While Payton Leutner is enjoying her journey through high school, her assailants are making preparations for trial after brutally stabbing her 3 years ago. Leutner was only 12 years old when her two friends, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, stabbed her 19 times.
In a New York Post report, Geyser and Weier faced attempted murder charges in jail on Tuesday. The pair stabbed Leutner in an attempt to impress a fictional character known as Slenderman. The 15-year-old teen is currently taking Advanced Placement classes as a freshman in Wisconsin and has then moved on from the incident now deemed the Slenderman stabbing.
“Today, Payton is a strong young woman who is excelling in school and doing many things that a teenager would do with her family and friends,” family spokesman Steve Lyons said in an interview with People.
Meanwhile, Geyser and Weier have pleaded not guilty for the reason of having an unstable mental health state. Although they are presently 14 years and 15 years of age, respectively, the pair will face trial as adults.
During the Slenderman stabbing, they were only 12 years old when they persuaded Leutner to head to the park for their planned attack. A cyclist found the bleeding teen after Geyser and Weier left her to die. While Geyser’s trial is set on October 2, an announcement is yet to be made for Weier’s trial date at a hearing this February 20.
The case of the Slenderman stabbing became the highlight of “Beware the Slenderman,” an HBO documentary helmed by Irene Taylor Brodsky and released in 2016. Interviews with the family members of the accused teens were included in the film.
Aside from discussing the Slenderman stabbing incident, the film also placed the spotlight on fictional monster himself by using numerous YouTube videos relating to Slenderman, such as those from Marble Hornets and Tribe Twelve along with clips from Minecraft and Slender: The Eight Pages games.
