Latest / When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom / When a Myth Becomes a Command: Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier

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When a Myth Becomes a Command: Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier · When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom

0:00
It's early morning in the woods, the kind of morning where
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everything looks normal at a glance.
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Mist hanging low between the trees, damp leaves sticking to
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the ground. The world still feels half
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asleep, but nothing about this morning is normal.
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Somewhere off the path, a 12 year old girl is crawling.
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She's injured, barely conscious. Every movement is an effort she
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shouldn't have to make. Her body is telling her to stop,
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But something stronger than her is pushing her forward just a
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little farther, just far enough until someone sees her.
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And what happened to her didn't begin here.
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It didn't begin in these woods. It began long before this
0:42
moment, before fear, before violence, before anyone
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understood what was really going on.
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Because when investigators would later piece this case together,
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they wouldn't just be asking what happened.
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They'd ask how. How do two children, two
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friends, end up believing that killing someone is necessary to
1:05
please a creature that doesn't even exist?
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How does a fictional character become a command?
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How does imagination turn into intent?
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And more importantly, how did nobody see this coming?
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Because this doesn't start with the crime scene.
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It starts with childhood isolation.
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Belief systems forms in places adults rarely ever think to
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look, and once it begins, it moves faster than anyone could
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stop. My name is Brittany Ransom, and
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This is When Killers Get Caught, a podcast where I examine the
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people, the psychology, and the moments that lead up to the most
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extreme acts of violence and what happens when truth finally
1:44
catches up. Today's episode takes us to the
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quiet suburbs of Wisconsin, where the line between a
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childhood game and a deadly obsession didn't just blur, it
1:54
vanished. We're looking at a case that
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forced the world to ask what happens when a monster created
1:59
by the Internet finds its way into the minds of children.
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This is the story of the Slender Man stabbing.
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To understand how something so dark could take root, you first
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have to understand Waukesha. Located about 20 miles West of
2:16
Milwaukee, it is the quintessential American suburb.
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In 2014, it was the kind of place people moved to
2:21
specifically because things like this don't happen there.
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It's a city of parks, historic brick buildings, top tier
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schools, a place where the community pride is visible in
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every manicured lawn and local festival.
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The Air Waukesha feels safe. It's the kind of town where
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parents let their kids bike to the library or walk to the
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neighborhood park without even a second thought.
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There's a profound sense of predictability to life here.
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The neighborhoods are quiet, the streets are lined with old
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growth maples, and the social fabric is woven with Midwestern
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politeness. It was, by all accounts, a
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protected bubble. But that's the thing about a
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bubble. It's transparent, but it's also
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a barrier. While the adults in Waukesha
3:01
were focused on the physical safety of their streets, a
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different kind of world was being built inside the glowing
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streams of middle schoolers. The world that raised them
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wasn't just the quiet streets of Waukesha, it was the early 2000
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TENS Internet. This was an era where the
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digital frontier was still a bit of a Wild West for parents.
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While the physical setting of this story is a sun drenched
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suburban park, the mental setting is much darker.
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A place of infinite scroll, unchecked forums and the birth
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of modern digital folklore. The contrast couldn't be sharper
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on the outside, the piece of the Saturday morning in May on the
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inside. A terrifyingly vivid obsession
3:40
that was about to shatter their peace forever.
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Now, to the outside world, our 2 mill schoolers, Morgan Geyser
3:48
and Anissa Weir were just two awkward 6th graders navigating
3:51
the social minefield of Horning Middle School.
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Behind closed doors though, their allegiance was becoming a
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closed circuit, a shared reality that was increasingly detached
4:00
from the world around them. Morgan was in many ways the
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architect of this fantasy. Friends and family described her
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as bright, highly imaginative, and deeply withdrawn.
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She had a penchant for the macabre, often seen drawing dark
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imagery in her notebooks. But for Morgan, the line between
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a vivid imagination and fractured reality was chemically
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very thin. Crucially, there was a genetic
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shadow hanging over her development.
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Her father, Matthew Geyser, struggled with schizophrenia and
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had been hospitalized in the past for it.
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For Morgan, the early warning signs were there, though they
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were dismissed as simply quirks. She would later tell evaluators
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that she had been seeing and hearing things since she was a
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toddler, hallucinations that she referred to as characters like
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Maggie from The Walking Dead or different characters from Harry
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Potter. By the time she met her best
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friend, Anissa, Morgan was already living in a world where
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the fiction was not very different from reality.
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To her, Slender Man was not a legend.
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He was a tall, faceless man who stood in her room and demanded
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blood to spare her family. Then we have Anissa Weir.
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If Morgan provided the vision, Anissa provided the validation.
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Anissa was a child who desperately wanted to belong.
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She had struggled with the social dynamics of middle
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school, often feeling isolated and seeking a best friend who
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could offer her a sense of security.
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When she found Morgan, she found someone who accepted her
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completely. But that acceptance came with a
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price. Anissa's psychological profile
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was defined as highly suggestible and a delayed
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emotional development. She wasn't experiencing all the
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same hallucinations as Morgan, but she possessed a powerful
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desire to believe in something bigger than just her mundane
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suburban life. She looked to Morgan for cues on
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how she should perceive the world, and when Morgan told her
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that Slender Man was real and they needed to become his
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proxies and prove their worth, Anissa didn't question it.
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She leaned into it. She became the pragmatist for
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the delusion, helping to research the mansion and
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planning the logistics of how they would travel to Nicolette
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National Forest after the deed was done.
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The tragedy of this case lies in Foliadieu, or a shared psychotic
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disorder. Individually, these girls might
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have just remained the weird kids in the back of the
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classroom. Morgan might have eventually
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received clinical intervention thanks to her father's history,
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which suggested that she really needed it.
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And Anissa might have found a different social circle that
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could have anchored her. But together, they were creating
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a feedback loop. Every time Morgan shared a
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vision, Anissa confirmed how important it was.
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Every time Anissa showed interest, Morgan felt empowered
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to dig deeper into her darkness. These kids weren't killers in
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the traditional sense. They were two very vulnerable
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children who had built a bunker out of a myth, reinforcing the
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walls until they couldn't see the light of reason anymore.
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By the morning of the sleepover, they weren't acting out of
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malice. They were acting out of a
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terrifying self-imposed necessity.
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Now, before she was a headline, Peyton Leutner was a vibrant,
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kind hearted 12 year old girl who loved animals, music and
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being a loyal friend to those who knew her as Bella.
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She was the girl who went out of her way to be inclusive.
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In fact, her kindness is what led her to Morgan Geyser in the
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1st place. While other children were put
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off by Morgan's eccentric behavior and withdrawn nature,
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Peyton saw someone who she thought needed a friend.
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She had been Morgan's best friend since 4th grade, acting
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as a social anchor for a girl who had trouble navigating the
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world. The sleepover that would happen
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on May 30th, 2014 was supposed to be a typical preteen
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milestone, a celebration for Morgan's 12th birthday.
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There were roller skating rinks, birthday cake and the kind of
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whispered secrets that define middle school friendships.
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Peyton arrived at the Geyser household with a sleeping bag
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and a sense of excitement, completely unaware she was
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entering a space that had been transformed into a tactical
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planning zone. To Peyton, the night was about
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celebrating her best friend. To Morgan and Anissa, this was
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the eve of the sacrifice, and this is where the element of
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betrayal almost is too much to stomach.
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Throughout the evening, they played and laughed while Morgan
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and Anissa secretly whispered about how and when they were
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going to kill the girl sitting right next to them.
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They had originally planned to do it at the sleepover while
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Taylor was sleeping, but Morgan said she couldn't go through
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with it in the house. Instead, they waited until the
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morning Lauren Peyton into a game of hide and seek in David's
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Park. Peyton followed them into the
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woods because she trusted them. She had no reason not to.
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When they told her to lie down and cover herself with leaves as
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part of the game, she did it not out of fear, but out of a shared
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sense of just playing like children do.
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The betrayal wasn't just the physical violence that would
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follow, it was the systemic dismantling of a years long
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friendship. Peyton wasn't a random target,
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she was the person who had always shown Morgan the most
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consistent compassion, and in the warped logic of the shared
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delusion, that was exactly what made her necessary to become an
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offering to Slender Man. And as we look at the logistics
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of the catch later, we have to remember this moment.
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The image of a young girl following her two best friends
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into the trees, expecting a game and instead just finding a
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nightmare. Now I'm sure by now you're
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wondering how does a fictional character created on the
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Internet become a monstrosity. Well, to understand how a
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fictional character can command a real world stabbing, we
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actually have to look at what we call the birth place of modern
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monsters, creepypastas. For people who didn't grow up
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with a tablet in your hand, think of creepypastas as the
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digital equivalent of passing around a ghost story at a
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campfire, except the campfire never actually goes out and the
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story gets edited by thousands of people online in real time.
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The name comes from copy pasta text that is copied and pasted
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across the Internet, but with a creepy twist.
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These were short, user generated horror stories designed to be
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shared on forums like 4 Chan or the Creepypasta Wiki.
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And in the early 2000 and 10s, no character loomed larger in
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the digital shadows than Slender Man.
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Slender Man wasn't actually born into ancient folklore.
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He was created in 2009 by a man named Eric Knudsen for a
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Photoshop contest. He was depicted as this
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unnaturally tall, thin man in a black suit with a blank,
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featureless white face. But the Internet did what the
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Internet does and it took that single image and it gave it a
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pulse. Within years there were
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thousands of stories found footage, videos that have been
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created on Blender, fan made games were created.
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In this world. Slender Man was a stalker.
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He lived in the woods, he always targeted children.
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And most importantly to our story, he had proxies, servants
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who did his bidding in exchange for protection.
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But first you had to prove you were worthy to enter Slender
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Man's world. For a 12 year old like Morgan or
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Anissa, this wasn't just a scary story, it was an immersive
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reality. The early 2000 tens were the
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golden age of the Blurred Line. You didn't just read about
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Slender Man, you watched leak grainy videos that look like
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real police evidence. You read forum posts from people
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who claimed they had seen him in their own backyards.
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For vulnerable children, this created a dangerous
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psychological trap. We call it the suspension of
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disbelief when we watch movies. But for some small children,
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they suspend disbelief when they shouldn't.
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And when you're 12, the world's already a pretty confusing
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place, where adults tell you what's real and what isn't.
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And then you find a corner of the Internet that feels like a
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secret that only you and your friends know about.
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That mystery becomes more intoxicating than the truth,
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even if you understand what the truth is in the beginning.
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To Morgan and Anissa, Slenderman offered a dark sort of
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belonging. He was a gatekeeper to a world
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where they wouldn't be simply awkward middle schoolers.
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They had been chosen, but the price of admission was a blood
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sacrifice. And because the Internet had
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made this myth feel so tangible, the girls believe the only thing
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more dangerous than killing their friend was the monster who
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would come for them if they didn't do it now.
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The attack on May 31st, 2014 wasn't a momentary snap or even
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a sudden burst of rage. It was a culmination of about 5
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months of deliberate, methodical planning.
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Beginning in early 2014, Morgan and Anissa began to treat the
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murder of their friend not as a crime, but as a mission.
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A mission for a higher power. They communicated in whispers on
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the school bus and through coded language.
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They built a secret world where the survival of their own
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families depended on the death of Peyton Lehner.
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In their minds, they weren't killers.
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They were proxies. In the Slender Man lore they
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consumed. A proxy is a servant who carries
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out the entities will to prove its loyalty.
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This created a twisted sense of occupational necessity.
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They believed if they killed Peyton, they would be granted
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passage into Slender Man's mansion, a physical place that
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they believed existed within the Nicolette National Forest.
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It was a very dark Peter Pan fantasy where the goal wasn't
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Neverland, but to join a House of monsters.
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But the plan wasn't exactly easy to execute.
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There were multiple failed attempts.
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Before the day in the woods. They wanted to kill.
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They had wanted to kill Peyton during the sleepover, while she
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was sleeping. Morgan even brought a kitchen
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knife from her home, hidden in her bag.
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But as the lights went out and Peyton drifted off to sleep, the
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reality of the ACT momentarily paralyzed them.
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On another occasion, they plan to do it in the bathroom at the
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park. But again, their nerves.
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Or perhaps a lingering shred of childhood innocence and
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conscience stalled them in the moment.
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This leads to the core psychological question of this
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case. Was this a shared delusion, or
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was it coercion? In the legal and psychiatric
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postmortems, experts pointed to Folia do the madness of two.
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In this dynamic, Morgan was likely suffering from early
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onset schizophrenia. She provided the primary
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delusion. She truly believed she saw
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Slender Man Anissa, however, played the secondary role.
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She never saw the monster, but she was so desperate for
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Morgan's friendship, and so suggestible to the proof
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provided by the Internet, that she adopted that delusion as her
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own. It wasn't traditional coercion,
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though, where one person threatens the other one.
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It was a mutual reinforcement. Every time one of them began to
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hesitate, the other would remind them of the consequences.
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What would Slender Man do if we fail?
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They trapped each other in this loop of fear and loyalty, and by
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the time they led Peyton into the woods at David's Park that
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Saturday morning, the plan was a psychological prison.
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They felt they had gone too far to turn back.
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To them, the violence wasn't a choice, It was their only way to
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go home. In the morning of May 31st, it
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broke with the kind of suburban piece we talked about earlier.
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To any neighbors looking out their window, they would have
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seen three preteen girls simply walking toward David's park.
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Pretty familiar sight in Waukesha.
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They look like they were just extending the fun of their
15:29
birthday sleepover. But inside Morgan's backpack was
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a 5 inch kitchen knife, and inside of their minds was a
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finish line they had been working towards for months.
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They let Peyton into a wooded area of the park under the guise
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of a game of hide and seek. This is the moment where the
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childhood element of the story becomes chilling.
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They use the language of play to facilitate a slaughter.
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Morgan told Peyton. Lie down on the ground and cover
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yourself with leaves to hide. And trusting her best friend,
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Peyton complied. What followed was a blur of
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frantic, delusional energy. Reports would state that Anissa
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was the one who urged Morgan on whispering.
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Go episodic, a phrase they had developed to mean go through
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with it. Morgan then attacked, stabbing
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Peyton 19 times in the arms, leg and torso.
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But even in the midst of this violence, the logic of their
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delusion remained. When Peyton began to scream,
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Morgan and Anissa didn't run away.
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They weren't panicked. In fact, they tried to get her
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to be quiet. They told her if she stayed
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still and quiet, they would go get help.
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It was a final, devastating lie. Instead of seeking a park Ranger
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or a passerby, they simply turn their backs, walked deeper into
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the woods, heading toward the highway.
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Now these girls weren't running from the police, not yet at
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least. In their minds, they were
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heading towards the mansion. They believe that by completing
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the sacrifice, Slender Man would manifest and lead them to
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safety. They left their best friend
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bleeding on the forest floor, convinced that their part of the
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bargain was over as they walk away.
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As they walked away, they said that they felt a sense of
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relief. They had done what was required.
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They didn't look back to see if Peyton was moving.
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They didn't check her pulse. They simply stepped out of the
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trees and back into the world. Two children covered in blood,
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waiting for a monster to reward them for their loyalty.
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When Morgan and Anissa walked away, they left behind a girl
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who was never supposed to get up.
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Peyton had been stabbed 19 times, Her liver was pierced,
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her stomach had been punctured, and most terrifyingly, one of
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the wounds had come within a hair's breath of her heart.
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To her attackers, they had finished the offering.
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To the medical world, she was a statistical impossibility.
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But Peyton refused to be a ghost in the silence of the woods.
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As adrenaline began to fade and the gravity of her injuries set
17:53
in, she didn't succumb to the sack.
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She started crawling. Just imagine the sheer physical
18:02
and mental fortitude required for a child to drag herself
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through the dirt and the leaves clutching her abdomen, moving
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toward a road she couldn't even see yet.
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She didn't even know if she was going the right direction, every
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inch a battle against her own body's urge to shut down.
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She wasn't just crawling away from the trees.
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She was crawling back to the world of the living.
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She eventually reached the edge of a bicycle path near Big Bend
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Rd. It was there that a passing
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cyclist, Greg Thomas. It was there that a passing
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cyclist, Greg Thompson, saw her. At first he thought it was a
18:36
prank, a child just playing in the grass.
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But as he got closer, the reality of the blood and the
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Help me she whispered shattered the suburban peace.
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When the paramedics arrived, they found a girl who was calm
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despite the chaos around her. Even as her blood pressure began
18:52
to plummet, Peyton was able to give the names of the girls who
18:55
had done this to her. She was a witness to her own
18:58
attempted murder before she Evan.
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She was a witness to her own attempted murder before she even
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reached the operating room. The medical reality of her
19:08
survival is often described by surgeons as a miracle.
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One of the stabs had tracked so close to her heart it had
19:14
actually grazed her pericardium. One of the stabs had tracked so
19:19
close to her heart that it actually grazed her pericardium.
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The protective sack around your heart.
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If the blade had been the width of a human hair closer, or if
19:29
the heart had been mid beat in a different position, Peyton would
19:34
have died in those woods. But Peyton's resilience wasn't
19:37
just in her physical survival, it was in her clarity.
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She fought through the betrayal of her best friends and the
19:42
literal darkness of the forest to ensure that the truth reached
19:45
the light. In a case defined by the people
19:48
who couldn't tell fact from fiction, Peyton became the most
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grounded, undeniable fact of all.
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She was the proof that monsters don't win.
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Now, while Peyton was being rushed into emergency surgery,
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fighting for every breath, Working Geyser and Anissa Weir
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were just walking. They weren't running, they
20:09
weren't hiding. They were marching along the
20:11
shoulder of Interstate 94 headed toward Nicolette National
20:14
Forest. They had a backpack filled with
20:16
snacks, a map they had drawn themselves, and the five inch
20:19
steak knife they had used just a few hours before.
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To them, this was a pilgrimage to the rest of the world.
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They were two blood stained children walking into a trap.
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The catch happened rather quickly based on the description
20:33
that Peyton gave from her stretcher.
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A police officer spotted the girls near a furniture store
20:37
about 5 miles away from the park.
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When the squad car pulled over, there was no high speed shades.
20:42
There was no resistance. Morgan and Anissa simply stopped
20:45
walking. When the officer asked them what
20:47
they were doing, they didn't offer a frantic alibi.
20:49
They were calm, eerie, polite and almost helpful.
20:55
But the true chilling heart of the investigation lies in the
20:58
police interview tapes. As the girls were brought into
21:00
separate interrogation rooms at the Waukesha Police Department,
21:03
the detectives expected to find terrified children or hardened
21:07
young criminals. Instead, they found 2 girls who
21:10
seemed to think that they were participating in a basic
21:14
debriefing. Morgan sat in her chair, her
21:17
legs dangled. Her face was blank.
21:20
When the detective asked her about the stabbing, she spoke
21:22
about it with the same emotional weight as if she were describing
21:25
a school project. She admitted to the stabbing,
21:28
explaining it was necessary because Slender Man would have
21:30
killed her family if she didn't do it.
21:33
There was a profound, haunting lack of understanding of
21:36
consequences. When Morgan was told that Peyton
21:39
was alive and in surgery, she didn't look relieved, and she
21:44
didn't look like she regretted anything.
21:46
She was confused. She asked the detective, can I
21:49
still go to the mansion if the sacrifice isn't complete?
21:53
She was more concerned about the rules of the myth than the laws
21:58
of the state of Wisconsin. Anissa's interview was equally
22:02
jarring. She spoke about Slender Man as
22:04
if he were a neighborhood bully they were trying to appease.
22:07
She detailed their months of planning with a sense of pride
22:10
in their thoroughness. When the reality of a life
22:12
sentence or a prison cell was brought up, they both reacted as
22:16
if they were being told they were grounded.
22:18
For a week, their brains had not bridged the gap between the
22:22
digital creepypasta world and the cold, hard reality of a
22:26
cinder block interview room. The investigation quickly
22:29
shifted from who did it to what exactly are we looking at?
22:34
Because detectives realized they weren't just dealing with a
22:37
crime, they were dealing with psychological collapse, and they
22:41
felt like they were way out of their depth.
22:45
The truth had caught up to Morgan and Nisa, but they were
22:48
still miles away, lost in the forest of their own minds.
22:52
It wasn't just an arrest, it was the moment the digital monster
22:55
finally evaporated and it left 2 little girls standing in the
22:58
wreckage of their own lives they had just destroyed.
23:03
When the handcuffs clicked shut and the legal system took over,
23:07
the psychiatric community was left staring at a puzzle that
23:10
defied all traditional labels. At the center of this puzzle was
23:15
early onset schizophrenia. And while schizophrenia
23:18
typically manifests in late teen years or early 20s, Morgan
23:22
Geyser is considered to be a rare and heartbreaking
23:25
exception. Clinical evaluations following
23:28
her rest feel Clinical evaluations following her arrest
23:32
revealed that Morgan wasn't just imaginative, she was
23:35
experiencing a full scale break from reality that had likely
23:38
been going on for years. She believes she possessed mind
23:41
control abilities. She spoke to Vulcan from Star
23:44
Trek. She spoke to her favorite
23:45
characters from Harry Potter as if they were sitting in the room
23:48
with her. To Morgan, the world was a
23:50
translucent veil where fictional entities were as tangible as her
23:53
own parents. Crucially, this wasn't a choice.
23:57
It was a biological inheritance, with Morgan's father's history
24:01
of the same condition. Morgan's brain was already
24:04
primed for a distorted perception of the world by the
24:07
time she'd encountered the Slender Man mythology online.
24:11
Her mind wasn't processing things as creepy entertainment,
24:15
it processed it as data. It was a new character, someone
24:19
to add to her internal. It was a new character, someone
24:24
to add to her internal landscape, one that happened to
24:27
be much more demanding and violent than the others.
24:30
But a hallucination usually stays internal.
24:34
To turn a vision into a stabbing, you often need a
24:36
witness. And this is where the concept of
24:38
Folia Do, or the madness of two becomes the biggest part of this
24:42
case. In Folia Do, a symptomatic
24:45
person, in this case Morgan, transmits their delusional
24:48
beliefs to the non psychotic person.
24:50
But highly suggestible, that's Anissa.
24:53
Anissa never saw Slender Man, she never heard his voice.
24:57
But she was so emotionally tethered to Morgan, and so
25:00
desperate for the specialness that their friendship gave her,
25:04
that she allowed Morgan's reality to simply overwrite her
25:07
own. She was the enabler of the
25:09
delusion. She didn't just believe Morgan,
25:11
she began to fear the monster for Morgan.
25:16
They created this closed loop system together where doubt was
25:19
viewed as life threatening betrayal.
25:23
And this leads us to a relatively new and terrifying
25:26
concept in modern psychology, Internet based psychosis.
25:31
And since this case, there have been a lot of different
25:35
situations where people have become psychotic due to their
25:40
obsession with the Internet. And now with the invention of
25:43
artificial intelligence and easy to use AI like ChatGPT or
25:48
Gemini, we are now finding AI psychosis where people become so
25:53
emotionally connected to the fake personalities the AI create
25:58
for them that they can no longer distinguish between reality and
26:02
fiction. See, before the Internet, a
26:09
child like Morgan might have been isolated.
26:12
Perhaps she could have had imaginary friends that she saw
26:14
in her books or on the TV. But the Internet is different
26:18
because it provides 24/7 high definition reinforcement of
26:23
whatever it is that you happen to like.
26:26
In this case, the mythology of Slender Man.
26:28
For every doubt Anissa could have had, there were thousands
26:33
of forum posts and eyewitness videos that proved that Morgan
26:37
was right. The digital world was a
26:40
megaphone for their mental illness, validating the
26:43
delusion, providing a community of believers that made the
26:46
mansion seem like a real place they could go.
26:49
And the core of this tragedy is the intersection of mental
26:52
illness, digital influence, and isolation.
26:55
These girls didn't spend their time in supervised after school
26:58
programs or engaging in a wide variety of activities with their
27:03
peers. They were treated into the
27:05
digital. In that vacuum, Slender Man grew
27:09
from meme to God. When we asked why this happened,
27:14
the answer isn't just the Internet or mental illness.
27:17
It was the way a broken mind found a broken myth and a lonely
27:22
friend provided the hands to carry out the deed.
27:25
A tragedy of synchronization, the moment where a ghost story
27:29
finally found a host. The legal journey for Morgan and
27:33
Anissa began with a controversial decision.
27:36
Despite being only 12 years old, they were both initially charged
27:39
as adults with first degree attempted murder in the eyes of
27:43
the law. A sheer calculation of the plan.
27:45
The months they spent hunting their friend suggested a level
27:48
of maturity that the defense team spent years dismantling.
27:51
When the conversation shifted towards the insanity plea, the
27:54
court had to determine if the girls truly lacked the capacity
27:57
to understand the wrongfulness of their actions.
28:00
This wasn't just about if they were crazy, it was a rigorous
28:03
multi year evaluation of these children's brain architecture.
28:08
For Morgan Geyser, the determination was almost
28:11
undeniable from a clinical standpoint.
28:12
State appointed doctors watched as she carried on conversations
28:16
in thin air in the middle of her interviews.
28:19
She was never She was not just claiming to believe in Slender
28:23
Man to avoid prison. She actively hallucinated
28:28
proxies and protectors the entire time she was in custody,
28:33
as experts argued that her brain was not capable of
28:37
distinguishing between the kitchen knife and a magical
28:41
tool. For Morgan, the defect was a
28:43
documented genetic and active psychotic break.
28:46
For Anisa Ware, the determination was more nuanced.
28:50
It's centered on that shared psychotic disorder.
28:52
The defense argued that Anisa's defect was her total
28:55
psychological immersion into Morgan's world, a state where
28:59
her survival instincts had been hijacked by a secondary
29:03
delusion. The court eventually landed on a
29:05
middle ground that satisfied neither the Lock Em Up crowd or
29:09
that they're just kids. Advocates institutionalization.
29:12
Instead of a prison cell, they were committed to the Winnebago
29:15
Mental Health Institute. And to the critics who called
29:17
this a cop out, the legal counter argument was the
29:20
duration of control in the prison system.
29:23
You have a set release date in a mental health commitment.
29:27
The state essentially owns your freedom until you can prove to a
29:30
degree of medical certainty that you are no longer a threat.
29:35
For Morgan, this has resulted in a 40 year commitment.
29:38
For Anissa, 25, they were not set free.
29:43
They were placed in a high security facility where every
29:46
hour of their day they were clinically interrogated,
29:50
sometimes by their own minds. The not guilty verdict was an
29:54
exoneration. It was a legal admission that
29:57
you cannot punish a person for a prime committed while their
30:01
brain is effectively offline. The question that haunts every
30:06
true Crime Story, can a person truly come back from the
30:09
unthinkable? In the case of the Slender Man
30:11
stabbing, the answer is currently being written in real
30:14
time and it remains one of the most polarizing debates in
30:17
Wisconsin legal history. Anissa Weir was the first to re
30:22
enter the world in September of 2021, after serving seven years
30:25
of her 25 year commitment at the Winnebago Mental Health
30:28
Institute, a judge granted her a conditional release.
30:32
Her transition was not simple. She was not allowed to just walk
30:35
out the door. It was a calculated, highly
30:37
monitored process. Under the terms of her release,
30:40
Anissa is awarded the state until she is 37 years old.
30:43
She is suspect to 24/7 GPS monitoring restricted Internet
30:47
access which is monitored by the Department of Corrections in
30:51
mandatory psychiatric treatment to the public.
30:54
The site of the then 19 year old Anissa returning to the
30:56
community she wants terrorized was a bitter pill to swallow.
31:00
They launched into a huge debate over rehabilitation versus
31:04
public safety. Supporters of the release argued
31:07
that the system had worked, that a child who was formerly broken
31:10
had been treated and was no longer a threat.
31:13
Critics, however, pointed to the 19 scars on Peyton's body as
31:16
proof that some lines once crossed should not lead back to
31:20
freedom. Morgan, on the other hand, it's
31:25
been a lot more turbulent because of her diagnosis of
31:29
early onset schizophrenia. Her commitment was sent to 40
31:32
years, effectively a life sentence in clinical settings.
31:36
While Morgan has made multiple attempts to seek a conditional
31:38
release similar to Anissa, the court has repeatedly denied her,
31:42
citing that she remains a significant risk to the public.
31:45
In one of the most jarring moments in Morgan's post
31:47
conviction history in two in 2022, a detail many casual
31:53
followers of the case might not know, she had a moment of
31:57
stability in which she used that moment to escape from the
32:02
Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
32:05
It wasn't a high speed case, nothing violent happened.
32:09
It was desperate. She was confused, a lapse in
32:13
security. Obviously she was found
32:15
relatively quickly, brought back without incident, but the escape
32:18
served as a chilling reminder to the community that there is a
32:21
thin line between patient and prisoner, and it's easily
32:24
blurred. For the prosecution, this event
32:26
solidified the argument that Morgan's grip on reality is
32:30
still quite fragile and she still needs to be committed for
32:35
public safety reasons. The controversy lies in the
32:40
nature of not guilty by reason of insanity.
32:42
In Wisconsin, if a person is found to be no longer insane,
32:45
the state technically loses its right to hold them in the mental
32:47
institution. This creates a paradox.
32:50
If the doctors do their job and cure the patient, the patient is
32:53
legally entitled to go home, even if the crime they committed
32:56
was attempted murder. This is why many true crime fans
32:59
feel the system is flawed. It feels like a loophole where
33:02
the punishment is tied to a diagnosis rather than to the
33:04
deed itself. Not every state follows this.
33:07
In California, there have been cases where they have committed
33:11
someone, that person's been cured, and then they immediately
33:16
filed charges and put that person on the stand to defend
33:20
themselves. Not everybody agrees that that's
33:22
fair, either. Now, while the legal battles of
33:27
her attackers play out in the news, Peyton Bella Leutner has
33:30
been busy building a life defined by more than just those
33:33
few minutes in the woods. For years, she remained silent,
33:36
choosing to heal away from the cameras.
33:38
And then, in 2019, she finally stepped into the light, and what
33:41
the world saw was a master class in resilience.
33:44
Peyton didn't just survive, she thrived.
33:47
Graduated high school with honors.
33:49
Moved on to college. Pursue a degree with the same
33:51
quiet determination that saved her life.
33:55
Peyton has been incredibly candid about the physical and
33:57
emotional scars that she still carries.
34:00
She still has the 19 marks on her body, and she has spoken
34:03
about the difficulty of trusting people.
34:05
But she has also stated that she does not want to live her life
34:08
in fear or anger. She has a job, a social life,
34:11
and a future that she fought for with every ounce of her being.
34:15
When we talked about when we talk about what happens when the
34:18
truth catches up, we usually focus on the killers.
34:21
But in this case, the most powerful truth is Peyton's.
34:25
She is the living proof that a victim doesn't have to stay a
34:28
victim. She took a story that was meant
34:30
to end in a sacrifice, and she turned it into a story of her
34:32
own survival. As Morgan and Anissa navigate
34:35
their continually restricted lives, Peyton is out in the
34:39
world living the life they tried to take from her.
34:41
And in the end, that's the ultimate form of justice.
34:47
In the wake of the 2014 stabbing, though, the world
34:49
didn't just react to this crime, it reacted to a ghost.
34:52
As headlines blare the name Slender Man on every major news
34:56
network, a wave of media driven moral panic swept through the
34:59
living rooms across our country. For many older listeners, this
35:02
might feel familiar, like the 2000 Tens version of the Satanic
35:06
Panic, or the 1980s, or the outcry against heavy metal and
35:10
violent video games in the 90's. The narrative was simple.
35:13
The Internet was its predator, and creepypasta was the Lord.
35:17
School districts began blocking horror sites.
35:19
Parents were urged to scrub their children's tablets.
35:22
Some even called for the total censorship of digital folklore.
35:25
But as the dust settled, it became clear that banning a
35:27
fictional tall man in a suit wasn't the solution.
35:30
It was a distraction. The Slender Man didn't stab
35:33
Peyton. 2 profoundly struggling children did it.
35:37
The case forced a much needed, thoughtful and painful
35:40
conversation about Internet exposure and using the Internet
35:44
as a digital babysitter. We began to realize that the gap
35:48
wasn't just in what kids were watching, but in how they
35:50
processed it. For the I Gen. and the Gen.
35:53
alpha, the line between the physical and digital worlds is
35:56
very porous. Without parental mediation or
35:59
just teaching your kid digital literacy, A myth feels as heavy
36:03
as a mountain. More importantly, this tragedy
36:06
exposed the massive gaps in mental health intervention.
36:09
We have to ask, how did a child with direct genetic links to
36:13
schizophrenia, who had been hallucinating since she was a
36:17
toddler, slip through the cracks of a modern school system?
36:21
The focus on the spooky Internet story allowed us to ignore the
36:24
much harder reality. Our system for identifying and
36:27
treating early childhood psychosis are, in many ways
36:31
woefully inadequate. To my older listeners, I want to
36:35
emphasize this. Moral panic is a reactionary
36:38
shield. It isn't a solution.
36:41
Hiding the scary story won't fix the broken mind or the lonely
36:44
heart. The broader impact of this case
36:46
isn't that the Internet is evil, it's that digital isolation acts
36:50
as an incubator for untreated mental illness.
36:53
The solution isn't better firewalls, it's keeping better
36:56
eyes on our children, better conversations about what they
36:59
see online and what they're involved in, and a much more
37:03
aggressive approach to mental health care before a delusion
37:06
turns into a plan. We spend so much time teaching
37:11
our children how to navigate the physical world, how to cross the
37:14
street, how to stay away from strangers in a park, how to find
37:17
your way home. But in the case of Slender Man,
37:19
it reminds us that there is another world entirely. 1
37:22
without physical boundaries or clear cut rules.
37:25
Was this preventable? It's the question that still
37:27
haunts the quiet streets of Waukesha.
37:30
Maybe the answer lies in the gaps that we failed to bridge,
37:32
the space between a father's clinical history and a
37:34
daughter's vivid imagination, or the exact moment a digital myth
37:37
becomes a life or death command. As Morgan and Anissa continue
37:41
their journey through the legal system and toward a world even
37:44
more digital than the one they left in 2014, we're left to
37:47
wonder. Have we learned how to look into
37:49
the shadows? We tell our children monsters
37:52
aren't real. But perhaps the real danger
37:54
isn't the monster under your bed, or even the one on the
37:56
screen. It's the belief that if we just
37:58
ignore the darkness for long enough, the lights can stay on
38:01
forever. Sometimes the truth doesn't just
38:04
come out though, it catches up. I'm Brittany Ransom and this has
38:08
been wine killers get caught. Thank you for joining me for
38:11
episode 96. If you found today's deep dive
38:13
into the Slender Man case insightful, please leave a
38:15
review. Please subscribe.
38:17
You can always find more information about all the
38:19
different cases that I am covering on TikTok.
38:22
And I will see you next time as we continue our countdown to our
38:25
milestone 100th episode in my brand new studio.
38:29
Until then, keep an eye on the shadows and remember the truth
38:34
always leaves a trail.