Jury Accepts Anissa Weier’s Insanity Plea In ‘Slender Man’ Stabbing

Fifteen-year-old Anissa Weier, one of the two girls charged in the 2014 “Slender Man” stabbings, will be placed in a mental institution until at least 2020 after a Wisconsin jury agreed that she wasn’t criminally responsible due to mental illness.

The verdict was reached late Friday night after 10 of the 12 jurors agreed that Weier was suffering from a mental disorder the day she and Morgan Geyser attempted to fatally stab a classmate, the Journal Sentinel reported.

All three girls were 12 at the time of the incident. Geyser stabbed the victim 19 times before she and Weier left her to die as part of a plot to become proxies of the fictional Internet character Slender Man. The victim miraculously survived.

Weier pleaded guilty in August to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, but claimed she wasn’t responsible for her actions because she was mentally ill.

If her plea had been rejected by the jury, a sentence of 10 years in prison and an additional 10 years of extended supervision would have been recommended by the prosecutors.

Weier’s attorney Maura McMahon maintains that justice would still be achieved by placing Weier in a secure mental hospital, where she belongs.

“There’s no walking away for Anissa, no loophole,” McMahon said. “There’ve been consequences for three years, and it will continue one way or the other.”

Weier claimed she had second thoughts when she and Geyser began their 300-mile walk to Slender Man’s supposed mansion in Nicolet National Forest. She was encouraged to continue by Geyser who claimed she’d made a deal with Slender Man that would result in the deaths of their parents if the girls didn’t join him.

Deputy District Attorney Ted Szczupakiewicz argued that the murder had nothing to do with the potential loss of the girls’ families. Szczupakiewicz believes that Weier followed through with the murder plot to avoid losing her friendship with Geyser.

“It was a choice she needed to be held criminally responsible for,” he said.

Morgan Geyser was diagnosed with early stages of schizophrenia and committed to a state mental hospital. Her trial will begin October 16.