Man gets life for killing girl’s parents
The man who admitted to killing 13-year-old Jayme Closs’ parents before kidnapping and holding her hostage for 88 days was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday.
Jake Patterson, 21, pleaded guilty in March to two counts of intentional homicide and one of kidnapping.
The bodies of Jayme’s parents, Denise and James Closs, were found in their Barron, Wisconsin, home in October 2018, according to police. But Jayme was missing.
Three months later, the young teen managed to escape the Wisconsin cabin where Patterson kept her hidden after fatally shooting her parents. Soon after, Patterson was arrested and eventually confessed to the killings and kidnapping in a letter purportedly sent by him from jail to a TV reporter.
“I knew when I was caught (which I thought would happen a lot sooner) I wouldn’t fight anything,” the letter says. “I tried to give [police] everything ... so they didn’t have to interview Jayme. They did anyways and hurt her more for no reason.”
After Jayme was found, authorities described the conditions Patterson kept the girl under and the way she orchestrated her own escape, which The Washington Post reported in January:
“The girl told police that Patterson would have her hide under his twin bed, stacking the area around it with tote bags, laundry bins and weights so that he would be able to hear or see if she moved. Police said she told them that ‘Patterson made it clear that nobody was to know she was there or bad things would happen to her.’ Guests had apparently come and gone to while she was under the bed,” the complaint said.
“On Jan. 10, Patterson told her he was going to leave the house for five or six hours, the complaint said, making her crawl under the bed beforehand. But after he left, Jayme moved the bins and weights away, walked out toward the road until she found a woman walking her dog. Jeanne Nutter told police Jayme told her her name during the encounter. ‘I don’t know where I am,’ the disheveled girl told her. ‘He killed my parents.’ ”