This episode maintained content of a graphic nature, including descriptions of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.

Listener discretion is advised.

Hi.

I'm Shannon.

Hi I'm Tanya, and we are Crimes and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.

Hey Shannon, Hey Tanya, how are you?

I am doing pretty good.

How are you good?

I did want to ask you a question.

Yes, that's why I had to look it up before we started recording.

You know, there's a new Keanu Reeves movie coming out.

Have you seen the trailer for it?

It's called only going to be in theaters the weekend I guess of the seventeenth, October seventeenth, and it's called Good Fortune.

Seth Rogan's in it.

Okay, premise looks like that Keano is playing a well meaning but an ept angel named Gabriel, and he meddles in the lives of struggling gig worker and a wealthy venture capitalist.

And who's not.

Sponsored, by the way, everyone, Oh, this is not sponsored.

I wanted to see if you wanted to get tickets like you imagine, And since it's only going to be there for the weekend, and it looks so good.

Let me see if I can look it up.

But you can't put in anything, and I will go see it real same same.

I love him.

He's like just such a pure soul.

Absolutely, He's like he's everything.

He's your cool cousin, your sweet older brother, your sweet younger brother, your cool uncle son grandson.

Now that I've reached Graham status, I'm like, oh, and I think Keanu is a little bit older than me.

Yeah, he's so sweet, I know.

Anyway, I'm gonna put that on the calendar for us.

Awesome.

All right, what do you got going on?

How have you been?

Oh, I've been really fine.

I got Monday off.

I'm excited.

That is exciting.

Any kind of that is nice.

So it'll be a nice long weekend.

So you know, I don't know if I'm doing anything fun.

I know I mentioned that in our members only episode, But that's like the most exciting news I have coming off.

This October.

No, that's good.

Well, I'm bringing a good story today.

I'm gonna tell you.

I can't wait.

Do you remember the slender Man murders?

Yes?

I do.

It's been a minute and I'm going to delve into this right away, and I'm gonna set the scene.

Here we go.

It's the woods, and the woods are quiet, too quiet for a Saturday morning in late May.

And somewhere beyond the trees, the wind moves like a whisper through leaves, a faint rustle, a hint of life.

Then a sound breaks the stillness.

Shallow, breathing, wet and uneven.

It's the sound of a little girl fighting to stay alive.

When she's twelve years old.

Her name is Peyton Lutner, and she's crawling through the dirt, her hands trembling, her shirt soaked in blood.

Nineteen stab wounds decorate her body like a map of betrayal, each one carved by the hands of her two best friends.

I trusted you, she whispered, and then I hate you.

It's twenty fourteen and Wakeisha, Wisconsin.

It's a quiet suburban community where horror does not happen, not here, not among children.

But that morning, the unimaginable did.

Peyton was supposed to be dead, left in the woods like a forgotten secret, her small body hididden beneath leaves.

Her attackers, Morgan Geyser and in this a Weir, both just twelve, had already vanished walking down the highway toward what they believed was their next destination, the mansion of a mythical creature known only as slender Man.

What began as a sleepover between friends would end in blood delusion and one of the most disturbing crimes ever committed by children in American history.

Now, before that morning, nothing about these three girls seemed extraordinary.

Peyton, or Bella, as her friends called her, was bright, kind, loved animals.

She had a tender heart that believed in goodness even when it wasn't returned.

Morgan Geyser, the ringleader, was quiet, artistic and imaginative, traits that hid the darkness blooming inside her mind.

And as a weir, the new girl, awkward and lonely, was desperate for belonging.

Together, they formed a triangle of innocence that would collapse under the weight of obsession.

But to understand how this tragedy happened, you have to start where it all began.

Not in Wakesha, Wisconsin, but on the Internet.

Slenderband was never real.

He was born on a forum called Something Awful back in two thousand and nine, the brainchild of a user named Victor Surge real name Eric Knudsen with a silent k.

The contest that year challenged creators to edit normal photographs into something eerie and paranormal.

Eric's obmission was simple.

A tall, faceless man in a dark suit standing among children.

The creature had no eyes, no mouth, no expression, just a blank white face.

It was the kind of image that didn't need gore to be terrifying.

It worked its way under your skin pro decisely because it could be real, and people loved it.

Within days, other users added their own stories, photos, and supposed sightings.

Slender Man became a legend, a digital myth, spreading like wildfire across forums, blogs and YouTube creepy pasta videos.

The story was always the sting.

He stalked, abducted, and traumatized children, appearing in the woods without warning, and the more you believed in him, the more power he supposedly had over you.

For adults, it was harmless horror fiction, but for children, especially impressionable ones, it was something else entirely.

By twenty twelve, slender Man had gone viral.

He appeared in games like Slender the eight Pages, a simply yet terrifying concept where players wandered through the woods collecting pages while avoiding the faceless beings.

Kids who couldn't download the game traded rumors and YouTube clips, whispering about the monster in the woods, and that is how Morgan Geyser discovered him.

Morgan was eleven when she first stumbled across slender Man.

At first, it was innocent curiosity, just another spooky story.

But for Morgan, fiction and reality blurred quickly.

She didn't just like slender Man.

She believed in him.

She read about his supposed proxies, his powers, his home deep in Wisconsin's Nicolete National Forest, a detail that would later take on shilling significance.

Her mother, Angie, thought it was harmless.

Angie later said, I wasn't concerned when I was her age.

I was reading Stephen King.

She thought her daughter's fascination was just an overactive imagination.

What she didn't know was that Morgan's imagination wasn't just vivid, It was fractured.

When Morgan watched Bambi as a child, she didn't cry like most kids did.

She laughed, Run, Babby, Run, She'd shout.

When Bambi's mother was shot, her mother remembered sitting there in a stun silence, realizing her daughter felt nothing, no empathy, no fear, just excitement.

At the time, they didn't know what that meant.

Years later, doctors would diagnose Morgan with early onset schizophrenia, a rare, a rare, devastating mental illness she likely inherited from her father.

But at eleven, she was just a little girl who believed in monsters, and slender Man was about to become the most real thing in her world.

Then came Anisa Wire.

She was the new girl in Morgan's sixth grade class, shy and lonely and just as lost in online horror.

When she found out that Morgan believed in slender Man, it was like finding a twin flame.

The two bonded instantly, not over makeup or boys, but over a fictional murderer in the suit.

Their friendship quickly became toxic, a shared delusion that grew in the shadows of the Internet.

They spent hours reading Creepy Pasta's stories and watching slender Man videos, and the more they consumed, the more real it became.

Peyton noticed the change.

Her best friend was slipping away, talking less, laughing less, and spending all of her time with Anissa.

The warmth that once connected them was replaced with cold obsession.

Peyton didn't like slender Man.

She told Morgan that it scared her, but Morgan brushed her off, calling her weak.

That was when the kindness that made Peyton special became her downfall.

She didn't want to abandon Morgan.

She felt sorry for her, so she stayed loyal, trusting, and complete, unaware that her friend had already begun planning her death.

The planning began in December of twenty thirteen.

Morgan and Nanissa spent five months plotting the murder.

They gave it code names.

The knife was called quote unquote, cracker.

The murder itself was called itch quote unquote, So when talking in public, they'd say things like we need to bring the cracker or when are we going to itch her?

It sounds crazy, absurd, like something out of a child's imagination, but to them it was deadly serious.

Their goal to become Slender Man's proxies.

They believed if they killed someone, specifically Peyton, it would prove their loyalty and earn them a place in his mansion in the Nicolette National Forest.

They even packed for the journey, granola bars, water and close stuffed in a backpack.

They were twelve years old.

The night before the attack May thirtieth, twenty thirteen seemed like any other sleepover.

It was Morgan's twelfth birthday.

So Morgan's a Gemini.

Oh figure, I wanted to throw that out.

That tracks, Yes, all of them exactly, semini listeners.

My husband is a Gemini.

Yes, the person I love the most besides my child night.

So yes, that makes her a Gemini.

So it's Morgan's twelfth birthday.

And the girls went roller skating at Skateland, laughing, eating pizza, you know, do what kids do.

To Peyton, it was just another night with her friends.

She even brought her American Girl doll.

Adorable.

These kids are eleven.

Yes, ruscious.

Yes, I always wanted one of those.

I mean I'm too old to like have had one as a child, I think, or yes, or my parents would have never spent American Girl money.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah?

I know right, But when I had my daughter, I was hoping she'd want one.

Of course she didn't, so that is I love that you can just customize them, you know, they're wonderful dolls.

Yeah, if you can swing it.

Morgan and Nissa had originally planned to kill her that night, to tape her mouth shut as she slept and stabber in the neck, but they were too tired, so they postponed it till the next morning, and when the sun rose over Wakesha the nightmare began.

They started the day eating donuts and strawberries for breakfast.

Morgan asked her mother if they could go to the park to play.

She said, yes, of course she did.

It was a beautiful Saturday, what could possibly go wrong.

The girls walked toward David's Park, a quiet wooded area about a mile away.

Along the way, Morgan lifted her jacket to show a Nissa the knife she'd taken from her kitchen, a five inch blade.

Anissa nodded it was time.

When they reached the park, they lured Peyton into the bathroom, telling her that they wanted to play hide and seek, and once inside, Anissa tried to slam Peyton's head into the concrete wall, hoping to knock her out, but Peyton fought back, screaming she was confused.

Morgan hesitated, she couldn't do it, not yet, so they told Peyton they'd play hide and seek in the woods instead.

Peyton followed them, trusting them because that's what friends, good friends do in the woods, the trees swallowed the sunlight and the girls walked deeper until the sound of the road disappeared.

Lie down, Nissa told Peyton.

She said it was to hide from the seekers, and Peyton obeyed.

Lying on the ground, she didn't see Morgan pull the knife from her waistband Go ahead, Anissa whispered, I can't do it.

Morgan said, then I'll tell you where to start, Anissa replied.

Moments later, Morgan, I'm on top of Peyton whispered, I'm so sorry, and began stabbing nineteen times.

Two wounds hit major organs, One sliced her liver and another came within a hair's width of her heart.

Peyton screamed, begging them to stop, but they didn't, and when it was over, she gasped, I trusted you.

I hate you.

Anisad told her to lay still, that they were going to go get help, but that was a lie.

They left her there to die.

Peyton somehow didn't.

She crawled out of the woods, dragging herself across the dirt until she reached a nearby bike path, and that's where A man named Greg Steinberg found her.

It was nine fifty am.

He called nine one one immediately.

She's bleeding everywhere, he told the dispatcher.

When asked who did it, Peyton whispered, my best friend.

When first responders arrived, they thought they were looking at a murder scene.

Peyton's wounds were so deep her white shirt had turned crimson, Her hair clung to her face, and her skin was chalk pale, almost translucent.

She was in shock, barely breathing, whispering that she had been stabbed by two friends.

Even then, in agony, she refused to let them die for her mistake.

Don't blame them, she told the paramedics.

They didn't mean it, but they did.

The paramedics rushed her to pro Health Jakisha Memorial Hospital.

There, trauma surgeons performed a six hour surgery.

One stab woman would miss her heart by less than the width of a human hair.

Her doctor later said, if it had gone a fraction deeper, she wouldn't have made it.

And while Peyton was fighting for her life, Morgan and Anissa were walking.

They treked down the highway covered in dirt, their clothes smeared with blood, believing that They were on their way to slender Man's mansion, a place they thought was hidden deep within Nicolette National Forests, about three hours north.

Police found them five hours later.

They were trudging along inter State ninety four carrying a backpack filled with Granada bars, water bottles, extra clothes, and the five inch kitchen knife.

When the officers stopped them, neither girl resisted.

Morgan's first question was is she dead?

When the officer told her he didn't know, Morgan calmly said, I was just wondering.

They were both taken to the Wakesha Police Department for questioning, and what came out in those interrogation rooms would haunt even the most seasoned detectives.

Morgan sat slouched in a small chair, wearing pink leggings and a hoodie.

Her hair was tangled and her voice was quiet, almost childlike.

The detective began gently asking what happened.

Morgan shrugged.

We had to do it, She said.

Why did you have to do it?

She replied, because we had to protect our families from slender Man.

He watches you, he can read your mind.

He told us we had to prove ourselves.

She said it like she was explaining the rules of a game.

When asked how she felt during the attack, Morgan replied, it was weird.

I felt nothing.

I thought I would, but I didn't.

I felt nothing.

The detective asked how she could stab her best friend.

Morgan tilted her head and said, people who trust you become very gullible.

We led her there and tricked her, and then she giggled, and it was a sound that chills you to the core.

Innocent on the surface, but empty underneath.

Now Anissa's interrogation in the next room, Nissa broke down almost immediately.

Tears streamed down her face as she tried to explain something that made no sense.

Slender Man told us to do it.

She said, if we didn't, he would kill our families.

And she described how they believed Slenderband lived in a mansion in the woods, that after they killed Peyton, they were supposed to walk there and become his servants.

She told detectives about the code words cracker for knife, itch for killing.

They'd use them in class during lunch, whispering their plan in plain sight, and Nissa admitted she didn't stab Peyton.

That was Morgan's job, but she said that she was the one who told Morgan to start.

I said, go ballistic, go crazy at one point, and Nissa said something so bizarre that detectives later said they stopped writing for a moment.

She said, I didn't want to, but Slenderman said that he could teleport, and he watches you all the time.

You can't hide from him.

The detective asked, do you really believe he's real?

And Nissa nodded, I've seen him in my dreams.

When investigators searched Morgan's bedroom, they found notebooks filled with drawings of slender Man, tall faced, lik tentacled, alongside scribbled words he watches, I want to be like you and killed to please.

There were mutilated dolls, Internet searches for how to get away with murder and what kind of insane am I?

It was honestly enough to chill any parents alive?

Yeah, serious, Tully, Draja dropping.

Meanwhile, Peyton survived.

When she woke up after surgery, her first question to police was did they catch them?

She couldn't talk, so she wrote Morgan and Annissa's name on the whiteboard.

Doctors called her recovery a miracle.

Her mother described her as the bravest kid I've ever seen, but the physical wounds were nothing compared to the emotional ones.

She had nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks for years, as you can imagine, oh wat For months, she slept with scissors under her pillow.

She couldn't walk alone, She couldn't trust anyone.

Her mother said she lost more than blood that day, she lost her innocence.

Both Morgan and Anissa were charged as adults with first degree intentional homicide.

The decision shocked many.

They were twelve, They couldn't drive, couldn't vote, but under Wisconsin law, attempted murder automatically triggers adult court.

Their mugshots look like yearbook photos, pigtails, baby fat, vacant eyes.

Neither seemed to understand the gravity of what they've done.

The trials the legal process dragged on for years.

Morgan was eventually diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia, the same illness her father suffered from.

Experts testified she heard voices, saw hallucination, saw hallucinations, and truly believed slender Man was real.

Anissa was diagnosed with delusional disorder, and while she didn't suffer hallucinations, she was so psychologically dependent on Morgan that she adopted her beliefs entirely.

Both girls were found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in twenty seventeen Morgan.

In twenty seventeen, Morgan was sentenced to up to forty years in a mental health facility, the Winnebagel the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Annisa received twenty five years, with a minimum of three before possible release.

During sentencing, Peyton's mother spoke through tears.

Our daughter slept with scissors for years.

She looks over her shoulder.

What they what they did, can't be undone.

Morgan's mother, Angie, wept two.

I love my daughter, but I am so sorry, she said, for Peyton, for everyone in the aftermath.

Anisaware was released in twenty twenty one under strict supervision.

Her condition includes GPS tracking therapy and no contact with Morgan or Peyton.

Morgan remains institutionalized though her attorney.

Though her attorneys continue to petition for periodic reviews.

Both now live as adults, young women shaped by an act so horrifying it nearly defies belief.

Peyton, on the other hand, survived not only the knife but the trauma.

In a two thousand and nineteen interview, she said, I still sleep with my door locked, but I'm stronger now.

What happened to me made me who I am by twenty twenty.

By twenty twenty, she was a senior in high school, bright grounded, determined to go into medicine.

She said the attack inspired her to help others survive the impossible, and her words were simple but powerful.

I'll forgive them, but I'll never forget.

The slender Man stabbing wasn't just a cry, it was a mirror.

It showed how imagination, when mixed with mental illness and isolation, can become deadly.

It exposed the dark side of internet mythology, how something created for entertainment could spiral into obsession, delusion, and violence.

But at the center of it all is one truth.

A twelve year old girl crawled out of the woods that day and lived, and that survival, as brutal as it came, is what defines this story.

Wow.

Incredible, Yeah, that story was I remember when this happened because I believe sod Or your daughter around the same age as these girls.

Yes, and I know my daughter knew who Slenderman was.

Did yours.

No, she no, Yeah, so I know, like I remember hearing the creepy pasta stuff and whatever, but yeah, that's crazy.

I didn't know all the details about it.

So Anissa got out.

Yeah, she was released in like under very strict supervision with her, you know, like the mental to just just totally believe what someone else believes in that delusional and now their thoughts become your thoughts.

Right, that's really horrible.

Yes, when the originating thoughts are so toxic, it's so self destructive.

Yes, yeah, very easy.

You're only gonna, you know, destroy yourselves.

It was just incredible the early onsets because Sophrana frenia.

I don't know why I struggle with that word.

Okay, schizophrenia, you know, and to be I've really never heard of somebody who has been found ments.

I don't really think of a can't think of anything where it pops out of my head.

It's like, oh, they're institutionalized.

Oh who is it who attempted Reagan?

Oh yeah, Hinkley, Hinkley.

Is he still in?

I think he might be out?

I think yeah, I think they've let him out in recent years.

He must be under supervis I can't imagine someonere like that, living alone by himself.

Right, right.

No, I think we did one other story a really long time ago, and I remember that person, the perpetrator was hospitalized you know, okay, due to mental illness.

But you're right, we've done some We've done some crazy ass stories, like the most insane, disgusting, horrendous stories, and most of them are not found you know, mentally insane.

Oh yeah, they're all yeah, they're all found pretty much competent.

I mean, because it's a defense.

I think they get to use the lot.

But you know how hard it is to prove that someone doesn't understand the gravity of what they're doing when they're doing it.

Like, to me, that's almost that's truly.

Yeah, yeah, that's trying to prove like you know, there's a Santa Claus or something to me, like like the trying to prove it is really difficult.

The burden is so high to try and prove it.

It's and that's why.

And it seems like courts will wait, you know what I'm saying, like, oh, she's not competent to stand trial, and then a month later he's competent.

He's competent.

Yeah, exactly, like, okay, let's get let's get some more evaluation done until one says he's he's not he's competent, right, yeah, they wait, Wow, I hope that Morgan is getting some.

Whatever hell there is for that.

Yes, anfe place is safe, but an affects so many lives.

Her mom, angie, she's devastated.

I can Yeah, your own child does something awful, and there's just like that mother love, but then there's mother love for the people that they've hurt, so right, Yeah.

And I'm sure her mother thinks like, oh, you know, maybe if I would have, you know, saw the signs to me, that's what I would think, right that if my child has early on set schizophrenia, you know, oh maybe I should have seen the signs there, like the Bambi story, right, But you kind of file that away like huh, yeah, you think maybe your kid is like a weird kid or something, right, you just like you're average a weird kid.

But yeah, wow.

You know what and it's not even like exactly there's nothing you don't know this is coming.

I know, like growing up with my mom, like she would use the lay with I love her, but my gud when I come home from school and all of my drawers in my closet has been flipped ye, like it's a like a prison.

And my mom's like, oh, you didn't put your your your shirts away nicely, so now you can put everything away.

No, you were going through my shit.

Yeah, so you would have found my mutilated dollas and my because that woman would go through everything, as you know moms canon do, right, But so I couldn't keep any I couldn't keep any drawings.

My god.

She found my diary when I was yeah, I think I was about eleven twelve, and I had started using saucy spicy words like you know, Derek's a dick, and actually writing out the word dick seemed very woot ass all.

And my mom found it and she's all like, oh, deck's a deck, And I thought, I'm never writing anything down again.

I just recently started journaling, so you know, it takes about forty five years.

I know.

I remember I got I got the worst banking of my life, well, one of the worst bankings of my life.

I used to go to Sunday school and I was probably like nine, and the Sunday school bus would come pick me up like my parents wouldn't go to school with like go to church with me.

And it was this church that was crossed the highway and the Sunday school bus would come pick me up.

I would have to stay for the sermon and then it would drop me back off at home.

Okay, great, Well one day I brought like a cousin with me, and you know, the sermons are boring.

No nine year old wants to sit through whatever they were talking about, so he so I had a little purse and I would have like connect the dots or whatever little booklets you know of games.

Well, we started thinking up every swear word we could think of church, and I left it in my purse apparently, and when I came home from school when my parents found it, my dad had it taped on a ping pong paddle and I got my ass when that ping pong pand ping pong paddle.

And as a classic boomer move, they got to set the fear of God, yeah, you know.

And I don't remember like what they said, but I remember like, oh, oh, you're making.

Like, oh, is this what you're what we're sending you a church for?

No, you're sending me to church, don't you dare make it seem like it's a blessing.

You're sending me to church.

You want me out of your hair.

This is classic Boomer guarantee.

Send you on a butt.

I love it that you come home.

And Tanya.

Let me tell you guys, she's like the sweetest kid.

He's like the best daughter you could possibly ask for, wonderful student.

Give her of the community volunteerism at nine years old?

At nine years old.

Yes, I got my ass beat.

That is so and it's not funny.

It's only funny because we're gen X.

I would never be like what they do to you.

I never beat my child.

Yeah.

I don't even think she ever got spanked once.

So I mean, you know, I'm not advocating beating your kid.

No, this is you know, yeah, gen X, we all got our.

Yeah for sure.

I mean, my goodness, that was the worst of the treatment.

I mean, yes, But what a difference between these girls and the access to just unable to decipher realism from fantasy?

Right?

Actually, oh, just craziness, so so much Shannon for that.

Before we go, if everyone could hit the subscriber follow button on whatever app you're listening to, please visit our website if you want to find out more, we really need to update that.

It's Crimes Andconsequences dot com.

Also, if you'd like to join our Patreon, it's patreon dot com slash TNT Crimes.

We can get extra episodes that we do not release to the public.

You can go to Patreon, or you can subscribe an Apple podcast apps.

Yes, because the real monsters, they don't live in the woods, They live in the stories that we tell ourselves absol to sleep at night.

So yes, be a joy to have you on this journey with us, because we were just looking up crime Con for next year.

And it looks like we're gonna we're gonna try and plan to go to crime Con when it's in the Vegas babe.

Yes, and I've never been on fifty five, never been to Vegas.

You guys, you got to show me a good time when we're out here.

I know tyng is gonna know yeah, but I want to Vegas a bunch of times.

But when we went to crime Con it was in Vegas, so I uh, it'll be a great time.

It is.

We'll have to plan for it, all right, you guys.

Thank you everyone again and love you Shamma, I'll see you next time.

Love your Chica till we meet again.

Ay bye.