Girl in Slender Man stabbing is given maximum penalty

Associated Press

WAUKESHA, Wis.

A Wisconsin girl who stabbed a classmate to curry favor with the fictional horror character Slender Man will be committed to a mental hospital for 40 years, a judge ordered Thursday, explaining his decision as “an issue of community protection.”

Judge Michael Bohren granted the maximum penalty that prosecutors had sought and discounted Morgan Geyser’s youth – she was just 12 – at the time of the attack in 2014.

“What we can’t forget is this was an attempted murder,” Bohren said.

Earlier, he heard from four doctors who talked about how Geyser is making progress with her mental illness, to various degrees. But Bohren called the teenager “a fragile person” whose long history suffering from delusions make her a risk to hurt herself and others.

Geyser, now 15, spoke briefly before she was sentenced, breaking down in tears as she apologized to the girl she stabbed, Payton Leutner.

Geyser and another girl, Anissa Weier, admitted that they lured Leutner into some woods near a suburban Milwaukee park.

Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on, according to investigators. They left Leutner for dead but she crawled out of the woods and got help from a passing bicyclist.

All three girls were 12 at the time.

Weier was sentenced to 25 years in a mental hospital in December.