Wisconsin authorities say man confessed to kidnapping girl, 13

0
168


(Reuters) – A Wisconsin man admitted he kidnapped a 13-year-old girl he picked out at random after seeing her board a school bus and held her hostage for three months after killing her parents in their home, prosecutors said in court papers on Monday.

Prosecutors described a brutal ordeal in which Jake Patterson, 21, shot Jayme Closs’s father and then killed her mother after ordering her to duct-tape the teen’s mouth shut.

The harrowing account came just days after Closs ended her 88-day captivity by escaping the rural home where, according to authorities, Patterson kept her trapped under his bed for as much as 12 hours at a time.

Patterson told police he first saw Closs getting on the bus last fall and decided he wanted to take her, prosecutors said.

What followed was weeks of planning, in which Patterson stole license plates to replace his own, checked out the Closs home twice, purchased a black ski mask and shaved his head to avoid leaving any hairs at the crime scene, police said.

After killing Closs’ parents, Patterson taped her ankles, locked her in his trunk and drove her to his home, passing squad cars with their sirens on that were responding to the shooting, he told police.

Closs managed to flee when Patterson was not at home and was found by a woman walking her dog on Thursday afternoon.

The two then approached a neighbor’s house to call police. While Closs warmed up inside, the neighbor, Peter Kasinskas, retrieved his gun and stood watch at the door in case her captor was searching for her, according to the Duluth News Tribune. His wife, Kristin Kasinskas, a middle-school teacher, realized she taught Patterson as a student but did not remember him well, the newspaper reported.

Reporting by Joseph Ax and Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Scott Malone, Lisa Shumaker and James Dalgleish



Source : Denver Post