It’s been a decade since two girls lured their classmate into the woods in a quiet suburb of Wisconsin and stabbed her nearly to death. It was all in the name of the fictional character Slender Man, they claimed.
Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier were 12 years old when they attacked sixth-grader Payton Leutner at a Waukesha park on 31 May 2014 after the three supposed friends had a sleepover.
Ms Leutner was stabbed 19 times and was left for dead, but she survived the shocking attack that captured headlines around the world.
Geyser and Weier told investigators that they stabbed Ms Leutner to earn the right to become Slender Man’s servants and protect their families from him. The tall, faceless creature in a suit is just a fictional character that was created online, but it quickly became the boogeyman of children’s nightmares.
Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in a deal with prosecutors and a judge sent her to the psychiatric institute for 40 years after determining she had a mental illness.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was also sent to the psychiatric facility after a jury found she was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the attack. In 2021, Weier was granted a conditional release to live with her father and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor. That stipulation was removed by a judge on 12 September 2023.
This week, Geyser – now a 21-year-old woman – is back in court to plead with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren to release her from Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
She made a similar request for conditional release in 2022 but withdrew the petition two months after filing it.
In January she appeared via Zoom at a hearing to request release. The next hearing was set for a two-day period this week. At the time of the previous hearing, her attorney Anthony Cotton said: “She’s made incredible strides and I think she’s in a position now to come home.”
He added: “Morgan was somebody who was 11 years old, 12 years old when this first happened and she’s now spent nearly half her life in custody.”
During the first day of the latest hearing on Wednesday, doctors who have known Geyser for a decade said there were several red flags which meant they did not believe she was ready for release.
The hearing is due to continue Thursday 11 April.
Here’s how the horrific events unfolded:
How a friendship nearly turned deadly
Payton Leutner befriended Morgan Geyser in fourth grade, at a time when she said Geyser had struggled to make friends, Ms Leutner said in a 2019 interview with ABC’s David Muir.
“She was sitting all by herself and I didn’t think anyone should have to sit by themselves,” Ms Leutner said.
Ms Leutner described herself as hopeful and positive before the attack and said she’d tried to see the good in people, including Geyser.
But everything “went downhill” when Geyser became friends with Weier in the sixth grade and began talking about Slender Man, she said.
She said it frightened her a bit, but she wanted to be supportive of her friend and her interests.
But as Geyser’s obsession with Slender Man grew, Ms Leutner considered ending their friendship.
“I saw the change from fifth to sixth grade when she met Anissa,” she said. “That’s when I was really wanting to get out of that friendship.”
But they remained friends and she said she had no idea what was coming when she arrived at Geyser’s house for her 12th birthday slumber party.
“Once I look back on it, I was like, that is really weird,” she said. “Why didn’t I see something? Why didn’t I notice something was weird? But I’m not blaming myself at all. Because who could ever see something like this coming? Nobody could ever see something like this coming.”
The attack
The plan to kill Ms Leutner was fuelled by the girls’ desire to please Slender Man.
According to a criminal complaint, the plan was initially supposed to be carried out on 30 May 2014, the night of Geyser’s sleepover to celebrate her 12th birthday.
But then they changed the plan and decided to kill her the next morning at a nearby park in Waukesha.
Once at the park, Weier suggested they go for a walk to play hide-and-seek in nearby woods, she told investigators.
“They just wanted to go on a walk,” Ms Leutner later told ABC. “And I didn’t think much of it. It’s just a walk. It’s in Waukesha. What bad stuff happens in Waukesha, Wisconsin?”
But Weier told Leutner to lie down and with a kitchen knife Geyser had brought from her home, she began to repeatedly stab her while Weier egged her on.
Ms Leutner suffered 19 stab wounds and barely survived, according to medical staff who treated her.
The girls left Ms Leutner for dead but she crawled onto a bike path and was found by a passerby.
Police captured Geyser and Weier later that day as they were walking on Interstate 94 in Waukesha.
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 his username “Victor Surge.”
The creation was part of a Photoshop challenge in which users were asked to manipulate real photos to give them a paranormal edge.
Slender Man is typically depicted as a spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face and regarded alternately as a sinister force and an avenging angel.
Geyser and Weier discovered Slender Man on Creepypasta Wiki, apparently believed he was real and decided to become what they called “proxies” of the character, thereby proving their dedication to him and his existence to sceptics, according to the criminal complaint.
But to fully prove their dedication, the girls believed they had to kill someone. They decided that person would be their friend Payton.
Following the 2014 attack, 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 a fear of Slender Man in parents across the nation.
Russell Jack, who was the police chief of Waukesha 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 wicked things.”
The trial
Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in a deal with prosecutors and a judge sent her to the psychiatric institute after determining she had a mental illness.
Geyser was diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia after being taken into custody, according to Rolling Stone.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was also sent to the psychiatric facility after a jury found she was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the attack.
In December 2017, Weier received the maximum 25 years in a mental health facility after pleading guilty to being an accomplice to second-degree intentional homicide.
In February 2018, Geyser received 40 years in a mental hospital after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide.
In 2021, Weier was granted a conditional release to live with her father and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor.
Slender Man and Hollywood
It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling for the ghastly figure after the attack gained international notoriety.
The HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman aired in 2017.
Sony Pictures followed suit with a 2018 movie titled Slenderman that featured the horror character.
While not based on the real-life case, Weier’s father, Bill Weier, said it was “absurd” and “extremely distasteful” to popularise a tragedy.
The creepy character also formed inspiration for episodes of both Supernatural and Law and Order.
Payton Leutner rebuilds 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 her emotional trauma was just as scarring, as she later revealed that she slept with scissors under her 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 rather than everyone else’s,” she said in an exclusive interview with ABC’s David Muir.
She was 17 years old when she finally told her story, explaining that she had worked hard over the last five years to heal and rebuild a normal life.
“I’ve come to accept all of the scars that I have,” Ms Leutner said.
“It’s just a part of me. I don’t think much of them. They will probably go away and fade eventually.”
She has since graduated high school and has plans to pursue a career in the medical field. As of September 2021, she was a college sophomore and had a part-time job, according to The Associated Press.
“I wouldn’t think that someone who went through what I did would ever say that,” she added, having decided to focus on the positive. “But that’s truly how I feel. Without the whole situation, I wouldn’t be who I am.”
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