News

Teen committed in Slender Man stabbing to seek release

Published

3 years ago

March 10, 2021

FILE - In this Dec. 21, 2017, file photo, Anissa Weier, one of two Wisconsin girls who tried to kill a classmate to win favor with a fictional horror character named Slender Man, is led into Court for her sentencing hearing, in Waukesha, Wis. Weier, is scheduled to appear Wednesday, March 10, 20201, before the Waukesha County Circuit Court judge who earlier sentenced her to 25 years in a mental health institution and ask for her conditional release. (Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, File)

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin woman convicted of stabbing a middle-school classmate to please fictional internet horror character Slender Man almost seven years ago is set to make her case before a judge Wednesday that she deserves to be released from a mental health facility.

Anissa Weier, now 19, is scheduled to appear before Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren. She’s expected to present testimony from mental health experts showing she’s ready to be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh.

Bohren sentenced her in December 2017 to 25 years in the mental health institution.

Weier and her friend, Morgan Geyser, lured classmate Payton Leutner into a Waukesha park in 2014 following a sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner multiple times as Weier cheered Geyser on. Leutner barely survived. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

Weier and Geyser told detectives they thought if they killed Leutner they would become Slender Man’s servants. Weier’s attorneys spent three years unsuccessfully trying to get her case moved to juvenile court.

If Bohren orders her release, Weier would be assigned state Department of Health Services case managers to track her progress until she’s 37 years old, the length of her commitment.

Geyser is serving a maximum 40-year-old sentence at a mental health facility.