A man who kidnapped a 13-year-old girl for 88 days after murdering her parents is set to die in jail.
Jake Patterson, 21, was handed a life sentence in Barron County Court in northern Wisconsin on Friday after he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and a kidnapping charge for abducting Jayme Closs.
Six of Jayme’s relatives gave heartbreaking statements in court before Patterson – all of them ending their testimony by recommending that Patterson get the maximum sentence. Afterward, a lawyer for the family read a statement from Jayme, which concluded: ‘He should stay locked up forever.’
Just before he was sentenced, Patterson was given the opportunity to speak and said: ‘I’ll just say that I would do absolutely anything to take back what I did. I would die to bring them back,’ he started to cry then continued: ‘I don’t care about me. I’m just so sorry.’
Patterson held Jayme captive for months after he broke into her home on October 15, 2018. It was his third trip to the Closs home after he showed up twice before when the family had not been home, Baron County District Attorney Brian Wright said.
He offered chilling detail on how the the Closs’ dog began barking when it noticed Patterson’s car in the driveway, waking Jayme up. She saw the strange vehicle with its lights off in her driveway and woke her parents, James and Denise. Her father went to the front window and shined a flashlight outside.
Patterson saw James as he peered out the front window and told him to ‘get on the ground,’ but instead James went to the front door. Patterson, armed with a Mossberg shotgun, fired point blank at James, hitting him in head and neck.
Denise took her daughter and the two hid in the bathroom, where they listened in terror as James was gunned down. Patterson was unable to get into the locked front door, so he blasted the lock with the shotgun and walked in. Denise called 911.
When Patterson got to the bathroom, Denise told him she had already called 911, but Patterson took her phone then made Denise tape Jayme’s mouth ‘the whole way around her head,’ Wright said.
Unsatisfied with the way Denise had bound her own daughter, Patterson took over, then shot Denise point blank with the shotgun ‘without even looking at her,’ Wright said.
Patterson then dragged her out to his car, over the James’ body, and drove her to a remote cabin in Gordon, Wisconsin, threatening her along the way to discourage her from trying to escape.
The girl told authorities that Patterson forced her to hide under a bed, weighed down by totes, for up to 12 hours at time without water, food, or bathroom breaks to avoid detection. For 88 days she remained a captive.
Jayme managed to escape on January 10. She pushed the weights off the bed and took a pair of Patterson’s shoes – so quickly that she put them on the wrong feet.’
She left the house and found a woman walking her dog who took her to a neighbor’s house to call police. Patterson was arrested a short time later and said he know he was ‘fucked when he didn’t see her under the bed.’
After prosecutors detailed the entirety of Patterson’s crimes, his lawyers spoke and claimed the Pre-trial investigation used biased language, citing one example in the report that said Patterson ‘succumbed to his twisted fantasies.’
‘Mr Patterson is not a sociopath and does not have psychopathic tendencies,’ Patterson’s attorney insisted.
Patterson pleaded guilty months before, on March 27, as he sobbed in court. He wrote a letter to KARE-TV that said he wanted to spare the girl’s family the heartbreak of enduring a long, drawn out trial, which would revisit the horrific details of his crime.
He wrote: ‘Plead guilty…I want Jayme and her relatives to know that. Don’t want them to worry about at trial.’
Patterson continued to write that he felt ‘huge amounts’ of remorse and added ‘I can’t believe I did this,’ claiming that he was acting ‘mostly on impulse.’
In a phone call to WCCO, Patterson said he ‘loved’ Jayme and tried to characterize the kidnapping as something less sinister, claiming he played games with Jayme and cooked her homemade meals.
Patterson was sentenced for two counts if intentional homicide and one count of kidnapping. His life sentence comes with no possibility of release. It is the harshest penalty that he could have received. Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
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