Kidnapping suspect targeted girl after seeing her get on bus

BARRON ,WI S . » A Wisconsin man accused of abducting 13-year-old Jayme Closs and holding her captive for three months made up his mind to take her when he spotted the teenager getting on a school bus, authorities said Monday.

Jake Thomas Patterson, 21, told detectives that “he knew that was the girl he was going to take,” and he made two aborted trips to her family’s home before finally carrying out an attack in which he fatally shot Jayme’s mother in front of her, according to a criminal complaint filed hours before Patterson’s first court appearance.

Prosecutors charged him Monday with kidnapping Jayme and killing her parents Oct. 15 near Barron, about 90 miles northeast of Minneapolis. He was also charged with armed robbery.

Investigators believe Patterson hid Jayme in a remote cabin before she escaped on Thursday. Police have said the two did not know each other.

The judge set bail at $5 million.

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 the bathroom, clutching one another in the 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.

Patterson told her mother to hang up and ordered her to tape Jayme’s mouth shut. Patterson told detectives that Denise Closs struggled with the tape, so he wrapped the tape himself around Jayme’s mouth and head. He then taped her hands behind her back and taped her ankles together, pulled her out of the bathtub and shot her mother in the head.