Two pre-teen girls in Milwaukee are to face charges of attempted murder after they stabbed a friend 19 times and left her for dead.
The gruesome incident occurred after the two girls reportedly decided to impress “Slenderman”, who they believed to be the ‘leader’ of a website used to post horror stories online. The girls told police that according to the site, a user must kill someone to move up Slenderman’s hierarchy.
A passerby found the wounded girl bleeding on a sidewalk on Saturday. She is reported to be in a stable condition in hospital at present.
Due to the severity of the charges and the nature of the case, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier have been charged as adults. They face charges of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and appeared in court yesterday, where bail was set for half a million dollars each.
An interpretation of Internet figure Slenderman as seen at Comic Con
The report states that the suspects go to the same school as the victim and had invited her to a sleepover on Friday night, before luring her to a remote wooded area ahead of the attack. The criminal complaint states that the attack had been in the planning stages for months, with the suspects having rejected several other thoughts on how to kill their victim before settling on their course of action.
Local police chief Russell Jack said at a news conference: “Both suspects had a fascination with a fictitious character that often posted” to horror sites.
If convicted, the girls face 65 years in prison.
