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Slender Man Attack: Why Was Payton Leutner Stabbed More Than a Dozen Times? · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's Deep Dive. I am I'm so glad
• 0:02
  you're here joining us today.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great to have you with us.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: We are going to jump right into something that, honestly,
• 0:09
  it fundamentally challenges how we think about the world, you know,
• 0:12
  about our kids and the media we consume.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: It really does. It shakes up a lot of core assumptions.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Right, So, I want you to think about a typical
• 0:20
  middle school sleepover, like there is a very specific, almost
• 0:25
  universally understood script that we all expect.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, it's a universal touchstone for sure.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You picture twelve year olds staying up way too late,
• 0:34
  sharing secrets, maybe maybe watching a movie that scares them
• 0:38
  a little.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Bit, eating absolute garbage food.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly, just the worst snacks, and eventually they crash in
• 0:45
  sleeping bags on a living room floor.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: It's predictable, it's very safe.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is for most of us, the very definition
• 0:51
  of childhood innocence.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: It's a comforting image because well, we understand the parameters
• 0:57
  of that environment, right.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: The stakes are so low, exactly.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: The biggest risk in that scenario is usually someone getting
• 1:03
  their feelings hurt or like spilling soda on the rug.
• 1:06
  We have this established framework for how children at that
• 1:09
  age operate, how they process the world around them, and
• 1:12
  how they interact with one another. And when that framework holds,
• 1:15
  everything makes sense.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: But what happens when that framework just completely collapses? I mean,
• 1:20
  what happens when the harmless game of hide and seek
• 1:22
  is hijacked by something unimaginably dark.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: That's what we have to look at today.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, today we are bringing you into a profoundly unsettling reality.
• 1:31
  We're unpacking a stack of sources. We've got harrowing court records,
• 1:35
  deeply detailed psychiatric evaluations, heartbreaking victim interviews, and complex psychological analysis.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Of a dense stack of material.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: It really is, and it all surrounds a case that
• 1:48
  absolutely shocked the world. We are looking at the twenty
• 1:51
  fourteen slender Man stabbing that took place in Wakeisha, Wisconsin.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And we should clarify the mission here isn't just to
• 1:57
  recount a true crime tragedy.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. It's to unravel a profound psychological
• 2:03
  mystery like how did a completely fictional internet character, a
• 2:08
  literal digital ghost story drive two twelve year old girls
• 2:13
  to stab their absolute best friend nineteen times?
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Synthesizing this perfect storm of psychology, Internet culture, and legal
• 2:21
  controversy is well, it's going to require us to look
• 2:24
  past the sensational headline.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Because there were so many headlines at the time.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: There really were, But we have to understand not just
• 2:30
  what happened on that day, but the underlying mechanisms that
• 2:33
  made such a horrific event even possible. Right the why exactly?
• 2:37
  We are looking at the collision of untreated childhood, mental illness,
• 2:40
  the deeply immersive nature of modern digital folklore, and frankly,
• 2:44
  the absolute limits of our juvenile justice system.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So to even begin to understand the psychological mechanisms at play,
• 2:50
  we first have to look at the chilling reality of
• 2:52
  the event itself.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: We need to ground ourselves in the facts.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to set aside the Internet myth, you know,
• 2:58
  the lore, and the digital booge man for just a moment.
• 3:01
  We need to focus entirely on the physical reality of
• 3:04
  May thirty one, twenty fourteen.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: The setting is crucial here, I think, because of the
• 3:08
  sheer contrast it provides to what actually occurred.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: We're in David's Park in Waukesha, Wisconsin. This is it's
• 3:17
  a quiet, leafy suburban city. It's located about twenty miles
• 3:22
  west of.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Milwaukee, and it's a Saturday morning in late spring. The
• 3:25
  weather is just starting to get.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Warmer, a perfect day for a park.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and three twelve year old friends, Morgan Geyser and
• 3:34
  Nissa Weir and Peyton Lutner, who often went by the
• 3:36
  nickname Bella. They head to the park after having a
• 3:39
  sleepover at Morgan's house the night.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Before, and by all accounts in the sources, the sleepover
• 3:44
  was totally normal. They had gone to a local roller rink,
• 3:47
  they eat strawberries, they did like all the things you
• 3:49
  would expect.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: It sounds like the opening scene of a coming of
• 3:52
  age movie. You know. They go to the park and
• 3:54
  they decide to play hide and seek, right, but then
• 3:56
  they wander into a more secluded, heavily wooded area of
• 3:59
  the park, and this is where the reality just fractures.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the shift is sudden.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: It really is. I was reading through the court documents
• 4:07
  detailing their confessions, and something that struck me immediately is
• 4:10
  that this wasn't It wasn't a spontaneous argument, It wasn't
• 4:14
  a playground spat, No kids fight. They push each other,
• 4:18
  they get mad. This wasn't that, This was the culmination
• 4:21
  of a deeply premeditated plan.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: The details of that plan are incredibly disturbing.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: They are in those woods. Morgan hands a kitchen knife
• 4:29
  to Anissa, and Morgan had actually brought this knife from
• 4:33
  her own home tucked in her waistband.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: But there is a moment of hesitation here. The record's
• 4:38
  note that Anissa either hesitates or outright refuses to be
• 4:43
  the one to initiate the violence.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: She tells Morgan to do it right.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So Morgan takes the knife back, and then the brutal
• 4:50
  reality of the attack unfolds. Morgan pins Peyton down and
• 4:54
  stabs her nineteen times.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Nineteen times. I just have a hard time wrapping my
• 4:59
  head around that level of f violence from a child.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: It's almost unfathomable.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And these weren't superficial wounds either. The medical reports in
• 5:05
  our stack are very very specific about the brutality here.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: They detail extensive trauma.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she is stad across her entire body, her arms,
• 5:14
  her legs, her torso, her chest, her diaphragm, her liver,
• 5:17
  and her stomach.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: The sheer physical force required for a twelve year old
• 5:21
  to inflict that much damage is horrifying.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: The physical trauma inflicted on that twelve year old body
• 5:27
  in that moment is staggering. But what happens immediately after
• 5:31
  the stabbing offers a massive clue into the psychological state
• 5:36
  of the attackers.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Right, because they don't do what you'd expect exactly.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: They don't panic, They don't suddenly snap out of it
• 5:41
  and try to help her.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Which is what you would think a kid would do
• 5:44
  after doing something terrible.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Right, the realization of what they've done. But no, they
• 5:49
  actually look down at Peyton and tell her to quote
• 5:52
  lie down so you die more slowly.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Ugh, that is so cold.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: And then they simply leave her there to bleed out
• 5:59
  in the dirt, believing that they have completed their objective.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: They tell her to die more slowly. It's sickening, But
• 6:06
  this is where the story shifts from a tragedy to
• 6:08
  an absolute miracle of human survival.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: It really is a miracle.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Because Peyton, bleeding profusely from catastrophic organ damage, somehow summons
• 6:18
  this unimaginable strength to get.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Up the sheer will to live.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she drags herself crawling and walking out of the
• 6:25
  secluded woods and toward a paved pedestrian path. She's leaving
• 6:29
  a physical trail of blood.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Behind her, and that sheer will to live is exactly
• 6:34
  what saved her, because a passing cyclist who happened to
• 6:37
  be biking through the park with his wife spots her
• 6:40
  on the path.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Thank goodness, they were there.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Seriously, he recognizes immediately that this is a critical situation.
• 6:47
  He jumps into action, applies pressure to her wounds, and
• 6:50
  calls nine to one one.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And then paramedics rush her to the hospital and she
• 6:53
  undergoes hours of emergency surgery.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about what the surgeons found, though,
• 6:58
  because it defies probabil Please do. The doctors who operated
• 7:02
  on her noted that one of those nineteen stab wounds
• 7:05
  had missed a major artery near her heart by exactly
• 7:08
  one millimeter.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: One single millimeter. Yes, I mean if you picture a millimeter,
• 7:12
  it is the absolute definition of a margin.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Of error, barely the width of a pencil tip.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Surviving a stabbing by one millimeter is like flipping
• 7:19
  a coin that lands perfectly, flawlessly on its edge. If
• 7:23
  that blade had been angled just a fraction of a
• 7:26
  degree differently, she would have bled out in the woods
• 7:28
  before she ever reached the path.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: It is a miraculous survival against extraordinary odds. But while
• 7:35
  Peyton is fighting for her life in emergency surgery, the
• 7:38
  police are actively searching for Morgan and Aissa.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Right they're still out there.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: They find them hours later, and this detail is what
• 7:45
  I think fundamentally shifts this case from a horrifying crime
• 7:49
  into a psychological anomaly.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Where were they found?
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: They are discovered by law enforcement walking near a local
• 7:55
  furniture store, which is miles from the park. Okay, when
• 7:59
  the police apprehend the demeanor of these two twelve year
• 8:02
  old girls completely stuns the veteran officers.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would expect absolute hysteria. If a twelve
• 8:10
  year old just participate in something like that, you would
• 8:12
  expect crying panic, maybe a frantic denial of what just happened.
• 8:16
  They are kids, you'd expect them to be terrified exactly.
• 8:20
  But the interrogation transcripts highlight that they still had the
• 8:23
  bloody kitchen knife in their possession, and when questioned, they
• 8:26
  are chillingly calm, very very They're incredibly matter of fact.
• 8:31
  They openly confess to everything, detailing their plan without any prompting,
• 8:36
  and they.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Are actively disappointed that Peyton survived.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: That is the part that gets me. They view her
• 8:41
  survival as a failure of their mission.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: What we are seeing in those interrogation rooms is a
• 8:47
  terrifying juxtaposition. We have the typical expected behaviors of adolescence
• 8:52
  layer directly over premeditated, calculated and highly organized violence. Yeah,
• 8:58
  this was not a crime of impulse of hot blooded conflict.
• 9:01
  It was a cold, mission oriented execution.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this for a second, because that absolute
• 9:07
  detachment is the piece I keep getting stuck on.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: It's jarring, it really is.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: How do twelve year olds disconnect from human empathy so entirely?
• 9:15
  It really does feel like they were operating on a
• 9:17
  completely different software system than the rest of humanity.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: They weren't experiencing the reality of a sunny Saturday in
• 9:24
  a park. They were executing a rigid, almost robotic protocol.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Well, to understand that software, you have to understand the programmer. Okay,
• 9:34
  In this case, the programmer isn't a person, and it
• 9:37
  isn't a tangible thing. It is a fabricated, crowd sourced
• 9:42
  digital entity. Slender Man exactly. To comprehend their detachment, we
• 9:47
  must examine the architecture of a modern digital boogieman. We
• 9:51
  have to look at the origins of slender Man.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Let's get into that, because to figure out why they
• 9:56
  believed they had to execute this horrific mission, we have
• 9:59
  to trace the origins of the very thing they were trying.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: To appease, right, the entity itself.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: If they were acting like robots, who are what programmed them?
• 10:07
  We have to look at how a monster is built
• 10:08
  in the twenty first century.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: If we look back at historical folklore, think of the
• 10:12
  Brothers grim or ancient mythological figures. Those stories evolved over centuries.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they took a long time to develop, right, They.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Were passed down orally, shifting slightly from village to village,
• 10:24
  generation to generation like a.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Game of telephone, over hundreds of years exactly, and they
• 10:29
  served his cautionary tales to keep children out of the
• 10:32
  dark woods.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: They were organic.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: But slender Man is different.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Fundamentally different. He is explicitly a digital creation, and his
• 10:40
  evolution happened at the speed of the Internet.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: We can actually pinpoint the exact moment this modern myth
• 10:45
  was born which is incredibly rare for folklore.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: You usually can't point to a single.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Day, right, but here we can. It traces back to
• 10:53
  June two thousand and nine to an Internet forum called
• 10:56
  Something Awful. There was a user named Eric Knudsen posting
• 10:59
  an the user name Victor Surge. He enters a photoshop
• 11:03
  contest on the site, and the prompt for the contest
• 11:05
  was pretty simple, create paranormal images.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Just a fun creative challenge.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The idea is to take ordinary photographs and manipulate
• 11:12
  them to make them look unsettling or supernatural, and then
• 11:15
  like pass them off as authentic on paranormal message boards.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: So Nudsen submits two black and white photos. They are
• 11:22
  seemingly ordinary pictures of groups of children playing, but he
• 11:25
  photoshops something.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Into the background and that's where it starts.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: He adds a tall, impossibly thin, faceless figure wearing a
• 11:33
  dark suit, and crucially, he includes a little bit of
• 11:37
  text with the images, hinting at abductions and malevolent unseen
• 11:42
  entity watching the children.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It was a simple creative exercise, but the imagery was
• 11:46
  incredibly striking.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: It was very effective.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: It tapped into a very primal, universal human fear of
• 11:53
  you know, the faceless Watcher in the dark. The suit
• 11:56
  makes them look formal, authoritative, but the lack of a
• 12:00
  face makes them entirely alien.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It's the Uncanny Valley exactly.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: And because it was posted on the Internet during the
• 12:06
  rise of Web two point zero, it didn't just stay
• 12:08
  in that single forum thread. The Internet essentially took those
• 12:10
  two photos and just ran with them.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: This sparked a massive collaborative creative explosion. Yeah, the mythos
• 12:17
  expanded exponentially across websites like creepypasa dot com, which are
• 12:21
  dedicated to user generated horror stories. People wrote thousands of
• 12:24
  pages of fan fiction. They created wikis to organize the lore.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It became a whole universe.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: It moved beyond just text into a multimedia phenomenon. There
• 12:34
  was a highly popular, incredibly immersive YouTube series called Marble
• 12:39
  Hornets that brought the character into a found footage documentary
• 12:43
  style reality.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Oh I remember that.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: And there were video games created like Slender the eight Pages,
• 12:50
  which placed the player directly in the terrifying position of
• 12:54
  being hunted by the entity in a dark forest.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when Slender the eight Pages came out.
• 12:59
  It was terrifying precisely because it was so simple.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: You didn't have weapons or anything, right.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: You just walked through the woods with the flashlight, gathering pages,
• 13:06
  and he is always right behind you. It was so intense,
• 13:09
  and through all.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Of this decentralized crowdsource storytelling, a specific set of rules
• 13:14
  for the fiction was established. The lore solidified.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: What were the rules?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Well, slender man stalks and abducts children. He is often
• 13:21
  depicted with shadowy tentacles or tendrils extending from his back,
• 13:25
  and he supposedly lives in a grand, dark mansion hidden
• 13:29
  deep in the woods.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, I see where this is going.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: And perhaps most insidiously for the psychological development of this case,
• 13:36
  the lore described something called slender sickness.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: It was a set of physical and mental symptoms memory loss,
• 13:43
  intense paranoia, violent coughing fits, nosebleeds that supposedly afflicted anyone
• 13:49
  who's being targeted or stalked by him.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: By twenty fourteen, when this attack occurred, millions of children
• 13:55
  and teenagers had encountered this lore. It was pervasive in
• 13:59
  middle schools the country.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting to me. This is
• 14:03
  basically open source software, but for nightmares.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Anyone with an Internet connection could add a line of code,
• 14:11
  or in this case, a new story or a new
• 14:13
  video to make the monster scarier, more complex, more real.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Because the lore wasn't contained in a single book written
• 14:20
  by a single author, it felt boundless. It felt like
• 14:23
  it was everywhere at once.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: The psychological impact of that collaborative fiction is fascinating. When
• 14:30
  a story is decentralized and constantly evolving across multiple platforms,
• 14:35
  when it's in text, in games and videos that look
• 14:37
  like real home movies, it bypasses the traditional filters we
• 14:41
  use to separate fiction from reality.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Right, a book has a cover and an author, you
• 14:46
  know it's a story. But the Internet blurs those boundaries.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: But hold on, I know you listening at home are
• 14:52
  probably thinking right now, millions of kids read these exact
• 14:56
  same stories, Lillians. Millions of kids played the video game
• 14:59
  and watched the YouTube videos. They got a fun scare
• 15:02
  at a sleepover and moved on with their lives. They
• 15:04
  didn't hurt anyone.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: That's the main counter argument.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, so why didn't Morgan and Anissa leave the ghost
• 15:09
  story at the campfire? Why did they take a fictional
• 15:12
  entity from a photoshop contest and use it as a
• 15:14
  justification to bring a real pitchen knife to our real park.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: That is the crux of the entire case. The Internet,
• 15:21
  the creepypasta, and the open source lore provided the match,
• 15:25
  but the girls underlying psychological vulnerabilities provided the kindling.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The kindling, Okay.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: To understand how the fiction became lethal, we have to
• 15:32
  look at the specific minds that absorbed it. We have
• 15:35
  to look at the lock and the key.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Let's dive into who these girls were before that Saturday
• 15:40
  morning and what was happening inside their developing minds.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: They were all six graders at Horning Middle School.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Right, and on the surface, their lives looked entirely typical
• 15:50
  for suburban preteens. They were navigating the usual challenges of
• 15:53
  that age, figuring out their fashion sense, exploring different types
• 15:57
  of music, and dealing with the constant shifting dynamics of
• 16:00
  middle school friendship.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Peyton, the victim, was known to her friends as Bella.
• 16:06
  The case files describe her as a very kind, outglowing,
• 16:09
  and artistic girl.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: She sounded lovely she was, and she.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Had actually been close friends with Morgan for years. They
• 16:15
  shared a love of reading and drawing.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: But Morgan was a bit different.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Right, Yes, When we look closer at Morgan Geyser, a
• 16:21
  much more complex and tragic picture begins to emerge. Morgan
• 16:25
  was also very creative and highly imaginative. She drew constantly,
• 16:29
  But she also had a very intense, almost obsessive interest
• 16:32
  in the paranormal, in horror, and in dark subjects.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: But I mean, plenty of creative kids like scary movies
• 16:39
  or draw dark art. That alone doesn't explain a jump
• 16:43
  to attempted murder.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: You're right, it absolutely doesn't. The dark interests were a symptom,
• 16:48
  not the cause.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, what was the cause?
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: The psychiatric evaluations that were conducted after the arrests revealed
• 16:55
  something far more profound and devastating. Morgan was suffering from
• 16:59
  a deeply roots, completely undiagnosed mental illness, undiagnosed completely. The
• 17:05
  evaluations uncovered that Morgan had been experiencing severe hallucinations since
• 17:09
  early childhood.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Wait, early childhood? Like, how early are we talking?
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: From a very young age? This wasn't just an active
• 17:15
  imagination or a phase. She was seeing figures that she
• 17:18
  genuinely believed were ghosts. Wow, she describes seeing colors, physically
• 17:22
  melting down the walls of her home. She interacted with vivid,
• 17:25
  imaginary friends that to her brain were entirely physically real.
• 17:29
  She heard voices.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: I was actually reading an interview with her mother, Angie,
• 17:33
  who later looked back and tried to piece these things together.
• 17:37
  She noted that around the time of the stabbing, Morgan
• 17:40
  had become and this is a direct quote from the
• 17:42
  psychiatric evaluation, she had become floridly psychotic.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: That's the clinical term for it.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, And the formal diagnosis she eventually received was early
• 17:53
  onset schizophrenia.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Right, And childhood schizophrenia is incredibly rare, and it is
• 17:58
  absolutely devastating.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: It normally happens later exactly.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Schizophrenia typically manifests in late adolescents or early adulthood, usually
• 18:06
  the late teens or early twenties.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: When your brain is a bit more formed.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Right, So, when it strikes a child whose brain is
• 18:13
  still fundamentally developing, whose frontal lobe is still under massive construction,
• 18:18
  it deeply distorts their ability to perceive reality.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: It must be terrifying for the child.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: It involves profound hallucinations, experiencing sensory inputs that simply aren't
• 18:27
  there and fixed false beliefs. These are delusions that cannot
• 18:31
  be corrected by logic, evidence or something just telling them
• 18:35
  it isn't real. To Morgan, the hallucinations were as real
• 18:38
  as you or I.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: So Morgan's brain is already struggling to distinguish between what
• 18:42
  is real and what is a hallucination. Her neurological hardware
• 18:45
  is misfiring. Yes, and into that deeply fragile psychological ecosystem,
• 18:51
  you introduce the pervasive, incredibly detailed lore of slender Man.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And we have to be very clear here, slender Man
• 18:58
  did not cause Morgan's skits. That is a vital distinction
• 19:02
  we have to make. But the digital mythology became the
• 19:04
  perfect prepackaged avatar for her symptoms to latch on. Here
• 19:08
  we give it a shape exactly. The lore gave a name,
• 19:11
  a face, and a narrative structure to the terrifying things
• 19:14
  her broken brain was already experiencing. When she felt paranoia,
• 19:17
  the Internet told her it was slender sickness. When she
• 19:20
  saw shadows, the Internet gave them a name.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: That makes terrifying sense. The severe undiagnosed schizophrenia was a
• 19:28
  deeply complex biological lock and the open source Internet lore
• 19:32
  of slender Man just happened to be the jagged key
• 19:35
  that flawlessly fit into that lock.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: The lock and the key.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: But that explains Morgan's descent. She didn't act alone. Anissa
• 19:42
  Weir was right there with her.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: She was a willing participant in the planning and the execution.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Right, But the psychiatric evaluations point out that Anissa did
• 19:50
  not have schizophrenia. She didn't, So how does Anissa get
• 19:53
  pulled so deeply into this nightmare?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: And thisis's role is categorized by the evaluating psychiatrists as
• 20:00
  the follower in this dynamic? She was diagnosed with a
• 20:03
  shared delusional disorder.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: What's the clinical term for that?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: The clinical term for this is fully a do, which
• 20:09
  translates from French as madness of two.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I've heard that term fully ado thrown around in pop
• 20:14
  culture a lot recently, especially with movies and stuff. But
• 20:17
  how does it actually work in a clinical sense?
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: The very specific phenomenon, How.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Does a delusion literally jump from one brain to another?
• 20:24
  It sounds like a psychological virus.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It operates very much like a contagion, but under highly
• 20:29
  specific circumstances. It typically occurs in very close, isolated relationships.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Like a best friendship.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, you have a primary delusion holder in this case, Morgan,
• 20:40
  who is suffering from a genuine psychotic illness and generating
• 20:43
  the delusion.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And then you have a secondary individual, Anissa, who is
• 20:48
  intimately connected to the primary and who is often more suggestible, dependent,
• 20:53
  or eager to please.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And we are talking about twelve year old girls. The
• 20:57
  intensity of middle school peer bonding is already like a
• 21:01
  pressure cooker.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: It absolutely is.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: You desperately want to belong, You want to share secrets,
• 21:05
  you want to be part of an exclusive club that
• 21:08
  the adult world just doesn't understand.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Precisely, the adolescent brain is highly primed for social acceptance
• 21:14
  within the intense echo chamber of their friendship. Morgan's absolute
• 21:19
  unwavering belief and slender Man began to bleed over into
• 21:22
  Ani's reality. Wow, when you are isolated with someone who
• 21:26
  possesses absolute conviction and your own reality testing is still
• 21:30
  developing because you're twelve, your defense is breakdown.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: It just wears you down.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: And this will later describe to evaluators that she felt
• 21:37
  this immense, crushing pressure to prove herself. She needed to
• 21:41
  prove herself worthy, not just to Morgan, but to the
• 21:44
  entity that Morgan so genuinely believed in.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: She bought into it completely.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: She adopted Morgan's delusions as her own reality. To maintain
• 21:52
  that vital social bond. She essentially outsourced her reality testing
• 21:56
  to Morgan.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: That is just man, It's a tragedy of timing proximity.
• 22:00
  Anissa was essentially a satellite caught entirely in the gravitational
• 22:04
  pull of Morgan's distorted reality.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: The illness provided the vulnerability, the Internet provided the narrative,
• 22:10
  and the intense friendship provided the mechanism for transmission.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: But understanding the diagnosis still leaves a massive gap for me.
• 22:16
  Aw soo, Well, having a delusion is one thing, but
• 22:20
  how does reading a scary story and having a shared
• 22:22
  delusion transition into actually bringing a Kishen knife to a
• 22:25
  public park to slaughter your best friend?
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: The leap from belief to action exactly?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: We need to look at the timeline of this delusion.
• 22:33
  We need to examine how this dark fantasy metastasized into
• 22:36
  a deadly actionable conspiracy.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the anatomy of the delusion.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and specifically answer the question why nineteen times.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: The records detail a terrifying escalation of belief in the
• 22:50
  months leading up to May twenty fourteen.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: It wasn't sudden, not at all.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: As the girls consumed more and more of this creepypasta lore,
• 22:59
  feeding off each other's fear, their panic intensified. They didn't
• 23:03
  just believe slender Man was real, they became absolutely terrified
• 23:07
  that he was actively targeting them.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So, in their minds, they were being hunted. Yes, they
• 23:12
  believe that if they didn't appease him, he was going
• 23:13
  to come after their families. They thought their parents, their
• 23:15
  siblings were all in mortal, immediate danger from this digital monster.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: And in the distorted logic of the slender Man lore,
• 23:22
  there is a specific solution to this problem. What's the
• 23:25
  solution To protect themselves and their families, they needed to
• 23:28
  become his proxies. Proxies the proxy in this mythology is
• 23:32
  a human servant who carries out the entities will, which
• 23:35
  almost always involves committing acts of extreme violence or murder.
• 23:40
  If you kill for him, you are spared.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: So they believed that if they committed a murder for him,
• 23:46
  they would earn his protection. That was the goal, and
• 23:48
  They also believed they would be rewarded with a place
• 23:51
  to live in his grand mansion, which they genuinely thought
• 23:55
  was located in the Nicoltte National Forest about two hundred
• 23:59
  miles north of Jakisha.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: They really thought they were going to walk there.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had packed bags with granola bars and water bottles,
• 24:06
  fully intending to walk two hundred miles into the woods
• 24:09
  after the murder.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: The tragedy here is that to them, the threat was
• 24:14
  real and the solution, however horrific, was logical within the
• 24:18
  framework of their delusion.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: It made sense to them.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Right, if you genuinely believe your family is going to
• 24:23
  be slaughtered by a monster, what wouldn't you do to
• 24:26
  stop it? So they decided they needed to make a sacrifice,
• 24:31
  and they chose Peyton.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: The premeditation is bone chilling. They didn't just snap one day.
• 24:36
  They discussed the logistics extensively.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: For months months of planning.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: They considered different venues for the murder. They thought about
• 24:43
  killing Peyton in her sleep while she was at the sleepover.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: They had a whole list of ideas.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: They even discussed doing it in a tile bathroom, specifically
• 24:51
  noting that the tile floor would make it easier to
• 24:54
  clean up the blood so they wouldn't get caught before
• 24:56
  they could run away.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: That level of detail is just.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: But they have eventually settled on the secluded area of
• 25:01
  the park.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: They planned to use the game of hide and seek
• 25:04
  as a lure to get her isolated. They mapped out
• 25:07
  their escape route to the national forest, and they discussed
• 25:11
  the violence itself.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: The sources mention that explicitly, don't they.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: The investigative reports note explicitly that the violence was not incidental.
• 25:19
  They didn't just want to hurt her or scare her.
• 25:22
  The absolute stated goal was.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Death, which brings us back to that number nineteen stab wounds?
• 25:29
  Why nineteen times? Why such an extreme level of overkill?
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Was it about anger?
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Great? The sources are very clear that this wasn't driven
• 25:37
  by some deep seated personal hatred for Peyton. They weren't
• 25:41
  angry at her for a slight or a betrayal or
• 25:44
  middle school drama.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Forensic psychologists labeled this as instrumental violence.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Instrumental violence, Yes.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: It was violence used as a tool as a means
• 25:53
  to a specific end. They weren't striking out in a
• 25:56
  sudden reactive rage. They were executing a ritual.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: So in their distorted minds, the sheer brutality, the thoroughness
• 26:04
  of stabbing her nineteen times was proof of their dedication.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: It was a performance for the entity.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: It was their way of showing this monster like, look
• 26:12
  how committed we are to you, Look what we are
• 26:14
  willing to do. We are worthy of being your proxies.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: The psychological state required to inflict that kind of repetitive,
• 26:21
  intimate physical violence on a friend is profound.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: The repeated stabbing indicates a severe state of dissociation. They
• 26:30
  were likely operating in a frenzy, driven not by anger,
• 26:34
  but by the sheer, unadulterated terror of slender Man's retribution.
• 26:38
  If they failed to complete the sacrifice perfectly.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So they just zoned out.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Essentially, Yes, h they detached from the reality of the
• 26:44
  blood and the pain and focused entirely on the mechanism
• 26:47
  of the sacrifice.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I want to pose a really difficult thought experiment for
• 26:51
  you listening right now. Try to imagine being so deeply
• 26:54
  trapped inside a psychological nightmare that you genuinely truly believe
• 26:58
  the only possible way to say the lives of your
• 27:00
  family is to physically sacrifice your best friend.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: It's a dark place to put your mind.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: It's like looking at the horrific, twisted logic of an
• 27:09
  extreme religious cult. But in this scenario, the all powerful
• 27:13
  cult leader isn't a charismatic person standing at a pulpit.
• 27:16
  It's a jpeg image from a photoshop contest, and.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: The entire congregation, the entire membership of this cult is
• 27:23
  just two twelve year old girls isolated in a bedroom.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It is a terrifying reality to try and empathize.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: With, and that exact tension, the horrific, calculated brutality of
• 27:33
  the act versus the profound, undeniable mental illness of the
• 27:36
  children who committed it, presented an absolute, unprecedented nightmare for
• 27:40
  the legal system. I bet, how do you judge a
• 27:42
  crime where the intent to kill is absolutely real, but
• 27:45
  the reality itself is fundamentally broken.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: That leads us directly into the legal aftermath, which is
• 27:51
  just as complex and fraught as the psychological build up.
• 27:55
  We have to look at the system on trial.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: The legal battles were intense.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Because when the reality of what happened in those woods
• 28:01
  hit the Waukesha Police Department and then the District Attorney's office.
• 28:04
  They had to make a decision about how to process this.
• 28:07
  We are looking at a massive collision between justice, public safety,
• 28:12
  and psychiatry.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: The initial legal response was swift and severe. Despite the
• 28:17
  fact that Morgan and Anissa were only twelve years old
• 28:20
  at the time of the stabbing, they were both charged
• 28:22
  as adult pass adults. Yes, the charge was first degree
• 28:26
  attempted intentional homicide.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Let me stop you there, because that is a massive point.
• 28:30
  Charged as adults at twelve years old.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: It shocked a lot of people.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: And with that adult charge comes an adult penalty. They
• 28:37
  were facing up to sixty years in prison. Sixty years
• 28:40
  a twelve year old facing a sentence that is five
• 28:43
  times longer than they have even been alive. How is
• 28:46
  that even legally possible in Wisconsin?
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: It comes down to a specific legal precedent. In Wisconsin,
• 28:52
  the law dictates that anyone ten years or older who
• 28:55
  is charged with first degree attempted intentional homicide is autumn
• 29:00
  placed an adult court.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Wow ten years old, right.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: The defense then has to undergo what is called a
• 29:06
  reverse waiver hearing, where they try to prove the child
• 29:09
  should be moved back to juvenile court.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Did they try that they.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Did, but the prosecution argued forcefully to keep them an
• 29:16
  adult court, pointing to the intense premeditation of the crime.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: And the prosecution had a strong argument there, didn't they
• 29:22
  They had a.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Very strong argument based on the facts of the planning right.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: They could point to the notebooks. They planned it, they
• 29:28
  brought the knife, they lured her, They explicitly intended to
• 29:32
  kill her. The system is designed around concepts of accountability, punishment,
• 29:36
  and deterrence.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: The legal system relies heavily on the concept of intent.
• 29:41
  Did the perpetrator intend to commit the crime? The intent
• 29:44
  here is undeniable.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: The intent was there, yes, but the defense argued that
• 29:49
  the intent was entirely the product of severe psychiatric disease,
• 29:52
  which brings us.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: To the core of the defense strategy.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: The legal battle over Morgan's case centered entirely on her
• 29:59
  early onset schizophrenia diagnosis.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: The expert witnesses testified extensively about her lifelong hallucinations, her
• 30:07
  complete inability to grasp reality, and her absolute conviction that
• 30:11
  slender Man was commanding her actions.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: They argued that her brain was incapable of forming culpable intent,
• 30:18
  and the.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Court ultimately listened to those psychiatric experts what happened. Morgan
• 30:22
  was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect,
• 30:26
  so not a prison sentence. No, instead of a penitentiary.
• 30:29
  In twenty eighteen, she was legally committed to the Winnebago
• 30:32
  Mental Health Institute and the term of that commitment was
• 30:35
  set for up to forty years.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Up to forty years in a psychiatric facility, and.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: This is legal journey was slightly different, reflecting her role
• 30:42
  as the secondary participant in the Folia.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Do what happened with her?
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: She initially pleaded guilty to being a party to attempt
• 30:48
  at homicide. However, she was also ultimately found not guilty
• 30:51
  by reason of insanity due to the shared delusional disorder
• 30:54
  that had hijacked her reasoning.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: She was sentenced to up to twenty five years in
• 30:58
  a psychiatric institution. But the records note a significant update.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: In her case, yes, a very recent update.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Anissa was actually released in twenty twenty one, after spending
• 31:08
  years undergoing intensive therapy and demonstrating that the shared delusion
• 31:12
  had broken. Once she was separated from Morgan, she was
• 31:15
  released to live with her father under very strict ongoing supervision.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Morgan's situation remains far more volatile, highlighting the reality
• 31:24
  of her diagnosis.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Because schizophrenia doesn't just go away exactly.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Schizophrenia is a chronic, deeply difficult condition to manage. It
• 31:33
  isn't cured, it is managed with medication and therapy.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And it hasn't been smooth sailing for her. No.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: There have been conditional releases that were later revoked. There
• 31:42
  have been instances of her escaping or violating the terms
• 31:45
  of her care. In fact, the case files mentioned a
• 31:47
  twenty twenty five incident where she managed to cut off
• 31:50
  her ankle monitor, which necessitated her return to institutional care.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Wow twenty twenty five. That underscores that severe mental illness
• 31:57
  is a lifelong battle.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: This raises an incredibly tough philosophical question, and it's one
• 32:04
  that legal scholars and ethicists debate endlessly.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: It's a fundamental question of justice.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: If a human brain is fundamentally biologically broken by an
• 32:13
  illness like early onset schizophrenia, can we legitimately assign moral
• 32:19
  culpability to that person?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: That's the friction point.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Our entire justice system requires that intent to punish. But
• 32:26
  what happens when the intent itself is dictated by a hallucination.
• 32:30
  Is locking a sick child away for sixty years justice
• 32:33
  or is it just cruelty disguised as public safety.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate friction point in modern law. You
• 32:39
  have the shifting paradigm of how we view juvenile crime.
• 32:43
  Neuroscience has proven that a twelve year old brain is
• 32:45
  vastly different from an adult brain, especially regarding impulse control
• 32:49
  and consequence evaluation. Combine that with severe psychosis, and the
• 32:53
  argument that they are hardened adult criminals falls apart. Medically,
• 32:56
  we should prioritize treatment over pure punitive measures.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I hear that. But on the other hand, you have
• 33:00
  the undeniable public safety argument the victim Exactly, you have
• 33:04
  a victim who was stabbed nineteen times. You have perpetrators
• 33:08
  who demonstrated a capacity for brutal, highly organized, premeditated violence.
• 33:14
  Society has a right and a profound need to isolate
• 33:17
  individuals who are capable of that, regardless of the underlying cause.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Public safety has to be a priority.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: If someone is genuinely dangerous, the public must be.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Protected, and that is exactly why the system ultimately chose
• 33:29
  institutionalization in a maximum security mental health facility over a
• 33:34
  traditional penitentiary.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: It was a compromise.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: There's a deeply flawed, complex attempt to balance the profound
• 33:41
  need for public safety with the undeniable medical reality that
• 33:44
  these girls required intensive psychiatric intervention, not just a prison cell.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: It is a devastating compromise. And while the attackers' lives
• 33:52
  became defined by institutionalization, court hearings, medication trials, and psychiatric evaluations,
• 33:57
  the victim, Payton Lutner, had to forge a path back
• 33:59
  to a world that had betrayed her so violently and
• 34:02
  so inexplicably.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: We need to talk about Peyton's recovery.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: We do. We need to talk about the scars we carry.
• 34:08
  We need to look at Peyton's resilience and the broader
• 34:11
  societal reckoning that this case forced upon all of us.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Peyton's journey post attack is truly a testament to the
• 34:18
  extraordinary capacity for human resilience.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: It really is incredible.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: The physical recovery alone was agonizing. Yeah, she spent weeks
• 34:26
  in the hospital undergoing multiple surgeries to repair the catastrophic
• 34:30
  damage to her major organs, her liver, her stomach, her diaphragm.
• 34:34
  The fact that she can walk let alone live a
• 34:36
  normal life is a medical marvel, and.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: The emotional trauma is almost impossible to quantify. She was
• 34:43
  betrayed by her absolute best friends in the world, people
• 34:46
  she trusted entirely.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: The psychological toll of that is immense.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: For years, she maintained a deeply private life, understandably shielding
• 34:53
  herself from the media circus surrounding the trial. But in
• 34:56
  twenty nineteen, five years after she was left bleeding in
• 34:59
  the dirt, made the decision to speak publicly for the
• 35:02
  first time.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: That was a huge moment.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: She gave an incredibly powerful interview on ABC's twenty twenty.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: In that interview, she revealed the enduring psychological impact of
• 35:11
  the trauma. She shared that she still sleeps with a
• 35:15
  pair of scissors under her pillow for a sense of security. Wow,
• 35:19
  the fear doesn't just evaporate, the hypervigilance remains. It leaves
• 35:23
  a permanent mark on how you interact with the world,
• 35:26
  how you trust people, how you view your own safety.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: But what was so striking to me about that interview
• 35:32
  was her strength. She wasn't just a victim. She talked
• 35:35
  about physically accepting the numerous scars across her body, She
• 35:39
  actually expressed a level of forgiveness, or at the very least,
• 35:42
  a commitment to moving forward and not letting anger consume her.
• 35:46
  She stated that the horrific trauma she endured actually shaped
• 35:50
  her resilience post traumatic growth exactly. It forged her into
• 35:54
  a person with concrete plans for her future, a drive
• 35:57
  to pursue a career in the medical field, a drive
• 36:00
  you might not have discovered otherwise.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: That concept of post traumatic growth is remarkable. Here contrasts
• 36:06
  her trajectory building a quiet, purposeful private life with the tragic,
• 36:11
  institutionalized reality of her attackers.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: It's night and day.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: It highlights the vital importance of the support system she
• 36:17
  had around her. The sources emphasize how crucial her family's
• 36:21
  advocacy was. Her mother and her brother provided an unwavering
• 36:26
  foundation of support during those dark days in the ICU
• 36:30
  and throughout the grueling years of legal proceedings.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: It protected her.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: They buffered her from the worst of the media storm.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: But the impact of this case didn't just stay within
• 36:38
  those three families. It triggered a massive global societal reckoning.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: The cultural fallout was huge.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: When the news broke, The media immediately rushed to point
• 36:48
  the finger. Headlines were screaming about Internet inspired murder and
• 36:51
  the inherent, unchecked dangers of digital culture.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: It was a textbook example of a moral panic.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: We've seen it before.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: We've seen this pattern throughout history. Society always seeks a
• 37:01
  simple scapegoat when confronted with inexplicable tragedy like what Well.
• 37:06
  In the nineteen eighties, it was the fear that heavy
• 37:08
  metal music or Dungeons and Dragons were driving teenagers to
• 37:11
  satanism and suicide.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, the satanic panic, right.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: And in the nineties it was the panic over violent
• 37:18
  video games like Doom influencing school shootings like Columbine.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was everywhere.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, the panic centered entirely on creepy pasta
• 37:28
  and the unfiltered Internet.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: It's so easy to just point the finger at the
• 37:31
  Internet and say that's the problem. Ban the websites, take
• 37:35
  down the stories.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: But it's rarely that simple, right.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the case
• 37:40
  files show us that this was not a single point failure.
• 37:43
  It was a multifaceted systemic failure exactly.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: The Internet was a factor, yes, but focusing solely on
• 37:50
  the digital Boogeyman ignores the critical structural failures that allowed
• 37:55
  the tragedy to occur.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: What were those failures?
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: The broader societal impacts that emerged from this forced us
• 38:01
  to look at three key areas. First, Internet safety, we
• 38:04
  had to have real conversations about digital literacy.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Which is so important now.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: How do we teach children to navigate online spaces, understand
• 38:12
  the difference between user generated fiction and reality, and utilize
• 38:15
  parental controls effectively.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Second, and perhaps most importantly to me, mental health. This
• 38:21
  case highlighted the absolute vital need for early.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Screening, catching it before it escalates.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: We need schools, teachers, and pediatricians to have the training
• 38:31
  and the tools to catch the subtle early warning signs
• 38:34
  of childhood schizophrenia and delusional disorders before they metastasized into violence.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: And there were signs.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Morgan's mother noticed changes, She noticed the imaginary friends, the
• 38:45
  strange comments, but the severity of the psychosis was completely
• 38:49
  missed by the medical system until it was too late.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: And Third, it forced an ongoing evaluation of our juvenile
• 38:56
  justice system. It forced us to confront the uncomfortable reality
• 38:59
  of balunceancing accountability with the medical needs of profoundly sick children.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: It's a delicate balance.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: The media's rush to blame the internet was a distraction
• 39:07
  from the much harder work of building better safety nets
• 39:10
  in our schools and healthcare systems.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: The Internet is essentially just the modern day dark forest.
• 39:16
  We've always had a dark forest in our folklore.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: That's a profound way to look at it.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: The real lesson here isn't to try and burn down
• 39:21
  the forest. You can't. The internet is here to stay.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: We live in it now.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: The lesson is that we have to make absolutely sure
• 39:28
  we aren't sending vulnerable kids into that dark forest without
• 39:30
  a compass, without guidance, and without a safety lifeline if
• 39:34
  they get lost.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: As we synthesize the incredibly dense, deeply tragic information from
• 39:39
  these records, we see that the slender Man attack was
• 39:42
  not simply an inevitable outcome of kids reading scary stories online.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: No it wasn't.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: It was a specific, heartbreaking anomaly built on profound, systemic
• 39:52
  blind spots.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: So, to summarize what we've unpacked today, this was the
• 39:56
  perfect tragic storm. It wasn't just a campfire story gone wrong.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: It was so much more than that.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: It was the devastating collision of severe, completely untreated pediatric
• 40:05
  psychosis with an expansive, unfiltered digital ecosystem. That collision resulted
• 40:11
  in an act of unimaginable, calculated violence, and it was
• 40:14
  countered only by the miraculous, defiant physical survival of Peyton Lutner.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: It is a stark reminder of the immense power of belief,
• 40:22
  the fragility of the developing mind, and the devastating consequences
• 40:27
  when our societal safety nets failed to catch those who
• 40:30
  are falling into a distorted reality.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: It is a heavy story, but a deeply necessary one
• 40:35
  to understand, and as we wrap up this deep dive,
• 40:38
  we want to leave you with a final lingering thought,
• 40:41
  tom all Over, something that builds on everything we've discussed today,
• 40:44
  but looks toward the horizon.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: We have spent the last hour dissecting exactly how a crude,
• 40:49
  fictional monster born from a simple photoshop contest managed to
• 40:54
  breach the real world and create actual physical bloodshed.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: A digital ghost made reeal.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: But we have to recognize that the digital landscape of
• 41:01
  twenty fourteen was remarkably primitive compared to where we're heading now.
• 41:05
  It really was, as our digital realities become increasingly profoundly immersive.
• 41:09
  With the rapid advancement of AI generated content, hyperrealistic deep fakes,
• 41:14
  and virtual reality environments that can perfectly simulate physical space.
• 41:17
  The lines between fiction and reality are blurring further and
• 41:21
  faster every single day, accelerating. If a simple text based
• 41:25
  story on a forum could hijack a vulnerable mind so completely,
• 41:30
  we have to ask ourselves, how do we protect the
• 41:33
  fragile human psyche when the fictions we invent become technologically
• 41:38
  indistinguishable from the world we actually live in.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: It is a question we are all going to have
• 41:43
  to answer very soon. You know. We started the sneap
• 41:46
  Dive by talking about how an innocent middle school sleepover
• 41:49
  was hijacked by a different operating system. The script was flipped.
• 41:52
  It definitely was, And the terrifying truth is the Internet
• 41:56
  is writing new, more complex scripts every day. We just
• 41:59
  have to make sure we know who is actually doing
• 42:01
  the programming. Thank you for joining us on this intense,
• 42:04
  illuminating journey into the sources today.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: We encourage you to keep asking the tough questions, to
• 42:10
  look past the sensational headlines, and to always seek out
• 42:13
  the deeper why in the world around you,