After witnessing 13-year-old Jayme Closs board the school bus at her Wisconsin home one morning in October 2018, Jake Patterson made the decision to kidnap her. He held her hostage for around three months.

The quiet existence of 13-year-old Jayme Closs was forever altered in the early hours of October 15, 2018. After breaking into her Barron, Wisconsin, home, a guy called Jake Patterson killed her parents and crammed her into his vehicle.

In the little hamlet of Gordon, 70 miles away, Patterson took Jayme to his cabin. For almost three months, the 21-year-old kept the teenage girl there as a hostage, making her hide beneath his twin-sized bed when he hosted company and threatening to hurt her if she attempted to go.

Then, on January 10, 2019, Jayme recognized her opportunity. Jayme, wearing Patterson's too-large shoes and without a coat, snuck out from under the bed and rushed out into the icy Wisconsin winter when Patterson left the house that day. She kept wandering until she spotted a woman walking her dog and pleaded with her for assistance.
After being held captive for 88 days, Jayme Closs' ordeal came to an end. Investigators swiftly located Patterson using the information the teen gave, and he was given a life term for his unsettling offenses.

Jayme Closs's kidnapping and her parents' murder
Jake Thomas Patterson knew he wouldn't be going alone when he pulled into the Closs family's driveway just before one in the morning on October 15, 2018. He saw 13-year-old Jayme Closs clambering onto a school bus while he was waiting behind it on his way to work around two weeks prior. Patterson reportedly told authorities that he "knew that was the girl he was going to take," according to a 2019 New York Times story.