AMBER ALERT WI - Jayme Closs, 13, Barron, missing after parents found shot to death, 15 Oct 2018 *endangered*

[Miamama]

Another thing to consider...she probably wasn't making too loud of a fuss when taken out of the house, whether due to incapacitation, fear, etc., because the neighbors who were already awoken by the gunshots and on alert would likely have heard her in the dead of night.

 

[Alethea]

BBM. I had those same thoughts too Steelslady but I didn't want to say it earlier because there was an 8th grade student posting on this thread. Whatever the scene was it had strong enough evidence for investigators to flat out say "Jayme is not a suspect in her parent's deaths" and they believe she is in danger. I'm thinking there has to be some evidence leading to those conclusions. JMO.

Agreed. They haven't said anything about the crime scene. They may have been restrained or tied up or posed in a way that LE did not think a 13 year old daughter would do to her parents. I'm sure LE immediately looked to see possible juvenile or family court records that could have led them to think this was a domestic incident but they seem to have ruled that out IMO.

 

[Gardener1850]

It takes time to both obtain and analyze digital records. It’s too early to determine whether or not there is a trail here.

You're right. And so logical, as usual, MG. I appreciate you! Hopefully LE is just covering their bases and trying to put parents at ease with extra protection at the school. Hopefully they will find that little piece of evidence in a phone or social media profile connecting to this SOB. This case is far from cold. JMO.

 

[PommyMommy]

Random thoughts II...

Did Jayme have a phone?
How did she access Facebook?
What other SM did she use?
Do kids that age use KIK?
Did she wear a fitness tracker?
Did they have a dog?
Who visited their home recently?
Repairmen?
Did they use propane?
Would they have propane delivered?

 

[rainynights]

Beth McDonough (@bmcdonoughkstp) | Twitter

Parents Denise and Jim Closs found dead in Barron Co home...their 13 year old daughter Jayme is missing...


Beth McDonough on Twitter

 

[borndem]

Welcome to Websleuths,
singlemom
and
OneQ84 !!
​

 

[Steelslady]

You're right. And so logical, as usual, MG. I appreciate you! Hopefully LE is just covering l find that little piece of evidence in a phone or social media profile connecting to this SOB. This case is far from cold. JMO.

I hope that the school takes it a step further and doesn't allow any cross country running without police protection. My kids all did cross country, and we live in the country- the trails are very very wooded in some areas- anyone could be hiding there and you wouldn't know it because you're too busy running to notice someone hiding. Also, absolutely no head phones or ear buds while running until Jayme is found, just in case. See, I'd be a God awful principal, taking all their fun away.

 

[Gunslinging Granny]

Mom's FB page has an interesting discussion and posters are asking for it be deleted.

 

[PommyMommy]

Search Continues For 13-Year-Old Wisconsin Girl
“Nobody answered our dispatcher, but we could hear background noise — yelling for help,” said Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald.

“We believe Jayme was in the house when this took place,” Fitzgerald said. “We don’t know where she’s gone, but we have entered as missing and endangered.”

With help from the FBI, Barron County investigators searched for clues in and around the home, extending into neighbors’ yards. “They came through and they looked through the house in the garage and the buildings in the back,” Church said.

“Some of my coworkers knew her. They played together on their daughter’s softball team,” Church said. “And so you feel like your heart just goes out to the family and friends and everybody involved. It’s horrible.”

Sheriff Fitzgerald said they don’t have any leads as of Monday night in what he describes as a mysterious case. It’s why both he and neighbors remain hopeful that someone in the community has information that can help.

Sheriff Fitzgerald says investigators are also taking a digital approach by looking into social media accounts like Facebook and Snapchat, hoping they’ll find clues on the internet that can point them in the right direction.

 

[wont_stop]

Lurker delurking- this struck me as a bit odd in and of itself. They live in the rural Northwoods and they own no firearms? My husband is from northern Minnesota and he found that as unusual as I did. I am betting that there are at least a rifle and a shotgun that are currently missing.

I live about 30 miles away and have no guns in my home. Neither do my parents and quite a few others I know of, some who live in further into the middle of nowhere. One family who lives within a few miles of the Closs family (same school district) doesn’t because they are very religious. Some people just don’t like guns, even in the north woods.

I absolutely agree with your logic here. It sounds like the parents were the obstacles to the ultimate goal, which appears to be the kidnapping of Jayme.

I’m pretty local to Barron and visit a lot of the northern part of the state, including Barron for work purposes as well as having a few friends in the area. There has been an increase in the number of pamphlets and posters about the dangers of and warning signs of human trafficking in the restrooms and rest areas in these rural northern Wisconsin towns and the highways into and out of the area. Not that any crime like this makes sense but that could’ve been a motive for killing her parents and taking Jayme.

Also Walmart is usually the go to spot for some of these people to buy supplies like hair dye after an abduction. Jmo. But im not sure if there is one out there.
.

There is a Walmart like 10 miles away, in another small town.

I wonder if anyone saw a man watching students recently or taking photos near the school? This is scary. It makes me think they don't have any leads that are clearly connected to Jayme or her parents.

My friends husband works in the same factory and didn’t really know them but he just said that no one at work can understand why someone would do this to them in particular. They were just nice, normal people, according to him.

Like I said I’m local and I was getting Amber alert interruptions about every 30 minutes on my tv for several hours but they’ve stopped in the last hour or so. I don’t know what that means, if anything, or if they always stop doing them at a certain time of night. They did a good job of getting the alert out there - it was impossible to have been watching tv during 7-9:30 pm without seeing and hearing it several times. Also, I got 3 phone alerts. Hopefully all of this will lead to something. It’s scary how little info is out there.

 

[Gardener1850]

Agreed. They haven't said anything about the crime scene. They may have been restrained or tied up or posed in a way that LE did not think a 13 year old daughter would do to her parents. I'm sure LE immediately looked to see possible juvenile or family court records that could have led them to think this was a domestic incident but they seem to have ruled that out IMO.

Agreed. They also said pretty quickly that there have been no previous police calls to the family home. The Realtor.com link I posted earlier said the home was purchased in 2001. If that is accurate then the family has been in the community for a long time (17 years) and has had no run ins with the law, no domestic situations, etc. Neighbors have said they kept to themselves but looking at where the house is-- it is not in view of other houses and there are acres of trees between houses. It's not like they lived on a cul-de-sac or in a subdivision where you would see your neighbors coming and going all the time. JMO.

 

[kkdj]

I don't know what to think about that. Are you thinking there was more than one perp?
MOO

idk. I'm not set on thinking anything yet. I'm just wondering if she was taken out of the home before the murders happened.

 

[Gunslinging Granny]

After reading the comments on the mom's FB, I feel that this case will be solved.

 

[Mysteries1974]

I contacted namus about this case and had her submitted.

 

[MassGuy]

After reading the comments on the mom's FB, I feel that this case will be solved.

I take those comments with a grain of salt. There’s a lot of nut jobs that love to chime in on highly publicized cases like this.

I’m hopeful as well that there will be a break soon.

 

[Gardener1850]

I hope that the school takes it a step further and doesn't allow any cross country running without police protection. My kids all did cross country, and we live in the country- the trails are very very wooded in some areas- anyone could be hiding there and you wouldn't know it because you're too busy running to notice someone hiding. Also, absolutely no head phones or ear buds while running until Jayme is found, just in case. See, I'd be a God awful principal, taking all their fun away.

I wonder if the kids are scared? They may not grumble too much about being restricted if they are freaking out about their friend's parents being murdered and their friend disappearing. I hope the school offers good counseling too (they usually do offer something in situations like this). MOO.

 

[DexterMorgan]

I live about 30 miles away and have no guns in my home. Neither do my parents and quite a few others I know of, some who live in further into the middle of nowhere. One family who lives within a few miles of the Closs family (same school district) doesn’t because they are very religious. Some people just don’t like guns, even in the north woods.


I’m pretty local to Barron and visit a lot of the northern part of the state, including Barron for work purposes as well as having a few friends in the area. There has been an increase in the number of pamphlets and posters about the dangers of and warning signs of human trafficking in the restrooms and rest areas in these rural northern Wisconsin towns and the highways into and out of the area. Not that any crime like this makes sense but that could’ve been a motive for killing her parents and taking Jayme.


There is a Walmart like 10 miles away, in another small town.


My friends husband works in the same factory and didn’t really know them but he just said that no one at work can understand why someone would do this to them in particular. They were just nice, normal people, according to him.

Like I said I’m local and I was getting Amber alert interruptions about every 30 minutes on my tv for several hours but they’ve stopped in the last hour or so. I don’t know what that means, if anything, or if they always stop doing them at a certain time of night. They did a good job of getting the alert out there - it was impossible to have been watching tv during 7-9:30 pm without seeing and hearing it several times. Also, I got 3 phone alerts. Hopefully all of this will lead to something. It’s scary how little info is out there.

Thank you and welcome.

So Walmart is in another town thats only 10 miles away. Hopefully that town really keeps an eye out. Thank you.

 

[margarita25]

Qmfr:

While the trail at this moment appears cold, as per LE, here are some scenarios we can hope for

(Just has a thought...check robberies today, maybe banks...again just a thought)

Anyway here some some things we can hope for:

1. The suspect talked to someone about this crime either before or since and that witness comes foreward (family, friend, etc.).

2. Someone sees Jayme after recognizing her picture on SM or the news and calls LE.

3. Someone sees a woman who appears to be in distress and calls LE, even though they don’t know Jayme.

4. The pair (what how does LE know it’s just one suspect?) is spotted during the perp’s commission of another crime and hopefully nobody is hurt and the suspect is apprehended and Jayme is recovered safely.

5. LE receives a new lead via surveillance footage (business, residential or traffic/toll)
(Any nearby toll booths? They would check this).

6. Something new comes back from electronic footprint analysis.

7. Jayme escapes from her abductor.

8. The FBI gets a hit on a similar case/previous crime which leads them to the perp’s identity.

9. The perp turns himself in (very unlikely, moo, hardly worth typing as a possibility but that would be great wouldn’t it )

I want to add to this:

10. He lets her go. Alive.

 

[Amonet]

Agreed. If the parents were the targets, I would expect more gunshots.

In that case, I would either expect Jayme to have been killed alongside them, or be left unharmed.

To take her along with you, is an incredible risk, unless she was the target all along.

What about little HC (I think those are the initials), the little girl taken after a man got into the home and attacked her mother and left the mother for dead? The little girl wasn't the target but she got taken.

And I don't see how the number of bullets correlates to anything but the number needed to do the job? If you've got a gun and the two victims are in bed or corralled together then you might only need two bullets.

 

[awillis0513]

"Joan Smrekar and her husband live right next door to the Closs family, who they describe as “very quiet, almost reclusive.” The Smrekars reported hearing two high-powered gunshots after 12:30 a.m. Monday."
Source: Parents found dead, 13-year-old girl missing in Barron County, Wisconsin

I think it's interesting that the family is described as reclusive. Did Jayme go to public school or was she homeschooled?

We had a case here locally a few years ago where a homeschooled teen around her age was tricked into meeting up with an older man she met online. Sometimes when teens don't have a lot of experience in the world and are actively shielded from it, they fail to see red flags. Hopefully, her social media accounts will give them answers quickly.