It’s extremely rare for young girls to attempt . These two 12-year-olds did so to prove their allegiance to

BY Abigail Jones ILLUSTRATION BY Esther Sarah Kim

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081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 34 8/11/14 7:30 PM 081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 35 8/11/14 7:30 PM cultural panic this case seems to encapsulate. The response to what these girls are accused of doing THIS IS reflects our deepest anxieties about girlhood, tech- nology and the growing gulf between parents and their children. And that’s why this kind of news story A TALE OF rivets us. We say to ourselves, “How awful,” while A YOUNG yearning for more. ‘ONE MILLIMETER AWAY FROM CERTAIN DEATH’ FRIENDSHIP In 2009 an online forum called announced a Photoshop contest to create fake super- natural photographs—images so convincing that they GONE would pass as the real thing in other online paranor- mal forums. Eric Knudsen submitted two black-and- white photos of an impossibly tall, thin and faceless HORRIBLY creature stalking children. According to the Know Your Meme, one of the captions read, “We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horri- fied and comforted us at the same time.… ” Knudsen called his monster Slender Man. The legend of Slender Man morphed and grew IN LATE MAY, in the suburb of Waukesha, as people contributed to his story, writing fan fic- Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls allegedly lured a tion and creating their own forged photos in a kind friend into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. The of modern-day, tech-fueled folklore. Dressed in victim, also 12, managed to crawl to a road, where a black suit, Slender Man has black tentacles pro- she lay on the sidewalk with stab wounds in her arms, truding from his back. He can stretch his arms to legs and torso, blood soaking her black fleece jacket, inhuman lengths and is often pictured lurking in until a bicyclist found her and called 911. According leafless forests or behind unsuspecting children. to police, the assailants had been plotting the crime Legend says he can cause memory loss, coughing for months. Their motivation? They said they want- fits (referred to as “slendersickness,” according to ed to prove themselves worthy of Slender Man, an Know Your Meme) and a litany of paranoid behav- evil character who lives only on the . iors. He can remove your organs, impale you on a It sounds like the outlandish plot of a horror tree or stalk you slowly and drive you to madness. movie, in part because it is incredibly rare for Slender Man is now a facsimile of the Puritan devil: young girls to murder. In 2012, of the 8,514 people He is everywhere, every day, a specter of our anxi- arrested for murder and nonnegligent homicide eties about raising children in a world where tech-

in the U.S., just one was a girl under the age of 13. nology reigns and the lines between reality and fan- It’s not so surprising, then, that when girls do kill, tasy grow dimmer. their crimes often devolve into sensationalized pop According to the criminal complaint obtained by culture narratives, replete with simplistic explana- Newsweek, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, both tions and groundless moralizing. “This should be 12, discovered Slender Man on Wiki, a wake-up call for all parents,” Waukesha Police a website dedicated to Internet horror stories (its Chief Russell Jack said in a much-quoted statement tagline: “Proudly hosting 12,151 of your worst night- about his two young prisoners. “The Internet has mares since 2010”). They believed he was real. In changed the way we live. It is full of information early 2014, Geyser and Weier decided to become and wonderful sites that teach and entertain. The what they called “proxies” of Slender Man, thereby Internet can also be full of dark and wicked things.” proving their dedication to him and his existence to Diluted advice to parents and ill-informed attempts skeptics. To do so, they’d have to kill someone. In at making sense of this case won’t get us far. We do February, the girls decided to carry out their act on not know enough about the two girls’ mental states, May 30, the night Geyser planned to celebrate her friendship, families and backgrounds to generalize 12th birthday. (This, and the description that fol- about their motivations. And their act is so unusual lows, recounts the actions of the two girls as they are that it tells us little about our daughters. presented in the criminal complaint.)

We do know about fear, however, and a rising In the intervening months, Geyser and Weier TIMES/REDUX; YORK NEW SANCHEZ/THE ARMANDO L. LEFT: FROM CLOCKWISE DYKE ABE VAN ANTLFINGER/AP; CARRIE

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081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 36 8/11/14 7:30 PM + Clockwise from top left: Then, as Geyser put it to police, “stabby, stab, stab.” The park bath- The girls stabbed the victim 19 times, piercing her room where Morgan Geyser liver, pancreas and stomach, and barely missing an and Anissa Wei- artery near her heart. The victim cried, the girls told er planned to police, and Weier remembered her screaming, “I kill a classmate, whom they later hate you! I trusted you!” After the attack, Weier said, stabbed; the she and Geyser told the girl to lay down and be quiet, road where a bicyclist found and they would go get help. whispered about their plan, sometimes while riding the victim; the Instead, they fled. “It was the hope that [the vic- scene after the bus, often using code words like “camping trip” police arrived. tim] would die and they would see Slender and know (to refer to the Nicolet National Park in Wisconsin’s that he exists,” reads the complaint. Northwoods, where they believed Slender Man The victim crawled out of the woods and onto a lived). On the evening of Friday, May 30, Geyser, sidewalk, where a bicyclist found her. “Please help Weier and the victim went roller skating and then me,” she said. “I’ve been stabbed.” When a police headed back to Geyser’s house for a sleepover. Gey- officer arrived, she said she was in extreme pain. ser and Weier knew when they were going to stab Asked who hurt her, she replied that it was her best their friend: 2 a.m. And how: cover the girl’s mouth friend. The victim was rushed to a hospital, “one

with duct tape, stab her in the neck and then pull the millimeter away from certain death,” according to covers over her. Then they’d run. the complaint. It was there in the hospital that she But they didn’t kill their friend that night. “I told police about the second assailant. wanted to give [the victim] one more day,” Geyser Police found Geyser and Weier near Interstate 94 told police. more than four hours later. One of them had a knife On Saturday morning, Geyser and Weier’s new with a five-inch blade in her bag. When questioned plan was to stab the victim in a bathroom at a lo- by police, the girls expressed regret mixed with cal park, but they finally attacked her in the woods cold-blooded intent. “I believe it’s ending a life, and during a game of hide-and-seek. According to the I regret it,” Weier said about the attack. “The bad criminal complaint, Weier pushed the girl down and part of me wanted her to die; the good part of me sat on her, thinking Geyser would then stab her. The wanted her to live.” victim started yelling, complaining that she couldn’t The criminal complaint offers many similarly breathe, so Weier got off of her. Geyser gave Weier dismaying details from Geyser’s interview: “When the knife, but Weier said she felt too squeamish so asked again why they were going to stab [the vic- she gave it back to Geyser. tim] Geyser stated, ‘It seemed necessary.’ When “I’m not going to until you tell me to,” Geyser told Geyser was asked what Geyser was trying to do Weier, according to the complaint. when Geyser stabbed [the victim] Geyser stated, ‘I

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ//REDUX; TIMES/REDUX; YORK NEW SANCHEZ/THE ARMANDO L. LEFT: FROM CLOCKWISE DYKE ABE VAN ANTLFINGER/AP; CARRIE “Go ballistic, go crazy,” Weier replied. “Now.” may as well just say it. Kill her.’”

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081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 37 8/11/14 7:30 PM Geyser told police she was sorry, adding, “It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse.” ASKED Geyser and Weier have been charged as adults for attempted fi rst-degree intentional homicide. Each WHY THEY faces up to 65 years in prison. The victim was discharged a week after the attack HAD MURDERED and started walking again. “While we have kept dis- cussions about the events of May 31, 2014, with her THEIR BEST short, we did ask how she found the strength to crawl out of the woods,” the victim’s family said in a state- FRIEND,RACHEL ment. “Her response was simple: ‘I wanted to live.’” SHOAF SAID, ‘LITTLE GIRLS DOING TERRIBLE THINGS’ Few facts about the case have been made public. Attorney Anthony Cotton, who represents Geyser, would not go into details about his client for News- week. Phone calls to Weier’s attorney, Joseph Smith, went unreturned. Neither family has spoken to the er’s mother, who was especially concerned about press, although in early June, Weier’s brother told her daughter, insisted that she not join Hulme on the Daily Mail that his sister “loved the Slender the trip. When Parker and Hulme found out, they Man stories, just anything a bit creepy. But I don’t lured Parker’s mother down a secluded path in a see why it changed from dream to reality.” local park and bludgeoned her with a brick. Parker The experts on childhood violence interviewed and Hulme were tried in the Supreme Court of New by Newsweek would not comment on this case, but Zealand and found guilty. Each spent fi ve years in they were willing to speak more generally about the prison. The crime inspired novels, plays and fi lms, culture and context in which this crime occurred. including Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures. “When these episodes come up, people right away Books, fi lms and Law & Order episodes followed think girls are becoming more violent,” says Kath- the 1968 deaths of two young boys in England. The leen Heide, a professor of criminology at the Univer- day before Mary Bell’s 11th birthday, she strangled sity of Southern Florida who has evaluated 150 juve- 4-year-old Martin Brown. He was found dead in an niles charged with violent crimes, mostly murder. abandoned house. Two months later, with the help “There is no evidence that the involvement of girls of a 13-year-old girl, Bell strangled Brian Howe, 3, in homicide or murder is increasing.” and left him covered in grass and weeds, puncture Historically, girls have been more likely to engage marks on his limbs and the letter “M” carved into

in bullying, gossip and manipulation, not physical his stomach. Experts said she showed “classic symp- ARCHIVE/GETTY; STANDARD/HULTON EVENING POPPERFOTO/GETTY; LEFT: FROM (2) DYKE VAN ABE (2); DOMINION POST/AP RITTENHOUSE/THE RON INDIANAPOLIS STAR/AP; POLICE DEPARTMENT/THE LAKE COUNTY violence. That is, in part, what makes crimes like the so noteworthy. “We are intrigued by the oddity, the horror, the irony of lit- tle girls doing terrible things. It doesn’t go with the age or gender,” says Frank Ochberg, a clinical pro- fessor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and leading expert on violence and trauma. The few cases in recent memory in which very young girls committed exemplify how gripping these stories can be. One of New Zea- land’s most notorious murders occurred in 1954, when Pauline Parker, 16, and Juliet Hulme, 15, killed Parker’s mother. The teens had developed an intense friendship, bonding over their wild imagi- Juliet nations, inventing their own religion, writing nov- Hulme, 15, and Pauline els together. Their parents started to worry about Parker, 16, the girls’ relationship. Around this time, Hulme MURDEROUS murdered also learned that her parents were getting divorced; Parker’s mother. she would be moving to South Africa with her fa- INTENT ther, thereby separating the two girls forever. Park- 1954

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081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 38 8/11/14 7:30 PM toms of psychopathy”; Bell was sentenced to life in many lenses. Some argue it was mass hysteria in an ASKED detention but released in 1980, at the age of 23. age when the devil mattered and religion reigned. In 1986, the U.S. had its youngest person on death Some cite economic anxieties between the prosper- WHY THEY row when Paula Cooper, 16, was found guilty of ing Salem Town and the agrarian Salem Village. Oth- murdering Ruth Pelke, a 78-year-old Bible teacher ers, the emotional needs of girls and young women HAD MURDERED in Indiana. Cooper and three friends had planned to in a society that confi ned them to strict gendered rob her, but Cooper stabbed Pelke in the chest and roles. “Most studies of witchcraft history don’t suf- THEIR BEST stomach 33 times with a knife. Cooper was released fi ciently acknowledge the importance of the devil,” from prison in 2013. says historian John Demos, an emeritus professor FRIEND,RACHEL And in July 2012, Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf at Yale University whose notable books include En- lured their longtime best friend, Skylar Neese, into tertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early SHOAF SAID, the woods of West Virginia and stabbed her to death. New England, which won the Bancroft Prize, and The All three girls were 16. For the next six months, Eddy Enemy Within: A Short History of Witch-Hunting. “I and Shoaf told family and authorities they had no don’t think the people involved went a single day, or idea what had happened to their friend. Eddy even an hour, or even a minute, without wondering what helped Neese’s parents look for their daughter. In De- the devil was up to next.” cember, Shoaf went to a psychiatric hospital following Today, we fl atter ourselves that we are safe from a nervous breakdown and, after being discharged in mystical illusions like witchcraft and the devil. Yet in early January, confessed to police that she and Eddy 2011 more than a dozen girls in Le Roy, New York, had killed Neese. Authorities found her body covered developed uncontrollable tics and twitches. En- in branches in the Pennsylvania woods, 30 miles from vironmental causes were considered. Ultimately, her home in Star City, West Virginia. Asked why they doctors determined the girls were suff ering from did it, Shoaf replied, “We just didn’t like her.” Both conversion disorder, an illness brought on by stress, Eddy and Shoaf were tried as adults. Eddy pleaded especially during adolescence. As one of the girls’ guilty to fi rst-degree murder and was sentenced to guardians told The New York Times about the diagno- life in prison; Shoaf pleaded guilty to second-degree sis, “It’s a very hard pill for me to swallow—what are murder and was sentenced to 30 years. we, living in the 1600s?” Our almost hysterical fascination with intense fe- male friendship harks back to a centuries-old story of girlhood gone awry. In 1692, girls and young women SOMETHING INTOXICATING in Salem Village, Massachusetts, started accusing ABOUT GIRLS IN CHAINS their neighbors of witchcraft. Before the crisis con- In early July, Geyser and Weier made separate court cluded, 54 people in Essex County had confessed to appearances. A judge had ordered the media not to being witches and nearly 150 had been charged with photograph their faces, and so news cameras were practicing “the devil’s magic.” In all, 19 were hanged, focused on their legs and torsos as they walked in, and one man was pressed to death with heavy stones. handcuff ed and shackled, dressed in navy prison

FROM LEFT: POPPERFOTO/GETTY; EVENING STANDARD/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY; ARCHIVE/GETTY; STANDARD/HULTON EVENING POPPERFOTO/GETTY; LEFT: FROM (2) DYKE VAN ABE (2); DOMINION POST/AP RITTENHOUSE/THE RON INDIANAPOLIS STAR/AP; POLICE DEPARTMENT/THE LAKE COUNTY Historians have analyzed the Salem panic through uniforms with chains around their waists. The world

Mary Bell Anissa strangled Weier two boys, (left) and ages 3 and Morgan 4, when Geyser at- she was 11 tempted years old. At 15, to murder Paula a friend Cooper to please was sen- an evil tenced to Internet death for character. stabbing Shelia a 78-year- Eddy old 33 (top), times. 18, and Juliet Her death Rachel Hulme, 15, sentence Shoaf, and Pauline was over- 17, killed Parker, 16, turned in their best murdered 1988. friend, Parker’s Skylar mother. Neese. 1977 1985 2014

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081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 39 8/11/14 7:30 PM watched as both girls shuffled to their seats, taking neither feels they can back down.” strides as long as their restraints would allow, the She adds, “I’ve had kids arrested for homicide, shackles jangling with each step. Geyser fidgeted and they’re really stunned. They said, ‘I really never throughout the hearing, playing with a braid in her thought it was going to happen.’” long brown hair. Her mother cried. Weier’s father Geyser and Weier are set to be tried as adults be- sat stoically. Video clips of the scene are all over the cause in Wisconsin all murder and attempted-mur- Internet, available for scrutiny. der charges for children older than 10 start in adult Had Geyser and Weier been boys, would media court. Lawyers for both defendants are working to coverage have been the same? Many experts inter- move the cases to juvenile court. Recently, Geyser viewed said no. There is something disturbingly in- was found incompetent to stand trial, though with toxicating about seeing girls in chains. time and appropriate treatment, she could “be- The Slender Man stabbing seems to embody all come competent.” Psychiatrists who interviewed our fears about what can go wrong for girls: how they her said Geyser believes in unicorns, says she can are growing up in a culture saturated in their sexual- communicate with Lord Voldemort (of Harry Potter ization; how the Internet has altered the ways they fame) and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and communicate and express themselves; how young thinks she has “Vulcan mind control.” As for Slen- people spend so much time curating their online der Man, she idolizes and fears him, and worries personas that the line between their Internet selves that if she angers him, he will hurt her family. One and their real selves all too often blurs. doctor said, “She needs to grow up.” Shortly after the attempted murder, focus inevi- “This is not an adult crime,” says Victor Streib, a tably turned to the parents. The Daily Mail revealed lawyer specializing in violent crime and the death that Geyser’s mother and father have Instagram feeds penalty who is writing a book about how the le- featuring photos of graves, skulls and other gothy im- gal system handles cases of preteen kids who kill. ages. Geyser’s father, Matt, once posted a drawing Streib, a retired professor of law, worked at nine in- of Slender Man by his daughter, along with the com- stitutions over 40 years, most recently Ohio North- ment, “Only Mogo [Morgan] draws Slenderman in ern University College of Law, where he served as crayon on a napkin when we are out to dinner.” dean. His work has been cited 28 times in the U.S. “It’s easy to say, ‘These are bad parents’ or ‘These Supreme Court. “Premeditation assumes an adult parents made mistakes that I wouldn’t make.’ Part mind of intending, planning and premeditating. of that finger-pointing is trying to make sense of You’ll read the casual comment that even a small something that, at the end of the day, is inexpli- child knows this is wrong.... Most kids I’ve worked cable,” says Jane Mendle, a clinical psychologist with have a Nintendo view of this stuff: They’re specializing in 10- to 13-year-olds and an assistant surprised the person is still dead.” professor at Cornell University. “I’m sure we all re- A brief lesson in child development is instructive member scary campfire stories, and it’s not unusual here. In their preteen and teenage years, boys and for 12-year-old girls to be interested in the macabre girls develop intense social relationships, and that’s or supernatural. I don’t know I’d necessarily say a good thing: It’s a natural part of growing up and Slender Man is more or less disturbing but instead a more modern interpretation of the sorts of stories that have always drawn kids in.” ‘MOST KIDS ‘IN A MUSCLE CAR WITHOUT BRAKES’ I’VE WORKED While it is extraordinarily rare for girls to commit WITH HAVE A murder—between 1976 and 2007, girls under 13 represented just 4 percent of all female juveniles ar- NINTENDO rested for murder and nonnegligent homicide in the U.S.—the crime Geyser and Weier are accused of fits VIEW: THEY’RE some recognized patterns. “Kids will do things in groups that they would SURPRISED THE never do by themselves,” Heide says. “It starts out as talk, in my experience. It’s a thing of fantasy…. It PERSON IS can often start with neither of the girls really think- ing they’ll do it. They’re talking big, testing each other, and then it takes on a life of its own…and

then it gets to a point where they’re at the cusp, and TIMES/REDUX YORK NEW SANCHEZ/THE ARMANDO L.

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081514_FE0207_Slenderman.indd 40 8/11/14 7:30 PM when we prosecute and imprison these kids for long sentences, because they may come out worse than when they went in. We may miss an opportunity to help these kids come to terms with the gravity of what they did and, at some point, to become contributors to society rather than be locked away and become a drain on society.” Mary Bell, the girl who strangled two young boys in 1968, took a new name and started over after she was released from prison in 1980. Four years later, she had a daughter. The two of them were promised lifelong anonymity (what’s now called a “Mary Bell Order”) and vanished into the wider world. In 2009, Bell became a grandmother. Parker and Hulme, the childhood best friends in New Zealand who murdered Parker’s mother, went on to live relatively productive lives after each served five years. Parker changed her name to Hil- + ary Nathan. After earning her bachelor’s degree in A memorial Auckland, she moved to Kent, where she ran a riding becoming more independent. Adolescence is also sits near the school, and later to Scotland’s Orkney Islands. She is site where a a time when young people feel intensely. “We’re 12-year-old girl a devout Catholic and has largely stayed out of the boiling or freezing. We hate you, or we love you,” was stabbed public eye. Hulme changed her name to Anne Perry, says Dr. Harold Koplewicz, a child and adolescent by Geyser and landed in the Scottish Highlands, became a Mormon Weier. psychiatrist and founding president of the Child and started writing. More than 75 books later, she is Mind Institute. “The peer pressure that affects girls a best-selling crime novelist with over 26 million as they enter adolescence is powerful and can lead books in print worldwide. to risky choices. Risk is an integral part of adoles- All three women were free as adults—almost. Over cence, and between friendship and risk, the combi- the years, journalists hounded Bell, who ended up nation can be worrying, even dangerous.” having to change her name and move multiple times. The adolescent brain is less equipped to set limits In 1998, when news broke that she had been paid to and see the world from someone else’s point of view collaborate on Cries Unheard, a book about her life because the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain by Gitta Sereny, Bell’s daughter learned the horrible in charge of critical thinking, judgment and delib- truth about her mother. Nathan was outed in 1997 eration—has not yet fully developed. In healthy when the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly revealed her adolescents, that doesn’t occur until the mid-20s. identity and location. One might argue that Perry had “With adolescents, it’s as if they’re in a muscle car the furthest to fall. For decades, no one knew that the without brakes,” Heide says. “If kids are in the spur best-selling writer was a child murderer until 1994, of the moment and it’s getting closer and closer to when a journalist uncovered her identity around the the actual event, they’re all charged up with emo- time Heavenly Creatures was released. tion, and neither of them can stop and reflect, ‘My “It seemed so unfair,” she told The Guardian in God, what are we doing here? This is our friend. 2003. “Everything I had worked to achieve as a We’re going to kill her?’” decent member of society was threatened.” It’s too soon to know what will happen to Eddy and Shoaf. Eddy is up for parole after 15 years, ‘THEY’RE BOTH Shoaf in 10. As Neese’s father, David, told ABC, SICKOS’ “They’re both sickos, and they’re both exactly Knowing what we know about the adolescent where they need to be: away from civilization, brain, should Geyser and Weier be tried in adult or locked up like animals. Because that’s what they juvenile court? And if found guilty, what should their are, they’re animals.” punishments be? In most criminal cases, certainly Apart from the near-certainty that they face a violent crimes, the public focuses on punishing the protracted legal ordeal, it’s hard to predict what the offender, Streib says, rather than prevention. Re- future holds for Geyser and Weier, or whether they search suggests that children and adolescents have will ever emerge on the other side of this horror the potential to rejoin society as healthy, contributing show to lead productive, meaningful lives. adults. “But the public sometimes wants to maintain But in one manner or another, Slender Man likely

ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX YORK NEW SANCHEZ/THE ARMANDO L. a ‘get tough’ stance,” Heide says. “We miss the mark will never be far from their thoughts.

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