The Wisconsin man who kidnapped Jayme Closs after killing her parents was sentenced to life without parole on Friday — as the teenager addressed the horrific ordeal publicly for the first time.
“He tried to steal me. And he didn’t care who he killed or who he hurt,” Closs, 13, wrote in the statement, which was read aloud by her lawyer during the sentencing hearing.
“He thought that he could own me, but he’s wrong. I was smarter,” Closs added.
“He thought he could control me, but he couldn’t,” she added. “He could never take away my spirit. He thought he could make me like him. But he was wrong.”
Her abductor, Jake Patterson, said he would “do absolutely anything to take back” what he did before he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the murders and 40 years for the kidnapping.
“I would die to bring them back. I don’t care about me,” Jake Patterson said through tears during his sentencing in a Barron County courtroom Friday.
Patterson, 21, was sentenced in front of Jayme Closs’ family who broke down in tears while reading statements about how the October 2018 double murder and kidnapping ripped their lives apart.
Patterson was spared capital punishment because Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
Siblings of Jayme Closs’ father, James Closs, remembered him as an avid Packers fan and a hard-working man who did everything he could to provide for his family.
“Because of this monster, Jayme won’t have her mom and dad at her dance recitals. She won’t have my brother to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day,” Mike Closs, Jayme’s uncle, said in the courtroom.
“Jayme was my sister Denise’s whole world,” a sister of Jayme’s mother, Denise Closs, said in her testimony. She added the family now lives in fear every day, needing home-security systems to sleep at night.
After the testimonies, a prosecutor methodically showed how Patterson carried out the murders and the abduction on Oct. 15 at the Closs family home near Barron, about 90 miles north of Minneapolis.
The prosecutor said Patterson shot James Closs point-blank through the front door of the house with a shotgun loaded with slugs.
He then blasted through the door and broke down a bathroom door where Jayme and her mother were hiding. Patterson bound Jayme with rope, taped her mouth shut, then shot her mother in the head at point-blank range.
He dragged the girl outside and threw her in the trunk of his car and brought her to his secluded cabin near Gordon, Wisconsin.
Months after her abduction, Jayme Closs escaped from the building while Patterson was out.
She flagged down a woman who was walking a dog, and they called local authorities. Patterson was arrested shortly after.
With Wires