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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANuARY 11, 2019
Wisconsin man arrested in teen’s abduction
By JEFF BAENEN and
GRETCHEN EHLKE
Associated Press
BARRON, Wis. — A
21-year-old man is jailed
in the deaths of a Wiscon-
sin couple he killed because
he wanted to kidnap their
teenage daughter, inves-
tigators said today, a day
after the girl approached a
stranger along a rural road
saying she’d been abducted
in October and held against
her will.
Jake Thomas Patter-
son was taken into cus-
tody shortly after 13-year-
old Jayme Closs sought
help from a woman walk-
ing her dog in a rural, heav-
ily wooded neighborhood
near the small town of Gor-
don, about 60 miles north of
Barron. Jayme disappeared
from her family’s Barron
home when her parents were
killed Oct. 15.
Barron County Sheriff
Chris Fitzgerald said during
a news conference today that
Jayme was taken against her
will. Investigators believe
Patterson killed Jayme’s
parents because he wanted
to abduct her, and that Pat-
terson “planned his actions
and took many steps to hide
his identity.”
Fitzgerald said investiga-
tors believe the girl was “the
only target” but don’t believe
Patterson had any contact
with the family. Douglas
County Sheriff Thomas Dal-
bec said Patterson was jailed
on kidnapping and homicide
charges.
T h e
woman who
first spotted
Jayme on
T h u r s d a y,
Jeanne Nut-
ter, said she Jake Thomas
Patterson
was walk-
ing her dog
along a rural road when
a disheveled teenage girl
called out to her for help and
quickly grabbed her. Only
then did Jayme reveal her
name.
Nutter said Jayme told
her she had walked away
from a cabin where she’d
been held captive, a cabin
not far from Nutter’s home.
“I was terrified, but I
didn’t want to show her
that,” said Nutter, a social
worker who spent years
working in child protection.
“She just yelled please help
me I don’t know where I am.
I’m lost.”
Nutter said she didn’t
want to bring Jayme to her
nearby home because it was
too close to where she’d
been found, and she didn’t
want them to be alone. She
said: “My only thought was
to get her to a safe place.”
The two went elsewhere
in the neighborhood, to the
home of Peter and Kris-
tin Kasinskas. Jayme was
skinny and dirty, wearing
shoes too big for her feet,
but appeared outwardly OK,
the neighbors said.
“I honestly still think I’m
dreaming right now. It was
like I was seeing a ghost,”
Trump closer to declaring
emergency for wall
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
—
President Donald Trump
is edging closer to declar-
ing a national emergency
to pay for his long-prom-
ised U.S.-Mexico border
wall as pressure mounts to
end the three-week impasse
that has closed parts of the
government and deprived
hundreds of thousands of
workers of their salaries.
Some 800,000 federal
employees, more than half
still on the job, were due
to miss their first paycheck
today under a stoppage that
neared a record for the lon-
gest government shutdown.
With the closure’s growing
impact on the economy,
national parks and food
inspections, some Republi-
cans are becoming uncom-
fortable with Trump’s
demands.
Lawmakers tried to
reassure federal employees
today that Congress was
aware of the financial hard-
ship they are enduring. By
a vote of 411-7, the House
passed a bill requiring that
all government workers
receive retroactive pay after
the partial shutdown ends.
The Senate approved the
bill unanimously Thursday.
The president is expected
to sign the legislation.
Trump visited McAllen,
Texas, and the Rio Grande
on Thursday to highlight
what he calls a crisis of
drugs and crime along the
border. He said that “if for
any reason we don’t get this
going” — an agreement
with House Democrats who
have refused to approve the
$5.7 billion he demands for
the wall — “I will declare a
national emergency.”
Trump was consulting
with White House lawyers
and others about using emer-
gency powers to take action
on his own, and over the
objections of Congress, to
construct the wall. Bypass-
ing Congress’ constitutional
control of the nation’s purse
strings would lead to cer-
tain legal challenges and
bipartisan charges of exec-
utive overreach. Trump said
his lawyers had told him
the action would withstand
legal scrutiny “100 percent.”
The wall was the cen-
tral promise of Trump’s
winning campaign in 2016.
Supporters have tried to
convince him that an emer-
gency declaration is the best
option to end the shutdown
and would give him politi-
cal cover to reopen the gov-
ernment without appear-
ing to be caving on his
pledge. Trump, they argue,
could tell backers that he
was doing all he could to
fight for the wall, even if
his order were held up or
blocked in court.
Jerry Holt/Star Tribune
Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald speaks during a news conference in October about
Jayme Closs, who had been missing.
Peter Kasinskas said. “My
jaw just went to the floor.”
Fitzgerald said Closs was
taken to a hospital but has
since been medically cleared
and released. She was not
being interviewed by law
enforcement, the sheriff
said.
Jayme went missing after
police discovered someone
had broken into the fami-
ly’s home outside Barron
and fatally shot her parents,
James and Denise Closs.
Jayme was nowhere to be
found. The Barron County
Sheriff’s Department said the
girl had likely been abducted.
Detectives pursued thou-
sands of tips, watched doz-
ens of surveillance videos
and conducted numerous
searches in the effort to find
Jayme. Some tips led offi-
cials to recruit 2,000 volun-
teers for a massive ground
search on Oct. 23, but it
yielded no clues.
Fitzgerald said in Novem-
ber 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
14 when she was taken from
her Salt Lake City home in
2002. Smart 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,” Fitz-
gerald said at the time.
Today, Smart posted on
her Instagram account that it
was a “miracle” Jayme had
been found alive. Smart said
the girl’s family should be
given “space and privacy on
their road to finding a new
sense of normal and moving
forward.”
“Whatever other details
may surface, the most
important will still remain
that she is alive,” Smart said.
During the 20 minutes
Jayme was in their home,
Peter and Kristin Kasinskas
said they tried to make her
feel more comfortable.
They offered her water and
food, but she declined both.
Jayme was quiet, her emo-
tions “pretty flat,” Peter
Kasinskas said.
Jayme told the couple she
didn’t know where she was
or anything about Gordon,
a town home to about 644
people in a heavily forested
region where logging is the
top industry. From what she
told them, they believed she
was there for most of her
disappearance.
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 cus-
tody 11 minutes later.
Jayme’s
grandfather,
Robert Naiberg, said he’d
been praying for months for
the call he received Thurs-
day about his granddaughter
being found alive.
Naiberg said his daugh-
ter called him with the news,
saying Jayme reported hav-
ing been held by “a guy in
the woods” but was able to
escape.
Sue Allard, Jayme’s aunt,
said 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.”
WORLD IN BRIEF
Associated Press
Ex-Trump lawyer
Cohen to testify
to Congress
WASHINGTON
—
President Donald Trump’s
former lawyer, Michael
Cohen, will testify pub-
licly before a House com-
mittee next month in a hear-
ing that could serve as the
opening salvo of a prom-
ised Democratic effort to
scrutinize Trump, his con-
flicts of interest and his ties
to Russia.
The House Oversight
and Reform Committee
announced Thursday that
Cohen will appear before
that panel Feb. 7, a little
more than a month after the
Democrats took the House
majority.
The hearing marks the
latest step in Cohen’s trans-
formation from a trusted
legal adviser to the pres-
ident to a public antago-
nist who has cooperated
extensively against him.
Although Democrats say
the questioning will be lim-
ited to avoid interfering
with open investigations,
the hearing is still likely to
pull back the curtain on key
episodes involving Trump’s
personal life and business
dealings, including hush-
money payments to women
and a proposed Moscow
real estate deal, that federal
prosecutors have been dis-
secting for months.
Cohen is a pivotal fig-
ure in investigations by spe-
cial counsel Robert Mueller
into potential coordination
between Russia and the
Trump campaign and by
federal prosecutors in New
York into campaign finance
violations related to pay-
ments to buy the silence
of a porn actress and a for-
mer Playboy Playmate
who say they had sex with
Trump. Federal prosecutors
have said Trump directed
those payments during the
campaign.
Trump has denied hav-
ing the extramarital affairs.
US official says
withdrawal from
Syria has begun
BAGHDAD — After
days of conflicting state-
ments about a timeline for
President Donald Trump’s
decision to withdraw Amer-
ican forces from Syria, a
U.S. defense official said
today the process has begun
with the removal of some
military cargo.
The official said the
movement of equipment
is part of what the military
calls a “deliberate with-
drawal” from Syria, where
some 2,000 troops have
been working with a coali-
tion of Syrian Kurdish and
Arab fighters to defeat the
remnants of the Islamic
State group.
The official, who spoke
on condition of anonymity,
said the equipment with-
drawal is underway and
that an unspecified number
of additional U.S. troops
have been brought into
Syria to assist with the pro-
cess, including by provid-
ing additional security.
Hours earlier, Col. Sean
Ryan, spokesman for the
U.S.-led coalition fighting
the Islamic State group, said
“the process of our deliber-
ate withdrawal from Syria”
has started. He said the U.S.
would not discuss a specific
timeline, locations or troop
movements out of concern
for operational security.
There has been confu-
sion over plans to imple-
ment Trump’s pullout order
and threats from Turkey to
attack the Kurdish fighters,
who Ankara views as terror-
ists because of their ties to
insurgents within Turkey.
Bernie Sanders
faces questions
about political
future
NEW YORK — Allies
of Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders are rallying behind
the embattled presidential
prospect even as they reluc-
tantly begin to ponder the
painful possibility of a 2020
campaign without him.
The 77-year-old self-de-
scribed democratic social-
ist is the most prominent
contender to face a seri-
ous setback in the evolv-
ing White House field. He’s
been forced to confront
reports detailing allega-
tions of sexual harassment
of women by male staffers
when he sought the Demo-
cratic nomination for presi-
dent in 2016.
No one has alleged that
Sanders had direct knowl-
edge of the incidents.
Sanders’ loyalists expect
him to launch a second cam-
paign in the coming weeks,
and his network of die-hard
supporters is hosting hun-
dreds of events across the
nation this weekend encour-
aging him to run.
But the allegations put
Sanders in an unenviable
position in the early days
of a contest playing out
in the #MeToo era. While
his competitors are visit-
ing early-voting states and
scoping out potential cam-
paign headquarters, Sand-
ers spent Thursday apolo-
gizing for the behavior of a
handful of 2016 campaign
workers and looking for
new staffers should he run
in 2020.