The Real Slenderman Case

Slender Man is a purely fictitious character created for a 2009 Photoshop contest.

Later a number of other people created Slender Man fan fiction and additional artistic depictions of the entity.

Slender Man is tall, thin, with a featureless white face and head. 

He wears a black suit, and is sometimes shown with tentacles growing out of his back. 

According to the Slender Man myth, he can cause amnesia, bouts of coughing and paranoid behavior in individuals. 

He hides in forests or stalking children.

Aniss Weier, Morgan Geyser, and Payton Leutner were all 12 years old and were classmates enrolled in the same school. 

Their principal said that none had any disciplinary issues.

They were kind of bullied in school and were far from popular.

The Weier and Geyser had discovered Slender Man on the Creepypasta website.

Weier  and Geyser believed Slender Man to be real and were obsessed with it.

Geyser was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

With schizophrenia you can see things that are not there.

Her father also suffered from the disorder.

Weier and Geyser had wanted to prove their loyalty to Slender Man, so they could become his "proxies", prove his existence, and prevent him from harming their families.

They believed that the only way to do this would be to kill a child, that would make them become servants of Slender Man and live in his mansion in Nicolet National Forest.

So they decided that they would kill their friend Payton Leutner.

Leutner met Geyser and Weier in the fourth grade.

Leutner would talk to Geyser every night on the phone.

Weier and Geyser initially planned to attack Leutner on May 31, 2014, during a sleepover a Geyser's house.

It was a birthday party.

They planned on taping Leutner's mouth shut, stab her in the neck, and flee. 

Geyser said she wanted to give Leutner one more day to live, so they didn't carry out the attack.

The next day the girls asked to go to the park and the mom said yes.

They go to the park and they are in the bathroom, where Weier and Geyser again considered killing her, but changed their minds again.

So now they all decided to play hide and seek.

They had trouble at first, deciding who was going to actually carry out the stabbing.

Geyser said she would do it, but not until Weier tells her to "Go Ballistic."

Weier told her to go Ballistic and Geyser jumped Leutner and pinned her down.

While Leutner screamed, Geyser proceeded to  stab her 19 times in the arms, legs, and torso with a five-inch-long kitchen knife. 

Two wounds were to major arteries and one missed her heart by less than a millimeter and the other went through her diaphragm, cutting into her liver and stomach.

Weier and Geyser then told Leutner they would get help for her, but instead they left, walking toward the forest, where they believed Slender Man lived.

Leutner dragged herself out of the woods and to a nearby road where she was found by a cyclist and he called 911.

When the paramedics arrived Leutner told them that her friends had stabbed her.

Weier and Geyser were apprehended near Interstate 94.

The knife used in the stabbing was in Geyser's bag she carried. 

Weier and Geyser were  brought in and explained that they felt guilty for stabbing their friend, but felt that the attack was needed to appease Slender Man.

Leutner left the hospital six days after the attack.

She returned to school in fall 2014.

Both girls were tried as adults.

In 2017, Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree homicide.

A jury then found her "not guilty by mental disease or defect". 

Geyser accepted a plea offer under which she would be evaluated by psychiatrists to determine how long she should be placed in a mental hospital.

She later pleaded guilty and was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

Weier was sentenced 25-years-to-life, involving at least three years locked confinement and involuntary treatment in a state psychiatric institute, followed by communal supervision until age 40.
Geyser, was sentenced to the maximum 40-years-to-life, involving at least three years locked confinement, in addition to involuntary treatment in a state psychiatric institute until complete resolution of symptoms or until age 53, whichever may happen first.

Followed by continued communal supervision, periodic reevaluations and/or reinstitution and further treatment per-needed as required by the sentenced imposed.