Kidnapping suspect stalked teen

Complaint says he decided to take girl as she boarded bus

BARRON, Wis. — The Wisconsin man suspected of abducting a 13-year-old girl decided to take her when he saw her getting on a school bus and made two aborted trips to her home before finally carrying out an attack in which he killed Jayme Closs’ mother in front of her, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

Jake Thomas Patterson, 21, told investigators he was driving to his job at a cheese factory when he stopped behind a school bus and watched Jayme board. At that moment, he said, “he knew that was the girl he was going to take,” the complaint said. Police said the two did not know each other.

Prosecutors charged Patterson on Monday with kidnapping Jayme and killing her parents Oct. 15 near Barron, about 90 miles northeast of Minneapolis. He was also charged with a count of armed robbery and was scheduled to make his first court appearance later in the day.

Investigators believe Patterson hid Jayme in a remote cabin before she escaped on Thursday.

The criminal complaint said Patterson had gone to the home twice intending to kidnap Jayme, but broke off one attempt because too many cars were in the driveway and called off another because the house was too active.

On the night she was abducted, Jayme told police, she was asleep in her room when the family dog started barking. She woke her parents as a car came up the driveway.

She and her mother, Denise, hid in a bathtub with the shower curtain pulled shut. Her father, James, went to the front door. They heard a gunshot, and Jayme knew that James had just been killed, according to the complaint.

Denise Closs started to call 911. But Patterson — dressed in black and wearing a mask — made her hang up, according to Jayme.

Armed with a shotgun, he taped Jayme’s mouth, hands and feet and then shot her mother in the head before leaving .

Patterson took Jayme to a cabin, made her dress in his sister’s pajamas and then hid her from friends and his father when they came visiting, the complaint said.

Patterson, who has no criminal history in Wisconsin, was described as a quiet and good student. He wrote in his high school yearbook of wanting to join the Marines. On Monday, a Marines spokeswoman said he lasted a little more than month before washing out in October 2015.

Police collected more than 3,500 tips after Jayme’s disappearance without any hard leads. Then on Thursday, a woman walking her dog spotted Jayme along a road near Gordon, a town about an hour’s drive north of Barron.

The woman said the girl begged for help, saying Patterson had been hiding her in a nearby cabin and that she had escaped when he left her alone.