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House Where Jayme Closs Was Kidnapped And Parents Killed Has Been Torn Down
Jake Patterson fatally shot Jayme Closs' parents to death in the Wisconsin home.
The Wisconsin home where 13-year-old Jayme Closs’ parents were murdered and where she was abducted has been torn down.
The house, located near Barron, where the grisly murders and kidnapping took place was demolished Tuesday, August 6, the Associated Press reports. After having a conversation with relatives about the property, the bank that owns the home decided to destroy it, Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald tells the Star Tribune.
“Whatever the Closs family wants is what I want,” he told the local outlet. “I knew they didn’t want to go back there, so it’s probably the right thing to do.”
Jake Patterson, who, before the murders and kidnapping was a stranger to the Closs family, decided to kidnap the girl after he spotted her getting onto a school bus near her home.
After two aborted attempts, Patterson arrived at the Closs home on Oct. 15 with a shotgun, killing Jayme Closs’ dad, 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 Denise 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. Patterson found the pair and had Denise help him tie up Jayme before he shot the mother dead. Then, he took the teen out to his car and put 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."
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 was sentenced to life in prison in May. After he pleaded guilty a few months earlier in March, he creepily uttered the phrase, “Bye Jayme,” as he turned back and looked toward the courtroom crowd.
At Patterson’s sentencing, a family attorney read out loud the teen girl’s first public statements about her ordeal.
“He thought that he could own me but he was wrong. I was smarter,” the statement said. “I was brave and he was not. ... He thought he could make me like him, but he was wrong.”
