Missing Teen Jayme Closs Found Alive

THE 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO SURVIVED88 DAYS OF CAPTIVITY AFTER HER PARENTS WERE MURDERED IN FRONT OF HER BREAKS FREE. INSIDE HER SHOCKING ORDEAL—AND JOYOUS FIRST DAYS HOME

- Sandra Sobieraj Westfall

After three hours in the car, Jeanne Nutter’s golden retriever Henry Standing Bear wouldn’t sit still. Usually when the retired social worker and her husband, Forrest, first got to their weekend cabin in the woods of Gordon, Wisc., Nutter would settle in by building a fire and stowing her jewelry—including her bracelet with the medal of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. But on Thursday, Jan. 10, the dog would not wait for his walk. “Henry was antsy, and the road was nothing butice,”Nuttersays.“I thought,‘I’m leaving my bracelet on so I don’t fall and break my hip.’”

But whatever powers the Catholic-school alum, now 66, ascribed to her religious medal had a higher calling that frigid afternoon when a thin young girl, wearing only a baggy sweatshirt and too-big men’s sneakers on the wrong feet, stumbled across the ice toward Nutter and Henry. “She said, ‘I need help.’ I recognized her immediately. Her pictures are everywhere,” recalls Nutter. “She was crying. She told me, ‘I’m Jayme.’”