Complaint: Kidnapping suspect kept Wisconsin girl under bed

BARRON, Wis. — For nearly three months, prosecutors say, 13-year-old Jayme Closs was forced to hide in a 2 1/2-foot space beneath her kidnapper’s bed, going without food, water or a bathroom for hours, too terrified to flee from a man she knew had fatally shot both of her parents.

But when Jake Thomas Patterson left the remote cabin on the 88th day of her captivity, she finally made a break for freedom, authorities said. She put on Patterson’s sneakers so hastily that they ended up on the wrong feet. After a neighbour called 911, Patterson was soon captured as he drove around the rural area searching for her.

“She’s 13 years old, and if you read the criminal complaint, you can see the amount of control that he was exerting over her,” Barron County District Attorney Brian Wright said. “And at some point, she found it within herself at 13 years old to say, ‘I’m going to get myself out of this situation.’ I think it’s incredible.”

The complaint filed Monday offered the most detailed account yet of the attack on the Closs couple and the cruel conditions under which their daughter was held.

Patterson, 21, was charged Monday with two counts of intentional homicide, one count of kidnapping and one count of armed burglary. A judge set his bail at $5 million cash. Prosecutors say more charges could come later. The murder charges are each punishable by life in prison and the kidnapping charge carries a maximum term of 40 years. Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty.

His defence attorneys, Charles Glynn and Richard Jones, have said they might seek a change of venue.

“It’s been an emotional time for this community and a difficult time for this community. We don’t take that lightly. But we have a job to do in protecting our client,” Jones said.

Patterson’s relatives, including his father, Patrick, declined to comment after his initial court hearing.

The suspect grew up an hour north of Barron, which is about 90 miles (144 kilometres) northeast of Minneapolis. He graduated from high school in May 2015 and joined the Marines. He lasted a month before he washed out after failing to meet “expectations and standards,” a Marine spokeswoman said. She did not elaborate.

According to the complaint:

Patterson was working at a cheese factory west of Barron when he stopped behind a school bus on his way to work and saw Jayme getting on. He decided then that she “was the girl he was going to take.”

He made two trips to her home meaning to kidnap her but broke off both attempts because he thought too many people were at the house. He returned to the home a third time on Oct. 15.

Dressed almost entirely in black and wearing a face mask and gloves, he armed himself with a shotgun. He told detectives he attached stolen license plates to his car so police would not be able to track him. He disabled the dome light, removed a cord that allowed the trunk to be opened from inside and coasted down the Closs driveway with his lights off just before 1 a.m.

Jayme told police that her dog began to bark. She woke her parents. Her father went to the front door while she and her mother hid in the bathroom, hugging each other in the bathtub with the shower curtain pulled closed.

Hearing a shotgun blast, Jayme said she knew her father was dead. Patterson told investigators he shot James Closs through the front door, then blew the lock apart with a second blast.

He battered down the door to the bathroom, then pulled out a roll of black duct tape and demanded Denise Closs tape her daughter’s mouth shut. When Denise struggled to do it, he took the tape from her and did it himself. He taped the girl’s hands behind her back and taped her ankles together, pulled her out of the bathroom and then shot her mother in the head, the complaint said.

The entire attack took four minutes, he said, according to the complaint.

Patterson dragged Jayme outside, nearly slipping in the blood on the floor. He pulled her across the yard and threw her in his trunk. Squad cars racing to the Closs residence passed him on the highway. Jayme told police she could hear the sirens. He told detectives he would have opened fire if officers had tried to stop him.

He took her to his cabin in Gordon, a township of 645 people in thickly forested Douglas County. He told police he ordered a weeping Jayme to strip and dress in his sister’s pyjamas, saying he had to get rid of the evidence. He then threw her clothes into a fireplace in the cabin’s basement.

It’s unclear what Patterson may have done to her over the months she spent in the cabin. Prosecutors have not charged him with sexual assault, and the charging documents do not say he ever attempted that.

He told investigators that whenever he left the cabin or people visited him, he forced Jayme to crawl into the narrow space under his twin bed. He slid tote boxes and weights against the side of the bed so she could not see out and to make it harder for her to wriggle free.

He said Jayme tried to get out twice. The first time he screamed and banged the wall and made her so scared that he thought she would never try it again. Whenever he left the house, he told her “bad things would happen” if she tried to leave. During the Christmas holidays he left, forcing Jayme to endure 12 hours under the bed without a bathroom break, according to the complaint.

On Thursday he left again. He returned to find Jayme gone. He found her tracks and was out looking for her when police stopped him .

Patterson is due back in court on Feb. 6.

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Richmond reported from Madison. Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

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For more stories on Jayme’s abduction and her parents’ deaths: https://apnews.com/JaymeCloss

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Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter: https://twitter.com/trichmond1

Amy Forliti And Todd Richmond, The Associated Press

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Ottawa’s avalanche of spending hasn’t helped First Nations

Published on November 19, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tom Flanagan

When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, he memorably said that the welfare of Indigenous Canadians was his highest priority. He certainly has delivered on his promise, at least in terms of shovelling out money.

During his 10 years in office, budgeted Indigenous spending has approximately tripled, from about $11 billion to almost $33 billion. Prime Minister Trudeau’s instruction to the Department of Justice to negotiate rather than litigate class actions has resulted in paying tens of billions of dollars to Indigenous claimants over alleged wrongs in education and other social services. And his government has settled specific claims—alleged violations of treaty terms or of the Indian Act—at four times the previous rate, resulting in the award of at least an additional $10 billion to First Nations government.

But has this avalanche of money really helped First Nations people living on reserves, who are the poorest segment of Canadian society?

One indicator suggests the answer is yes. The gap between reserves and other communities—as measured by the Community Well-Being Index (CWB), a composite of income, employment, housing and education—fell from 19 to 16 points from 2016 to 2021. But closer analysis shows that the reduction in the gap, although real, cannot be due to the additional spending described above.

The gain in First Nations CWB is due mainly to an increase in the income component of the CWB. But almost all of the federal spending on First Nations, class-action settlements and specific claims do not provide taxable income to First Nations people. Rather, the increase in income documented by the CWB comes from the greatly increased payments legislated by the Liberals in the form of the Canada Child Benefit (CCB). First Nations people have a higher birth rate than other Canadians, so they have more children and receive more (on average) from the Canada Child Benefit. Also, they have lower income on average than other Canadians, so the value of the CCB is higher than comparable non-Indigenous families. The result? A gain in income relative to other Canadians, and thus a narrowing of the CWB gap between First Nations and other communities.

There’s an important lesson here. Tens of billions in additional budgetary spending and legal settlements did not move the needle. What did lead to a measurable improvement was legislation creating financial benefits for all eligible Canadian families with children regardless of race. Racially inspired policies are terrible for many reasons, especially because they rarely achieve their goals in practise. If we want to improve life for First Nations people, we should increase opportunities for Canadians of all racial backgrounds and not enact racially targeted policies.

Moreover, racial policies are also fraught with unintended consequences. In this case, the flood of federal money has made First Nations more dependent rather than less dependent on government. In fact, from 2018 to 2022, “Own Source Revenue” (business earnings plus property taxes and fees) among First Nations bands increased—but not as much as transfers from government. The result? Greater dependency on government transfers.

This finding is not just a statistical oddity. Previous research has shown that First Nations who are relatively less dependent on government transfers tend to achieve higher living standards (again, as measured by the CWB index). Thus, the increase in dependency presided over by the Trudeau government does not augur well for the future.

One qualification: this finding is not as robust as I would like because the number of band governments filing reports on their finances has drastically declined. Of 630 First Nation governments, only 260 filed audited statements for fiscal 2022. All First Nations are theoretically obliged by the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, 2013, to publish such statements, but the Trudeau government announced there would be no penalties for non-compliance, leading to a precipitous decline in reporting.

This is a shame, because First Nations, as they often insist, are governments, not private organizations. And like other governments, they should make their affairs visible to the public. Also, most of their income comes from Canadian taxpayers. Both band members and other Canadians have a right to know how much money they receive, how it’s being spent and whether it’s achieving its intended goals.

Author:

Tom Flanagan

Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Distinguished Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary

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Musk, Ramaswamy to lead Trump efforts to cut waste, fraud in federal government

Published on November 13, 2024

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

During his campaign, Ramaswamy proposed cutting 75% of the federal workforce. Musk recently suggested that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, or about one-third of total U.S. spending.

President-elect Donald Trump picked Tesla CEO Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

The department’s acronym, DOGE, is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said the new group will pave the way for his administration to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulation, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”

Trump laid out lofty goals for the group in his announcement this week.

“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhatten Project,’ of our time,” Trump’s announcement said. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”

It won’t be an official government agency, which will likely allow Musk and Ramaswamy to avoid public financial disclosures.

Trump said the change he’s looking for won’t come from within the existing federal government.

“To drive this kind of change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside the government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform and create and entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before,” the announcement noted.

Trump said he looks forward to what Musk and Ramaswamy can accomplish.

“Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 trillion of government spending,” he said.

Trump also gave them a deadline: July 4, 2026.

“A smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy will be the perfect gift to America” on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, according to the announcement.

Ramaswamy, who dropped out the race for the GOP nomination to endorse Trump in January, has previously proposed significant cuts. During his campaign, Ramaswamy proposed cutting 75% of the federal workforce.

Musk recently suggested that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, or about one-third of total U.S. spending. He’s been tossing out ideas on X, previously Twitter before Musk bought the company and changed the name.

“The world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation. Every year, the noose tightens a little more,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. “We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.”

Musk also said he isn’t a threat to democracy, but a threat to bureaucracy.

DOGE already has an X account. It’s first post: “Working overtime to ensure your tax dollars will be spent wisely!”

Some budget experts have called Musk’s pledge to cut $2 trillion a pipe dream, noting that many of the problems DOGE wants to address have proven intractable.

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, called Musk’s proposal “a random number unattached to reality.”

Marc Goldwein, the senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said it could be done with 10 aggressive policies, mostly focused on Medicare and Medicaid.

“The government can legitimately save trillions over a decade by reducing waste and improving efficiency – and I hope we do,” Goldwein wrote on X. “Achieving these savings requires major changes to how and how much we pay for health care.”

Medicare (annual cost of about $1 trillion) is a federal health insurance program for people 65 or older, and some people younger than 65 with certain disabilities or conditions. Medicaid (annual cost of about $558 billion) is a joint federal and state program that helps cover medical costs for some people with limited income and resources.

The Government Accountability Office, which serves as the research arm of Congress, estimated annual fraud losses cost taxpayers between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, in a report in April. The fraud estimate’s range represents 3% to 7% of average federal obligations. The Office of Management and Budget publicly questioned that estimate, calling it “not plausible.”

“OMB has significant concerns that this report will not further efforts to prevent and reduce fraud, but rather will create confusion and promote misleading generalizations that have no factual connection to specific federal programs,” Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, wrote of OMB concerns in a three-page letter to officials with the Government Accountability Office.

On the campaign trail, Ramaswamy detailed his plan to reduce the federal workforce by 75% during an event at the America First Policy Institute in Washington in 2023.

Ramaswamy said he would shutter the FBI (about 35,000 employees); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms a nd Explosives (5,099 employees); the U.S. Department of Education (about 4,200 employees); the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (about 3,000 employees); and the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services (about 1,500 employees).

Under Ramaswamy’s campaign plan, some 15,000 FBI employees would be moved to other agencies such as the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Secret Service, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Drug Enforcement Administration, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

Some groups called the Department of Government Efficiency goals a stretch. Others had more pointed things to say.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a progressive consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader, said the government agencies and regulations Ramaswamy proposed cutting are in place to protect people.

“The purpose of government regulations is to protect the American people,” she said in a statement. “We all depend on these regulations to protect our air, water, workers, children’s safety, and so much more. ‘Cutting red tape’ is shorthand for getting rid of the safeguards that protect us in order to benefit corporate interests.”