Two 12-Year-Old Girls Charged With Stabbing Classmate 19 Times To Appease “Slender Man”

Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier are two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who’d allegedly become obsessed with a horror-story website called Creepypasta Wiki. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, they became especially fixated on a fictional character known as “Slender Man” who has the ability to grow tendrils from his back and fingers.

Only one problem: They apparently thought he was real. And to prove their devotion to him and gain his favor, they allegedly plotted to kill another girl.

According to first-degree intentional homicide charges filed yesterday, the two girls had conspired for months to kill a classmate at Horning Middle School in Waukesha. Police allege that last Saturday morning after a sleepover at Geyser’s house, they went to a public park with their eventual victim, who remains unnamed for legal reasons. They initially planned to stab her in a public bathroom so the victim’s blood would swirl down a drain and cover evidence. Instead, they reportedly walked her into the woods.

As the Journal-Sentinel tells it:

Weier then suggested they go for a walk, pointing out a wooded area near Rivera Drive and Big Bend Road. They could play hide and seek, distract the victim, then kill her. … Weier told the victim where to hide and told her to lie facedown in the dirt. The girl refused… [and] began to yell and complain that she couldn’t breathe. … Geyser gave Weier the knife, but Weier said she told Geyser she was too squeamish and gave it back. … Weier said she started walking away from Geyser and then told her, “Go ballistic, go crazy.” Geyser said she would go ballistic, and Weier said, “Now.” …Weier said Geyser then tackled the victim and started stabbing her. The victim was screaming. Weier said when Geyser got off the victim, the victim screamed, “I hate you. I trusted you.”

Weier reportedly told police, “The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live.”

Geyser allegedly told a detective, “It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse.”

The victim reportedly suffered 19 stab wounds and crawled out of the woods, where a bicyclist found her. She is being treated in a local hospital and is allegedly “fighting for her life.”

According to the New York Daily News, the girls are being charged as adults and could face up to 60 years in prison, after which point one might hope they’d be able to discern between fantasy and reality. Or maybe not.