By Kristina Irwin
So what is normal?
Is something real just because you read it or heard from a friend?
Is there such a thing as a shared psychosis?
Recently, I received a message from documentarian Josh Zeman about a podcast that he was launching that he thought I would be interested in, since I previously have written favorably about my first introduction to his work. Killer Legends features the connection between heinous crimes and the horror movies that they inspired.
Through Killer Legends, I came to Cropsey, and later to Sons of Sam, based on Maury Terry’s book, “The Ultimate Evil.” While I have great respect for his work and his ability to find connections to crimes that history has long since forgotten, the two part episode on the Slender Man Stabbing struck a chord with me.
It was not a problem with Zeman’s work, but with the author, Kathleen Hale. I do not debate her dedication to the case or her research, but she struck me as someone who wanted to help the attackers play the role of victim themselves, with potentially no inclination or detailed interaction with many people who suffer mental illness. Especially those with such disorders as the child, now adult in question.
In 2014, Anissa E. Weier and Morgan E. Geyser became obsessed with the website, CreepyPasta with a particular obsession with the character, Slender Man. They had another close friend, Payton Isabella Leutner, that everyone affectionately called, “Bella.” Morgan and Bella had known each other since kindergarten but had only been best friends by the time they became friends with Anissa. Bella had no known interest in the Creepy Pasta site, but the site is what made the other two girls become friends. They began to be drawn into this world of Slender Man and felt that if they did his bidding they could join him as servants.
It is believed that the girls felt that Slender Man was out to kill their families and if they did not kill someone to regain or earn his approval then he would slaughter them all. After several months of plans, mostly created by Weier, they decided that the best time to do it would be at Geyser’s birthday sleepover on May 30. In the HBO documentary, Geyser kept trying to put it off, however, it was later revealed that while Weier slammed her head into a wall, the most brutal attack, the most bitter betrayal, came from Geyser herself. As Weier encouraged and cheered her on to be more violent, Geyser would ultimately stab Leutner, 19 times, one strike a single centimeter from a major artery. On May 31, 2014 the three girls would end up in the woods near a park to stab their alleged friend. Pictures from the night before, showed three happy, smiling girls at a skating rink, but Leutner would be slightly off to herself while the others were huddled close together.
Geyser would be diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia while both girls seemed to be in a detached state in which they were merely curious as to whether she had survived or not. Not in a concerned way and only Weier seemed to show any emotion at all as she would wipe her eyes as if she had tears. While she never actually used the knife, she did however help plan, struck an initial blow, and was an avid cheerleader to the attack. One girl wanted to be a servant and the other claimed to simply want to prove he was real. There is some discussion and the deduction of the courts was that Geyser was able to somehow share her delusions with Weier.
1. If Geyser was the one with the diagnosis that was entered into court and used as Hale’s scapegoat for the crime, why was it Weier who confessed, and Geyser corroborated that Weier was the instigator and mastermind?
2. Does their age matter when their crime was so violent and the girls are fully aware of the crime?
3. Due to their age, why was no child advocate present before their confessions were made?
The answer to question three is a little easier to answer as one of the girls was quick to tell the officer what they had done and proudly showed off her blood covered shirt. They were under the impression that if they were caught that they could face the possibility of execution, thereby proving that they understood the consequences of their crime. However, the law of Wisconsin, states that a child as young as ten can be charged as an adult based on the crime that they commit.
As the mother of a child who has mental health issues, I know that both Mississippi and Louisiana have similar laws. My oldest was arrested for assault at the age of ten.
These girls, however, had attorneys who presented an affirmative defense of Not Guilty by reason of mental defect or disease, using the French term, folie a deux, meaning a disorder shared by two. The parents seemed surprised by the reality because they did not realize that the friendship was becoming toxic or that either child had a mental illness prior to this. Which is understandable as schizophrenia starts showing signs around puberty.
However, signs of sociopathy can begin making appearances much earlier, despite most mental health officials being cautious of labeling a child with the disorder prior to their brains becoming fully developed. My son’s doctor had a patient that started showing signs as young as three, with my son’s history showing signs at the age of five.
While I have, admittedly, not read her book, after her interview with Zeman, I am not sure that I want to. She had interviewed the families and Geyser herself, but admitted that she had not spoken much with the victim or her family. She was actively advocating that Geyser and Weier were just children who deserved to be treated like children, blaming first the stories, the diagnosis, and the State of Wisconsin for being so harsh with them. She also falsely claimed that properly medicated people with schizophrenia are not likely to harm people. The catch in this sentence first off, is properly. Outside of a facility of some sort, there is no guarantee that they will take their medication, and in my experience with a former co-worker with the disorder, who does properly medicate, he still was prone to delusions and violent inclinations.
As a Criminology graduate student I have studied many serial killers, adults, who are fully aware that they do not function as a normal member of society would be expected to behave. Ted Bundy, one of the most famous, has also stated this, and worked with authorities to better understand the dynamics of why someone is inclined to commit murder. He, like John Wayne Gacy, and Dennis Rader functioned quite well in society, with the ability to hide what they were for sometime. In Rader’s case, he was able to function in civil government and as a church leader for decades before he, as BTK, began to kill again.
The problem with this case, stems first from the idea that Hale, who was previously a novelist prior to researching this case is coming at this as a mother trying to protect children without having to deal with the fall out of having a child with a mental disorder or seeing the gaping chasms between a child with normal mental development and one who had mental health issues. The mental processes and emotional maturity is off in these cases. My youngest, at five, could understand fact from reality. An example, not all chocolate in the Adventure Time commercial was chocolate milk. While my oldest would swear to his little brother, you can still drink it, it’s just chocolate milk.
Hale proclaims that neither girl is a danger now that they are adults and separate. Geyser taking her medication would never hurt anyone and claims that she is no longer a danger to anyone. She also claimed that doctors claimed that she should go free, she was able to leave, and it was simply the prosecution trying to undermine a retiring judge to manipulate the system, and keep a ‘girl’ locked up for the rest of her life. However, People Magazine would discover that in 2022 two court appointed psychologists performed an evaluation on Geyser to determine whether or not she should be released. Both said no, with one admitting that Geyser claimed to have faked symptoms to avoid punishment and to avoid alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her father.
She would be released and despite Hale’s adamant claims that she was not a danger to society, that she was repentant, and wanted a normal life, and would not be a danger to anyone, she fooled everyone. Where Weier was restricted to only be able to use the internet at her father’s home with authorities monitoring her activity, Geyser did not seem to have such restrictions. Upon her release to a halfway house in January, she used the internet, seemingly without supervision. Why do I say seemingly because as of November she had met and carried on a relationship with someone who shared her love of violence and death. She would cut off her ankle monitor and escape her halfway house to flee the state with the man she met on the internet. She was recognized in Illinois within twenty-four hours and captured.
Something to consider that now both are well into their early twenties are whether or not they are both sociopaths. The word gets tossed around a lot especially in criminal justice, but the way they acted in the police interrogation interviews and Geyser announcing to the officer what they had tried to do, shows little remorse for their actions. As they are both 23 years old, their brains are fully developed, especially in the frontal lobe that controls impulse control. Geyser escaping her halfway house shows that she has little regard or interest in finishing her sentence to have a normal life. True, she has spent considerable time in a mental health facility as part of the sentencing for the crime, but is she truly reformed? Schizophrenia cannot be cured, but it can be treated, if and only if, the adult is willing to take their medication, and continue with therapy. Her mother seems willing to help her and ensure that she takes her medication but is Morgan Geyser? This seems doubtful.
As for Hale’s claim that once medicated she serves little to no danger to the public, you have a writer’s word for a writer’s word, except in my background I was taught to have a source to my source, and backups for both. I may just be a Criminology Graduate student and not a best selling author, but I reached out to someone who is an esteemed professional in my field. Whenever I have a theory, I ask questions to those with more experience than me. In this case, I reached out to Dr. Scott Bonn, a Criminologist, who is a contributor to Psychology Today, and has interviewed David Berkowitz extensively. In regards to Hale’s claims I wrote to him, via X, “An author with a true crime book stated it was not likely someone with schizophrenia would be violent, while making excuses for a diagnosed schizophrenic who had stabbed someone 19 times. Is this true?”
He responded fairly quickly for being on tour for his latest book, “Someone who has schizophrenia is at least five times more likely to commit murder than the average person and ten times more likely to be aggressive or violent generally.”
Ironically, the case is fascinating to me because I have seen the dynamic of a child who grows through the various stages of psychosis before physical maturity allows doctors and authorities to provide the needed services to help regulate them. My oldest I would never allow him to watch anything that had even the suggestion of violence, while his younger brother had a little more leeway. It was 2018-2019 when the youngest introduced me to Creepy Pasta. His favorite character was Jeff the Killer. He was slightly older than Geyser and Weier and offered me an interesting theory that came from our shared interest in the paranormal. He offered the idea that was flouted in an episode of the television show, Supernatural. If someone believes in something strongly can they convince themselves it’s real? Supernatural presented the idea of something demonic somewhere in between the paranormal myth of The Rake meets Slender Man. An episode dedicated to people posting online about a similar figure that they believed in and conjured into life.
Zeman would admit that someone would bring in a religious demonologist into the case as a part of the defense, I would assume. Someone he had interviewed for his Sons of Sam documentary. However, this did not feature any elements that would contribute to this line of thinking as Zeman would point out. Satanism was present in the Son of Sam documentary but there was no known correlation in the Slender Man stabbing other than the idea of a mythical being granting people access to an alternate reality for shedding blood.
https://6abc.com/post/slender-man-stabber-recaptured-timeline-original-case-morgan-geysers-disappearance-return-custody/18207511/
https://people.com/slender-man-stabbing-where-are-anissa-weier-and-morgan-geyser-now-11855565
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/wisconsin-woman-stabbed-classmate-slender-man-extradition-chicago/
This essay is reproduced as Kristina Irwin wrote it. Proper names have been corrected to their documented spellings and nothing else has been altered: Morgan Geyser (given as Geyer throughout), Payton Leutner (Leuther), Dennis Rader (Raider), and Maury Terry, whose book is The Ultimate Evil rather than Sons of Sam, which is the title of Zeman’s documentary adapted from it. “A major arterial artery” has been shortened to “a major artery”.
Two points of record. Both Geyser and Weier were found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and committed to state mental health care rather than convicted; the essay’s references to their “sentence” should be read in that light. Geyser was conditionally released to a group home in January 2025, absconded in November 2025 and was recaptured in Illinois, as the essay describes. The statistics on schizophrenia and violence attributed to Dr Scott Bonn are the author’s own correspondence with him and are reproduced as she reports them; the relationship between schizophrenia and violence is contested in the research literature, and the largest increases in risk are associated with untreated illness and substance use rather than the diagnosis alone.