The Wisconsin man who kidnapped 13-year-old Jayme Closs, killed her parents and kept her captive in a remote cabin for 88 days before she escaped will learn his fate Friday.
Jake Patterson, 21, could spend the rest of his life behind bars when he is sentenced in a Barron County court in northern Wisconsin after pleading guilty in March to two counts of intentional homicide and one of kidnapping.
Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
He admitted to abducting Jayme on Oct. 15 after killing her parents, James and Denise Closs, at the family’s home near Barron, about 90 miles northeast of Minneapolis.
She escaped in January from Patterson’s cabin near the isolated town of Gordon, some 60 miles from her home.
Jayme’s family members are expected to speak at the hearing, but it was not immediately known whether the girl will speak or even attend the sentencing.
Patterson told investigators he decided Jayme “was the girl he was going to take” after he saw her boarding a school bus near her home, according to a criminal complaint.
He said he plotted carefully, including wearing all-black clothing, putting stolen license plates on his car and taking care to leave no fingerprints on his shotgun.
Jayme told police that the night of her abduction, the family dog’s barking awoke her, and she went to wake up her parents as a car came up the driveway. While her dad went to the door, Jayme and her mom hid in the bathroom.
After shooting the father, Patterson found Jayme and her mother. He said he wrapped tape around Jayme’s mouth and head, taped her hands behind her back and tied her ankles together before shooting her mother in the head.
He told police he dragged the girl outside and threw her in the trunk of his car.
At his cabin, he forced Jayme to hide under a bed when he had friends over and warned her that if she moved, “bad things could happen to her,” according to the complaint.
He also turned up the volume on his radio so visitors couldn’t hear her.
Authorities searched for Jayme for months and collected more than 3,500 tips before she made a daring escape on Jan. 10 while Patterson was away.
Jayme flagged down a woman who was walking a dog and Patterson was arrested minutes later. She is now living with an aunt and uncle.
In a letter Patterson wrote to a reporter for KARE-TV in February, he said he had “huge amounts” of remorse or regret for what he did — adding that he didn’t want Jayme’s family “to worry about a trial.”
“I can’t believe I did this,” the former cheese factory worker wrote.
“The cops say I planned this thoroughly, and that I said that … straight up lie. This was mostly on impulse,” he wrote. “I don’t think like a serial killer,” he added. “At the time I was really pissed. I didn’t ‘want’ to. The reason I did this is complicated.”
With Post wires