It’s been a decade since two girls lured their classmate into the woods in a quiet Wisconsin suburb and stabbed him nearly to death. They claimed it was all in the name of the fictional character Slender Man.
Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier were 12 when they attacked sixth-grader Payton Leutner in a Waukesha park on May 31, 2014, allegedly after three friends had a sleepover.
Ms Leutner was stabbed 19 times and left for dead, but survived the shocking attack that made headlines around the world.
Geyser and Weier told investigators that they stabbed Ms. Leutner to gain the right to become Slender Man’s servants and protect their family from him. The tall, faceless creature in a suit was nothing more than a fictional character created on the Internet, but he quickly became the bogeyman of children’s nightmares.
In a deal with prosecutors, Gayser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree premeditated murder, and the judge sent him to a psychiatric institution for 40 years after it was determined that he was mentally ill.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was sent to a psychiatric hospital after the jury found that he was suffering from mental illness at the time of the attack. In 2021, Weier was granted parole to live with his father and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor. This condition was lifted by the judge on September 12, 2023.
This week, Geyser, now a 21-year-old woman, will return to court to ask Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren to release her from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
He sought similar parole in 2022 but withdrew the petition two months after filing it.
In January, he attended a hearing via Zoom to request release. The next hearing is set for two days this week. During the previous hearing, his barrister Anthony Cotton said: “He has made incredible progress and I think he is now able to return home.”
He added: “Morgan was 11 when this first happened, she was 12, and she’s now spent almost half her life in custody.”
The terrible events unfolded as follows:
How a friendship nearly turned deadly
Ms. Leutner said in a 2019 interview with ABC’s David Muir that Payton Leutner befriended Morgan Geyser in the fourth grade, at a time when Geyser said she was having trouble making friends.
“He was sitting alone, and I didn’t think anyone should sit alone,” Ms. Leutner said.
Ms. Leutner described herself as hopeful and positive before the attack and said she tried to see the good in people, including Geyser.
But everything “went downhill” when Geyser became friends with Weier in sixth grade and started talking about the Thin Man, he said.
He said it scared him a little, but he wanted to support his friend and his interests.
However, as Geyser’s obsession with the Thin Man grew, Ms. Leutner considered ending their friendship.
“I watched him transition from fifth grade to sixth grade when he met Anissa,” he said. “That’s when I really wanted to get out of that friendship.”
But they remained friends, and when she arrived at Geyser’s house for her 12th birthday sleepover, she said she had no idea what would happen.
“Looking back, I thought it was really weird,” he said. “Why didn’t I see anything? Why didn’t I notice something was weird? But I don’t blame myself at all. Because who could have seen something like this coming? “No one could have seen something like this coming.”
Attack
The plan to kill Miss Leutner was motivated by the girls’ desire to please the Thin Man.
According to the criminal complaint, the plan was originally supposed to be implemented on May 30, 2014, the night Geyser had a sleepover to celebrate his 12th birthday.
But then they changed the plan and decided to kill him the next morning at a nearby park in Waukesha.
He told investigators that when they arrived at the park, Weier suggested they go for a walk to play hide-and-seek in the nearby woods.
“They just wanted to go for a walk,” Ms Leutner later told the ABC. “And I didn’t think much about it. It’s just a walk. in Waukesha. What bad things are happening in Waukesha, Wisconsin?
But Weier told Leutner to lie down, and as Weier prodded him with the kitchen knife he had brought from Geyser’s house, Leutner began stabbing him repeatedly.
According to the medical staff who treated her, Ms. Leutner suffered 19 stab wounds and barely survived.
The girls left Ms. Leutner to die, but she crawled onto the bike path and was found by a passerby.
Police caught up with Geyser and Weier while walking on Interstate 94 in Waukesha later that day.
Who is Slender Man?
Slender Man is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a “creepypasta” – or horror – internet meme created in 2009 by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen under the username “Victor Surge”.
The creation was part of a photoshop challenge in which users were asked to alter real photos to give them a paranormal advantage.
The Slender Man is typically depicted as a spider-like figure with a featureless white face in a black suit and is considered a sinister angel of power and vengeance respectively.
According to the criminal complaint, Geyser and Weier discovered Slender Man on the Creepypasta Wiki, apparently believed him to be real, and decided to become what they called “surrogates” for the character, thus proving their devotion to him and his existence to skeptics.
But to fully prove their loyalty, the girls believed they had to kill someone. They decided that this person would be their friend Payton.
Following the attack in 2014, Mr. Knudsen released a statement to the media: “I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin, and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act.”
The stabbing of Payton Leutner sparked Slender Man fear in parents across the country.
Russell Jack, Waukesha’s police chief at the time, warned that the Slender Man stabbing “should be a wake-up call for all parents” and that “the internet is full of dark and bad things.”
Attempt
In a deal with prosecutors, Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree premeditated murder, and the judge sent him to a psychiatric institute after finding he had a mental illness.
Gayzer was diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia after he was taken into custody. Rolling stone.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was sent to a psychiatric hospital after the jury found that he was suffering from mental illness at the time of the attack.
In December 2017, Weier was sentenced to the maximum term of 25 years in a mental health facility after pleading guilty to being an accessory to second-degree intentional homicide.
In February 2018, Geyser was sentenced to 40 years in a mental hospital after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree premeditated murder.
In 2021, Weier was granted parole to live with his father and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor.
The Thin Man and Hollywood
After the attack gained international fame, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood wanted this terrifying figure.
HBO documentary Watch out for Slenderman It was published in 2017.
Sony Pictures followed this with a film released in 2018: slender man It featured the horror character.
Weier’s father, Bill Weier, said popularizing a tragedy, even though it was not based on a real-life event, was “absurd” and “extremely distasteful.”
The creepy character also served as inspiration for episodes of both series Supernatural And Law and order.
Payton Leutner is rebuilding her life
Ms. Leutner underwent 25 surgeries to repair her heart, liver, stomach and pancreas after the attack, her mother, Stacie Leutner, told ABC Action News in Tampa Bay, Florida.
But his emotional trauma was just as hurtful; He later explained that he slept with scissors under his pillow for protection.
Ms. Leutner had never spoken publicly about what happened to her in the woods until 2019.
“I feel like it’s time for people to see my side and not everyone else’s,” he said in an exclusive interview with ABC’s David Muir.
She was 17 when she finally told her story, explaining that she had worked hard over the past five years to recover and rebuild a normal life.
“I have come to accept all the scars I have,” Ms. Leutner said.
“It’s just a part of me. I don’t think about these things much. They will probably fade away eventually.”
He has since graduated from high school and was planning to pursue a career in medicine. As of September 2021, he was a sophomore in college and had a part-time job, according to the Associated Press.
Deciding to focus on the positive, she added, “I never thought someone who went through the things I did would say that.” “But I really feel that way. “I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for this whole situation.”