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Jayme Closs Hid In The Bathtub With Her Mom As She Listened In Horror To Her Dad Being Shot Dead
Jake Patterson told police it took up to 15 attempts to bust down the door of the bathroom, where he found Jayme and Denise Closs on the phone to 911.
Jayme Closs, the 13-year-old girl from Wisconsin who recently escaped a remote cabin where she had been held captive for nearly three months, hid in the bathtub with her mother as her kidnapper gunned down her father and broke down the bathroom door to kill her mother and take her, according to a criminal complaint.
Closs had been missing since Oct. 15 when police say Jake Thomas Patterson broke into her family's home outside Barron and fatally shot her parents, James and Denise Closs. Then, after nearly three months of seemingly futile searching by authorities, Closs managed to escape her captor and seek help.
A criminal complaint written against Patterson by Barron County prosecutors, obtained by Oxygen.com, outlines the charges against him - two counts of first-degree homicide and one count each of kidnapping and armed buglary - and also details the terrifying moments leading up to Closs' abduction.
It describes how Jayme was sleeping when she woke up to the sound of her dog barking in the middle of the night on Oct. 15. She told investigators that "she got up to investigate why her dog was barking and noticed there was someone driving up their driveway." Then, she went to her parents’ bedroom to wake them and alert them to the intruder.
She said Patterson was at the door with a gun and her dad went down to see what was going on. Meanwhile, she and her mother hid in the bathtub with the door closed. Her mother had her cellphone on her.
At that point, Jayme told investigators that "she heard a gunshot and knew her father had just been killed."
Denise was on the phone to 911 when Patterson began pounding at the locked bathroom door. He later told police he'd searched the other rooms in the house before figuring they were in the bathroom. It took him up to 15 tries to bust the door down with his shoulder, he told investigators, according to the complaint.
After finding them, he told Denise to hang up the phone. He then ordered the mother to put tape over the teen's mouth, which she did. After binding Jayme's hands and feet with tape, Patterson then shot Denise, according to the complaint.
The complaint specified that both Denise and James were shot one time each, according to Jayme’s account. Deputies noted that both parents were found with significant gunshot wound trauma to their face and heads. Denise was found in the tub and James was found lying by the front door.
Patterson allegedly dragged her out to his car, and put her in the trunk. Not long after he began driving away, Jayme said she heard the sirens of two squad cars. A Barron County Sheriff's Deputy reported that while en route to the Closs home, responding to that 911 call, he noticed a car which was missing a front license plate.
Patterson allegedly removed the front license plate from his car before driving over to the Closs home.
[Photo: FBI, Barron County Sheriff’s Department]
