“THE DEVIL DRIVES A RED SEDAN: The Jayme Closs Case” #MurderNoir
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We all dream, but for some people, what should be a time for their bodies and minds to rest turns into a nightmare from which they cannot escape. Our next Weird Darkness live stream is Saturday night, December 28th on the Weird Darkness YouTube channel. And during the live broadcast, I'll share some of these chilling nighttime stories

Tales of shadow people, sleep paralysis, and demons who stalk their victims in that place between dreams and reality. I'll share true tales of prophetic dreams, some joyful, some not. Sleepwalking incidents that are both amusing and disturbing. I'll also share real stories of night terrors so horrifying that sleep

became something to fear and dread for those victimized by the night. You might not want to sleep after joining our next live-screen. It's Saturday, December 28th at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern. On the lighter side, I'll also be responding to comments and questions live on the air and doing a giveaway of some Weird Darkness merch.

Prepare yourself for our next live-scream for chilling tales of what some people must endure in an attempt to get some sleep. Find the details on the live-scream page at WeirdDarkness.com. The neon signs of downtown flicker like dying fireflies as I settle into my office chair, pulling out one of the heaviest files in my drawer: the Jamie Claus case. Some cases hit you harder than others.

This one hit like a freight train in the dead of night. Five years have passed, but the weight of those pages still feels like lead in my hands. Time does enlighten some loads. It just teaches you how to carry them. Me? My name's not important. I'm a private eye. October 15th, 2018. Barron, Wisconsin. As quiet a town as you'll find on God's green earth.

Until that night, when hell came calling at the Kloss residence. Through the window of my mind's eye, I can still see that house, standing there like a tomb waiting for its occupants. Little Jamie Kloss, 13 and innocent as fresh snow, was sleeping when that devil's footsteps first crunched up her driveway. Jake Patterson, a name that would soon be written in blood in Wisconsin's darkest chapters. The family dog knew.

They always do. Dogs have a nose for evil that we humans lost somewhere in the past. Assuming we ever had it. That loyal mutt started barking like Judgment Day was coming. Which for James and Denise Kloss, it was. Four minutes. That's all it took for Patterson to turn a peaceful home into a slaughterhouse. That's the thing about violence. It moves faster than mercy. Strikes harder than hope.

James went down first, trying to protect his family like any father would. The flashlight in his hand was about as useless as a sword fighter using a candlestick. Denise and Jamie huddled in that bathroom like frightened birds in a storm. But there was no shelter from this tempest. Modern homes have locks on their doors that are about as effective as wet paper, especially against a determined predator.

Patterson came dressed in midnight black clothes, black mask, black heart. The shotgun spoke twice that night, leaving two bodies cooling on the floor and a little girl vanishing into the trunk of a red sedan that slipped past responding officers without anyone taking notice. That's when they called me in. The crime scene photos still haunt my dreams.

Blood patterns on the walls telling stories no one wants to read. Shell cases gleaming dully on the floor, like spent pieces of someone's soul. The neighbors heard the shots but dismissed them as hunting sounds. Funny how the mind can rationalize away horror. Package it up neat and tidy in a box marked "ordinary". 70 miles. That's how far he drove with his prize. Like a spider carrying prey back to its web.

His house in Gordon became her prison, but Patterson played at domesticity like a boy playing house. Board games, TV, cooking together, a twisted parody of normal life while nightmares lived under his bed. Every detail of his routine was calculated with the precision of a watchmaker or an executioner. That's where he kept her when company came calling, under the bed.

Trapped behind weighted bins like some twisted modern-day Anne Frank. No food, no water, no mercy. Just hours ticking by slow as molasses in January while Patterson's music drowned out any chance of her cries being heard. Even his father, dropping by for Saturday visits, never knew he was walking above a living grave. The psychology boys at the bureau had a field day with this one.

Patterson, discharged from the Marines for medical reasons after just three months. No prior criminal record. A ghost. Until he became a monster. He'd been fantasizing about taking a young girl since his discharge. Keeping those thoughts bottled up like poison in a flask. Until the day he saw Jamie stepping onto her school bus. He knew that was the girl he was gonna take. Nonchalant.

like picking a melon at the grocery store. But even the devil gets careless. January 10th, 2019. Patterson's guard dropped just enough. Jamie seized her chance like a drowning woman grabbing a lifeline, bursting out into the winter air, wearing nothing but lightweight clothes and borrowed shoes. Found Jean Nutter walking her dog, an angel in a down jacket if there ever was one.

"I'm Jamie Cross," she said, words tumbling out like prayers. "I don't know where I am," she said. "He killed my parents. Please help. I want to go home." The dominoes fell fast after that. Patterson folded like a house of cards when they caught him. "I did it," he said, simple as ordering coffee. His confession read like a horror novel written by an accountant: detailed, methodical, emotionless.

Turned out he'd been hunting for a victim like a wolf stalking sheep. Spotted Jamie getting off a school bus one September morning. Three tries it took him to spring his trap. If it wasn't Jamie, it would probably be someone else, he said later. And he said it cold, like a corpse in the morgue. The most chilling part? His growing confidence as time passed. After a while, I thought, well, I could get away with this, he told investigators. Voice steady as a surgeon's hand.

I mean, I understand how, when there's no connection, a person has no connections to someone, how that's almost impossible to solve or really hard to solve. Yeah, the perfect crime in his mind. Until it wasn't. His remorse came too late, like giving an apology at a funeral. "I just felt so bad," he said. "Like every time I looked at her, I was like, 'I can't, like I couldn't literally, couldn't believe that I actually did this.'"

Yeah, words cheaper than newspaper print, especially after what he'd done. The letters he wrote from his cell, trying to explain the unexplainable, rang hollow as funeral bells in an empty church. The judge threw the book at him. Two life sentences, stacked like cordwood, plus 40 years for kidnapping. They shipped him off to New Mexico, where he sits now, writing sorry notes like they could wash the blood from his hands.

Some say prison's too good for him. Others say hell's got a special place waiting. Me? I've seen too much evil to believe in easy answers. Sometimes, late at night when the wind howls around my office, I think about Jamie Closs. She saved herself when no one else could. Earned her own reward money from Hormel. $25,000.

Blood money if you ask me, but at least it came from the right source and went to the right person. The girl rescued herself, might as well get the reward. But some scars don't show, and some nights are darker than others, even in the safety of home. I wonder if she still checks under her bed before sleeping. Not for monsters, but for memories. Does she hear phantom music when the house gets too quiet?

Duated laundry baskets make her breath catch in her throat. I close the file, but the case never really closes. Not this one. Not while somewhere in Wisconsin, a young girl will startle at the sound of footsteps in the night. And somewhere in New Mexico, a monster writes letters of regret to nobody in particular. The neon signs outside my window keep blinking their endless code into the darkness, reminding me that evil doesn't sleep.

It just waits for the next opportunity. The next school bus. The next quiet house on a quiet street in a quiet town. That's why I keep the file close. That's why I remember. Because somewhere out there, another Patterson is watching. Waiting. Planning. Maybe, just maybe, reading these pages one more time will help me spot him before he strikes. But that's tomorrow's problem.

Tonight, I'll pour another bourbon and watch the shadows dance on my office wall, wondering if any of us are really as safe as we think we are.