AMBER ALERT WI - Jayme Closs, 13, Barron, missing after parents found shot, 15 Oct 2018 *endangered* #19

[BB71]

Newly-published article from the New York Times (mods, please remove if this is a repost!):
Mystery in a Small Town: A Quiet Couple Shot Dead, Their Daughter Missing

Would like to reiterate that the NYT got the time of the 911 call wrong and the name of the person holding the dog. Shoulda given WS a first draft, we woulda cleaned it up in no time!

 

[KLM6]

Many are afraid to contact even the tipline, locally. I live 40 minutes away, and all the small towns around Barron are filled with terrified people, suddenly locking all their doors.

Sad, but I understand the fear. Though I dont like hearing they are afraid to call the tiplines. That is SO important for Jayme's sake. Thank you for replying, and welcome to WS.

 

[human]

I've been hesitant to share my complete thoughts on this, but tonight I think I will. I'll preface by saying it's my opinion only of course. I believe the turning point in my thinking was getting past the shock that a 13 year old girl was abducted.

Digging a bit deeper into what's going on in Barron County, it's obvious they have both a meth problem and an unusually high concentration of sex offenders. Despite what was discussed earlier about Mexican Cartels supplying meth, a quick google search shows plenty of "manufacture and distribute" examples - that's the home grown stuff. And the sex offender to resident ratio is 80:1 in the city of Barron - that's staggering.

I was also surprised at how many of the drug cases I found involved Confidential Informants. There's enough publicly available info to establish Barron County has been cultivating a Confidential Informant program for years and making a concerted effort to infiltrate their local drug underground, something I didn't expect to find in a county of only 45k people. There's even a case where one of their confidential informants was setting up fake drug deals, implicating innocent people and pocketing the money from controlled buys. Dealing with CI's can be tricky, no idea where their loyalties lie and what their motivations are.

But in the case of sting operations that lead back to a manufacturing and distribution network within the local area, whoever doesn't get caught up in the first sweep is left wondering who snitched, what they know, and who else is going to be implicated. This is the situation I believe led to the Closs murders. You've got snitches that can't admit they're snitches and they're eager to point the finger at anyone other than themselves. It could be as innocent as a friend that James had a beer with was in a position to know something. Regardless, there would now be dangerous people with a whole lot to lose that need the snitch silenced.

My theory is that somebody at risk of being implicated in one of these drug raids wanted this killing believing either James or Denise had provided information. Using people not local but already involved in the flow, I'm comfortable assuming that whoever showed up to kill James and/or Denise is already a pretty deviant person and grabbing the girl was opportunistic.

Okay, again - My Opinion Only.

Makes total sense

 

[doublestop]

Excellent points, Photog4! We don't know where Denise, Jayme or James were when the 911 call was made. There's so much we don't know...it does seem like either there was enough commotion going on at the time of the call that the dispatcher had difficulty making out who/what was being said OR as you suggested, the caller was perhaps so weak/debilitated (possibly from being shot), that they didn't have the strength left to project their voice.

I'm guessing Denise and Jayme were both in the bathroom, and the assailant broke down the door, killed mom and took Jayme.

 

[human]

Don't know about that but we did discuss the possibility of prints on them, if the killer wasn't wearing gloves when he loaded the gun.

Even the panty stealer had gloves so it seems hard to believe that these perp(s) did not wear gloves

 

[BB71]

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification. 4 minutes between the time of the 911 call and the arrival of LE does seem like dumb luck to me, though. JMO

It was more than 4 min though.
Call came in at 12:53. Lasted 47 sec or so. Operator called back twice.
They did not arrive til after 1 am.

 

[margarita25]

Does anyone know if there is an abundance of homeless people in the Barron community? TIA

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I do know that meth and homelessness sometimes go hand in hand.

 

[BB71]

About a year ago, there was a similar hang up 911 call. When officers arrived, they found a double murder/suicide. Maybe that was on their mind. They did not know the familial or marital status of D. Closs when they got to the scene.

Link: Autopsy results from Chetek, Wisconsin murder-suicide

If Jayme sounded suicidal somehow on 911 call, they may have thought this? < modsnip - rumor >

 

[Seattle1]

Makes sense to me. People from Mexico would totally stand out in rural northern WI.

Seriously, any Cartel soldiers in Northern WI were likely born in WI and look like their neighbors. Mexico would be the power and money - not the local personnel.

 

[human]

Kind of, but not exactly. I wouldn’t consider the home-grown meth operations to be “organized crime”, at least not the motley bunches of people that get busted around here. Meth isn’t hard to make which is why these small town operations exploded (figuratively, and sometimes literally). The people involved in these meth busts aren’t the same type of people that get stung in other drug raids because the other drugs got here through a more organized and expensive network. Local meth operations can involve the bottom rung of the local social ladder, really undesirable people. That’s the type of organization I believe had a perceived motive to kill one or both Closs parents.

This makes so much sense especially with the description of people who may be involved

 

[BB71]

I'm surprised it would have woken them up. Is there a measure of exactly how far apart their houses are because it looks like a good distance.

They say they were awake in bed. Not sure on distance but quite close.

 

[MsBetsy]

time

Well, yes, but couldn't he have used a different gun that wouldn't leave any evidence?

 

[human]

The cartels don't only employ other Mexicans, they also employ Americans and other "Caucasians". So the short answer is no, they wouldn't necessarily stand out because they are likely to look just like everyone else.

They would have to employ them in Northern Wisconsin where they would definitely stand out when they were doing their hiring,

 

[quueenie]

Can you provide the link? <modsnip - rumor>. I'll write to reporter Paul Blume. He's been very responsive. I'll send him the link and ask him to follow up with the Sheriff's office.

<modsnip - source not allowed> Here is the NAMUS link: Missing Person Case

 

[JudgeJoe]

Many are afraid to contact even the tipline, locally. I live 40 minutes away, and all the small towns around Barron are filled with terrified people, suddenly locking all their doors.

That’s horrible especially with tips drying up. Why don’t they get CrimeStoppers partnered up like they did in the MT case so that people feel more confident about their ability to stay anonymous?

 

[BlinkOfAnI]

OK, I've been thinking about this all day and I will now throw this out there. I've been puzzled about the two shots vs. multiple rounds statements. Here is one possibility:
the neighbors had not been home but a few minutes before hearing the two shots. Maybe there were earlier shots and they were not heard because the neighbors weren't home to hear them.

Maybe the father was killed at the very beginning of the crime and the mother was the victim of the two shots heard by the neighbors.

I do think that the purpose of the crime was to take Jayme. I think this person is young and was in a fit of rage and bound and determined to leave with Jayme. I think the mother was shot while dialing 911 and the yelling and inaudible sounds that the dispatcher heard was Jayme screaming at the sight of her mother being shot.
This young male hustled Jayme out of the house to his car and hit the road. I would not be surprised if the officers are the ones who had the description of the vehicle because it was either on the dash cam or they remembered seeing the car pass by on their way to the house.

JMO

I'm still wondering why we are thinking the perp/s were only there a short time. Has LE released any info that would back that up? If not could they have been in the house for hours?

 

[CuriousMaine]

Another group, not on FB, stated that NAMUS changed the location Jayme was last seen to Gordy's. It does show NAMUS last modified Jayme's info on November 4th, but I can't figure out how to tell if that is what was modified.

I had NAMEUS confused with another database; I thought it was a public search database. It's only for professionals in certain fields.

 

[MsBetsy]

Even the panty stealer had gloves so it seems hard to believe that these perp(s) did not wear gloves

At first I didn't know who you were talking about! I thought maybe there was some infamous serial killer called the Panty Stealer.

 

[KLM6]

I've been hesitant to share my complete thoughts on this, but tonight I think I will. I'll preface by saying it's my opinion only of course. I believe the turning point in my thinking was getting past the shock that a 13 year old girl was abducted.

Digging a bit deeper into what's going on in Barron County, it's obvious they have both a meth problem and an unusually high concentration of sex offenders. Despite what was discussed earlier about Mexican Cartels supplying meth, a quick google search shows plenty of "manufacture and distribute" examples - that's the home grown stuff. And the sex offender to resident ratio is 80:1 in the city of Barron - that's staggering.

I was also surprised at how many of the drug cases I found involved Confidential Informants. There's enough publicly available info to establish Barron County has been cultivating a Confidential Informant program for years and making a concerted effort to infiltrate their local drug underground, something I didn't expect to find in a county of only 45k people. There's even a case where one of their confidential informants was setting up fake drug deals, implicating innocent people and pocketing the money from controlled buys. Dealing with CI's can be tricky, no idea where their loyalties lie and what their motivations are.

But in the case of sting operations that lead back to a manufacturing and distribution network within the local area, whoever doesn't get caught up in the first sweep is left wondering who snitched, what they know, and who else is going to be implicated. This is the situation I believe led to the Closs murders. You've got snitches that can't admit they're snitches and they're eager to point the finger at anyone other than themselves. It could be as innocent as a friend that James had a beer with was in a position to know something. Regardless, there would now be dangerous people with a whole lot to lose that need the snitch silenced.

My theory is that somebody at risk of being implicated in one of these drug raids wanted this killing believing either James or Denise had provided information. Using people not local but already involved in the flow, I'm comfortable assuming that whoever showed up to kill James and/or Denise is already a pretty deviant person and grabbing the girl was opportunistic.

Okay, again - My Opinion Only.

This is impressive. Ive read about a lot of the things mentioned and would have never brought it all together this way. But it makes terribly good sense. What about Jayme knowing one of these peoples kids? Overheard something? A friend confided in her? Maybe she saw something at a sleepover? Said the wrong thing to the wrong kid?

 

[human]

Seriously, any Cartel soldiers in Northern WI were likely born in WI and look like their neighbors. Mexico would be the power and money - not the local personnel.

How would they communicate with people in Northern WI?