A woman involved in the Slender Man stabbing is requesting conditional release. Here’s what to know. – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Buy Photo

Anissa Weier, seen here with her attorney Joseph Smith Jr. during a hearing in 2017, is petitioning a judge to be conditionally released from a state mental health facility. She will appear before Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren on Wednesday, March 10.(Photo: C.T. Kruger / Now News Group)

One of the women involved in the Slender Man stabbing will soon appear before the Waukesha County Circuit Court judge who sentenced her to 25 years in a state mental facility to request her release.

Anissa Weier, now 19 years old, has spent the last 3 years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute after a jury found her not criminally responsible due to a mental disease in the stabbing that nearly killed a classmate in a sensationalized crime that gained worldwide coverage.

Weier was 12 when she and Morgan Geyser lured Payton Leutner into the woods, stabbed her 19 times and told police they did so to appease a fictional internet horror character named Slender Man.

Weier received the maximum sentence in December 2017 after more than three years of mental evaluations, failed attempts to get the case moved to juvenile court and after she eventuallypleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, a lesser offense than she was originally charged.

TIMELINE: How the Waukesha Slender Man stabbing case played out over the years

Now, on March 10, Weier is seeking her conditional release into the community.

Here are 10 answers to questions about what we know ahead of the in-person hearing at the Waukesha County Courthouse.

According to court documents and previous testimony, Weier plotted for months with Geyser when they were in sixth gradeto kill Leutner after becoming enthralled withSlender Man through the Creepypasta Wiki website.Weier and Geyser said in order to become proxies of Slender Man they believed they had to kill someone or face retribution. They would execute theiract during Geyser's 12th birthday party on May 31, 2014.

Weier told police they planned on stabbing Leutner in a park bathroom but that plan fell through. They then ventured into the woods for a game of hide-and-seek at Weier's suggestion. The two would then pin Leutner down. Weier had the knife, but she gave it to Geyser and issued instructions for Geyser to stab Leutner."Go ballistic, go crazy," she told Geyser.

Weier and Geyser left Leutner to die. Weier said she told Leutner to be quiet so she wouldn't draw attention to herself. A passing bicyclist found Leutner and she was rushed into emergency surgery.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren will determine whether Anissa Weier still poses "a significant risk" of bodily harm to herself or others or ofseriously damagingproperty if conditionally released.(Photo: Michael Sears / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren has presided over the case since the beginning. He has since moved away from the criminal division but has stayed with Weier's and Geyser's cases.

Based on Wisconsin Department of Health Services' conditional release program, Bohren will consider whether Weier poses a danger.

If Bohren finds "clear and convincing evidence" that Weier poses "a significant risk" of bodily harm to herself or others or ofseriously damagingproperty if conditionally released, he would deny her request.

During the early parts of the case, most notably when the girls were attempting to get their cases transferred out of adult court, Bohren maintained that "longer-term control" over Geyser and Weier was "necessary" to ensure protection to the public.

If they were tried in juvenile court, they would have beenincarcerated for three years and had community supervision with treatment until they were 18. In adult court, they faced the possibility of decades in prison. Since Weier and Geyser were initially charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide, they were automatically tried as adults.

At Weier's sentencing hearing in December 2017, Bohren said that although he sawWeier as remorseful and mature, a report of Weier talking about making aOuija board at the West Bend Juvenile Detention Center and of it unleashing spirits was "startling."

"It was a planned murderby kids," Bohren said. "We can't forget the goal was to kill."

"Anissa could not conform her conduct to the requirements of the law," Melissa Westendorf, a forensic psychologist, tells jurors as she testified for the defense during the trial of Anissa Weier in Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2017.(Photo: Rick Wood / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

During the conditional release hearing, Bohren will listen to medical professionals who evaluated Weier in recent months.

Weier'sdad said he didn't see any signs of mental illness leading up to the stabbing.

But psychologists saidWeier suffered from a shared delusional disorder due to Geyser's undiagnosed schizophrenia, preventing Weier from conforming her conduct to the law.

Michael Caldwell, a staff psychologist at Mendota Mental Health Institute, believedWeier also suffered from persistent depressive disorder and schizotypy, a condition along the schizophrenia spectrum.

RELATED: What the Lifetime movie 'Terror in the Woods' changed and didn't change about Waukesha Slender Man stabbing

Psychologist MelissaWestendorf said Geyser's medical condition, along with her own belief in Slender Man, created a "perfect storm" of events.

Westendorf was again assigned to evaluate Weier ahead of her conditional release hearing, along with psychiatristRobertRawski and forensic psychologist DeborahCollins.

Weier will return to a secure mental health facility, likely at Winnebago. Weier can petition every six months for her conditional release.

Weier would be assigned case managers that would provide services to her to become "successful and productive" in society, according to DHS' conditional release program.

Bohren would set terms of Weier's conditional release, but she would be monitored until she is 37 years old, the length of her commitment (she was credited with the 3 years she served at the West Bend jail).If she would violate terms, her conditional release could be revoked.

As part of her plea with the state in 2017, she agreed that shewouldn't request her release forat least three years.

The state's conditional release program is meant toprovidesupport to people living with a mental illness who have committed a crime. Most of these people, like Weier,have committed a felony, DHS said.

In her petition to the court late last year, Weier said she "would not pose a significant risk of bodily harm to self or others or cause serious property damage, if released under specific conditions."

Payton Leutner, left, is interviewed by ABC's David Muir for the news program, "20/20," in 2019 about the Slender Man stabbing five years earlier. As a 12-year-old, Leutner was stabbed 19 times by her former classmate and friend in Waukesha.(Photo: Associated Press)

In an interview with the ABC news program "20/20" in 2019, Leutner said she doesn't fear for Weier's and Geyser's eventual releases.

"If they ever come near methey're going right back in," Leutner said. "When they get out I don't think it's going to change my life at all."

But she and her mother in letters to the court and in TV interviews have said that the scars both physical and emotional remain. Payton's mother, Stacie, wrote to the court in 2017 that Payton agreed that treatment in a secure hospital was the best place for Weier and Geyser, though she wouldn't feel safe if they're released without supervision.

Geyser is serving a 40-year sentence the maximum at a mental health facility.

She worked out a plea agreement with prosecutors in which she avoided trial and pleaded guiltyto attempted first-degree intentional homicide but that her mental illness was the cause.

Geyser'splea deal allows her topetition for conditional release every six months. She has not done sobut had been fightingBohren's ruling that juvenile court was the appropriate venue and that her statements to police the day of the stabbing were a violation of her rights and should not have been used in court.

ContactChristopher Kuhagen at (262) 446-6634or christopher.kuhagen@jrn.com. Followhim on Twitter at @ckuhagenand our newsroom Instagram accounts at MyCommunityNow and Lake Country Now.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/waukesha/news/waukesha/2021/03/04/slender-man-stabbing-anissa-weier-requests-her-release-what-we-know/6894513002/

See original here:

A woman involved in the Slender Man stabbing is requesting conditional release. Here's what to know. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel