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Woman who found Jayme Closs feared kidnapper would come after them

A criminal complaint outlines horrific details about Jayme's time held captive by the man who allegedly killed her parents.
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The woman who first saw Jayme Closs after she escaped from her kidnapper's house said during a mostly calm 911 call that she feared the Wisconsin teen's kidnapper would find them before police arrived.

Jeanne Nutter, who was walking her dog near her Douglas County cabin when Jayme approached her on Thursday for help, told a dispatcher that she brought the teen to her neighbor's house because her own cabin was too close to the house of the man who allegedly held her captive for nearly three months.

"We’re kinda scared because he might come," Nutter told a dispatcher as she and the home owners, Kristin and Peter Kasinskas, waited about a half hour for officers to arrive.

The three adults can be heard in the background, simultaneously trying to make Jayme comfortable and following instructions of the dispatcher: lock the doors, don't go outside, don't let anyone in, secure pets in another room.

Nutter's voice remained calm but she was jittery, as she worried about her dog scratching her neighbor's bathroom door, accidentally hitting speakerphone and whether Jayme was afraid.

When the dispatcher asked Nutter if Jayme would need medical attention, she said yes, for shock.

Image: US-CRIME-PROBE-MISSING-CLOSS
Jeanne Nutter speaks to the press on Jan. 11, 2019 in Gordon, Wisconsin. Kerem Yucel / AFP - Getty Images

Jayme, 13, was allegedly held by Jake Patterson, in a house about 80 miles from her Barron, Wisconsin, home, where she heard the shot that killed her father and saw her mother take a fatal shot to the head before she was stuffed in the trunk of a car.

A criminal complaint filed with the Barron County Clerk of Courts office detailed Oct. 15, when in the early morning, Jayme's father, James Closs, 56, and mother, Denise Closs, 46, were shot dead and the teen was taken.

When Jayme arrived at Patterson's house, he told her to get undressed, and he took away her clothes, making "a comment about not having evidence," the teen told investigators, according to the complaint.

Jayme spent the next 80-plus days trapped under a bed when Patterson had company or went out, sometimes for 12 hours at a time without food, water or anywhere to use the bathroom, she told police.

Patterson would stack storage bins, some weighted with barbells around the bed so that Jayme couldn't get out, and play loud music in the room so that no one could hear her.

"One time, (Jayme) stated she accidentally moved one of the totes when she was told to hide under the bed and Patterson told her something bad would happen if she did it again," the complaint said.

On another occasion, "Patterson got mad and hit her 'really hard' on her back with what she described as a handle for something used to clean blinds and that it hurt really bad when Patterson hit her," the document said.

Patterson did not tell investigators that he had struck Jayme, but did allegedly say he knew the teen "was fearful of him enough that she knew that she was not to leave the bedroom without him."

But she did. On Jan. 10, Jayme overpowered the crates and the weights, put on a pair of Patterson's shoes and found Nutter, who was walking her dog not far from Patterson's house. The teen has since been reunited with her family.

Patterson, 21, is charged with two counts of intentional homicide and one count each of kidnapping and armed burglary. He didn't know Jayme, but one day spotted her at a bus stop and resolved to kidnap her.

"There's a type of kidnapping called expressive where the actually taking of the victim is an end unto itself, where they look to dominate or put pressure on somebody, somehow victimize them," former FBI executive assistant director and NBC News analyst Shawn Henry said on "Today" Tuesday. "That looks to be what happened here, there was no ransom demand."

"You know when I read through the complaint, it’s really the callousness of this premeditated crime. ... There was nothing that was going to stop him from getting to her including murdering her parents," Henry said. "I mean, it reads like a script from a horror movie."

Investigators are still combing through the evidence to figure out why Patterson targeted Jayme and allegedly committed murder so that he could bring her to his home.

Dylan Fisher, who was a friend of Patterson's in high school but hadn't spoken with him since, told NBC News that he finds it hard to believe Patterson would be capable of what he is accused of.

"I couldn't believe it. Not in a hundred years would I have ever said or seen any red flags that would display anything towards this nature," Fisher said.

"He was polite, you know? He had a moral sense of what was right and wrong," said Fisher, adding that Patterson aspired to join the Marines after graduating.

Patterson served in the Marines at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego for a little more than a month, according to Marines spokeswoman Yvonne Carlock. His service began Sept. 14, 2015, and he was discharged at the rank of private on Oct. 20 of the same year.

"Patterson's premature discharge and rank are indicative of the fact that the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps' expectations and standards," Carlock said.