Slender Man
Slender Man
On a Saturday morning, May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls stabbed their friend (also 12) 19 times. Leutner survived the attack, but the other girls were sentenced to a mental institution.
ABC News reports that Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier had planned the attack for 6 months. The girls were at a slumber party to celebrate Geyser’s birthday. While being interrogated by detectives, the girls both said that they had been told to kill Peyton Leutner by a character called Slender Man.
Detective Tom Casey said that at that time, he had a daughter around the same age as the girls. He told ABC News that Morgan could have been his daughter. But then she started saying weird things.
Det. Casey: “So did you guys talk about doing this beforehand?”
Geyser: “Anissa told me we had to.”
Det. Casey: “Why?”
Geyser: “Because she said that he’d kill our families”
Det. Casey: “Who’s he?”
Geyser: “Um, a man. I didn’t know him. But Anissa knew him.”
Anissa Weier told Detective Trussoni that she had learned of Slender Man through a website called CreepyPasta Wiki, “It’s full of like horror stories that are meant to, like, purposefully scare you. And there’s one of them called Slender Man.”
Geyser reported that he was a “tall faceless man who preys on children”. Weier told Trussoni that, “he can explode these tendrils from his back and, like, strangle his victims. From what the CreepyPasta Wiki said, he targets children most”.
Trussoni told ABC that Anissa had explained to her that, in order to prove oneself worthy to Slender, one would have to kill a person. Anissa told her that Morgan was the one who said that they had to kill Leutner.
When Detective Casey asked Geyser if she felt bad about stabbing one of her best friends, Geyser responded, “I thought about it, but then I decided that remorse would get me nowhere. It’s easier to live without regrets”. She also told Casey that she hadn’t wanted to do it, but that she was scared of what would happen if she didn’t.
Leutner barely managed to survive. Weier told her to lay down so she would lose less blood, and that she and Geyser were going to get help, but Detective Trussoni reported that the girls had told her that they had no intention of getting help. They wanted her to die.
Leutner managed to walk until she found a patch of grass she could collapse on. A bicyclist found her and called 911. She was taken straight to the hospital. One of the surgeons operating on Leutner told ABC News that if the stab wound on her chest had been the width of a human hair deeper, Leutner wouldn’t have survived.
Weier recieved a sentence of 25 years in a rehabilitation facility, and Geyser received 40. As of last year, Weier has been released from the facility.
Picture from the New York Times.
ABC News Video covering the Slender Man attack:
'Slender Man' stabbing survivor describes horrific ordeal | Nightline
