Two 12-year-old girls in Wisconsin are being charged as adults in the attempted murder of a classmate, which they claimed they were doing to show devotion to Slender Man, to prove he’s real, and so he wouldn’t kill their families. Slender Man is a fictional horror monster created by a Something Awful forums user just five years ago, when these two girls were seven years old.
If convicted, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier could be sentenced to up to 65 years in prison. If they were charged in juvenile court, they could only be held until age 25. I’ve always found it strange there isn’t any middle ground in juvenile sentencing. Charge them as a juvenile, and the sentencing lengths are extremely limited. Throw them to the adult corrections system, and you can say goodbye to any chance of getting them into a good rehabilitation program when they’re at the impressionable age when rehabilitation is much more likely to work. Although, considering the details of the crime, rehabilitating these two messes might be impossible.
Geyser and Weier had been plotting to kill a classmate for months. On May 30th, Geyser invited Weier and the victim to a sleepover. The next day, while at a park, the two girls stabbed their classmate 19 times. The Journal Sentinel (via Kotaku) lays out the entire scenario in disturbing detail.
Weier told the victim to lie down and be quiet — she would lose blood more slowly. Weier told police she gave the victim those instructions so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself, and so she would die. Weier told the victim they were going to get her help; but they never planned on actually doing so. They hoped she would die, and they would see Slender and know he existed.
The victim was able to crawl to a road, where a bicyclist found her. She is in stable condition at a Wisconsin hospital. Police found the two girls walking near I-94, with the knife still in Weier’s backpack.
The suspects believed that “Slender,” as Weier called him, lived in a mansion in the Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin. The plan was to kill the victim and walk to Slender’s mansion. After school on Friday, Weier told police, she and Geyser went to Weier’s house, where she packed a backpack with clothes, granola bars, water bottles and a picture of her mother, father and siblings. She didn’t want to forget what her family looked like after leaving for Slender’s mansion.
Everything about this story is so damn depressing. Even the confessions are terrible.
When police asked Weier if she knew what it meant to kill someone, Weier said, “I believe it’s ending a life and I regret it.” Weier also said, “The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live.” […]
At one point, when talking with police, Geyser said she was sorry. She said she had put the knife back into her bag and wiped it off on her jacket. She then told a detective, “It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse.”
Geyser said they had to do it or “he would kill our family.” […] When asked about Slender Man, Geyser said she had never met him but said he watches her and he can read minds and teleport. Geyser said what she did was “probably wrong.” [emphasis ours]
Probably wrong? Gee, ya think?
Inevitably, part of the news media will blame the game Slender, even though the whole point of the game is to avoid Slender Man, and you don’t even commit acts of violence in the game. Anything for them to distract from more serious issues, we guess.