BARRON, Wis. (AP) A 21-year-old unemployed man shot a Wisconsin couple to death in a scheme to kidnap their 13-year-old daughter, holding the girl captive for three months in an isolated north woods community before she managed to escape, authorities said Friday.
Jayme Closs was skinny, disheveled and wearing shoes too big for her when she approached a stranger to tell her story Thursday in the small town of Gordon, where police said Jake Thomas Patterson lived.
Her discovery set off joy and relief 60 miles away in her hometown of Barron, population 3,300, ending an all-out search that gripped the state, with many people fearing the worst the longer she was missing.
My legs started to shake. It was awesome. The stress, the relief it was awesome, Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said at a news conference, describing the moment of joy when he learned that Jayme had been found.
Patterson was jailed on kidnapping and homicide charges. It was not immediately known whether he had an attorney.
Fitzgerald gave no details on what happened to Jayme during her captivity and why she was seized, but said investigators do not believe Patterson knew her.
The sheriff said that he did not know if Jayme had been physically abused but that she was hospitalized overnight for observation and cleared and released after a checkup. Investigators were still interviewing her.
Jayme told one of the neighbors in Gordon who helped take her in after her escape that she had walked away from a cabin where she had been held captive.
She said that this persons name was Jake Patterson, he killed my parents and took me, another one of the neighbors, Kristin Kasinskas, told The Associated Press. She did not talk about why or how. She said she did not know him.
Property records show the cabin was sold by Pattersons father to a credit union in October, a few days before Jaymes disappearance.
Kasinskas called 911 to report the girl had been found after another neighbor out walking her dog encountered Jayme and brought her to Kasinskas house. Minutes later, Patterson was pulled over by a sheriffs deputy based on a description of his vehicle Jayme provided, authorities said.
Jaymes grandfather, Robert Naiberg, told the AP that he had been praying for months for the call he received about his granddaughter being found alive.
I thought, Good for her she escaped, he said.
Jayme disappeared without a trace from her familys home near Barron after someone broke in and killed her parents, James and Denise Closs, on Oct. 15.
Fitzgerald said Jayme was taken against her will. He said investigators believe Patterson killed Jaymes parents because he wanted to abduct her.
Patterson was a good but quiet student with a great group of friends, said Northwood School District Superintendent Jean Serum. Patterson was a member of the Northwood High School quiz bowl team and graduated in 2015, she said.
