Teen girl still missing
Mystery lingers in a small Wisconsin town after couple shot dead, 13-year-old girl vanishes
BARRON, Wis. — Cows and corn and silence stretch out on either side of U.S. Route 8, beyond the Jennie-O turkey plant and 10 churches that serve this town of just more than 3,400. So when James and Denise Closs, a quiet couple who had lived in town for decades, were found shot to death in their taupe house last month, residents were stunned. It was an agonizing loss of two lives, but also of a way of life.
Front doors are being locked. FBI agents have descended. Yet after three weeks, residents are left with a terrifying mystery that goes beyond the shocking deaths: Not only have the authorities publicly identified no suspect, no murder weapon and no motive, but the Closses’ 13-year-old daughter, Jayme, has been missing ever since.
“We have a double murder and a missing 13-year-old girl, there’s not much more to tell than that — and that’s the frustration,” said Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald, whose force of 78 ballooned at one point with 200 federal, state and local law officers joining an intensive, round-theclock hunt.
More than 2,100 tips have turned up nothing. Law enforcement officials have turned a courtroom in a municipal building on the outskirts of town, about 90 miles northeast of the Twin Cities, into a nerve center for the investigation. Thousands of volunteer searchers have combed cornfields and cow pastures. And still nothing — no
clues and no Jayme.
“We have exhausted every lead,” Fitzgerald said.
At just past 1 a.m. Oct. 15, a 911 call came in to the sheriff ’s office. No one spoke, but muffled shouting could be heard. Police traced the call to Denise Closs’ cellphone, and arrived at the house on Route 8 four minutes later. They found the front door open and the couple dead. James Closs’ body was in the doorway; his wife’s, inside the house. According to the sheriff, evidence indicated that Jayme was home at the time of the attack, though he would not describe the evidence. When deputies arrived, though, only Jayme’s dog, Molly, was there.
An Amber Alert was issued for Jayme, and in the weeks that have followed, her name has shot to the top of the FBI’s missing persons list. The agency has expanded its search nationwide, classifying her as “missing and endangered.” She is not a suspect in the case, according to the sheriff.
James Closs, 56, and Denise Closs, 46, worked at the Jennie-O plant for 27 years, according to an obituary posted on the website of the Rausch and Steel Funeral Home. It read: “James loved the Green Bay Packers and the Wisconsin Badgers and getting into conversations on the ‘glory days’ of his high school sports career. Denise loved working with her flowers, feeding her birds, she loved angels and helping everyone, any way she could.”
Denise Closs taught religious school at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in a nearby town, Cameron.
Around Barron, where Jayme’s sunny face and strawberry hair peers out from checkout counters from Duane’s Collision Repair Center to Dollar General, endless speculation has filled the void of hard information.
In the past decade, there have been a total of four killings in Barron County, according to the sheriff. Barron is the kind of town where screen doors are left unlatched in summer; in winter, few lock their front doors. Those days are over, several residents said.
“It’s the not knowing,” said Kelle Jenderny, 48, as she stood at the Holiday gas station on Day 17 of Jayme’s disappearance. Down the street, black lettering on a white billboard spelled out “Bring Jayme Home.”
The investigation itself has fueled the unease here, several people said. Residents obsessively check the sheriff ’s Facebook page for updates.
Last week, a local man, Kyle Jaenke-Annis, was arrested inside the Closses’ house; officials said he had taken clothing, including underwear, that belonged to Jayme, but they also said he had been cleared of involvement in the killings and disappearance.
In recent days, the operation scaled down some; many federal and state agents headed home.
Inside the sheriff ’s headquarters, an office is being converted into a permanent operations center where local and outside law enforcement will continue working on the Closs case.
“They’re not giving up,” Fitzgerald said. “I go to bed every night hoping my phone rings in the night saying, ‘We have her.’ ”