We’ve all heard the stories where heavy metal music and violent movies are blamed for the moral degradation of today’s youth. (And yesterday’s youth and tomorrow’s youth.) But rarely does an Internet-spawned fictional monster get put in the spotlight for awful behavior. Yet that’s exactly what happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where two 12-year-old girls tried stabbing another 12-year-old to death, all in the unholy name of Slender Man, the tall and thin black-suited child abductor originally created as an Internet meme by Eric Knudsen back in 2009.
The two girls, Morgan E. Geyser and Anissa E. Weier, were charged as adults with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in Waukesha County Circuit Court. Telling police they had planned the attempted murder for months (via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Geyser and Weier pulled this heinous act off to show their dedication and worth to Slender Man. They said he was telepathic and had been watching them from afar, and they both hoped to walk to and move into his mansion, which they believed was located in northern Wisconsin’s Nicolet National Forest. Geyser even packed up supplies, including water, snacks and a picture of her parents. (I guess there was no room for crazy pills.)
Geyser invited a classmate to her birthday party on May 30, when she’d originally intended to kill the victim in bed by duct taping her mouth shut and cutting her throat open. However, they waited until the next day, when they took the victim into a wooded area to play hide and seek. It was there they eventually knocked her down and stabbed her 19 times in the legs, arms and torso, leaving the victim to die, which probably would have happened if not for a bicyclist who found her crawling on a sidewalk, covered in blood.
While children’s identities are usually kept private in criminal cases, the fact that they were charged as adults means their names and absolute ignorance are now known to everyone. That’s their pictures up there. Seethe at them while making sure your children are smart enough to research imaginary monsters before going out into the world to do their evil bidding.
Slender Man has been attached to children’s disappearances in everything from video games to a popular web series to a truly awful indie movie. But this may be the first time he’s been connected to an actual crime. Listen to him sing about his woes in the video below.
Geyser and Weier, who both attended Horning Middle School, are each facing up to 65 years in prison, where I’m guessing they’ll meet some legitimate monsters.
