BARRON, Wis. — A social media post summed it up well. 1268 US Highway 8 stopped being a home on October 15, 2018. And now, it is no longer a house.
The house where Jim and Denise Closs were brutally killed and 13-year-old Jayme was taken stood for 10 months after the crime.
But no more.
The bank that now owns the property demolished it after letting Jayme's family know.
Jayme already made it clear what she thought in a statement read in court by her lawyer.
"I don't want to even see my home or my stuff, because of the memory of that night," Chris Gramstrup read from Jayme's statement in May.
The home also haunted neighbors along Highway 8 outside Barron, Wisconsin.
"You don't want to keep going by that house every time you go to Minneapolis or someplace or go by and all the sudden here's that house there to remind that reminds you of all the horror that went on there," said Mark Garrett who lives just down the road.
The home also haunted Joan Smrekar.
"It's allowed me to actually take a deep breath," Smrekar said.
Joan heard the gunshots on October 15, 2018. She thought it was a neighbor firing to scare aware an animal. She received hate mail because she didn't call 911 and has been in counseling ever since.
"Jayme is so strong, and I'm so glad that she is back. And I just want for her to know that, I know there was nothing I probably could have changed much, but I wish we would have called the sheriff's department and just said come and check this out. And I didn't. We didn't," Smrekar said.
Removing what Joan saw as a monument to the crimes is allowing her and others to move on.
"It's going to help me get past what happened here," she said.
Jayme's family didn't comment on the demolition of the house.