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'Bye Jayme': Jake Patterson's Creepy Last Words After Pleading Guilty To Kidnapping Jayme Closs, Murdering Her Parents
Patterson previously told a reporter he loved his 13-year-old captive.
The Wisconsin man who admitted to kidnapping 13-year-old Jayme Closs and holding her captive for nearly three months made an eerie utterance while leaving the courtroom after his tear-filled guilty plea.
“Bye Jayme,” Jake Thomas Patterson said as he turned back and looked toward the courtroom crowd. He did not appear to be looking directly at anyone in particular, the Associated Press reports.
Patterson 21, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of kidnapping for the Oct. 15 attack on the Closs home during which he gunned down James and Denise Closs before abducting their teen daughter and taking her to his cabin in rural Wisconsin. He'd also been charged with burglary, but that charge was dropped as part of the plea deal.
Although he seemed composed and stoic leading up to the pleas, he broke down when he actually had to say the words “guilty.” Patterson began crying when the judge read the charges and could be heard sniffing loudly and pausing for a few seconds before being able to state “guilty.” His voice was clearly cracking.
“Mr. Patterson has wanted to enter a [guilty] plea since the day we met him,” one of Patterson’s defense attorney Richard Jones said. He went on to say “this is his choice. This is what he wants.”
Patterson had hinted he would plead guilty while corresponding with reporters earlier this month.
He sent a letter to KARE11 in Minneapolis, expressing remorse and including an apology to Jayme written in childlike bubble letters.
In that note, he said he planned to plead guilty and that he wants “Jayme and her relatives to know that. Don’t want them to worry about a trial.”
He also called Jennifer Mayerle, a reporter at Minnesota station WCCO, on Friday, again stating that he feels remorse about what he put Jayme through.
"I just love her,” he told Mayerle.
Patterson characterized the kidnapping stint as something innocent, claiming that he and the young teen would spend time “watching TV, playing board games, talking about stuff. We cooked a lot, everything we made was homemade, you know.”
The reality was much more grim.
Patterson told investigators he decided to kidnap her after he spotted her getting onto a school bus near her home. After two aborted attempts, Patterson arrived at the Closs home Oct. 15 with a shotgun, killing James Closs at the front door after the father came down to see why a stranger was standing outside their home.
Jayme and her mother hid in the bathtub with the door closed as they heard her father getting shot to death, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Oxygen.com. Then, Patterson had Denise Closs help him tie up Jayme before he shot her dead too, afterward taking the teen out to his car and putting her in the trunk.
During her captivity at Patterson's cabin in rural Wisconsin, he would force her to hide under his bed if he had friends or relatives over and he "made it clear that nobody was to know she was there or bad things would happen to her." Closs said he once hit her over the back with an object used to clean window blinds.
Jayme escaped on Jan. 10 after 88 days in captivity and flagged down a woman for help. She was able to provide a description of the car Patterson was driving, and he was arrested shortly thereafter.
Patterson will be sentenced on May 24.
