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Wisconsin town rejoices after missing teen found alive

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MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin teenager missing for nearly three months after her parents were killed in the family home was found alive barely an hour’s drive away, by a woman who stumbled across the 13-year-old girl and pounded on her neighbours‘ door shouting: “This is Jayme Closs! Call 911!”

Jayme was skinny and dirty, wearing shoes too big for her feet, but appeared outwardly OK when she was discovered Thursday afternoon near the small town of Gordon, the neighbours said.

“I honestly still think I’m dreaming right now. It was like I was seeing a ghost,” Peter Kasinskas told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “My jaw just went to the floor.”

Authorities said a suspect was in custody, but otherwise didn’t give any additional details ahead of a planned Friday news conference in Barron, in northwestern Wisconsin.

Jayme went missing on Oct. 15 after police discovered someone had broken into the family’s home outside Barron and fatally shot her parents, James and Denise Closs. Jayme was nowhere to be found, with the Barron County Sheriff’s Department describing her as likely abducted.

Detectives pursued thousands of tips, watched dozens of surveillance videos and conducted numerous searches in the effort to find Jayme. Some tips led officials to recruit 2,000 volunteers for a massive ground search on Oct. 23 but it yielded no clues.

Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said in November that he kept similar cases in the back of his mind as he worked to find Jayme, including the abduction of Elizabeth Smart, who was taken from her Salt Lake City home in 2002, when she was 14 years old. She was rescued nine months later with the help of two witnesses who recognized her abductors from an “America’s Most Wanted” episode.

“I have a gut feeling she’s (Jayme’s) still alive,” Fitzgerald said at the time.

He was right.

The Star Tribune reported Town of Gordon resident Kristin Kasinskas heard a knock on her door Thursday afternoon. It was her neighbour, who had been out walking her dog, with Jayme alongside.

In the 20 minutes Jayme was in their home, Kasinskas and her husband, Peter, tried to make her feel more comfortable, they said. They offered her water and food, but she declined both. Jayme was quiet, her emotions “pretty flat,” Peter Kasinskas said.

Jayme told the couple she didn’t know where she was or anything about Gordon. From what she told them, they believe she was there for most of her disappearance.

Gordon lies about 40 miles south of Lake Superior and about 65 miles north of Barron, Jayme’s hometown. The town is home to about 645 people in a heavily forested region where logging is the top industry.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on its website that Jayme was found in the town at 4:43 p.m. Thursday, and that a suspect was taken into custody 11 minutes later. The Associated Press couldn’t confirm the Kasinskases’ account; the sheriff’s office’s non-emergency line rang unanswered Thursday night and Sheriff Thomas Dalbec didn’t respond to an email.

Sue Allard, Jayme’s aunt, told the Star Tribune that she could barely express her joy after learning the news Thursday night.

“Praise the Lord,” Allard said between sobs. “It’s the news we’ve been waiting on for three months. I can’t wait to get my arms around her. I just can’t wait.”

Barron Mayor Ron Fladten said Thursday night he was overjoyed at learning she is alive.

“There was a lot of discouragement because this took quite a while to play out,” Fladten said. “A lot of people have been praying daily, as I have. It’s just a great result we got tonight. It’s unbelievable. It’s like taking a big black cloud in the sky and getting rid of it and the sun comes out again.”

He acknowledged that Jayme may not be the same person she was before she disappeared.

“I hope that she’s in good shape,” the mayor said. “She’s no doubt been through just a terrible ordeal. I think everybody wishes her a good recovery and a happy life going into the future.”

The notification that Jayme had been found came just four hours after Fitzgerald had taken to Twitter to debunk a report that she had been found alive near Walworth County. Douglas County, where Jayme was found, is hundreds of miles northwest of Walworth County.

___

Associated Press writer Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

Todd Richmond, The Associated Press


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RCMP to create fake online profiles to track Canadian ‘extremists’: docs

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From LifeSiteNews

By  Clare Marie Merkowsky

Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), is planning to create fake online accounts to target Canadian “extremists.”

According to an internal strategy document, the RCMP plans to conduct undercover surveillance on Canadians by creating fake online accounts and tracking what they consider “ideological extremists,” which could include pro-family, pro-life and pro-freedom content.   

“The RCMP’s lack of a covert online presence was previously highlighted in the OIR (Operational Improvement Review), which recommended that the RCMP develop its own online undercover program to assist with national security criminal investigations,” the RCMP internal document stated. 

The document, obtained by an Access to Information request and shared with CBC News, reveals that the Federal Policing National Security is “currently taking steps to address this recommendation through proactive legend-building and backstopping personas, but this work needs to be prioritized and accelerated in order to meet future demand for online undercover activities.”  

“Undercover police investigations, among many tools, remain an effective technique to thwart the commission of serious crime and resolve historic offences,” the plan continued. “The focus is on uncovering the truth, verifying facts and determining if someone is involved.” 

According to the RCMP, violent extremism is divided into three categories:  religiously motivated extremism, politicly motivated extremism, and ideologically motivated extremism. 

Ideologically motivated extremis is further categorized into xenophobic violence, gender-driven violence, anti-authority violence, and “other grievance-driven and ideological motivated violence.” The last category includes environmental, animal rights, and “anti-abortion violence.” 

While the RCMP’s move to monitor Canadians online is alarming, it is hardly the first time the government-run police force has spied on its citizens.   

In 2022, the RCMP acknowledged it uses spyware to turn on or off the camera or microphone of a laptop or phone at will to eavesdrop on one’s conversations without the suspect even knowing it.   

Spying on and tracking Canadians for sharing pro-family and pro-freedom values could prove even more dangerous if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms bill, which would punish “hate speech” online, is passed.   

Bill C-63was introduced by Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome. Put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online, the bill also seeks to expand the scope of “hate speech” prosecutions, and even desires to target such speech retroactively.   

Furthermore, the RCMP, like the rest of Canada’s government-run organizations, appears to have been infiltrated by woke activists who label pro-family, pro-freedom, and pro-life causes as “extreme” and “dangerous.” 

In 2022, the RCMP issued a 16-page guide suggesting people tell on those who show any signs of “anti-government” or “anti-LGBTQ2” opinions on the internet.

“Some people hold social or political beliefs that may be considered ‘extreme’ or outside mainstream ideologies. Although some ideas alone may be concerning to those around them, it is when a person uses or actively supports violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals that the police have a role to play,” the guide said. 

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Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis calls out Liberals for not supporting anti-church burning bill

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Speaking about the ‘hundreds of churches’ that have been ‘set on fire across Canada’ in the last number of years, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis questioned why the Liberals seem completely unconcerned.

One of Canada’s most prominent pro-life MPs has called out the Trudeau government for its apparent lack of support for an anti-arson bill which aims to curb the rash of church burnings plaguing Christians in the country.

In an X post Monday, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis pointed out that under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, church burnings have shot up “100 percent,” and that the government does not seem to have expressed any “concern” at all.

“In the last several years, hundreds of churches and other places of worship have been set on fire across Canada. Under this Liberal government, these crimes have increased by over 100%,” wrote Lewis on X.  

“Where is the concern or action from the Liberals regarding these attacks on Christian churches?” 

Lewis’s post included a link to another X post from Conservative MP Marc Dalton, who posted a video on October 31 highlighting the recent rash of church burnings and how his bill, C-411, aims to stop this.  

“Thank you @MarcDalton for bringing forward Bill C-411, the Anti-Arson Act, an important bill to protect places of worship and increase penalties on those who would target them,” wrote Lewis. 

Bill C-411, or, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (arson — wildfires and places of worship),  was introduced by Dalton in June. 

The law, if passed, would create specific criminal offenses for setting fires to churches and for starting wildfires.

Dalton said in his video that there is a “serious problem in Canada that must be addressed” concerning Catholic and Christian churches being the target of arson. 

He highlighted how since 2010, 592 churches have been the target of arson in Canada, with a large portion of these being concentrated to the last few years.  

Dalton noted how Canada’s Criminal Code, as it stands, does not include specific protections against arson directed at religious institutions. C-411 aims to “change that,” said Dalton, noting that the bill would implement a minimum sentence of five years in jail for a first offense of this kind, and seven years for a repeat offense.

“This bill strengthens our criminal code and punishes these hateful arson attacks,” he said. 

“Commonsense Conservatives stand for strict punishments against criminals who target places of worship.” 

Since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, have beenburned to the ground, vandalized or defiled in Canada. 

The church burnings started in earnest after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools in Canada, particularly a school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

The anti-Catholic narrative that developed following these claims continues to this day, despite the fact that no bodies have actually been discovered.

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