3 Blood Chilling Cases of Killer Kids
3. Anthony Jacques Broussard
Milpitas is a sleepy city just north of San Jose, California. In the early 1980s the city had a population of about 38,000 people. According to the newspaper San Francisco Weekly, it was best known for being the home of a large landfill. On November 3rd, 1981 14-year-old Marcy Conrad skipped her afternoon classes at Milpitas High School, and she went to the home of
Anthony Jacques Broussard. Broussard was 16 years old and he attended the same high school. Broussard was a large young man. He stood 6 foot 4 and he weighed 240 pounds. Broussard was apparently on LSD that afternoon. He said Marcy was sitting on his lap, and then she said something he didn't like. Apparently, she teased him about his dead mother. When Broussard was 7 he found his mother dead from natural causes in the shower. After her death, Broussard apparently started acting strangely.
After she made the crack about his dead mother, he got angry and strangled her to death. Afterward, he violated the ninth grader's body. Once he was finished with her, he placed her body in the back of his pickup truck and he drove to the outskirts of the city. He dumped her half-naked body in a wooded ravine and drove off. When Marcy didn't come home that night her mother reported her missing. Just over 24 hours later Broussard's friends were hanging out at a local arcade. When Broussard got there he bragged to his friends that he had killed Marcy. They didn't believe him. To prove it, he took a group of them out to the ravine. One of the young people who saw the body was an ex-boyfriend of Marcy's and the ex-boyfriend's eight-year-old brother.
At first they thought the body was a mannequin, so someone poked the body with a stick. When they realized the body was real, they weren't sure if she was dead. One boy apparently dropped a rock on her head to test for signs of life. That proved she was dead. Amazingly, none of the kids told the police or their parents about the murder. The next day Broussard attended school, and he bragged to more people about the murder. He again took groups of people out to see the body. One of the people who went to see the body was 16-year-old Kirk Rasmussen.
Rasmussen asked Roussard why he killed Marcy, but apparently Roussard just laughed. Before leaving the ravine, Rasmussen put leaves over the body to try and conceal it. In total, Roussard took at least 12 fellow-teenagers and an eight-year-old to see Marcy's body. It wasn't until the afternoon of November 5th, about 48 hours after Marcy was killed that one of the kids who saw the body finally went to the police. He was part of the first group of kids to see the body. He said that as he had dinner that night with his family and sat in classes the next day he kept thinking about seeing her body.
Around the same time, another person who saw the body on the second day called the police. The police went to the ravine and they found the body. As the police were blocking off the crime scene, more teenagers drove up to look at the body. When they saw the police, they turned around and drove away. Broussard was arrested and the teenagers who saw the body were brought in for questioning. They were asked why they didn't go to the police. Some said that they didn't want Broussard to get in trouble. A few said that they didn't want the police to think that they were involved in the murder, so they chose to keep quiet.
After Broussard was arrested, two sisters, who were 13 and 14, went to the police and said that Broussard had sexually assaulted them. In exchange for dropping the two sexual assault charges involving the sisters Broussard agree to a prison term of 25 years to life. Rasmussen was given three years for trying to hide the body. He was the only other teenager convicted in connection with the murder. The murder, and the fact that the other kids knew about it yet no one reported it for nearly 24 hours shocked people across the country. Violent movies and heavy-metal music were blamed for the murder and the callousness of not just the killer, but the other teenagers who said and did nothing after seeing the dead body of their fellow schoolmate. Broussard has been eligible for parole since October 1997, but he has never been granted it. At the time of this video he is 53 years old and he is incarcerated at the correctional training facility in Soledad, California.
2. Joshua Phillips
November 3rd, 1999 was a nice, cool day in Jacksonville, Florida. Around 5 o'clock that afternoon eight-year-old Maddie Clifton told her mom Sheila that she was going out to play. They lived on a quiet street and Maddie was a good kid, so Sheila wasn't too worried about her youngest daughter going out to play. At 6:30 Sheila called out for Maddie and her sister to come home for dinner. Only Maddie's sister returned home. She said she had not been playing with Maddie, and she didn't know where she was. Sheila and her husband Steve decided to call 911 right away and the police arrived shortly afterward.
Search crews were made up from people in the neighborhood, and they looked for the little girl. Over the next 7 days hundreds of people searched for Maddie, but no trace of her could be found. It was like she walked through a hole in reality and vanished. Seven days after Maddie vanished, a neighbor of the Clifton's, Missy Phillips, was cleaning up around her home. She lived across the road from the Cliftons with her husband, Steve, and her 14-year-old son, Joshua. Missy, Steve and Joshua all helped look for Maddie on the first night that she went missing.
By most accounts
Joshua Phillips was just a typical teenager. He had a C-average in school, he liked baseball and he liked hanging out with his friends. While Missy was cleaning up, she noticed some liquid near the base of her son's water bed. She thought that the bed might be leaking, which would explain the horrible smell that has started emanating from his room. She lifted the mattress and saw a small, discolored human foot. She dropped the mattress, walked outside and found a police officer. She led the officer into her son's bedroom. Hidden in the base of the water bed was the body of Maddie Clifton.
One of the boards of the bed space was broken, and it was held in place with tape. Maddie's body was stuffed into the base, and then the board was put back in place to conceal the body. For six nights Joshua slept in the bed while Maddie's body decomposed below him. Maddie was naked from the waist down, but there were no signs of sexual assault. Her pants and her underwear were hidden under the bed with her. Joshua also made attempts to cover up the smell. Beside his bed there were air fresheners and incense. They were sitting beside one of Maddie's missing persons posters.
The police had searched the Phillips house three times before and they even noticed an unusual smell. Missy said that the smell was probably just from their pet birds. Joshua was at school when the body was discovered. He was pulled out of class and brought to the police station. With his dad by his side Joshua confessed. He said that on the day that Maddie was killed, she came over to his house and wanted to play baseball. Joshua told her that he couldn't play, but she kept pestering him. He relented and they went into his backyard to play baseball. Joshua said that he was batting and he hit a ball that struck Maddie in the head. It caused her to start bleeding and she started screaming.
Joshua said he panicked and he dragged Maddie from his backyard into his bedroom. While he was dragging her, she lost the bottom half of her clothes. In the bedroom, Maddie kept screaming and he began to panic more. Joshua's father had a strict rule that Joshua wasn't allowed to have other children in the house when no adults were there and his father would be home at any time. Joshua said to get Maddie to stop screaming he hit her in the head with his baseball bat three times. He then stabbed her three times in the throat. He stuffed her body under his bed and left her there. His father arrived home not long afterward.
After his father was in the house, Joshua heard Maddie moaning, and he realized that she wasn't dead. So we went back into his bedroom, pulled out her body stabbed her a few more times in the chest, and then pushed her back under the bed. The police found both the baseball bat and the knife hidden in his room. Several months later Joshua went to trial. He was charged with first-degree murder, and even though he was only 14, he was charged as an adult. Joshua's defense was that Maddie's murder was a bad decision he made because he was panicking or at the very least it was not premeditated.
Therefore he should be guilty of manslaughter or second-degree murder, but not first-degree murder. The prosecutor said that Joshua was lying about what happened, and he said that Joshua was a monster. The prosecutor introduced the autopsy report as evidence. The report said the Maddie had been struck three times in the head with the baseball bat, and she had been stabbed ten times. Three times in the throat and then seven times in the chest. The chest wounds happened after his father arrived home. Maddie was still alive after the second round of stabbings, and she died after she was stuffed back under the bed.
The prosecutor pointed out that there was no physical evidence backing up Joshua's version of events. He said that they were playing baseball, and Maddie was hit in the head with the baseball, resulting in a cut on her head. Joshua said he then dragged Maddie from the backyard into his house and into his bedroom. The first problem is that Maddie didn't have a cut on her head. Also, there was no blood found anywhere else other than Joshua's bedroom. Finally, neither Maddie's body nor her clothes had any dirt or twigs on them. The prosecutor introduced evidence that before Maddie was killed, Joshua was at home looking at violent pornography.
After he killed her, he went back to looking at porn. However, Maddie had not been sexually assaulted. Something odd that was found in Joshua's room was a photograph of Maddie's 11-year -old sister. The Clifton's home had been broken into before the murder and it is suspected that Joshua was the one who broke in and he stole the photograph then. Joshua's defense attorney rested without calling a single witness. He just told the jury that the death was the result of the fourteen-year-old panicking. The jury deliberated for just over two hours before finding Joshua guilty. At the age of 14 he was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. The Cliftons thought that the sentence was fair.
However, other people thought that locking up and throwing away the key on a 14-year-old was cruel and unusual punishment, even if his crime was horrifying. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that giving juveniles life without parole was unconstitutional. In the summer of 2017, Joshua was given a new sentencing hearing. The Clifton's feelings towards Joshua have changed slightly over the years. Sheila doesn't hate Joshua anymore, but she still doesn't think that he should ever leave prison. She says that Maddie doesn't get a second chance at life, so why should he?
Maddie's father and sister both agree with Sheila and think that Joshua should pay for what he did by living out the rest of his life in prison. The judge agreed with the Cliftons, and Joshua was re-sentenced to life in prison. Joshua has been in maximum security since the age of 15, and he has been a model prisoner. He graduated from high school and he got a college diploma as a legal assistant/paralegal. He helps tutor inmates who are trying to get their GED. He says that he is not a monster, he was just a kid who did something horrible. He hopes that one day he'll be released from prison.
1. Shinichiro Azuma
In February, 1997 the peaceful city of Kobe, Japan was rocked by a series of violent attacks on young girls. In two separate attacks, two pre-teen girls were struck in the head with a hammer. They luckily both survived. Just a month later, on March 16th, 1997 there was another pair of attacks. Ten-year-old Ayaka Yamashita was struck several times in the head with a hammer, and she was also stabbed in the head as well. She died as a result of her wounds. An hour after she was attacked, a second girl was attacked. She was stabbed and left to bleed to death. Luckily, she survived.
Murders, especially
child murders, are very uncommon in Japan and everyone in Kobe was on edge. Then, a month later, the citizens of Kobe were shocked by another horrible crime. On May 21st, 11-year-old Jun Hase went missing. Jun was a boy, and all the other victims were girls and none of them went missing. The people of Kobe were wondering if a second person was preying on their children, or was the killer changing their modus operandi? Three days after Jun went missing, a custodian at a junior high school in Kobe made a horrifying discovery. Near the back gate of the school was the head of a young boy in a plastic bag.
The police were called, and they were also disturbed by what the custodian found. They were able to identify the head. It belonged to Jun. The head had been removed with a hacksaw, and the body wasn't at the school. The boy's eyes had been gouged out, and the sides of his mouth had been cut to make it look like a grotesque smile. Inside the boy's mouth there was a note written in red ink. In part, the note reads:
This is the beginning of the game. You police guys stop me if you can. I just really want to see people die. It is a thrill for me to commit murder. A bloody judgement is needed for my years of great bitterness. He signed off with the name Sakakibara Seito, which uses the Japanese symbols for the words 'sake', 'devil', 'rose' and 'sacred master'.
On June 6th, about two weeks after the murder, a local newspaper in Kobe received a letter written in red ink and signed off as Sakakibara Seito. The killer also added a designation that was written in English. He called himself 'The School Killer'. The police compared the handwriting to the note that was found in Jun's mouth, and they concluded that the letter was from the killer. In his letter, the killer discusses his hatred of the Japanese school system. He also wrote, "It's only when I kill that I'm liberated from the constant hatred that I suffer and I am able to attain peace.
It is only when I give pain to people that I can ease my own pain." He also wrote that he was mad because the newspaper had gotten his name wrong. They called him Onibara, which means 'devil's rose'. He then wrote, "From now, on if you misread my name or spoil my mood I will kill three vegetables a week. If you think I can only kill children, you are greatly mistaken." The newspaper decided to publish the letter, and it terrified the citizens of Kobe.
Children weren't allowed out of their parents sight and even adults were nervous that they may be the next person to be attacked. The police relentlessly pursued any lead that came their way. Near the end of June they got a tip from two boys who had been beaten up by a 14-year-old classmate. They said that the boy who beat them up, who was only identified as 'Boy A', may be responsible for the murders. 'Boy A' was the oldest of three children, and he was from a middle-class family. The boys thought that 'Boy A' may be responsible because he had killed several animals in very sadistic ways.
The police got a warrant and searched 'Boy A's bedroom. In his bedroom they found a journal detailing the murders of Jun and Ayaka. The diary entry for the day that Ayaka was murdered reads: "I carried out sacred experiments today to confirm how fragile human beings are. I think I hit her a few times, but I was too excited to remember." In the diary entry for the day after that, he writes that he learned that both girls he attacked didn't die. He was surprised that killing someone wasn't as easy as he thought.
The police found the hacksaw in a nearby pond and arrested 'Boy A'. At the police station he confessed to the two murders and the three other attacks. He said that when he killed Jun, he strangled him in the mountains and removed his head. He brought the head home first and then dropped it off at the school. 'Boy A' was convicted of the two murders, and in October 1997 he was sent to a juvenile reformatory. He was paroled in March 2004 at the age of 21, and his parole ended later that year, leaving him free with a clean record after serving just seven years.
In June 2015, 'Boy A', who was then 32 years old, found himself in the national headlines in Japan yet again. He wrote a book about his crimes and his time in the reformatory, and it was published by a major Japanese publisher. The book, is titled 'Zekka', which loosely translates to 'desperate song'. The families of the victims were appalled by the publication of the book. Before the publication of the book, the killer wrote the families an apology letter every year. When the book was published, he sent them a copy of the book along with another letter of apology.
The families were upset because they were not consulted before the book was published and they didn't think that the killer should profit off his crimes. The book was an instant bestseller and the initial run of a hundred thousand copies were all sold. The writer supposedly made fifteen million yen, which is about $US150,000 on the first printing of the book. In the epilogue of the book, the killer says that he is remorseful for his actions, but the content of the book made several people question if he really was sorry for what he did.
People suspected that he got enjoyment from reliving the attacks while writing the book. The book also contains shocking and lurid details about the murders that had not been made public. The most shocking claim in the book is that when he took Jun's head home, he locked himself in his bedroom and did something that was "far more heinous than murder". Months after the book was published Japan Today reported that 'Boy A' had launched a vanity website. The website was called 'The Unbearable Transparency of Being', and it featured several odd pieces of artwork.
They were pictures of a man, (presumably 'Boy A') and he was shirtless and wearing a mask. In one picture he is nude and it looks like a xenomorph from the Alien franchise is coming out his crotch. There is another photograph that features his torso on the body of a scorpion. Not long after the website was launched, a Japanese tabloid decided to break Japanese privacy laws and they revealed the identity of 'Boy A'. His name is Shinichiro Azuma. He currently lives in the Saitama Prefecture, which is north of Tokyo, where he works as a welder on construction sites.
