Mike Duncan, News Director at WJMC Radio in Rice Lake, joined Wisconsin’s Morning News for more on what this sentencing means for the Closs family and the Barron community. Listen to the full interview in the player below.
BARRON, Wis. (AP) – The Wisconsin man who admitted kidnapping a 13-year-old girl after killing her parents is due to be sentenced.
Twenty-one-year-old Jake Patterson is facing life in prison when he’s sentenced Friday in Barron County Circuit Court for kidnapping Jayme Closs and killing her parents, James and Denise Closs, on Oct. 15 at the family’s home near Barron, about 90 miles northeast of Minneapolis.
Jayme escaped in January, after 88 days in Patterson’s cabin near the small, isolated town of Gordon, some 60 miles from her home. Patterson told authorities he decided Jayme “was the girl he was going to take” after he saw her getting on a school bus near her home.
Patterson earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and kidnapping.