BARRON, Wis. — A 21-year-old man shot a Wisconsin couple to death at their home in a scheme to kidnap their teenage daughter, then held the girl captive for three months before she managed to escape in an isolated north woods town, authorities said Friday.

Jayme Closs, 13, was skinny, disheveled and wearing shoes too big for her when she approached a stranger and pleaded for help Thursday in the small town of Gordon, where Jake Thomas Patterson lives.

Patterson was apparently out looking for her when he was arrested and jailed on kidnapping and homicide charges, Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald said.

The news that Jayme was safe set off joy and relief 60 miles away in her hometown of Barron, population 3,300, ending an all-out search that gripped the state, with many people fearing the worst the longer she was missing.

“My legs started to shake. It was awesome. The stress, the relief — it was awesome,” Fitzgerald said, describing the moment he learned Jayme had been found.

Jayme’s grandfather, Robert Naiberg, said he had been praying for months for the call he received about his granddaughter.

Jayme told one of the neighbors in Gordon who took her in that she had walked away from a cabin where she had been held captive. “She said that this person’s name was Jake Patterson, ‘he killed my parents and took me,’” said another neighbor, Kristin Kasinskas. “She did not talk about why or how. She said she did not know him.”

The sheriff said investigators are trying to figure out what happened to Jayme. He said there is no evidence Patterson knew Jayme or her parents, James and Denise, or had been in contact with her on social media. “I know all of you are searching for the answer why any of this happened,” Fitzgerald said. “Believe me, so are we.”

The sheriff said Jayme was hospitalized overnight for observation and released after an exam.

Investigators were still interviewing her, and she was “doing as well as circumstances allow,” he said.