MINONG, Wis. - The gatherings were typical of what takes place when teenagers get together at the holidays after high school graduation.

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That was true when recent graduates of the Northwood School of Minong got together toward the end of 2015 — except for Jake Patterson.

Even with the guys with whom he'd been closest in the group of 34 students, Patterson wasn't interested in staying in touch, a friend's mother recalled. He didn't give out his email address, didn't want anyone's phone number.

"He was always pretty quiet, which I thought was a little odd," said Minong resident Victoria Fisher, whose son Dylan had been running buddies with Patterson on and off while the two attended the tiny K-12 school in northwestern Wisconsin.

"But I chalked it up to Jake just wanting a little independence for himself."

As it turned out, it was a step in a journey that saw Patterson grow increasingly isolated from friends, classmates, and almost everyone except immediate family.

Some schoolmates thought Patterson was serving in the Marine Corps, probably as an infantryman as he'd vowed he would via a message in their 2015 yearbooks. Others, if they bumped into him at one of the handful of jobs he cycled through after graduation, assumed he'd begun a career at a local meat-packing plant or a wood-pellet factory.

RELATED:Timeline: The life of Jake Patterson, leading to double homicide, abduction charges

His increasing isolation continued until late 2018 when Patterson, four months after his 21st birthday, was so far off people's radar that he was able to avoid being a suspect in the shotgun murders of a Barron County couple and the kidnapping of their 13-year-old daughter, Jayme Closs. That's despite, as prosecutors now allege, having held Jayme captive for nearly three months in the house where he'd lived since 2006.

Now, his classmates and their families struggle to make sense of the news.

"He isn't the person I would've guessed out of my class to do something like this," said a woman who attended Northwood with Patterson for 12 years; like several other classmates, she asked that her name not be used. "It makes all of us who knew him sad … but it also makes a lot of us angry.

"We trusted this classmate and friend," she said, "and he did something horrible."

A move, then divorce

Patterson was born June 17, 1997. He was the youngest child of Patrick, an electrical-supply worker; and Deborah Moyer Patterson, a homemaker, who'd married in 1989. Jake was the couple's third child, joining Katie, then 5; and Erik, who was almost 4.

Though little is known about Jake's childhood, public records show the family spent his first eight years in a small house on 2.5 wooded acres off South Black Widow Road, a rural dead-end street in the woods of Wascott, a Douglas County town of fewer than 800 residents.

Deborah Patterson, now living in Haugen, in Barron County, didn't respond to a note requesting an interview. Patrick Patterson couldn't be reached.

In June 2005, one of his parents decided the marriage was broken, filing papers seeking a divorce or separation. But that case was never finalized, and records of the filing aren't available.

Ten months later, the family bought the house in Gordon where Jake is accused of imprisoning Jayme and moved 15 miles east from Black Widow Road.

In October 2007, the Pattersons were back in divorce court by mutual agreement. This time it was for real.

As the calendar turned to 2008, Deborah moved to Minong. Her husband agreed to pay $800 in monthly child-support, $40,000 for her stake in the house, and to grant her a share of his work pension and $28,000 from his profit-sharing plan.

On March 31, 2008, the marriage was legally dissolved. The children, court papers show, would split time between their parents' houses, switching homes every other week.

Jake Patterson was 10 years old.

'Just kind of there'

When he began high school at Northwood in 2011, Patterson didn't present a memorable figure.

"He was just kind of there," one classmate would later recall of the freshman whose 2012 yearbook photo shows him smiling in a T-shirt, tousled brown hair and glasses.

Said another: "He did keep to himself a lot, but we had no issues. … He had a few close friends."

Superintendent Jean Serum this month called Patterson "a quiet kid" and "a good student." She said he was part of Northwood's Quiz Bowl team, which competed academically against other schools, but didn't participate in sports or other activities. He read a lot — often Tom Clancy thrillers.

Before junior year, students noticed changes. He began sporting a crewcut. And he showed flashes of a temper, although a classmate said he wasn't the only student to do so.

"Something simple like someone throwing a ball (in gym class) and hitting him in the face by accident would set him off," the longtime acquaintance said. "He would cry or get really upset and whip a ball back with anger. That's the closest I'd seen him be violent."

Problems began to emerge on the home front, too. And his potential support group had grown smaller.

At some point — it's unclear when — his father moved out of the house in Gordon, neighbor Daphne Ronning said. With their sister already gone, it was just Jake and Erik, who was almost four years older.

"We had some problems with them when they were teenagers — we caught them siphoning gas," Ronning recalled. After a talking-to from her husband, though, "there was never anything else."

Jake had no legal troubles, but Erik had brushes with the law: a 2013 conviction for fourth-degree sexual assault, then a 2014 conviction for bail-jumping and two felony counts of manufacturing or delivering THC, the compound that gives marijuana its potency. The latter resulted in an eight-month jail sentence.

As graduation approached in 2015, Jake was ready to be done with school. He skipped prom, his class trip and the senior photo, and spoke of a plan to join the Marines.

Classmates voted him "most quiet."

'I hope he gets what he deserves'

The U.S. Marine Corps' basic-training course lasts 13 weeks. Patterson began it in September 2015 in San Diego. He was thrown out in week five, a time when recruits typically have yet to begin rifle marksmanship and field-training.

Back in Wisconsin in 2016, he quit a job at a Barron turkey-processing plant after one day. At some point, he worked at a wood-pellet factory in Hayward, but quit after a day or two.

A job in October at Saputo Cheese USA near Almena yielded a similar result: two days, then done. Police said he was on his way to work at the cheese plant when he saw Jayme Closs board a school bus in Barron, and decided he'd kidnap her.

People who know Patterson remain stunned. Fisher said her son, who didn't want to be interviewed for this story, has spent sleepless nights periodically interrupted by tears.

"I'd thought, 'Boy, there's a kid who's got it together, who's gonna go far in life,'" said Fisher, who recalled Patterson coming over to play video games and the board game "Risk." "Now he's got this whole community torn up."

His longtime classmate says she holds out hope for Jayme Closs' future, but not for Patterson's.

"I just hope,"' she said, "that little girl can come back from this and live a somewhat normal life. And I hope (Patterson) gets what he deserves — which is probably life in prison."

Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this story.