The Slender Man Stabbing: A Chilling Tale of Adolescence, Delusion, and Online Horror

What happens when the line between fantasy and reality blurs for two young girls obsessed with the online horror entity known as Slender Man? Prepare for a spine-chilling journey as we dissect the infamous Slender Man stabbing, a horrifying crime committed by 12-year-old schoolmates Anissa Weir and Morgan Geyser. Peyton Lautner, their friend, and the intended sacrificial lamb, was discovered on a local road, barely alive, after suffering 19 severe stab wounds orchestrated by Anissa and Morgan. This gruesome incident paints a stark picture of the horrifying power of peer pressure and the perils of adolescence.

Dive headfirst into the murky waters of Morgan Geyser's psyche how her mind, tainted by early onset schizophrenia, fueled her into committing such a heinous act, and her chilling indifference towards the consequences of the crime. The labyrinth of her mind is a morbid treasure trove of over 50 pictures of Slender Man, mutilated dolls, and internet searches about getting away with murder. It's a chilling exploration showcasing the frightening extent to which a child can be influenced by the dark corners of the internet.

The aftermath of this macabre crime brought about shocking developments. Anissa and Morgan's trials, their eventual sentences, and the ripple effects of the assault on Peyton Leutner form an integral part of our discussion. Learn about Peyton's remarkable recovery and her aspiration to enter the medical field, and Morgan's decision to withdraw her appeal for release. This episode offers a riveting analysis of the influence of online horror stories, the devastations of divorce, bullying, and the destructive side of teenage curiosity. Strap in for this compelling narrative of a crime that shook a small community to its very foundations.

References: 
Beware of the slenderman :HBO documentary 2016

Slenderman by Kathleen Hale

Transcript

tiffany: 0:13

Welcome to Rogue and Wicked. So it's spooky month, bitches.

wendy: 0:20

Yes, it is Fall in New England and we're about to get creepy.

tiffany: 0:25

Yeah, we are about to get creepy, so I want to tell everyone to heat up some butter shots and apple cider, grab a pumpkin latte, put on your favorite hoodie, light some scented candles and let us take you to our favorite place. The air feels crisp, the leaves are beautiful shades of orange, red and yellow, the streets are shiny and wet, with black pavement cutting through the rolling hills and lieu of spooky month. You know, my girl and I will be doing cases based on all spooky things.

wendy: 0:54

We will, and this is my and Tiffany's season. It's not just the month of her birthday, but it's also Well. We went to Salem this time last year, but when it comes to fall in New England, that is our jam.

tiffany: 1:09

Yeah, and it'll be our one year anniversary coming up on the 28th.

wendy: 1:13

Yes, which we celebrated in Salem, and that was an amazing time. By the way, while this is out there, meaning pumpkin spice Our listeners, I would like to know if you prefer Wawa to Dunkin Donuts, because Tiffany and I have a thing going on with that right now.

tiffany: 1:29

Fuck, yeah, and I love me some Wawa coffee, and being that you know, wendy is up in Massachusetts, she doesn't have Wawa up there, so we don't. But I love me some Dunkin. Well, yeah, but when you come to visit, you're gonna have to try Wawa and compare it to your Dunkin. So what are we doing today, girl? Today's case is the attempted murder of Peyton Lautner, and it has all the spooky elements that one can handle. I mean, we're talking ghostly apparitions, creepy pasta characters, a house without any mirrors and a 12 year old girl's slow and almost po-esque descent into madness. Except this isn't the tell-tale heart or the pit in the pendulum. This is a work of true crime that could easily be confused with a work of fiction, and with that let's head back to May 31st 2014.

tiffany: 2:24

In Waukesha, wisconsin, at 9.50 am, a bicyclist named Greg Steinberg stumbled upon a 12 year old, peyton Lautner, lying near the pavement on Big Ben Road. He immediately called 911 when he realized that the girl had been brutally stabbed. He kept asking Peyton who did this to you? And she muttered my best friend. Peyton said that the two other girls had been with her and that they were now gone. These two girls were her classmates and friends, anissa Weir and Morgan Geyser. Peyton wasn't aware that just hours earlier these two girls she was playing dress up with were going to brutally stab her 19 times and leave her for dead. Anissa was the one who instigated the killing by saying that Morgan should just go ballistic on Peyton. The wounds that Peyton suffered were everywhere. She was pretty much stabbed from head to toe with a 5 inch blade. Peyton was stabbed in the arms, the legs and the torso. One of the stab wounds that occurred to the chest area missed her heart by 1 millimeter.

wendy: 3:36

That was fucking close, yeah, really close, and it's crazy because she actually had the ability to say who did it to her, which is not something that we're used to either Exactly, and if that blade went one hair to the left, then that one stab wound would have ended her life instantly. Right, exactly.

tiffany: 3:56

The girls were inspired by the creepypasta wiki story of Slender man. When we were kids we would tell the same like four stories around the campfire. You remember this Mainly the story about the escaped sane asylum guy who had like a hook for a hand, or like, say, the axe-wielding granny who was, you know, really a man in drag, and an array of other cryptid stories like the moth man, bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, I do know some of them the Jersey Devil you told me about and we definitely had the hook and slo hook asylum dude, but we had so many asylums in our city Asylums were a big thing in our city so there was a lot of horror stories regarding asylums where I lived.

wendy: 4:38

So I definitely heard that and a whole bunch more regarding them.

tiffany: 4:42

But in this age, the creepypasta is where the newer generations hook hand man stories come from.

wendy: 4:49

Creepypasta. I knew nothing about that one.

tiffany: 4:52

Oh yeah, creepypasta is a website, so it's like a playoff of the words copy and paste and it's literally like a 500 word blog that people would like put short fictional stories on. It's been out for a long time but I haven't really heard of it in like at least six years.

wendy: 5:11

How short are these stories I might want to partake in this?

tiffany: 5:14

They're like 500 words, but I don't even know if the website's still up. You could check it out. I'm sure if it is, it's still going to be up.

wendy: 5:21

Fuck it you deterred me at 500 words, girl. I can't go that low. Well, you have to. I have a hard time making a Facebook post with that few words, I know.

tiffany: 5:31

Slender man went so viral that people made fan art and depictions of this fictional character. Slender man is exactly that. He is lean and tall, with a blurry face and long fingers. He has a top hat and a suit on in some photos and in others he has no hat and large tentacles that contract from his back. He looms in the background of playground pictures and is almost like the grim reaper for children. When the girls took off on foot, they told police that they were heading to Slender Man's mansion. They wanted to please Slender man and let him know that they would do whatever he wanted, even if he wanted them to commit murder. Anisa wanted to prove that Slender man was real and Morgan believed that Slender man would kill her whole family if she didn't murder Peyton.

wendy: 6:21

How is she? Convinced of this? You're probably going to proceed and tell me, aren't you?

tiffany: 6:25

Oh, yes, so, as the story unfolds, you'll get a clearer picture as to why they think this way. Anisa was asked if she really believed her family would be killed if she didn't kill for Slender man. She responded yes, because he could be anywhere from like 8 to 14 feet tall. He constantly wears a suit. He doesn't have a face, His skin is white and at his own will, he can like explode these tentacles from his back and like strangle his victims.

wendy: 6:54

He sounds like he should be on hentai porn yeah.

tiffany: 6:58

Yeah yeah, he's a weird creature. In this situation, these little girls believe that this fictional character is real. Morgan says she didn't want to kill Peyton but was afraid of what would happen if she didn't. When asked why, morgan said that it was necessary. The detective asked her if she ever met Slender man and Morgan responds not exactly, but he can read minds and he has teleportation skills.

tiffany: 7:26

The entire interview, morgan has never showed any signs of remorse. She didn't cry at all and it was obvious that she talked about it as casually as one does about the weather. This alarmed the detective and made him think that he was talking to an undiagnosed sociopath, and at one point he even referred to Morgan as a psychopath. Morgan does ask about Peyton at one point and says what about the one who was stabbed? Is she dead? The detective tells her that Peyton was taken to the hospital. Morgan's head shoots up and she then shakes the hair out of her face and says I was just wondering. That's some bizarre-ass behavior. Yeah, it's very strange behavior which we'll learn about as we go on through the story.

wendy: 8:12

But how old is she again?

tiffany: 8:14

Twelve.

wendy: 8:15

Wow.

tiffany: 8:16

Yeah, anissa did show emotion during her questioning. There are several parts of the interview where she has seen crying and maybe realizing the seriousness of the crime that she actually committed. The problem is that, even though Anissa cried, when she was asked where Peyton's body was, the police told her that she was still alive at the hospital. Then Anissa got excited for a second and said does that mean I get to go back to school tomorrow? Police charged both girls with attempted first-degree murder and, because of the Wisconsin law, the two were to be tried as adults, which holds a sentence of up to 65 years in prison. Remember, these two girls are 12 years old.

wendy: 8:58

Not only that, it didn't sound like they, or maybe one of them, who led them into doing it, like they had evil intentions. It sounded like they were working out of fear.

tiffany: 9:09

It's very strange and as this, like I said, as the story goes on, I'm going to start unfolding this for you so that you can see where their minds were actually at, and it's shocking. Morgan's mother describes her daughter as an unexpected surprise. Morgan was known as a quirky child and marched to the beat of her own drum. She wasn't concerned with what others thought of her and just did her own thing. She had a baby grand piano that she would make up songs and sing to herself. Like. Her mom would catch these little moments in time on her personal video camera. When thinking back on those good times, her mother's face lit up with joy and sadness. Morgan had many imaginary friends. Her imagination was always very vivid and one of her imaginary friends would often sleep with her in bed. Morgan wasn't adept at making new friends, especially because she was a Trekkie and named her guinea pigs after mythological gods. Morgan's parents eventually noticed some small red flags in hindsight. Whenever Morgan would watch movies and something bad would happen to the main character, she wouldn't feel or show empathy towards them. The movie Bambi was awful and I remember crying my fucking eyes out when the mom of dear dies in the beginning of the story. So did I. Yeah, it was sad. Everybody reacted to that. Everyone I knew reacted to that and everybody always remembered that that was one of the most traumatizing Disney films ever. But Morgan had a different reaction to Bambi. When Bambi's mother had gotten shot, she screamed run, bambi, run, save yourself. But wasn't concerned with the fact that Bambi's mother had died. Morgan's mother was aware of her interest in Slenderman but didn't think it was that strange. She herself was an avid Stephen King reader, so it wasn't a big surprise to her that her daughter would be interested in horror tales. However, she was unaware how deep her daughter's obsession with Slenderman was, and she also didn't think that her daughter could have possibly believed that Slenderman was actually real.

tiffany: 11:18

Bella, aka Peyton Lautner, was what teachers described as a goodie-goody. She would often tell on the naughty kids. She loved the color purple and was a bit of a people pleaser. When she met Morgan, she was more concerned with being nice to her than listening to what the other kids thought of Morgan. Morgan had known Bella since the fourth grade. The two were best friends. Bella approached Morgan at school when she saw her eating alone and decided to sit down with her and make friends, which is really sweet, and the rest was kind of history. The two girls did everything together. They bonded over their love for cats, dolls, dress up in the color purple, which I also love.

wendy: 11:59

I love the color purple too, but your affinity for pink yak.

tiffany: 12:04

Oh yeah, I got this. My whole room is decked out in Barbie Corps. It's like so Barbie.

wendy: 12:08

Corps. It looks good on you, though, and beige is tiffs and black and purple stuff.

tiffany: 12:15

Well, no, not beige. I don't wear no beige.

wendy: 12:18

No, no, you don't, but the furniture that you have around you is always this light tan wood beige color.

tiffany: 12:24

Oh yeah, because I have a lot of wood. I like wood. But the colors that I wear are typically like black and red or black and pink. Yep, now, that was about all those two girls had in common, because Morgan that's a lot for 12 years old, though that's where it starts.

tiffany: 12:41

Yeah, yeah, that is for a 12 year old, but other than that those two girls were polar opposites. Bella volunteered at the local animal shelter and was a very happy-go-lucky kid. Morgan didn't want to just play with cats, she wanted to actually be a cat, a little predator, all sharp teeth and pointed ears. Bella was aware that Morgan was hearing voices. When Morgan would ask Bella if she heard these same voices, these little people in her head, bella pretended to hear them. Also, there were many incidents where Bella steered Morgan onto the right path because she was a little misfixant.

tiffany: 13:18

As the girls grew up together, morgan noticed Bella was gaining popularity and Morgan was considered the weird, nerdy kid. Morgan was starting to be bullied by the other classmates. They would roll their eyes at her whenever she would speak. They would bump into her on purpose in the hallway and generally exclude her from everything. Morgan was quiet in comparison to Bella, who was warm and friendly. This caused a huge rift in their friendship and some brooding jealousy. Bella was warned to stop being friends with Morgan, but she bucked up against her parents when they encouraged her to make other friends. When the other kids tried to make her choose between them and Morgan, she chose Morgan. Bella was a loyal friend to Morgan and deeply cared about her troubled companion.

tiffany: 14:03

Anisa Weir was in choir, she loved her cat and she was in the Flight Academy class. She was devastated when her parents separated and her mother shared way too much about her broken relationship with her daughter and that left a lasting impression with Anisa. She claimed it was the worst period in her life. Anisa tried to make herself more appealing to her father in hopes that she wouldn't be in the shadows of her older half-siblings. So she tried to get the good grades and be perfect and be a quiet daughter. She was always afraid her parents would stop loving her, which makes me think that the divorce gave her some serious abandonment issues.

wendy: 14:40

You know that was. I feel like that was almost a cliche, very sad one, of course. Situation in middle school.

tiffany: 14:48

Yeah, like when people's parents would get divorced.

wendy: 14:50

Yeah, it seemed like a trend, At least when I was in middle school. It seemed like half my friends were going through that.

tiffany: 14:57

Yeah, and it does cause abandonment issues.

wendy: 14:59

It does. To me it seemed very lightweight compared to what I was used to before that and but as an adult, in hindsight I think that it could be catastrophic, especially because it changes the whole entire dynamic of a household too.

tiffany: 15:15

Especially when you're 12, because you're like in that middle stage between teenage, hood and childhood.

wendy: 15:21

Yeah, and trying to acclimate to such a devastating change is difficult as well, especially when you don't understand it.

tiffany: 15:28

you know she and her father would play fantasy video games together and they would fight the bad guys. She became obsessed with self-defense and doing the righteous thing. Anisa would be violent at times when people would act up in class or not follow directions, and when that would happen she would lash out and sometimes she would even hit other kids. Anisa loves Minecraft and one day she's chilling on YouTube looking at Minecraft videos and sees an ad for Creepypasta. Curiosity pulled her into this 500 word short story site. On this amateur horror story site she found Slenderman.

tiffany: 16:04

Anisa used Creepypasta as a way to manage her stress. Being shuffled back and forth between her mother and father every week was taking its toll. She felt even more out of place and alone when she was forced to change school districts. Her parents sent her to Horning Middle School, where Bella and Morgan went. Anisa met Morgan at the school bus stop. The two bonded over Harry Potter, horror and urban legends. Yes, yeah, and, as you can see, anisa is more on the level with Morgan as far as like, hobbies and likes and dislikes go.

wendy: 16:38

Right, she got a little bit deeper there, and you know, another thing too is, I understand, really averting reality using horror, like I. When I was a kid, as you already know, I was obsessed with skeleton crew and, to those who don't know, that's one of Stephen King's short stories, and something amazing about Stephen King is that he doesn't really use a lot of big words, but he still has the ability to really pull you in. What's wrong I mean, what Stephen King does that I am guilty of doing as an author is getting so far into detail that you lose track sometimes.

tiffany: 17:13

Oh yeah, I skip mad pages.

wendy: 17:17

But what's great about this particular book is because it's short series, I mean because it's short stories.

tiffany: 17:23

He can't, he doesn't really do it in this one, oh, I know, and that's why I read mostly his short stories versus his actual long full length novels.

wendy: 17:31

Well, that book inspired me to write my first horror story and that sent me to psychiatry for three years. So I can see. I can see how, how whacked. It's funny because I had a Facebook post about that today, very ironically, and my friend Alex and I went to the same kitty asylum together for the same thing. Anyway, yeah, but books can really have an effect. Short stories can have a real effect. They reach you deeper. Because it's a harder medium reading is than just watching.

tiffany: 18:04

I think, though, that they hit you in a different spot, where it actually influences your behavior and puts you in positions like that when you already have trauma. Yes, yes, because if you didn't have trauma I mean, I mean I had tons of trauma and I read a lot of horror and it didn't affect my mental health, but there are some people that it does affect their mental health when they already have trauma or they have, like, serious mental health issues.

wendy: 18:27

Right, I don't feel like with me. It did anything more than inspired me to want to write creepy shit. Yeah, although I could see that you know being as how detailed and stuff it was. Reading the adult versions of what was said about that time, which I have in my files, I could see where it would seem a little bit disturbing to have somebody so young do that. Yeah, and so even when you started, like discussing how she interpreted movies and things like that around her mother, things like that, you can tell that she doesn't have the right mindset for a horror story at all.

tiffany: 19:00

No. Morgan later spoke of their friendship and she described Anissa as a green eyed grim reaper. So hey that gives you an idea of like their mentality here.

wendy: 19:11

There is such a fucking stigma against green eyes. I swear to god, fuck you Disney.

tiffany: 19:18

Something about Anissa made Morgan feel dizzy in the chest. That was what she was quoted as saying about Anissa. The friendship blossomed quickly. The two girls lived in the same condominium complex and Morgan's parents were excited that she finally had another close friend to play with, because at this point it's only Bella. Morgan gets this idea in her head that the three of them can now become good friends, so she introduces Anissa to Bella.

tiffany: 19:45

Bella and Anissa don't like each other. Bella thinks Anissa is rude and mean because she would. She was rather violent, tempered. Anissa doesn't like Bella because she's a goody two shoes and she starts bullying Bella at school. Morgan takes the punishment onto herself to keep the peace between the two girls. Bella took this bullying because she wanted to keep Morgan as a friend. But Anissa sometimes would hit, push and kick Bella and instead of taking accountability for it, anissa would say I'm just tired or I'm hungry and whenever she would try to explain like why she was putting her hands on Bella. Those were the dumb excuses that she would give.

tiffany: 20:25

Morgan and Anissa had constant contact with one another. The two girls would email late into the night. Sometimes they would refer to the girls at school and say that they should kill them with fire and brimstone. And then, in a separate email, one of the girls wrote and knives. Not only did Anissa have to compete with Bella over Morgan's attention, she also had to compete with a very disturbed preteen male named Lance for Morgan's affection. This boy had to crush on Morgan and, instead of being nice to the girl, he slammed her into a locker, told her that he wanted to shank her in the boobs and that he was obsessed with prison, and he talked about rape constantly. The school even put a no contact order on Lance after he put his hands on Morgan, but he found a way to continue to talk to her anyway.

tiffany: 21:11

It came to a head when Lance was sitting with Morgan talking to her about sex. He turns to Morgan and says I made a rape baby with a stripper. Do you want to be raped next? Holy fuck, yeah, is this kid's fucking disturbed? Yes, he is. He's like a criminal before he is a criminal. It's that's. That's scary when you hear a 12 year old boy saying some shit like that to a 12 year old girl. And in Morgan's honor, anissa stood up before Morgan could even answer this kid and she just fucking punched him so hard that he started crying like a little bitch. She wasn't having it and that was the end of Lance. Anissa introduces Morgan a creepypasta and tells her about the legend of Zelda and you know she knows what the legend of Zelda is. But there's like short stories on this creepypasta site that you know Morgan's never been privy to.

wendy: 22:01

Oh my god creepy versions of Zelda.

tiffany: 22:05

Yeah, I mean, I guess they're like short stories, but I don't know what they're about. No shit, that's wild. So Morgan goes on the site and starts scrolling through these stories until she stumbles upon Slenderman. She becomes fixated on him. Anissa becomes obsessed with proving that Slenderman is real because she felt crazy for feeling afraid of him if he wasn't real. The proof was a picture that was created using Photoshop Contest. It was of Slenderman and he's like standing in the woods in black and white behind a bunch of children. That's all Anissa needed to say to believe that he was real. Plus, tons of fans made Slenderman fan art and the videos that furthered her beliefs.

tiffany: 22:43

Bella wasn't all that into it, but she could see that Anissa and Morgan were, so she was very supportive. But it wasn't her cup of tea. She wasn't in a creepypasta stories because she felt like they were quote unquote rumors of people who like to kill other people for fun. Because Slenderman scared Bella, anissa and Morgan bonded closer together over this. They started torturing Bella with links to Slenderman on creepypasta. They would send her emails filled with Slenderman propaganda and they started pushing her out of their little world. Bella started making other friends and had no trouble socially, unlike Morgan and Anissa. That factor alone made the two girls develop a jealousy that they couldn't shake. The two started taking to trash talking Bella behind her back, but yet still wanted to hang out with her. They called her names like bitch and just had general disdain for her. Oh no, they didn't.

wendy: 23:37

Yeah, oh no, they didn't. You know what? See, I was adverse to that so fucking early, and thank god, because there are actual adults who do shit like that. There are actual fucking adults who shit talk each other and wait till that person's around and they completely change tone. Yeah, that's where it starts, guys. It starts there. It should fucking end there but it doesn't.

tiffany: 24:01

No, and this is what like freaked me out it's because I never had big groups of friends that were girls in school Like I wouldn't hang out with more than like one friend at a time. I never really had like groups of people. Now I did have two groups of girls that I became friends with when I was in high school and they both ended really badly and very violently, which is why when I heard this story, it really reminded me of that. Whenever you're hanging out in groups with girls like multiple girls we're talking about odd numbers here like five, seven, three, any of those odd numbers somebody's going to get pissed off, because usually in those groups there's pairs Like two girls will bond and then there'll be other two girls will bump. When you have an uneven number of girls in a group, there's always one that gets bullied because she's left out.

wendy: 24:52

You know what? I've never contended with that at all. I mean, I've been in trifectas very often Like we mixed together it was always. It, seemingly, was always three people.

tiffany: 25:03

Yeah, but you had the girls that were like, open-minded and willing to be friends with other girls.

wendy: 25:09

Yeah, they're still friends with me and each other to this day, and we met when we were in single digits.

tiffany: 25:15

Yeah, but I'm talking about these ones that are already either in established groups. They invite you into the group. Right so you're always going to be the odd man out there becomes a jealousy because there's an extra odd number.

wendy: 25:28

Right. Yeah, I guess that's true too. We didn't have any jealousy among us either. It was one of those things that would deter us from hanging out with someone. Yeah, we locked out man yeah no, I just didn't have tolerance for it really.

tiffany: 25:41

Well, that's what I mean. Like you met people that didn't do that, which is yeah, I did.

wendy: 25:45

I'm not down for this, like my friends don't yeah, my people don't do this shit. And then they just stayed my people and set the blueprint for everyone. Hence you know.

tiffany: 25:55

Yeah. So Morgan feels Bella pulling away and decided to ask her if she really heard voices. Bella tells Morgan that she never heard voices. She also tells Morgan that she doesn't like Anissa and that she hates it when they send her creepypasta, and she told her to stop. So because Morgan has no problem overstepping somebody else's boundaries, she goes home and then starts bombarding Bella's email with creepypasta stories, firing away email after email just because Bella asked her to stop sending the creepypasta.

wendy: 26:30

Fuck you and your boundaries too.

tiffany: 26:32

Yeah, that's fucked up right. Like I'd be pissed off if I told one of my friends like, stop sending me these stories. And then she just starts like fucking emailing me like every single story on the website, just to be like I'd be fucking furious. I'd be like we're not friends anymore. But I guess at 12 years old you have more tolerance for bullshit behavior. Bella started having nightmares and she couldn't sleep at night because Morgan told her that Jeff the killer was going to climb through her windows at night and kill her.

tiffany: 27:00

Morgan gives Anissa the nickname Scorpion and in turn Anissa calls Morgan Kitty and even takes to like stroking her, sometimes like a cat, while calling her that name. And their friendship starts getting even weirder when Morgan starts keeping a purple craft folder in her locker that had her and Anissa's name printed on the front In asterisks. Next to Anissa's name was the phrase make her do her things, which kind of makes you wonder if Morgan felt that she had power over Anissa or if she was speaking on behalf of one of her imaginary friends. Morgan started testing Anissa by telling her that she was seeing Slenderman, when she wasn't seeing him. Anissa said that she saw him too, but then Morgan confronted Anissa and Anissa promptly admitted that she was fibbing. I guess she wanted to see if Anissa would lie about Slenderman. Like Bella lied about the hallucinations, anissa apologized in an email but still maintained that she wouldn't lie to Morgan. Anissa starts to believe that Morgan is a proxy to Slenderman, being that she could see him and all. Morgan tells Anissa that they could both be proxies to Slenderman, basically like his henchmen. And since Slenderman killed small children and Morgan thought that if they sacrificed Bella to Slenderman that he would let the two girls move into his mansion and that they could be his favorite proxies, slenderman would save their lives. They believe that this mansion was in the Nicolette National Forest for years to come, however, neither could settle on whose idea it was to kill Bella. Back and forth they pushed the blame, but it was clear that the two ultimately acted together During the planning of the sacrifice. You can see how immature these girls really were. Anissa thought that you only had to hit someone once to kill them, because you know she played a lot of video games and the characters died relatively easy in those. So, with her little knowledge about life and death, they used code words and discussed their plans on the bus rides to and from school, and these plans went on for a few months before they actually were executed. Morgan acted like Bella and her were still best friends. They were still super friendly in school and Morgan believed that Bella would be okay with their decision to sacrifice her.

tiffany: 29:20

Bella's mother was starting to look at Morgan as a bad influence because she could plainly see that Morgan was mentally disturbed. The alarm bells went off when Morgan slept over Bella's house one night. After Bella's parents went to sleep, the girls built a Molotov cocktail out of acetone and a bottle. They lit a match and it went up in flames. The girls accidentally set the closet on fire, but were able to put the fire out before Bella's parents woke up. They even disabled the smoke alarms so that they wouldn't alert Bella's mom and dad. To cover the smell, morgan poured hand sanitizer all over the carpet. I guess she didn't think about that too well, because if there were still embers on that carpet, the alcohol in the hand sanitizer would have set the whole fucking closet ablaze. Right and the next morning Bella's mom kept asking why it smelled like smoke in the house. Morgan said that it didn't smell like smoke, it smelled like hand sanitizer. And when she opened the closet door, she saw the ashes in the closet and didn't want Bella hanging around Morgan anymore. Unfortunately, though, bella's mom didn't call Morgan's parents or stop Bella from going over there.

tiffany: 30:31

Just a few weeks later was Morgan's birthday sleepover. Morgan was suspended from school for a day for bringing a rubber mallet that she claimed was for protection. She didn't tell anyone who she was trying to protect herself from, but regardless she was in trouble. Once back in school, she started writing die all over her notebook and a student rat it on her. She was sent to the principal's office, but nothing was ever done about it. The two girls invited Bella to the birthday sleepover extravaganza. Unfortunately, bella didn't know what the two girls were planning. Bella was super psyched about going to this birthday sleepover because Morgan and her planned the whole night via email.

tiffany: 31:12

When Bella was picked up from her house that day, the girls went roller skating for hours at skateland skating rink. Before the sleepover they hung out at the party and played for a while. Usually, morgan wanted to stay up late, because why the hell not? It's your birthday. But Bella found it strange that Morgan didn't want to stay up at her birthday party. She just wanted to go to bed. Anisa woke up in the middle of the night, annoyed because Bella kicked her. Anisa kicked her back, as if she had done it on purpose. But Bella was fast asleep.

tiffany: 31:43

Morgan and Anisa woke up first and went downstairs at birthday donuts and hang out together. But they left Bella upstairs still sleeping, which was a bit shitty because they didn't include her. But the rest of the morning the girls played dress up. They played with some silly putty, chalking it out the ceiling and watching it fall off, and then just goofed off for a few hours. At one point the girls asked Morgan's mom if they could go to the park to play. Normally she would have said no because they were pretty strict with the girls, but because it was broad daylight and it was Morgan's birthday, she reluctantly agreed.

tiffany: 32:16

The girls walked to the park. As Bella was ahead of the girls, morgan lifted up her jacket and flashed Anisa a steak knife that she had taken from the kitchen. They played on the playground a bit. Then the three headed back to the girls room. Anisa asked Bella to lay down and go to sleep. She wouldn't, so Morgan grabbed a hold of Bella and Anisa slammed Bella's head into a concrete wall. The two girls were trying to knock her out. It didn't work. So Morgan hands Anisa the knife and asks her to do it. Anisa won't do it and hands the knife back to Morgan, who then freaks out and gets upset saying that she can't do it. All the while Bella's like fucking scared of shit. She's just standing there like yeah, somebody just tried to smash my head into a fucking wall.

tiffany: 33:02

I would have ran like fucking hell if I were her. Yeah, but I just think she was so scared and didn't know what was happening that she just kind of went along with it, hoping it was just like a blip in the matrix or something. So then the two girls want to play hide and seek. Anisa tells Bella to hide and cover herself with leaves. Morgan leaves to go count. So Morgan's like counting really fast. And then Bella hears the two girls talking about something, but she can't hear what they're saying. And Morgan is now standing over Bella and she's holding a steak knife. She looks down at Bella and says probably one of the most terrifying things that I could imagine, which is don't be afraid, I'm only a little kitty cat. What a fucking creep. Yeah, but isn't that fucking scary, like if you were laying on the ground and your best friend is standing over you with a five inch blade steak knife and says that to you like I'd be fucking terrified. It's very creepy.

tiffany: 34:01

Anisa tells Morgan now go ballistic. Morgan leans over Bella and whispers in her ear I'm so sorry. Then she just starts brutally stabbing Bella and remember, as I said in the beginning of the story, she stabbed her 19 fucking times. The conversation that Bella couldn't hear just moments earlier was Anissa and Morgan fighting over who was going to stab Bella. Afterwards Bella tries to stand up but she can't see anything and she keeps complaining and saying I can't see anything. I can't see anything. So Anissa takes her hand and she leads her deeper into the forest and then tells her to lie back down because if she lies on the ground she'll lose less blood that way and she'll die slower. Anissa then tells Bella that they're going to leave and go get some help. But they had no fucking intention of coming back. But Bella wasn't going to stay there and wait to die. So she lays down, she waits for them to leave and then she gets up and she crawls as far as she can, losing major blood along the way through the woods, and then collapses pretty much on the pavement where the bicyclist found her.

tiffany: 35:11

Bella told the officers that Morgan Geyser was the one who stabbed her. She was rushed to the hospital to have emergency life-saving surgery. It was touch and go as the weather. Bella was going to live or die, but she ultimately pulls through. When police caught up with Anissa and Morgan, they were sitting on the grass near Interstate 94 after they had cleaned up in a Walmart and those girls were covered in blood. I'm talking like the one girl's jacket had big blood stains all over it for some reason, and it doesn't surprise me that no one in Walmart even batted a fucking eye. They just walked right by everybody and nobody even saw it. And right before the girls were found, anissa was all of a sudden had this nervous breakdown and starts blaming Morgan for everything, because now I guess she realizes after walking for like three to five miles that this is real.

wendy: 36:04

Right, the shock factor of what she'd done probably hit her and then she had just her eyes and be like you know there's something right about Morgan, yeah that's exactly what happened.

tiffany: 36:15

But up until that point the two seemed to have been on walking the five miles to Slenderman's mansion. It finally hit Anissa that the two of them were in big fucking trouble that they couldn't get out of, and when the police pulled up and put handcuffs on Morgan, she claimed she was forced to kill Bella. Morgan told the investigators that the girls had planned this for six months and over the six month period they had three separate plans on how to kill Bella, leading up to the plans for murder. Anissa tried to talk Morgan out of it by finding holes in her beliefs about Slenderman. Morgan assured Anissa that there's no room for logic in this scenario. So every time that Anissa said that doesn't make logical sense, like she would try to break it down so that Morgan would be maybe think that this wasn't right and to kind of like end this whole thing, morgan would flip it and say there's no room for logic, like this isn't logical. And that was her like excuse to keep it going. And, as you'll find out, you'll find out why her brain doesn't work like that. But that's all Anissa needed to hear to compartmentalize how she was feeling and get back on that horse, so to speak.

tiffany: 37:22

The first plan was to kill Bella while she was sleeping, cover up with a comforter and then run to Slenderman's mansion. But after roller skating all night, anissa was too tired, so Morgan set an alarm for 2 am so that she could wake up and use the teddy bear duct tape that Anissa gave Morgan for her birthday to cover Bella's mouth before stabbing her in the night. Morgan deleted the alarm between 1.30 am and 1.59 am because she wanted to give Bella one last morning and hope that she could put it off forever. Now, plan number two was to kill Bella in the bathroom by trying to knock her out on a wall. They figured that if you didn't look a person in the eyes, kill them when they were sleeping or when they were unconscious. That it would be easier to go through with it. Because Anissa found that on the internet. This girl was methodical as hell. Yeah, for somebody who For somebody that age. Yeah, anissa planned on propping Bella's body up on the toilet in one of the stalls and then she would lock the door the stall door and then crawl out from underneath, letting the toilet catch most of the blood, making it less noticeable that somebody was dead, and that way they could slip away unnoticed, but fortunately they weren't able to knock out Bella by smashing her tiny little head into the wall.

tiffany: 38:43

Morgan says that they decided to go with plan three after the other two failed, which was to play hide and seek and then kill Bella in the woods. Morgan referred to this plan as flawless. Also, she said that it was easy because people who trust you are gullible and that it was sad, basically meaning that she felt sorry for people she deemed as trustworthy or gullible. During this whole interview, morgan tried to put the blame on Anissa, saying that it was her plan, even though Morgan was cold as ice during her interview. Anissa, as we discussed earlier, was very forthcoming and told investigators what they needed to know about the whole thing.

tiffany: 39:21

Morgan, however, wasn't so much. She was more deceptive and acted like she couldn't remember stuff about the incident. However, anissa didn't try to push the plan forward when it was clear that Morgan was backing out in vice versa. So I'd say the two were very culpable, although it was said that Anissa was a follower by everyone who knew her, but she managed to take the lead in the friendship when she needed to. When the police searched Morgan's room, they found over 50 pictures of Slender man that she had drawn herself. There were creepy captions written on the pictures that said Always watches no eyes and never alone. Also, she had dismembered dolls in her room with their hands and feet like Salled off, and she used paint or marker in spots that looked like she was drawing blood, like they are stab wounds.

wendy: 40:13

You know, she was clearly disturbed. Yeah, I mean.

tiffany: 40:18

I don't need to say that.

wendy: 40:19

Thank you, captain, obviously. But I mean, like she is a kid and she is disturbed. That doesn't mean that she wouldn't evolve into an even worse adult, because we've seen all these things have played out. Usually, when they're disturbed at that age, it only progresses and they regress into a piece of shit.

tiffany: 40:39

Yeah, it's true, but in her school locker they found more drawings of Slender man. She believed it.

wendy: 40:45

She really did. She wasn't pulling a man's and was pretending to believe it so that she can manipulate them into believing it. She was disturbed enough to believe in this guy.

tiffany: 40:54

Yeah, she was, and in her computer police found hundreds of internet searches for how to get away with murder. And what kind of insane am I?

wendy: 41:03

Wow, she was on the road to accountability, though.

tiffany: 41:06

Yeah. So that's wild, because she was aware that she was disturbed. And not only that, but the reason I bring this up is because during her trial she was found to have early onset schizophrenia. Apparently it runs in her family. Her father found out that he had schizophrenia when he was a teen and never started treatment but lived a normal life. There are also other alarming searches like how to cover up a murder and what makes your conscience feel guilty about killing someone, and another one that said can you get arrested for killing somebody in self defense? Introduced to the court was an itemized list of materials that Morgan was going to bring on the hike to the forest. It said pepper spray, map of forest camera, cheesecake, because you know, I mean you have to have a snack when you're right after you commit a fucking attempted murder a spray bottle, the will to live was written on there and a weapon.

tiffany: 42:02

During the trial Anisa was diagnosed as Schizotypal, which is the same diagnosis as Jeffrey Dahmer, which means basically that she falls on the spectrum of schizophrenia, but there's a spectrum of delusion. So you can't diagnose somebody necessarily as schizophrenic unless they actually have schizophrenia and they're like high on that spectrum. But Anisa was diagnosed as Schizotypal because she couldn't differentiate between delusion and reality, but it wasn't so bad that she was like seeing things that weren't there. The two girls were both tried as adults because in the state of Wisconsin you can be interviewed without an adult present and you can also be tried as an adult because they had some kind of new initiative going on there where they were trying to stop crime. The two girls were tried as adults and their fathers were besides themselves with emotion and anger when they realized their children would be spending pretty much their entire lives behind bars if convicted.

tiffany: 43:02

During Morgan's incarceration leading up to the trial, it was learned that she had been having hallucinations since she was three years old. When she was little, she said that ghosts would hug and bite her, that colors would melt down the bedroom walls like paint and that she would often hear voices that sounded like she was standing next to an intercom. Dangerously, while trying to determine Morgan's competency to stand trial, they withheld her medication and she stayed in full-blown psychosis. Stress makes somebody with schizophrenia go into full-blown psychosis and it makes their illness like 10 times worse, and the stress from her committing that crime caused her to be unhinged, so to speak, and they didn't give her any medication or treatment because they didn't want to treat her mental illness. Morgan was found not guilty due to disease or mental defect and was sentenced to 40 years in a mental hospital.

tiffany: 44:03

In the documentary Beware of the Slender man, I saw one of the writings taken from Morgan's room After knowing that she has schizophrenia. Those writings became disturbingly sad. One said Help me, escape my mind. Another I want to die. Surrounded by the word die, repeated on the page like a pattern.

tiffany: 44:23

It was clear that Morgan was extremely mentally ill and it was strange that no one noticed, especially when her father knew he had the same hallucinations and was home with her like 90% of the day, because his wife knew that he had schizophrenia that was untreated and so he couldn't work. So she took up the slack for the household. Morgan's father's illness was untreated his entire life and she knew. His wife knew the risks of having a child with the same disorder but figured that because Matt, her husband, could manage his symptoms on his own, that it wouldn't be that bad if their daughter had the same affliction. The only mirror inside of Morgan's house was in the bathroom because her father, matt, hated seeing his reflection. Whenever he did. He would see figures or apparitions behind him that would terrify him.

tiffany: 45:13

In the weeks leading up to the killings, morgan's teachers saw signs of mental illness but chalked it up to being overworked and not having the time or resources to help correct the problem. Morgan was seen barking at other kids on the playground, throwing bugs at other students, and she would fly in at high rates. That didn't make any sense and she would burst out in the laughter at stranger, inappropriate times. Another student saw her pick a scab and then write in her notebook with her own blood. She was like even painting in that notebook with her blood from her scab. Later the teachers were asked about Morgan. They said that she was attention seeking and quirky, so they just chalked it up to a. She was attention seeking. Let's take a look at this kid and see if there's something wrong. Nope, she's just quirky.

tiffany: 46:02

When the staff from the jail testified, it was clear that Morgan was seeing full delusions. Morgan was seeing a plethora of characters not making any sense when she was talking and she believed that she could use Vulcan mind control to will things her way, and it was clear that it was getting out of control. Anissa took a plea deal and was sentenced to up to 25 years in a state mental institution. Anissa's sentence was lighter because Morgan had handed her the knife three times to carry out the murder and all three times she said she couldn't do it. She was ordered release in 2021 after only serving seven years, but will be under supervised release until she's 37 years old. She is to have no contact with Peyton Lutner or have use of the internet.

wendy: 46:51

That's a hard thing to imagine I mean, eight years is a long time when you consider how young she was and what percentage of her life that actually is but also not being able to use the internet when most schools or ways to upgrade your life are contingent on having internet.

tiffany: 47:10

True, but Anissa is in 2014,. She was 12, so she's 19 years old, so she's already done school.

wendy: 47:20

Right. But I mean, well, yeah, she's done high school and things like that, but if she wanted to take an online course or already she's got a record to contend with. So if she wanted to do anything, I mean, even you and I have gone online to look up things that we can do, that we can learn if it's not just pertaining to us as podcasters, but also classes. I just took a bunch of online courses myself so that I could do what I'm doing with the elderly people that I'm working with.

tiffany: 47:50

Yeah, but you also didn't stab somebody, Anissa.

wendy: 47:53

That bit is very true, but considering her age and how difficult it's going to be for her to acclimate into society, I find that to be a little bit rigorous. Once she gets out Till 37, that seems absurd.

tiffany: 48:06

I don't. And the reason I don't and it's okay, because I think it's because of the fact that she is schizo-typical or schizo-typal, I'm sorry and because she's schizo-typal, she has delusions and can't distinguish between reality and fantasy. So they're trying to prevent this from happening again by her going on websites like Creepypasta and Short Stories and then believing these characters are real.

wendy: 48:32

I suppose you're right. I don't know enough about that disorder for me to say anything. I guess I know that you said that there have been a couple of cases where that has been the case, but we didn't really I didn't study that really, so I agree with you, morgan won't be leaving the institution anytime soon.

tiffany: 48:53

She did file for release but ended up withdrawing her appeal. Bella, aka Peyton Lautner or Lutner, is doing fabulous. She recovered beautifully from the attack after several surgeries and extensive therapy. She wants absolutely nothing to do with Morgan, but said that the incident inspired her to go into medicine. She's in college now and she is thriving and she's doing amazing, which is fucking incredible, and I am so happy that this girl got a chance to live her life and is doing so well. Now I couldn't even imagine what it's like, but I do know that having near-death experiences makes you appreciate the little things in life, and she's a fucking badass and a survivor in every sense of the word. I don't want to call her a victim, because she isn't living like a victim, she's a fucking survivor.

wendy: 49:47

Plus her soul. I am so glad that this didn't have a dark ending for her.

tiffany: 49:52

Yeah, me too, because she actually mentioned somewhere that she was like thankful it did happen. I guess that's like her silver lining, I want to say because she appreciates life more, but she really doesn't want nothing to do with either one of them girls.

wendy: 50:06

Right, of course. I mean some of the things that have been the worst things that you and I have gone through. We can look at them as in hindsight, of course, after the sting is gone, with humility, almost like acceptance, the type of acceptance that realizes that if we hadn't endured that, then we wouldn't have learned what we needed to strengthen the character that we use to get us through life.

tiffany: 50:31

Yeah, I mean there's times where I really didn't want to go through certain things and I shouldn't have and it wasn't right, but at the same time I don't leave myself as a victim, because when you leave yourself as a victim, even if you were a victim, I mean I was a victim in the very, very raw definition of what the word victim actually means in a lot of scenarios. But when you live like a victim, you never get past your traumas.

wendy: 50:57

Exactly.

tiffany: 50:58

You stay stuck in the past and you can't. You start living in fear and in order to like, move on and be a survivor, you have to find some kind of silver lining in order to just live your fucking life.

wendy: 51:12

Yes, you absolutely do. It's amazing, too, because there have been things that have happened in my life where I'm just like you know. That was terrible and the trauma it still affects me to this day. But I'll find the silver lining and the fact that I'll meet somebody else who's gone through the same thing and we bond on a deeper level as a result of that and we find different coping and healing mechanisms that precipitate into other things, other categories, things that, as you and I have discussed regarding shadow work, that we had to dig out of ourselves in order to realize that it was something we need to contend with and fix within ourselves.

tiffany: 51:54

Yeah, for sure.

wendy: 51:55

I am so proud of her and so thankful that she made it through.

tiffany: 52:00

Yeah, me too. But I did want to add something else in here real quick, before we go about schizophrenia. When you have psychosis from schizophrenia, they have this thing called the flat effect. And what the flat effect is? A very monotone, very flat faced, very cold demeanor. And the detective, like I said earlier, called her a psychopath and he, like, misdiagnosed her in his mind he thought she was a sociopath. He didn't know she had schizophrenia until she was diagnosed when she was in the jail. So Peyton was the biggest victim here and Morgan. She was a victim of her own mind and now she's getting the help that she needs and supposedly she's doing well in the mental institution. But she needs to be in a mental institution and she needs to stay in the mental institution. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a very sad story all the way around and there's a lot of victims in this story.

wendy: 53:03

There are. I'm so glad that they were caught early, them finding her and her being able to let them know who did it to her.

tiffany: 53:13

Yeah, me too. If you'd like to check us out on Facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube or TikTok, then you can find us under Rogue and Wicked podcast. If you'd like to join our Patreon and become a subscriber, then you can find us at wwwpatreoncom. Our tier one listeners get pictures, polls and exclusive content. Our tier two listeners get all that plus a bonus episode monthly. Our tier three listeners get two bonus episodes monthly and all tiers get a shout out on the pod. Grab a copy of Wendy's book Sage. It's available at roguepoetnet. Any cool stories, questions or case suggestions should be sent to our email at RogueandWicked at yahoocom. And don't forget to give us a five star review on Spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. The more reviews that we get, the more pod episodes that we can bring to you. Thanks for listening and until next time.