MAN PLEADS GUILTY IN JAYME CLOSS KIDNAPPING.
BARRON, WIS. • A Wisconsin man pleaded guilty Wednesday to kidnapping 13-year-old Jayme Closs and killing her parents, in a move that spares the girl held captive in a remote cabin for three months from the possible trauma of having to testify at his trial.
Jake Patterson, 21, sniffled and his voice caught as he pleaded guilty to two counts of intentional homicide and one count of kidnapping. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dropped a count of armed burglary. Patterson faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced May 24; Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
Patterson had said he would plead guilty in a letter sent this month to a Minneapolis TV station, saying he didn’t want the Closs family “to worry about a trial.”
Patterson admitted kidnapping Jayme after killing her parents, James and Denise Closs, on Oct. 15 at the family’s home near Barron, about 145 kilometres northeast of Minneapolis. Jayme escaped in January, after 88 days in Patterson’s cabin in near the small, isolated town of Gordon, some 97 kilometres from her home.
The plea, coupled with an earlier decision by prosecutors not to bring charges in the county where Jayme was held, increases the chances that the details of her time in captivity will remain private.
Patterson stoically answered “yes” and “yeah” to repeated questions from Barron County Judge James Gabler about whether he understood what he was doing. Later, as he responded “guilty,” to each count, he could be heard sniffling.
According to a criminal complaint, Patterson told authorities he decided Jayme “was the girl he was going to take” after he saw her getting on a school bus near her home.
Jayme told police that the night of the abduction, the family dog’s barking awoke her, and she went to wake up her parents as a car came up the driveway. While her father went to the front door, Jayme and her mother hid in the bathroom. Patterson shot Jayme’s father, then found Jayme and her mother. He told detectives he shot her mother in the head.
During Jayme’s time in captivity, Patterson forced her to hide under a bed when he had friends over, warning that if she moved, “bad things could happen to her.”
On Jan. 10, Jayme escaped while Patterson was away. She flagged down a woman who was out walking a dog.