Days and days of searching for Maddie end with a call to police. a call from this house.

Hugs and tears and prayers for the little girl many of us never knew but few of us will ever forget.

Tonight a community Mourns for Maddie.

He was her playmate. someone she trusted.

But police say he violated that trust. in the most violent of ways.

We know now what happened to Maddie Clifton. but we still don't know why.

Police say this 14 year old took that life.

Tonight. Joshua Phillips. her neighbor. is charged with murder.

This is not the ending anybody could have forseen to a mystery that has gripped our community for seven days.

We have witnessed one family's indescribable pain and the outreach of many friends and strangers who hoped and prayed for Maddie Clifton.

Now, we know there is a second family who faces the indescribable pain of their 14 year old son being arrested and accused of a heinous crime.

This is a story that isn't over yet, and will never be for the families of two children.

Seven days of tireless searching for the 8 year old girl who went out to play and never came home.

The worst fears in all of us brought out the best in many.

How could she vanish from the face of the earth, we asked?

Who could want to hurt her?

Thousands joined in the effort they hoped would bring her home. plastering her picture everywhere. her mother asked us to call her name.

For seven days the child we were looking for was in the sheriff's words, "entombed" in a neighbor boys' water bed."

Our heartache is the loss of her beautiful innocence to this hideous end.

The family priest counseled the Cliftons and all of us to see this story in the context of good and evil.

Evil exists in the world he said, but witness how much more good we have seen in the past seven days. the LOVE that will continue to embrace the two families among us. who are suffering beyond our imagination.