The Leg Thing

In early July 1994, fourteen-year-old Chris Steiner disappeared from his home in Baraboo, Wisconsin. His body was found in the Wisconsin River days later, and at first it looked like a drowning, though the cause was officially listed as undetermined. Nobody connected it to a crime.

On July 29, 1995, a teenager named Joe Clark took thirteen-year-old Thad Phillips from his home and held him for about 43 hours at a house on County Road U. Clark deliberately broke Thad’s legs and other bones. Thad got free, called 911, and Clark was arrested within hours. At Clark’s home, investigators found notebooks listing more than two dozen boys’ names under the headings “Get to Now,” “Can Wait,” and “Leg Thing.” The similarity to Chris Steiner’s case led investigators to exhume his body, and a new examination found ankle injuries like Thad’s.

Clark was sentenced to 100 years in prison for the attack on Thad. In November 1997 a jury convicted him of murdering Chris Steiner, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Thad later won a civil judgment of about $21 million, but he told WKOW in 2023 that he had never received any of the money.