In 2014, the world was disturbed by a shocking crime out of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Twelve-year-old Payton Leutner was brutally stabbed 19 times in the woods. The perpetrators: Aneissa Weier and Morgan Geyser—friends and classmates of Leutner…and also 12-years-old themselves. While Weier orchestrated the attack, it was Geyser who did the actual stabbing.
What led two children to lure another child into the woods and then viciously attack her, clearly with the intention to kill her? An extreme and fanatical devotion to Slender Man. That’s not actually a real person, but a creepy, tentacled, Internet-based urban myth, a horrific monster out of H.P. Lovecraft that wants his acolytes to kill in his name. Weier and Geyser believed Slender Man lived in a nearby and that they had to kill somebody so he wouldn’t kill their families.
Thankfully, Leutner survived the violent ordeal. Weier and Geyser were tried separately, and as adults. Late last year, Weier was sentenced to 25 years in a Wisconsin state psychiatric facility. Yesterday, Geyser received her punishment: 40 years in a mental institution. (Although she can petition to get out of the facility every six months, which her attorney says she will do.)
Geyser received institutionalization, as opposed to hard time, thanks in part to testimony from a psychologist, sho said that Geyser scored very high on an IQ test but also exhibited signs of schizophrenia.