Both girls were charged Monday with first-degree attempted homicide, face up to 60 years in prison if convicted of the attack in a Waukesha, Wisconsic, park according to prosecutors. Bail was set for each in the amount of $500,000, Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel said.
According to the criminal complaint, one of the two girls told a detective they were trying to become “proxies” of a mythological demon like a character called Slender Man, which they learned about on creepypasta.wikia.com. Slender Man is a fictional character and Internet meme that often appears in horror stories, videos and images. One of the suspects told police that Slender Man is the site’s suppose leader, and to climb into his realm, a user must kill someone.
Both girls attended the same middle school as the victim. The slaughter of their friend, who they baited after a sleepover, had been planned since February, one girl told a detective. They first thought to kill the victim by placing duct tape over her mouth while she was sleeping and stabbing her in the neck, the complaint says. Next, the plan was to kill her in a park bathroom where there was a floor drain that could make cleanup easier, it continued. They decided to carry out the attack in the park, while playing hide-and-go-seek after failing to kill her the night before during a sleepover.
The game ended once they grabbed the girl, held her down and stabbed her 19 times in the arms, legs and torso. The complaint states: “As they left for the park. . . (the victim) was walking in front of them and Geyser lifted up the left side of her white jacket and displayed the knife tucked in her waistband. Weier stated she gave Geyser a look with wide eyes and, when asked what that meant Weiver stated, ‘I thought, dear god, this was really happening.”
The suspects left the girl crawl to her own rescue. A bicyclist found the wounded girl alive, lying on a sidewalk in Waukesha, Police Chief Russell Jack said. She was in stable condition at a hospital Monday. The victim was stabbed near her heart, and she was “one millimeter away from certain death,” the complaint says. When the bicyclist found her, the girl pleaded, “Please help me, I’ve been stabbed.”
Authorities searched for the two other girls, and a sheriff’s officer found them walking near interstate 94, Jack said. He declined to say whether the suspects had blood on their clothes, but added: “There was evidence that was readily apparent when the two were taken into custody.”
The evidence included a large kitchen knife inside a purse that Geyser identified as one of her mother’s old purses, according to the complaint.
On Tuesday morning, a lengthy statement was posted on www.creeppypasta.com. The statement expressed condolences for everyone involved and stressed that the site does not condone or encourage violence in any way. But it also noted that “it’s hard to justify pinning blame on an entire genre of writing.”
Both girls are due back in court on June 11 for a status conference.