Michael Caldwell said that Weier had schizotypy, which caused 'diminished ability to determine what's real and what's not real.' In Beware the Slenderman, psychologist Dr. Weier pleaded guilty in August 2017 to attempted second-degree homicide due to mental illness or defect and was sentenced to at least three years and up to 25 years in a mental health facility. One of the girls also had a photo of her parents and siblings, to remember them by.ĭespite defense counsel's efforts to have the court treat them as juveniles, they were ultimately charged as adults with first-degree intentional homicide-a shocking decision to some observers, considering the girls were only 12. They had blood on their clothes and the knife in a backpack, as well as extra clothes, granola bars and bottles of water-provisions for their journey to where they thought Slender Man might live in Nicolet National Forest. Geyser and Weier were found about five hours after police were first called. 'Two 12-year-old girls stabbing their friend nearly to death is unimaginable any time, but especially for a safe community like the city of Waukesha,' Police Chief Russell Jack told ABC News at the time. 'I want to go home' was her first message, her mom, Stacie Leutner, told Nightline host David Muir. She underwent emergency surgery and for a time she couldn't talk, so would communicate by writing. It was like… air,' Geyser was later seen telling detectives in the 2017 HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman.Īfter the other girls had run off, Leutner managed to get up, stabilizing herself by holding onto trees, and made it to the side of the road where a passing bicyclist saw her and called 911. At first they had her lie down while they covered her with leaves and twigs, claiming it was a game of hide-and-seek, and then Geyser proceeded to stab Leutner-her best friend since fourth grade-19 times with a kitchen knife. It was the morning after a sleepover at Morgan Geyser's house on May 31, 2014, after all three girls had visited a skating rink and got frozen yogurt for Geyser's 12th birthday, that Geyser and Anissa Weier told Payton Leutner they wanted to go to the woods to play. The victim and her attackers all lived comfortably with their families, went to school and did normal things that sixth-graders do, like surf the Web and have sleepovers. Payton, Morgan and Anissa lived in Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee, the most populous city in Wisconsin. True, the attack didn't happen in some remote backwater.

'But there's always a chance that that could happen.' 'You hear about that happening to people and you think, 'That could never happen in my family. I couldn't believe that that kind of thing could have happened,' Payton's brother Caden Leutner, who was 10 when his sister was attacked, told ABC News' 20/20. Now 17, the Wisconsin girl who was stabbed five years ago by two fellow 12-year-olds, who insisted they only attacked Payton to please Slender Man, sat down this month to speak out publicly for the first time about the traumatic events that shined a big, scary light on the all-too-real consequences of what can happen when impressionable-or unstable-minds come into contact with a fictional story that's taken on a life of its own.īecause, obviously, there is no Slender Man-at least, not in the form Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier thought 'he' existed. Payton Leutner sleeps with a pair of broken scissors under the pillow next to her, 'just in case.'

The slender man