Content note: discussion of murder and kidnapping, mention of sexual violence (no details), general dudely creepitude

Welcome to the Spooky Sconnie podcast, the show that talks about the spooky, paranormal, criminal, and just plain odd Badger State. While we're known for sportsball and food, there's a lot more to learn about Wisconsin if you know where to look.

In this first minisode on the subject, I discuss the Jayme Closs case. Three months after her parents double murder and her kidnapping, Jayme was recently found. Details are still coming out about her captivity and, yesterday, her captor - Jake Thomas Patterson - was officially charged.

Further reading

• Link to Wisconsin's current missing children cases

Transcript

Welcome to the first minisode of the Spooky Sconnie Podcast, the podcast that talks about all things creepy, weird, spooky, and more in the state of Wisconsin. One of the things that I think it's very interesting about true crime is when you get the opportunity to cover a case as it unfolds when you are a podcaster or a writer or what have you, and I wanted to take time today to talk about a fairly well known kidnapping. The recently occurred here in Wisconsin and is actually reaching the trial stage and I'll talk about all the details and get you all caught up if you haven't heard about what's going on, um, since this case is going to start going to trial potentially in February. This will be, um, you know, I would imagine a longer minisode series, um,and we'll just see where it takes us. Some of the episodes might be really short, some of them may be fairly long and this one will probably be a longer one just because of, uh, getting everyone up to speed on the kidnapping of Jayme Closs and her recovery.

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At the center of this case are two, uh, locations in Wisconsin. The first is Barron, Wisconsin, which is located in the northwest of the state. Um, it's a city, so there's a town of Barron and surrounding that town is the city of Barron and is located in Barron county. This happens so much in Wisconsin specifically as wild. Uh, let's be more imaginative with names. I don't know. Anyway, there's an estimated 3,300 people in the area and it's actually closer to Lake Superior, one of the Great Lakes than it is to Madison. In fact, it's roughly 220 miles or about three and a half hours away by car from Madison versus being about an hour and 45 minutes in slightly different directions from both Minneapolis or Lake Superior.

Gordon, Wisconsin, the other city that is really being focused on in this case, is up in Douglas County. This is, at least in my eyes, the most northwestern county in the state of Wisconsin. In 2000, there were only 645 people living there permanently and that really hasn't changed 19 years later, which is weird. Anyway, um, as, as par for the course for Wisconsin, there are a lot of cabins where people come up and stay throughout the year, use for hunting, use for snow sports, use to be close to the lake because it is only about 35