The Slender Man Stabbing: When Fiction Bleeds Into Reality

Twelve is a strange age for everyone. You still feel kind of like a kid while also beginning to feel the unfamiliar pangs of maturity. At this age you may experience your first crush. You may put on make-up for the first time. Your parents may finally start letting you experience small tastes of the freedom you’ve lately found yourself thirsting for. Toys start to lose their ability to entertain while new interests begin to take the place of childhood pass times. Friendships start to change and evolve as well. While most kids just drift apart as they grow older, sometimes the situation is more complicated than that.

Payton Leutner started Horning Middle School in the fall of 2013, according to an article published by Biography. Growing up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, there couldn’t have been more of a picturesque place to live. The award-winning community is boasted as part of Milwaukee’s metropolitan area.

Starting school alongside the friendly, outgoing young girl was Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser. Finding themselves socially outcast in these uncertain waters of early adolescence, they found Payton and latched on as though she were a life preserver. Payton would call these girls her best friends, while they nicknamed her “Bella.”

It was around the time that they were starting middle school that Anissa was introduced to a webpage known widely as the Creepypasta Wiki. Here, users invent and add onto entries about fictional monsters, cryptids, and supernatural beings. The posts are made to sound as though the creatures listed here are real, but it’s all just for fun. When Anissa stumbled upon Slender Man, it began to seem like more than just creepy fun to her. The tendency to post fictional encounters with the beasts may have perpetuated a firm belief that was already taking root on its own.

Slender Man is a tall, thin, faceless, creature with long limbs and a black suit. He was originally created for an online Photoshop contest that stipulated a backstory be created and submitted with the pictures. Slender Man’s pictures and lore almost immediately blew up. People began sharing the story and adding to the lore until he became widely popular.

As Anissa was truly coming to believe in Slender Man, Morgan was becoming equally as obsessed. They became convinced that Slender Man owned a big mansion right in the middle of Nicolet National Park when Morgan claimed to have found proof of the house. As the clearly defined line between reality and fantasy became increasingly blurred for Anissa and Morgan, they started devising a plan. Starting somewhere between late December 2013 and early January 2014, the sixth-graders began plotting in secret to kill their best friend, Payton.

The youngest of the group, Morgan was the last to celebrate her twelfth birthday on May 30, 2014. It was a Friday night and Morgan’s mother, Angie Geyser, was throwing her a small get-together with only two friends. She took Morgan, Anissa, and Payton to the roller skating rink that night before the girls came back to Morgan’s house for a birthday sleepover. The birthday sleepover sounds so familiar to all of us. To adolescent girls, it’s an almost ritualistic part of growing up. Staying up late, watching movies, bingeing on snacks, talking about boys, and all of the drama that sixth graders start to find in school. Sometimes you may have at least two girls snickering about another in whispers. Few pre-teen girls have had a sleepover experience as traumatic as Payton Leutner, though.

The girls had an exciting and exhausting night at the roller rink. They were all tired out when they got home that night, but Payton would later learn that the night hadn’t been as uneventful as she thought. When they got up the next morning the girls played on an IPad, played with silly putty, and played dress-up for a while before eating breakfast. When they were finished with their meal, Morgan asked her mother if they could go outside to play for a while at a nearby park. She agreed and the trio left, with Morgan snatching a five-inch knife from the kitchen on her way out. She stashed the weapon in her bag, briefly flashing it to Anissa as Payton walked ahead of them to the park. Little did she know, her so-called best friends were acting on the second plan they had concocted to kill her in as many days.

ABC News published the girls’ admissions of guilt. In her interview, Morgan admitted to plotting with Anissa to duct tape Payton’s mouth closed during the slumber party and stab her in the neck as she slept. Stating that they “were too sleepy and tired” from their evening out, she said that they backed out of the murder plot for the night. As Payton was putting on a pink dress for their game of dress-up the next morning, the two were whispering plans once again. This time they wanted to lure her to the public bathroom at the park. They reasoned that they could use a drain located in the bathroom to wash away the blood.

As they walked to the park that day, Payton was woefully unaware of her friends’ plan. They went to the bathroom, where Morgan slammed Payton’s head against the concrete wall. She stated during her interview with police that she had read online it was easier to kill a person if they were unconscious. She also said that it would be easier not to look them in eye. Payton wasn’t knocked out and the girls lost their nerve on attempt number two.

After they exited the bathroom, Anissa whispered another idea to her co-conspirator. She suggested that they lead her out into the woods to kill her. And so they did, suggesting that they all play a game of hide-and-seek when they got there. Payton was already suspicious of her friends and their suggestion of such a game didn’t help matters any. Morgan began to count. Before Payton could react to the strange situation, she heard Anissa yell, “Now.” As Morgan began violently stabbing her friend, Anissa egged her on, calling out, “go ballistic, go crazy, make sure she’s down.” After stabbing her nineteen times, the pair stood over their helpless victim, blankly staring for several moments.

Payton told her attackers, “I trusted you,” then, “I hate you.” She told them that they had lied to her. The young girl struggled as she bled from her wounds. She tried to get herself up off the ground. She told Morgan and Anissa that she couldn’t see, walk, or breathe. Anissa responded by telling her to lie down so she wouldn’t bleed so quickly before promising help that she never intended to get. Walking away from their friend as she lay bleeding on the ground, their plans were already set and they had to get going. It was a four and half hour drive to Nicolet National Park, and they were making the trip on foot.

Left alone to die in the woods, Payton refused to accept that as her fate. She pulled herself up and walked until she found a trail. Finding a soft patch of grass beside the trail to collapse, she was quickly found by a passing cyclist, who called for help. Officer Dan Klein was the first to respond. As he approached the young girl lying on the ground he saw blood. The closer he got, the more blood he saw. She was barely moving, but what strength she had she used to tell the officer that she’d been stabbed by her best friend, naming Morgan Geyser specifically.

Detectives Michelle Trussoni and Tom Casey never imagined that they would be responding to such a call. It was a warm, sunny Saturday morning that should’ve been peaceful and uneventful when they were dispatched at ten o’clock. The look of agony that pinched and twisted Payton’s face as she was rushed to the emergency room is a memory that will never be wiped from Detective Trussoni’s memory. Not sure if this young girl was going to survive the brutal attack she endured, Trussoni tried to get as much information as she could on the ride to the hospital. She learned that another girl had been out in the woods during the attack.

Tom Casey went to speak with Morgan’s mother, Angie Geyser. He learned that there had been a slumber party the night before for Morgan’s birthday, and that Payton had attended as well as Anissa Weier. He was also informed that all three girls had left the house on their way to the park that morning. Immediately after talking to Angie police fanned out far and wide to find the two missing adolescent girls. The initial reaction was that these girls were in eminent danger. Detective Casey feared finding them dead given the way they had found Payton. Morning stretched into afternoon as police searched for the pair, preparing themselves for the worst. But they never could’ve prepared for the story about to unfold.

Just before three o’clock that afternoon Morgan and Anissa were found sitting on the side of the I-94 freeway. Dirty, tired, and covered in dried blood, they were eerily calm when they were picked up. Payton was still in surgery when they arrived at the police station. Detectives Trussoni and Casey didn’t know if they were investigating a homicide or an assault with intent to kill. They had no idea what kind of motive they were going to uncover. Trussoni immediately figured given their age of twelve that this must have been about a boy. She prepared herself for stories of first crushes, broken hearts, and misplaced rage. What she heard instead she will never forget.

Referring to Payton by her nickname, “Bella,” Morgan calmly and flatly asked, “Is she dead … I was just wondering.” The coldness with which she inquired about her so-called friend told Detective Casey that she didn’t care in the least whether she was dead or alive. Still, he was shocked when this adolescent girl blurted out a confession. “I might as well just say it,” she declared, “We were trying to kill her.”

She said that they had been trying to appease “whoever Anissa was talking about.” Who Anissa had been talking about was Slender Man. In a casual sort of tone, Morgan asked, “This is going to get me arrested, isn’t it?” Having been so focused on killing Payton and getting to Slender Man’s mansion, she never stopped to think for a second about what would happen next. The far-stretching consequences of her actions had never occurred to her. She told the detective that she had been sure the crime would catch up to her one day down the road because of something her mother had always said. Eventually the things that you do always catch up with you. Morgan and Anissa were both learning how fast the truly heinous things come back around.

Morgan tried to pin everything on her cohort, saying that Anissa had told her what to do. It had been Anissa that convinced her a man that she knew, but Morgan did not, was going to kill their entire families unless they did what she said. The man she had been referring to was Slender Man. His description left detectives shocked and befuddled. He could be anywhere from six to fourteen feet tall. The incredibly tall creature with no face and pale, white skin always wears a black suit. Long tendrils protruding from his back are used to strangle his victims to death, most of whom are children. Sharing the web page they had found him on, detectives were again stunned as they scrolled through cryptid after monster, after poltergeist.

As Morgan spoke with Tom Casey, Anissa was in a separate room with Detective Trussoni. Her previous assumptions were shattered as this troubled young girl spoke at length about her firm belief in Slender Man. Her faith in this creature was as unshakable as the faith of a Christian. Her fear that this thing would annihilate her family was real. She would speak with him on the school bus, having conversations so realistic she knew they had really happened. Looking through the window at the world outside, she would see him standing there before disappearing into thin air. She told Trussoni that she knew the monster “could easily kill my whole family in three seconds.”

To save themselves and their families, they needed to prove themselves worthy. They figured the only way to prove themselves worthy of such a murderous creature’s favor was to kill someone. It had been Morgan that suggested they kill Payton to accomplish their grim goal. Once this was done, they were free to travel to Slender Man’s mansion to live with him.

In separate interview rooms the girls turned on each other. Morgan pointed to Anissa as the instigator and mastermind as Anissa did just the same right across the hall. Detectives wondered if Anissa had only done this for Morgan. Take Morgan Geyser out of the equation and she may have never seen the inside of a police station. Though both girls were casting the role of ringleader on the other, they had plotted together, both putting forth ideas that were attempted. They had worked in equal part for six months to plan the murder of a girl they had called their best friend. Morgan may have attacked, but Anissa helped to plan that attack. She had also encouraged it instead of stopping it.

During her interview, Anissa asked where Payton’s body was. She was told that Payton was in the hospital, alive. “I know she’ll never trust me again,” she admitted, the weight of her crime crashing down on her. She confessed that she didn’t “realize the enormity of this.”

A week later Payton was finally interviewed at the hospital. When asked how the attack ended, she said that Morgan had just stopped. Flatly, she told detectives from her hospital bed that they had wanted her to die.

Investigators searched Morgan’s locker at school, finding drawings and writings relating to Slender Man. Her legal team hired a former police officer named David Janisch to gather some information for them. While searching her bedroom, David found more drawings of Slender Man. He also stumbled upon a graveyard of mutilated dolls, with their hands, arms, and legs cut off. A look through her emails uncovered a message to Anissa, reminding her to clear her browser history. The Geysers’ home computer revealed searches on how to get away with murder as well as ‘what kind of insane am [I]?’ It was made clear for all to see who the real mastermind of this crime was. Morgan had been in the drivers seat, taking Anissa along for a ride that would have devastating effects on her mental health.

When Anissa’s mother, Kristi Weier, was allowed to visit her daughter at the police station, the memory would sear itself into her nightmares. She was forced to helplessly sit as her daughter confessed to murder. There was nothing she could do when she and Morgan were both charged as adults with attempted first-degree intentional homicide. Sitting in that interview room, Anissa told her mother that she was “very, very scared.” Mothers are programmed to help their children when they’re in need, when they’re in pain, when they’re in danger. In this terrible situation Kristi was powerless to help. Instead she was forced to sit by as her daughter and the friend she had attempted murder with were sent to the West Bend Juvenile Facility.

Anissa was set to go to trial first, but she took a plea deal at the last minute. Pleading guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree intentional homicide, her deal allowed for her insanity defense to be heard. From there it would be decided if she had been criminally responsible for the attack. She was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in 2017 and sentenced to twenty-five years in an institution.

Morgan’s lawyers also cut a deal that allowed her insanity defense not to be challenged. Morgan pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide and was handed a forty-year sentence to be served at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Wisconsin. Anissa Weier was also sent to this facility to serve her sentence. Through tears, Morgan apologized to “Bella” and her family. “I never meant this to happen,” she cried. The sentiment was too little, too late for a traumatized young girl and the family that nearly lost her.

Morgan would be diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia. While it’s not typical to display such symptoms so young, it’s not unlikely, either. It was revealed by her family that Morgan’s father had suffered the same affliction. This would’ve increased the likelihood of her early diagnosis by quite a lot. In 2019, the girls were seventeen years old. Angie Geyser believed that her daughter should no longer be considered a threat by that time. She reasoned that Morgan’s untreated mental illness had been the catalyst for the brutal attack. Her illness had been successfully treated, though, she reasoned.

Unfortunately, schizophrenia can not be cured. It can only be treated, and only as long as the patient is taking their medication. Full cooperation and complete transparency with doctors also helps, but it doesn’t always happen.

The New York Times reported that in July 2021 Anissa Weier was deemed no longer a threat to herself or others. She was granted conditional release that wasn’t finalized until September of that year. Round-the clock GPS monitoring was a stipulation. The terms of her release also stated that she would remain under the supervision of a case manager until she turns thirty-seven. On September 12, 2023 the GPS stipulation was removed, granting her more freedom than she’d known since the age of twelve.

Payton Leutner underwent extensive surgery in Tampa, Florida to repair the damage inflicted upon her heart, liver, stomach, and pancreas. She carries twenty-five physical scars from the attack, and countless mental and emotional scars as well. Anissa would turn out to be right about one thing. Payton carried trust issues for quite some time after the attack, afraid to make friends again. She spoke out publicly about her harrowing experience for the first time in October 2019 with ABC News.

Though she wishes to never see Morgan or Anissa ever again, she feels deeply for Morgan’s mother. Her daughter’s mental illness wasn’t something she could’ve controlled, stopped, or planned for. She couldn’t have even helped Morgan without her being forthcoming and honest about her symptoms, which she was not. The entire jarring situation knocked her off her feet, having never expected her own daughter to do anything like this.

Though the traumatic encounter has affected her life, she allowed the effects to be positive rather than let them drive her down a hard path. She’s fully pursuing her desire to enter the medical field, lending all of the credit to the horrifying experience she endured. In September 2021, she was a college sophomore, working a part-time job just like every other young adult her age. Just a year later ABC News reported that she was still attending college and “doing very well.”

This story could be considered a cautionary tale for adolescents. Many of us can think back to a particular person from that period in our own lives that may have needed help. Maybe if we look them up today we find that assumption to be true. How differently would things have worked out if Anissa had told someone about the things her and Morgan were discussing? Could the plot have been stopped in its infancy if someone had noticed the odd things they were whispering about? No one can answer those questions. All we can do is keep our eyes and ears open for the troubled youth in need of help today.