In the weeks and months after washing out of the Marine Corps, Jake Patterson was "basically lost," he told police.
As he drifted through a series of short-term jobs near his hometown of Gordon, Wis., a thought grabbed hold of him: "taking a girl."
And it could be any girl, Patterson told police in the hours after his arrest in January in the murder of James and Denise Closs at their Barron, Wis., home and the abduction of their 13-year-old daughter, Jayme, in the dark of an October 2018 morning.
"If it wasn't Jayme, it would probably be someone else," he told police.
That chilling detail was revealed in hundreds of pages of investigative documents released by authorities Friday in the Closs murders and kidnapping, a terrifying case that gripped the nation for months following Jayme's disappearance and her daring escape after 88 days of captivity in Patterson's secluded rural Wisconsin home.
Patterson, then 21, was arrested just minutes after Jayme's escape. He later pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of kidnapping and is serving two consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole.
The police files released Friday shed new light on Patterson's motivation and his actions while he kept Jayme prisoner.
A year after Patterson was discharged from the Marines in 2015, he began thinking about abducting a girl.