- A teenager involved in the 2014 “Slender Man” stabbing will be released from a mental hospital.
- Anissa Weier, 19, has said she wants to be a productive member of society.
- Slender Man originated on internet forums dedicated to supernatural stories.
On Monday, one of two teenagers involved in a grisly 2014 stabbing incident – done on behalf of a fictional horror character known as Slender Man – is being released from a Wisconsin mental hospital.
A judge has ordered the release of 19-year-old Anissa Weier, according to court documents.
Weier pleaded guilty in 2017 to being a party to an attempted second-degree intentional homicide. A judge sentenced her to 25 years in the custody of Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services.
Weier has admitted to watching as her friend Morgan Geyser stabbed their other friend Payton Leutner 19 times after luring her to the woods. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.
Leutner survived and has since spoken out about her trauma and said she wants to study medicine. Geyser was sentenced to 40 years in a psychiatric hospital.
After the stabbing, Weier and Geyser told police they tried to appease Slender Man out of fear that he would kill their families. They said they planned to prove to Slender Man they were worthy by killing their friend, then they would go live with him in a mansion and become his “proxies.”
The character Slender Man originated on internet forums dedicated to supernatural pictures and stories. The character has been described as an abnormally tall, thin man with white skin, no facial features, and tentacles.
Last March, Weier requested that a judge release her from the mental facility, writing in a letter that she was sorry for her actions and had “gone above and beyond” to be healthy.
“I am NOT saying I am done with my treatment. I am saying that I have exhausted all the resources available to me at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute,” Weier wrote. “If I am to become a productive member of society, I need to be a part of society.”
Weier said she has participated “wholeheartedly” in her mental health treatment, has been completely transparent with her treatment team members, and has maintained “100% medication adherence.”
“I vowed after my crime that I would never become a weapon again, and I intend to keep that vow,” she wrote.
According to court documents, Weier will continue to receive psychiatric treatment after her release and be monitored with a GPS device.
NBC News reported that she’d live with her father, and the state corrections department will monitor all her internet activity.