Girl's Murder Stuns Community

(CBS)  Eight-year-old Maddie Clifton knew her neighbor as a playmate and friend. Now, Joshua Earl Patrick Phillips sits behind bars, charged with the girl's death.

Clifton disappeared last Tuesday while playing outside her house near Jacksonville, Florida. Authorities sealed off the area and began searching, aided by hundreds of volunteers. The girl's case was even noted at last Sunday's Jacksonville Jaguars football game, where coaches and spectators wore yellow ribbons. But now, the search has ended. The 8-year-old girl's body was found in a neighboring home, reports CBS News Legal Correspondent Kristin Jeannette Meyers.

Authorities announced the arrest of 14-year-old Joshua Phillips, a friend of Maddie's who lived right across the street. They say the boy has confessed to the murder. The sheriff showed a diagram of where Maddie was found. She was stabbed, beaten, and stuffed in the base of a waterbed in the boy's bedroom.

"It was apparent she was killed immediately after she was abducted, Sheriff Nat Glover said.

Joshua appeared in court Wednesday and was ordered held in isolation.

The girl had been stabbed at least nine times and was struck in the head. Detectives recovered a knife and a baseball bat believed to be the weapons, Glover said. Glover added that Maddie did not appear to have been sexually assaulted.

Joshua Phillips has no criminal record. He was turned in by his mother, who discovered the girl's body.

Melissa Phillips grew suspicious after police searched her home Monday and smelled an odor coming from the water bed. She saw a liquid oozing from the bed Tuesday. When she pulled aside the frame, she saw Maddie's feet and summoned an officer patrolling the neighborhood, Glover said.

"Her body was securely entombed in the casement of that water bed," he said.

Joshua's house was searched three times by police as part of a general search of the neighborhood, but those searches failed to uncover the body. The family had lived there for about two years.

Authorities are not releasing any information about motive or any details from the boy's confession. He is currently being held in a juvenile facility. He could be tried as an adult. That's a decision Florida prosecutors will have to make.