CreepCast - The Slenderman Stabbing | CreepCast

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

On the 12 year anniversary of the event, the boys discuss the Slenderman stabbing and the terrible events that followed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Come back to Creepcast. Today we're doing something a little new, a little, something that we've been wanting to try for a bit, which is talk about something that pertains to creepypasta that is something very real and very horrifying in real life.
Starting point is 00:01:05 But it does connect to the thing that we've covered before, which we are coming up now on the anniversary of the Slender Man Stabbing, which is a very, very very, very. real thing and it's a fascinating story and we have formatted it in a way to where now it's a digestible story to be ingested the same way as a creepy as a creepcast episode but done in a way where we can you know shed light on something that's very real and horrifying yes I would agree so yeah the slender man stabbing were on May 13 31st of 2014, as I'm sure a lot of you know, a very tragic circumstance where a couple young girls
Starting point is 00:01:51 became far too invested in internet culture around creepypastas, specifically Slender Man, and became obsessed with the idea that Sunder Man was real and they could dedicate themselves as like a proxy to him. And they took out those fantasies on a friend of theirs who will get into, but thankfully survived. But it's a very, it's a very upsetting story. It's a very wild one, especially some of the details of how the young girls survived are both terrifying and impressive. So we want to say, go ahead.
Starting point is 00:02:27 Yeah, the survivor has to be one of the biggest badasses of all time. Yeah, we'll get into it. But the way she lived was pretty outstanding. I would have died. once again for people who might not have seen some of the previous episodes that we've done we did a creep tv which was on our show is basically horror adjacent video content in like horror storytelling content and video form that we like to talk about and one that Isaiah showed me that uh was a three part video series was the um marble hornets marble hornets marble hornets oh my god I said mande catalog. Holy shit. Not Mandela catalog.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Yeah. The three parts series that we covered was Marble Hornets from years ago. I mean, actually let me ask you this. Was marble, Marble Hornets was before these, correct? Because it was pretty,
Starting point is 00:03:22 it was pretty, uh, it was pretty close to the original posting of the picture or, you know, of the kind of like fan, the start of the fandom with the, uh, first upload of the Slyndermann image,
Starting point is 00:03:34 right? So the, the original Sender Man image was uploaded. and then a week after that, I believe, the first Marble Hornets video was posted. So Marble Hornets second to the original image was the first Slynderman adaptation. First thing to give it a narrative. So yes, these came way after that. To think that the thing that we watched, which granted Isaiah, completely different time, right?
Starting point is 00:04:00 But to think that the thing that we watched may have helped inspire this act or just like the phenomenon that was Slyr man, which it's not, it's obviously, you know, the crimes that were committed were in act. They say that it was in, it was in service to Sender Man and stuff, but it was really, I feel like it could have been anything that, that just struck their fancy. I mean, it may have, it may have contributed to it in like the sense that it popularized Sunder Man and that led to this, but as I'm sure we'll talk about, um, they're obsessed. session with Slyndraband had a lot to do with like the, uh, the fandom side of things with the idea that people can be like servants of him and that there's, I think they talked a lot about the
Starting point is 00:04:47 Slender Man mansion, which was kind of like, uh, the equivalent of like an OC character thing where like Sunderman takes his followers to a mansion where they all live together and stuff like that. It was very like fandom coded, um, you know, people making their OCs and like making them interact with characters they like sort of thing. The same kind of community that would do Jane the Killer. Yeah. Jeff the Killer offshoots. That they,
Starting point is 00:05:15 people absorbing media in different ways and like basically having like that cult like mentality around them is very, very fascinating. So today, bear with us. We're going to do something new. I'm actually pretty excited just to change the format up just a little bit and just see,
Starting point is 00:05:30 uh, read something that is real and extremely horrified. and has one of the most heroic, dare I, dare I say one of the most heroic means of escape and survival of all time. It's pretty phenomenal. But I just wanted to say thank you to our patrons and for people listening on audio platforms right now,
Starting point is 00:05:54 like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much. It does help us out if you give us a nice rating. Isaiah, are you ready to jump in? Yes, I'm ready to jump in. Thank you. Did you say thank you to the patrons? I did. Thank you patrons.
Starting point is 00:06:07 All right. So for the first, I guess, what we'll even call this is, was this still a creepcast or is this like a... I guess we're calling a creepcast. I don't know. It's like it's just a little... Yeah, Creek crime. Let's do that. Creep crime. Sure, why not. The slender man stabbing. In the suburbs of Milwaukee, just a few miles inland from the Mighty Lake Michigan, lies the quiet and affluent town of Ocestersha, Wisconsin. for anyone driving through, sprawling parks and home paint the picture of a quintessential American town. Residents knew it as a safe and cozy place to raise a family, a place where you could let your kids play outside until the streetlights came on. Joe and Stacey Lutner owned a traditional single-family home in town and raised their two kids, Peyton, and Kaden.
Starting point is 00:06:54 Around Waukesha, the Loutner's were well-respected. Joe had a steady job and Stacey was able to stay home and raise the kids. Their two children were described as compassionate and well-rounded individuals, and with only a two-year age gap, the siblings were very close. Twelve-year-old Peyton, otherwise known as Bella, was just your average little girl with dark brown pigtails and blue eyes. Her younger brother, Caden, was a short blonde and tied together what many would call a picturesque family. Among all her friends was another 12-year-old girl with long brown hair named Morgan Gaser. or Geyser, I'll say Geyser, who was Peyton's best friend. The two girls met when they were nine years old and soon grew close,
Starting point is 00:07:40 going to each other's house to play with dolls and draw. When they were young, they were very similar to one another and shared many of the same interests. However, as they grew older, a clear divide emerged between the two. While Peyton was blossoming into a teen, taking an interest in makeup and boys, Morgan was beginning to show more macawful. and concerning behavior.
Starting point is 00:08:04 Since she was little, Morgan had experienced weird visual phenomena that only she could see. As a toddler, she would approach her parents and tell them that ghost would hug and bite her. Psychologist would later reveal, She had vivid dreams when she wished she could change. These anomalies grew stronger and recurred more often as time went on. In elementary school, she would watch as the colors on the wall melted down to the floor and pulled around her. Not long after that began, woman's voice, which she called Maggie, would regularly talk to her inside her own head. Morgan herself would grow more concerned about the things she was seen out of the corners of her eye.
Starting point is 00:08:45 Another figure named Sevs soon manifested from the anime show she watched. Seve was unlike any of the previous visions because Morgan claimed he felt real to the touch. She treated him as though he were a real person, even allowing him to sleep in her bed. while lying together Morgan would place her hand on his chest and feel his heartbeat in the morning she claimed she would wake up with hair wet with Seth's drool
Starting point is 00:09:10 just want to say how fucking horrifying that is by the way I mean like the idea of just from the I mean like one I guess to conquer your I feel like this would be so easily discarded as like oh you have imaginary friends
Starting point is 00:09:29 are like, oh, it's just in your head, whatever. People like brushing this kind of stuff to the side, but going to that level of detail and that level of clarity of like, I don't know, like feeling someone's heartbeat, claiming that you're waking up from Seve's drool from sleeping in your same bed. I mean, just living with that day in and day out,
Starting point is 00:09:48 my God, that would be fucking rough. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a hard situation to navigate around because for one, it's hard to understand with the kid how, serious something like this is um like when i was eight i think i told my mom that i was in love with raven from teen titans which was fitting and i was proud of my younger self um but it's like at what level is it just like a kid who's watching a cartoon and what level are they actually like have a diagnosable illness um i think the fact that she was being seen by
Starting point is 00:10:25 psychologist when she was so young is kind of a indicator of how serious it was. And what has to be with that level of, I mean, with that level of what she's saying every day. Yeah. She's talking to ghosts that bider and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about it more as we get into the details of the case, but that's the reason this stuff was so damaging to her or her worldview. because she was already perceptive to taking outside influence and then making it real in her head.
Starting point is 00:10:59 Something that needs to be done, which a lot of people, again, we'll get into it, but a lot of people around this, especially the media, had conversations like, oh, is it okay to talk about slender? Is this the kind of thing kids should be talking about? And I think it's the same as like the video game argument, where it's like, yeah, it's fine because. 99% of people have no issue. But the 99 shouldn't be, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:27 restricted because of things that 1% need kept from them, I believe. Because, I mean, there were plenty of people that listened to the Sunderband stuff and wrote fan fiction, all that, and didn't stab young girls. So, you know. Also, so easy to have these conversations in hindsight, you know? Yeah. Or like, it's so easy to talk about these things.
Starting point is 00:11:49 whenever it's like, well, the horrible thing happened. So let's discuss why versus just versus, uh, or let's make a blanket statement or a blanket idea that covers everybody versus just like focusing in and trying to figure out why exactly this person had this happen, which we're already starting to see here. I mean, associating an imaginary person and like associating with them as the sev in the bed and like manifesting those things and having to be something that feels so real. I mean, we're already, I mean, even a. the age of eight already starting to get that idea.
Starting point is 00:12:22 Yeah, yeah. Her entire life, Morgan knew something was off and would regularly talk to her parents about what she was seen. But nothing was ever done. Unbeknownst to anyone, Morgan was schizophrenic, just like her father, Matt. When her father was seven years old, he wandered up to his parents and told them about how he had seen his unborn sister's ghost. His parents thought their child just had a creative imagination and sent him to bed.
Starting point is 00:12:48 years later, when he was in his teens, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but stopped taking his medication at 19. His doctors tried to reason with him, however, Matt worried taking his medicine would make the devil in his visions disappear, eliminating one of the only sources of joy he had in life. Finney one, man, that's rough. Fitting one was going to catch what was going on with Morgan. It would have been her father who shared a similar diagnosis and story. Like his own parents, however, Matt ignores. the red flags and allowed his daughter's condition to worsen. Other people in Morgan's life,
Starting point is 00:13:23 like her school counselors, didn't say anything either when her odd behavior continued at school. She would bark at other students at the playground, and early one morning, she was caught smuggling a rubber mallet into class. She would claim she needed it for protection. Like a fog creeping over her brain, Morgan's schizophrenia began to change her, making her more paranoid. Again, it's like the parents should have known. And a lot of, I feel like a lot of this fault, uh, would fall on Matt because he became so, it's from this, it seems he became so at peace with his own delusions that he figured it'd be fine
Starting point is 00:14:06 for his daughter to have, uh, which is a very reckless place to, uh, to leave a child, you know. Oh, sure. Well, also too, the way that you grew up in the way that those things were, how how previously those things were approached to you. And, uh, I think totally dictate how you respond to it now. You know?
Starting point is 00:14:25 Like if he's just like, they treated me like shit. So therefore I'm going to like, I'm not going to put my daughter through that hell. Yeah. I will say though, the counselors not like a pub like at a school. Seeing like this girl bring up these problems,
Starting point is 00:14:39 bringing in fucking mat like rubber mallets and stuff. Like like I don't know like fucking Elmer Fudd into class and stuff. trying to like whack wily coyote. I mean like how the fuck do you I'm like how do you not report this to anybody? I like how the councils are just like, I'm sure it's fine. You know, I am so afraid of my life
Starting point is 00:15:01 that I'm going to be like either a parent who just like it completely ignores these red flags or I'm going to go to like a parent teacher conference and then you'd be like also by the way so your daughter is pretending to be a werewolf and she keeps removing her teeth in the back of the class. And you're like, why am I just hearing about this now? You know, well, we didn't want to.
Starting point is 00:15:23 I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Little little kids lose their teeth at the time. I'm like, yeah, well, not by fucking pulling them out of your mouth, you goon. Well, that's what the mal is for. Yeah, exactly. Well, that was what the rubber mallet was for. It's, um, I don't know, because some stuff, it's like you could see how it would happen. Like the, um, what's I think?
Starting point is 00:15:45 it's oh the barking at other students it's like yeah there's weird kids that do that kind of thing oh dude it's easy i mean all the amount of people that in even the school system you must see in like you must see like just strange behaving kids all the time that in a way it literally must come off as normal i mean dude i remember you know how many horse girls were in my like grade school classes you would have thought that we would have thought it was a goddamn stable versus a school. I mean, it was like acted like horses. Yeah. Dude,
Starting point is 00:16:20 horse girls, especially in elementary, which I don't know how prevalent that was. I mean, you got, you've had, did you have some horse girls in your school? I don't think we did.
Starting point is 00:16:27 I mean, my middle school class was six people. So it was. Okay. It was pretty small. I mean, like, even if it was,
Starting point is 00:16:34 I mean, like, I didn't have the biggest class either. But I'm just saying that like, like, horse girls were a thing. Even just like, you know,
Starting point is 00:16:40 there's just some strange kids. You know, I mean, one of the horse girls, she would eat fucking Pringles and ketchup at lunch. And people were more weird up by that than the idea that she would like buck and say and hop around the goddamn auditorium. You know, who knows? I mean, it's once again, I just want to preference.
Starting point is 00:16:55 It's so easy to look at these things in hindsight and be like, oh, God, the signs were there. But I mean, God knows the amount of weird shit that you see during the day. I'm saying this out of love because I care about both of you. but Allison, a million percent strikes me as someone who was a horse girl at some point. You have no idea. You have no idea how bad I feel duped. When I started to, when I started to befriending, when I was first, when I was just Allison's friend before we were starting dating, there was no, I don't think I ever heard her say the
Starting point is 00:17:27 word horse, right? And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, we're like four or five years in our relationship. And she's like, I'm just, just really just started drawing horses a lot. I mean, I felt like I did feel like a guy coming in. I thought the motherfucker walking in being like, hey, Morgan, what is this? And she's like, it's slender man. That's how I felt to me with Allison drawing these horses.
Starting point is 00:17:46 And I was like, you ain't even drawn a lot of horses lately. Like the thing. And she came up and she was like, yeah, I think I'm about getting a horse. I'm like, what? And then it was just all. And then from there, she's just dressed like Alan Jackson for the past like seven years. So what was she a horse girl when she was younger? Dude, I
Starting point is 00:18:06 I don't, now I don't know She's always been a big animal person I feel like she 100% might have been I've seen her videos where she talks about like her furry OC she had when she was a child Don't get me wrong. Once again Isaiah the hindsight is there Right? I can look back now and be like oh
Starting point is 00:18:24 Makes sense because we used to joke around calling yourself she's like yeah I had to pay my bills and like help pay some of my bills whenever she was like younger she would do furry art and stuff or Or so when she was younger, she was part of the community, blah, and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, because you're just like, oh, not anymore. Yeah, how foolish I would say that. You would say that. I would have caught on to that immediately. But Hunter's like, I mean, that's normal, right? Like people, you know, you're an artist. You draw stuff. Who cares? Dude, when you, I once again, I say it blinded. When you go to a liberal arts college and I was getting all horned up for Allison, who like was a short-haired crust punk looking kind of like girl.
Starting point is 00:19:04 listen I'm like come on dude I'm like she could have told me anything at that point I'm like hey live in Lovita Loka baby you know I'm all about it also the amount of other weird shit you see I'm like I would have fuck I was like I will settle for anything I'm like give me a furry artist
Starting point is 00:19:23 over some of the crazy shit that I'm seeing you know what I mean I'm a furry guy I did know I don't I think my perception would have been totally different if she's like by the way I'm a horse girl I if you if you drilled her on it. I guarantee you she like would buck and a when she was like nine years old. Dude, I bet. I bet. I don't know. I'm just saying those people exist and I'm saying that once again, we can dog the counselors all day and I want to. But it's just it's the amount of stuff you see must be
Starting point is 00:19:50 crazy. Uh, and I don't know. At what point does something unless something like it's, you know what it is though too? What's kind of fucked up is it seems like it's one of those things until something horrible happens. No one does anything, right? Well, I mean, mean, I don't know. She has a rubber mallet because she says she's whacking invisible whackamoles at her desk. And you're like, well, I probably should. You probably should have told me about that. Well, I don't.
Starting point is 00:20:14 She wasn't hurt anybody. You know, it's that kind of thing. Yeah. I just figured, you know, good to let off some steam. And she said at her desk playing that fuck. Remember that Chucky Cheese game where it was like you, uh, you hit the spiders like the bug splat thing. The things like that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:27 Yeah. Yeah. She's doing. She was doing that at her desk. And, uh, we didn't, we just, we thought it was fun. We like Chuck E Cheese games too. I don't know. That's where a kid can be a kid.
Starting point is 00:20:39 A kid could be a kid. And I will say just you in this. Yeah. I can be a kid. But I will say you what was the best Chuckie cheese game? What? And I'm not even joking. I've looked for this for my studio.
Starting point is 00:20:54 It's that fucking pirate ship game. You control the pirate ship. It's a two-d pirate game. It's like a driving game. We have like the pirate steering wheel. Do you remember? You're probably too young. Do you remember this?
Starting point is 00:21:04 No, the only one I remember being real hyped out of Chuckie Cheese was the Jurassic Park one with the giant spiders, like the shooting game. Is that the one where you get to sit, where you get to sit in? Yeah, you sit in like the actual cab and shoot at him. Yeah. Dude, the Pirateship game, I can't even fucking tell you. It was, I mean, it's my fucking jam. It was called Dead Storm Pirates. And let me tell you, it was just on.
Starting point is 00:21:29 Dead Storm Pirates. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Hold on a second. Sorry, this is, this is, this is actually. desperately important. People are going to see the title of this episode. They're going to be like, how are they going to get on side tangents with this topic? It's like, oh, you wait. Many thought that the school counselors would have intervened by now, but it was more complicated than that. Both the
Starting point is 00:21:49 school staff and her parents believe she was just acting out and being a quirky teen. Part of the problem was that the school she attended had over 680 students with only two counselors to manage them. Morgan just happened to be one of the many children neglected by the system in which she was raised. For a long time, Morgan's only real friend was Peyton, but as they began to drift apart, she met someone new who would change the course of her life forever. During middle school, Morgan met another girl named Anissa Weir, who lived near the Geyser home. From an early age, Anissa had a normal childhood, but she was allegedly born with an undiagnosed severe learning disability that ostracized her from people her age. While her life had once been stable,
Starting point is 00:22:34 it took a dark turn when her parents went through a bitter divorce. When her parents split, it affected Inessa's social life even more. What was once a normal kid soon devolved into a lonely, desperate little girl seeking approval from anyone in her life. With her parents focused on the divorce, her needs were sometimes overlooked and she began to feel pushed aside. When she met Morgan, it felt like a beacon in the darkness, and she clung to her new friend. Anything her new friend wanted to do, she would do it, as long as she could keep clutching on to this single connection. Both girls had gone to school together,
Starting point is 00:23:09 but were never close until Morgan's behavior began to change, isolating her from her classmates. Since she couldn't rely on Peyton as much anymore, Anissa filled in the gap that her old friend couldn't. As the two grew closer, they would spend hours online together. watching videos and visiting random websites. While surfing the net, they stumbled upon a forum called creepypasta.com. At the time, creepy coppastas or creepypastas were at their peak in the online sidegeist.
Starting point is 00:23:41 Stories like Just the Killer, Sonic.exe, and Ben Dround had grown immensely popular and spawned a new generation of writers shaped by internet culture. During their time on the forum, Anissa and Morgan read countless stories, but none interested them more than Slender Man. I will say that reading that was like a series of flashbacks. Well, yeah, especially for us. It's also... Sonic.exe. Ben Tram.
Starting point is 00:24:09 Yes, yes, yeah. It's so interesting to just once again how these times of people, whenever, it's like the finding community online versus in schools is such a huge... Such a huge thing that also people had no idea about. about yet. It was still so new. So even something, you're like, wait, what the fuck? I mean, how many times did you show your mom or dad something?
Starting point is 00:24:31 And they're like, what? Because it's just such a foreign concept, the idea that's like, yeah, I'm online and it's this community. And we're reading about this thing called Jeff the killer. It's like an online horror story. And you're like, okay. You know, like, and not understanding that like there's a community and a fandom around like this kind of character or, you know, these kinds of subcultures.
Starting point is 00:24:51 That movie, what is it? We're all going to the World's Fair. or whatever. Yeah. You've seen that? I haven't seen about what you're talking about. That is a great move that kind of captures the isolated feeling and like the only, like the isolated feeling of being somebody.
Starting point is 00:25:05 Yeah, the whole thing's the little girl holding the camera. Yeah, just in her room from the camera perspective from her computer. Yeah. But it's a great, it's a great study on like escaping and believing in something from the internet and like social isolation. It's a, it's just like. It's so interesting how all these kids who were probably bullied in school or were misunderstood in these schools really did flock to these online circles in droves and found their community there.
Starting point is 00:25:36 And I think that's also what helped just like breed these obsessive traits when people were just like, well, I don't need the fucking people in real life because they suck. Like this is my new home. You know what I mean? And now more than ever, I would say that I would say generally a lot of social groups, not all of them, but I would would say generally it is like a much heavier like it's it's a much like larger sect of people that are associating generally online versus like in you know in person relationships and stuff that you might find even via friendships and stuff it's it's it's just it's crazy how probably that's like i can't even imagine like fucking like quadrupled i mean like or it's just double down
Starting point is 00:26:23 and how people approach their conversations now that, like, what was weird back then is now completely normalized. Yeah, it's, it's interesting how the shift has been. I remember one time I was in the car with my dad, and I wanted my dad to be interested in things I was interested in. So I played the Russian sleep experiment, because I really liked it.
Starting point is 00:26:47 And he was just so disinterested. Did he believe at all that it was a real story? Was it? No, no, I barely, barely listened to it. He's like, what? They're like,
Starting point is 00:27:00 they're like mad or something? No, daddy. No, daddy, listen, he's not sleeping. He's afraid. I've ever do that thing when like, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:11 when you like go to show someone something on your phone and they're not paying attention? So you just kind of slowly like pull the phone away. Like, yeah. Like see if they care that you're moving it away. That's what I did. But by pausing the video.
Starting point is 00:27:23 it's a thing that you can definitely tell my i i'm pretty sure my dad hated me when i was younger like it's just these things become more and more blanket like it becomes more and more obvious when you like go through it and you do try to show them something and your like your parent is just like you you because you it you it's so easy to do to a child lie right yeah that's really cool Isaiah. Wow, that's awesome. That's all it had to be, right? I was playing a banjo-kazui
Starting point is 00:27:55 on Nintendo 64 and my dad was like, so what the bear could talk? And I was like, not like not really. It's just him and his friend and he has a bird in his backpack. And he just said, he just said, what the hell do you do with your time? I was, I'm like, I'm a child.
Starting point is 00:28:12 Like, what are you talking about? What do you do with your time? It's a banjoo. Cause you and dad. Come on, man. You know what I mean? Like, what the fuck? What kind of response is that?
Starting point is 00:28:22 What do you do with your time? Well, sorry. I guess I should be at the mine right now. What do you do with your time? It's a crazy thing to say to a child. To a kid who's like, hey, can I show you banjo?
Starting point is 00:28:36 What do you do with your time? It's such a fucking hot take. What are you doing with your time? That's, Nothing more remember. I guess. The only game that my dad ever, uh,
Starting point is 00:28:53 he would ever responded to when I was younger was, uh, he was like one of those gay guys that liked Harleys and shit and like loud bikes and stuff. And I was playing, uh, I was playing Road Rash. Mm-hmm. And he was like, that bike is nice.
Starting point is 00:29:07 Like, he had PlayStation one. Yeah. Graphics. He was like, fucking nice bike. I'm like whipping a guy with a chain as we're racing down this road. He's like, let's fucking kill our bike.
Starting point is 00:29:22 That's the coolest bike I've ever seen. Holy shit. It's so cool. I want to think today's sponsor, Warby Parker. Buying glasses shouldn't feel complicated. Oftentimes, it's hard to tell if you're being charged a fair price or if the glasses are even going to fit your face. That's where Warby Parker is here to help.
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Starting point is 00:32:46 description below. And if you could let them know that we sent you at checkout, it would really mean a lot. I can't recommend them enough. Thank you to Chubbies for sponsoring the show. Their link will be in the description and we are now back to the episode. Known as one of the original creepypastas, Slyndermann was created by Eric Nudson, aka Victor Surge Online. He submitted a picture of a tall, pale creature wearing a suit with tentacles to a Photoshop contest on the Something Awful forums. From there, internet users would take the haunting creature and begin to write stories and fake sightings. This cult classic grabbed both girls' attention and soon became their entire world. Creepypastas acted as the glue that held their friendship together,
Starting point is 00:33:26 but tore others apart. Peyton and Morgan would occasionally hang out, during which Morgan was more vocal about her visions. Peyton would play along, telling Morgan she saw her them too. Hoping to rekindle their relationship, Morgan began to show Peyton some of the things she was reading online, assuming that her old friend would bond with her over them as she and Anissa did. However, Peyton was disturbed by what she was being shown and eventually told Morgan she didn't want to hang out anymore if they would only talk about creepypastas.
Starting point is 00:33:57 Though Morgan was upset by this, she still valued their friendship and respected her wishes. As their friendship dwindled, Insa grew closer to Morgan as the two consumed. more content online. In saying that Peyton's mental clarity was that was that sharp at that age. Hey,
Starting point is 00:34:15 if you guys are only going to talk about creepy bosses, I don't think I should hang out with you anymore. I mean, we got to tell that to some of our fans, dude, the way they talk, the way they're talking
Starting point is 00:34:23 in the subredited and shit. I mean, to be fair, it is our job. I know. I trust me. You're talking to, you're hearing this from a guy
Starting point is 00:34:36 who, it is his job. Yeah. You know what I mean? I love the idea of Peyton just being like, Hey, so if you guys are just going to be talking about Slyder Man again for 12 hours, I don't really want to hang out.
Starting point is 00:34:49 Because if it was me, I'd just be like, well, I guess this is as good as it gets. You know what I mean? This is the high rope right here. I guess this is pretty much my friends forever now. I remember one time.
Starting point is 00:35:00 So like I showed my dad that. And there were times where like, like I remember playing the goat man at a sleepover and like, a couple of the guys thought it was scary and stuff like that. So you're saying when you're saying playing this, you're just talking about these are online readings. I'm just playing the videos. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:15 And I remember that guys for Jeff. I remember one time it was like a mixed party or something like that, like guys and girls. And I remember I played Jeff the killer because I thought it was scary. And I remember the girls being like, what is wrong with you? Which is in hindsight, how strange for a guy or like a boy to pull out an iPad and play the chip, the killer creepy pasta to a room of people. Dude, a fucking, a young, a young, no-haired Isaiah pulling out a genuine iPad.
Starting point is 00:35:58 I like to think that you're wearing the size of shirt and like the crucifix is just as big as your body around your neck. and you guys like, you want to hear a scary story? Lips, fat as shit, flapping around. They're like, God damn, dude. Here's a towel. Wipe your lips. You're like, sorry. I just get excited for these stories.
Starting point is 00:36:17 I just remember that. I just remember playing it. And then someone being like, one of the girls being like, so is this like scary? And I'm like, yeah, the picture's really scary. When you think about the story with the picture, it's really creepy. You know what, though? I'll give you this. I'll give you young yourself this.
Starting point is 00:36:38 At least for the times you showed your dad and around friends, at least it was the reading. How many people do you think dry read this shit to people? Probably so many. Oh, that's rough. That would be way where I would. What I did was also brutal,
Starting point is 00:36:53 but there is a layer. There is a layer. Yeah. I will say you have to have at least some layer of respect for yourself there. Thanks, fan. Appreciate it. To the girls, more specifically, Morgan.
Starting point is 00:37:04 the lives and actions described in these online stories began to influence how they thought and behaved in real life. By this point, the girls had been playing the Slender Man game and knew every little detail. Morgan's obsession with the character would begin to manifest in her diary. Across multiple pages, scrawled in black ink, were drawings of Slender Man along with three creations of pages from the game. Her drawings also contained more ghastly images. In addition to the Slender pictures, she often drew pictures of a girl, most likely representing herself in different scenarios. On one page, she drew a girl with cat ears and a tail lying on the ground. Her eyes closed. Floating above her was a skull and another
Starting point is 00:37:47 young girl holding a scythe while looking at the viewer saying, I love killing people. So again, the stuff like the cat ears and the cat tail and stuff like that's indicative of just like, you know, that young culture around the time. But obviously all of these things are playing into her fantasies. And if it wasn't for where the story goes, it would just be another cringe kid, right? Well, that's the thing is these, once again, it's the online realms and forums that these kids are existing in and like the online community is where, you know, you are getting the more centric, like furry different forums where people are like, oh, let me show you my art and people are able to express themselves. And I feel like that that is just rubbing off and it's starting to
Starting point is 00:38:32 formulate in just this kids just I mean how they're fucking writing down their diary now you know I mean it's just it's just the online uh where where they're where they're hanging out you know yeah but you're right I mean if it if it wasn't for this one thing it would have just been a normal like kids experience online back in the day mm-hmm yeah at some point using black ink wasn't enough classmates and teachers reported Morgan picked at a scab until it bled later using the to write, die over and over again in her diary. Okay, all right. Yeah, normal kid experience.
Starting point is 00:39:09 There we go. All right, all right. Let's, I'm not going to, I'm not going to advocate for any scab pickers who are also using that scab blood to write die over and over again. I don't give a fuck where you, I don't give a fuck where you, I don't give a fuck what realms of the internet. You're lurking. The scab bit is that, that would, that's where you lose me. You lose me at the scabs.
Starting point is 00:39:31 Okay. Yeah, yeah. Picking scabs. My God. You think she ate the scabs? Maybe. Maybe she used them like a paintbrush to draw on the paper. What kind of animal hair is that?
Starting point is 00:39:45 She's like, pig. Huh? Back home, she was taking her dolls and drawing occult symbols on their abdomens, cutting off their heads and etching marks on their hands and thighs. Well, there you go. For many people, their diaries are gateway to their innermost thoughts, and Morgan was no exception. In a way, marking these dolls and drawing in her diary served as a way for her to act out in silence.
Starting point is 00:40:09 Her behavior and outbursts at school and around her parents solicited a little more than disgust and annoyance. With little attention in her real life, Morgan would retreat into her drawings and imagination, places where she could make herself the focus of any world she created. Perhaps the most concerning drawing found was one depicting Slytherman standing over a line of chival. children talking directly to the viewers saying, You're a strange child. It will be of my use. So now she is filling in the dialogue for her imagined, for her apparition.
Starting point is 00:40:48 So it's another layer into the delusion. In a time of desperation, her inner monologue spoke directly to her, comforting her with one of the few things that brought her joy. Eventually, she began to experience those slithes. as something outside of her own mind, similar to her other visions. For years prior to even learning about Slyderman, Morgan claimed to have seen an entity called IT. She described it as a misty, shadowy figure that haunted her and was only visible in the mirror.
Starting point is 00:41:20 Any time she peered into the reflective glass, she would see it standing from afar and watching her. Because she had bonded with Anissa over creepypastas, she felt comfortable enough to describe her visions, knowing that her friend wouldn't think she was crazy. Morgan had told Anissa she thought she was going insane seeing all these visions, but Anissa supported her by saying, No, I think you're a medium. I think that you straddle two worlds. But the first time in her entire life, someone genuinely validated her feelings.
Starting point is 00:41:50 I was gonna say the first time that someone's ever actually like, if someone's ever told you about the medical thing, like if you were schizophrenic, Isaiah and people told you like, oh, your brain's out of whack. And people are continuously telling you these things or you should be on this medication. And maybe this is the first time ever that someone's ever been like, actually, you're not weird at all. You have a gift. How relieving would that have been? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:13 And that's also why it's so dangerous. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Because any, like they'll grasp on to anyone that validates the things they're seen as real. Also, it's terrifying that aside from her regular like slender band. and stuff like that makes sense because she sees these things
Starting point is 00:42:31 so she imagines these things but to have a new creature that appears as a shadowy figure that can only be seen in the mirror like something original quote unquote man I cannot I cannot fathom like schizophrenic
Starting point is 00:42:45 uh schizophrenic symptoms must be so fucking horrifying it's got to I mean it must feel I mean like can you imagine that feeling and it feels like it's a part of this world and then it just disappears and like everyone else is just like, oh, no, it's not there. Yeah, I mean, that would, the mental toll that would take is, is, I mean, unbelievable.
Starting point is 00:43:07 Yeah, I follow some people online who are schizophrenic and they talk a lot about the, the condition. And some of the stuff they'll say, man, it is, it takes strengths to, to live with. Are these people? There's probably some viewers who listen to this show who are in a similar case. And I know it varies the severity of it. but I see so many of these people talk about, you know, they'll be in their house and someone will walk in and they'll be speaking to them only to look in a camera or mirror and realize that person's not there. Or like they'll, they'll, one of them was talking about they have a dog.
Starting point is 00:43:45 And if the dog doesn't address the person, then they know the person's not there. That's interesting. Do you think that's like a metal? Like, do you think people use that as like a support animal? Yes. Yeah. That way they can like, yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:59 That's what he was describing that the, he keeps the dog and takes it everywhere. That way if someone comes up and speaks to him, he looks at the dog to see if the dog is looking at them. And if they're not, then it's just an imagination. Yeah. I mean, smart. Yeah. So the pages that you're looking at, these are actually like just schizophrenic people
Starting point is 00:44:16 talking about like. There's a lot. There's a lot of, yeah, people who have schizophrenia who talk about what's like day to day. Some are just auditory. some are visual and auditory. Some of them will kind of describe what it's like or like a bunch of them will record while they know they're having a schizophrenic episode to be like I can see someone. They're standing right there.
Starting point is 00:44:37 They're trying to get my attention, blah, blah, blah. It's a... The amount of... I mean, that that's one form of mental illness that's like, I think very misunderstood online. The amount of people that will look at like, especially... But like, man, especially, uh, Instagram or something. There's just people having full on schizophrenic episodes and they upload stuff to Instagram,
Starting point is 00:45:04 only for people to be like, what the fuck is going on? Or people just will like, fuck with you in the comments and be like, it's real. Yeah. He's there. You got to watch out. I mean, like it's a very, it's such a fucking crazy system. Well, it's like, uh, there's different, there's a lot of schizophrenia is a very wide spectrum. But there's people who have like visual and auditory.
Starting point is 00:45:24 hallucinations. There's people who have hallucinations of reality. There's people have kind of breaks with it where they will have hallucinations about themselves or their person. And then there's like, it used to be schizophrenia was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, but now they realize there's more of a distinction between paranoid type personalities and schizophrenia, but there are people who have paranoid type with schizophrenia where they're constantly worried of others or if something coming to get them and things like that. Like it's such a buried illness or so much, which I do sympathize with people like Morgan's parents, you know, who saw their child going through this and that's got to be tough to handle. But at some point,
Starting point is 00:46:12 like, you know, the father, it's like, yes, you can sympathize with he was in Morgan's same condition and he has to put up with it. But at one point, you become the parent who's now responsible for the next generation. Yeah. I mean, you got, yeah. Yeah. And especially if you have firsthand experience with the two, you need to know, like, and assuming he was mentally sound enough to do things like hold down a job and raise a daughter and things like that, then I would assume he would be sound enough to know there's got to be parameters somewhere. Parameters to come from the guy that said that, he didn't want to take medication because he liked the demon he saw. So. Yeah, I mean, which is like, let's step back and just, you know,
Starting point is 00:46:53 which is a dangerous. It's a dangerous mentality to bring a child into, of course. Yeah, it's time to put on your adult pants and actually be like, what's the best way to prop my daughter up for a happy, more normalized future than what I had. Yeah, at one point, the sympathy only goes so far, right? At one point,
Starting point is 00:47:10 someone else is suffering because of it. And as this story ends, someone really suffered because of it. No shit. For the first time in her entire life, someone genuinely validated her feelings. her whole life she had been dismissed and ignored. Now she had someone who related to her on a deeper level
Starting point is 00:47:26 and who she could truly confide in and trust. Her friendship with Anissa not only made her more confident, it began feeding into delusions that she was special. Slowly she began to believe her visions were not a curse, but a gift. Not long after confiding in Anissa about her visions, she began to believe that the figures she called it was actually Slender Man. The made-up monster had now become so deeply ingrained in her life that it began infiltrating some of her earliest memories.
Starting point is 00:47:57 While hanging out with Anissa, Morgan claimed that when she was five, she saw Slender Man peeking out from the woods near her childhood home. Anissa, pined into the delusions, added that she had been seeing the fictional creature in the woods while riding home on the school bus. Because they had spent so much time online obsessing over the creepypasta, they knew all of his tells, all of his lore, and what it meant when you saw the Slender Man. Fear began to creep into the girl's minds as they continued telling each other what they believed they had seen. It wasn't just their own lives they were afraid for, but their families as well. On a cold winter day, both Morgan and
Starting point is 00:48:35 Nissa were hanging out when Morgan came up with a plan to save their families by stating, Hey, we should be proxies. Within the Slender Man lore, proxies are people who believe Slyndermann is real and are subservient to him, either through direct possession or his influence. Proxies carry out tasks Sunderman cannot do on his own, such as destroying or leaving evidence, influencing victims, or even creating videos. In exchange for their work, some proxies are granted protection by Sunderman himself, which is what Morgan hoped to achieve. Which again, this is, you know, there's a delusion, and then you fear the delusion,
Starting point is 00:49:13 so you do things to prevent the delusion. Also, the thing about the proxies comes from like mostly the OC stuff. I think I said incorrectly during the Marble Hornets that they were all proxies. And while it's the same mechanism, the word proxy came later from like other Slender Man lore stuff. But yeah, the idea that you can like become his henchman basically. Yeah, people just taking ideas from the fandom and making it their own and stuff. I mean, I still think that like proxies is, it may not be the correct word, but that's basically what that was. Yeah, same idea.
Starting point is 00:49:53 But I, you what's interesting though about that too is Anissa basically going on and saying that she too has seen it. Almost like at this point, do you think Inissa is like, is thinking that Morgan is not necessarily lying, but do you think that they're just, it's like taking the role play into this real world, like taking the roleplay into the real world where now she also feels like she wants to participate in. as well? Or do you think that she's like legitimately saying that she also has visions? You're talking about Anissa? Yeah, Nissa, because Morgan is saying that I don't think. No, I don't think Anissa is having visions. I think she's just a girl with a learning disability who's going along with what her friend says. Yeah, so her friend is basically being like also by the way I saw Slyerman.
Starting point is 00:50:36 And she's like, oh yeah, me too. Because she just wants, they had that camaraderie together. Yeah, she has a friend for the first time. Right. Of course. At the time, Anissa didn't understand what that meant. asked. Okay, how do we do that? To which Morgan responded, we have to kill Bella. Shock swept over Anissa as she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Soon her shock would turn
Starting point is 00:50:58 to excitement, though she was still a little unsure. To get her to go along, Morgan began pressuring her by reminding her of Slender Man's power and that her family's lives were at stake. Anessa eventually agreed after being psychologically coerced and began scheming with Morgan on how they would commit the crime. But fear was not the only motivator. The girls were also eager to meet Slender Man in real life and wanted to prove his existence. For almost a year, they had become engrossed in an online community that told stories about a creature living in the woods and haunting people's dreams. Believing Slyndermann was real due to their supposed sightings, The girls thought that if they successfully carried out their plan to kill Peyton,
Starting point is 00:51:41 he would allow them to live with him as proxies. They believed he resided in the woods of the Chiguamagon Nicolet National Forest, roughly 200 miles north of Oakesha, and that reaching him would grant them a permanent place in his mansion. Most people on the creepypasta forums knew the stories were fake, but the girls took offense at those who said Slender Man was not real. They decided they needed to prove the people on the forum, wrong to gain notoriety online and protect their families. Yeah, that was another thing.
Starting point is 00:52:13 There was this, this Slender Man Mansion, kind of like, O-C thing where people would write themselves into the mansion and like Jeff the Killer live there, and Eilish Jack and all the famous creepypastas. So it was like, oh, well, here's my character in Slender Man Mansion, like the Jane the Killer kind of stuff.
Starting point is 00:52:34 For a person, for a person like Morgan, it's like having something where now you are having these episodes and you're seeing Slynderman actually visit you, it has now become where it has now became a thing where everything you're reading about it is real, right? Those lines would begin to blur. Yeah, well, every thing becomes a part of the delusion.
Starting point is 00:52:58 Yeah. Well, absolutely. Well, this one thing is visiting me every day. Why is this not real? And then for people to joke around about it, now it's becoming a thing where you're like, What the fuck are you talking about? You don't know what you're talking about.
Starting point is 00:53:07 Yeah. Yeah. Though Anissa was apprehensive at first, she later admitted to being excited about the prospect of killing someone for Slender Man. This was despite being fully aware they were going to actually go through with the murder of someone she knew.
Starting point is 00:53:21 I was surprised, but also kind of excited because I wanted proof that he existed. Because there are a bunch of skeptics out there saying that he didn't exist and there are a bunch of photos online and sources online saying that they did see him. so I decided to go along, to tag along to prove skeptics wrong. With their end goals in mind, the girls began plotting how they would commit the crime months in advance.
Starting point is 00:53:47 Still caring for their shared best friend, they wanted the killing to be painless and preferred that Peyton be asleep or unconscious when it happened so they didn't have to look her in the eyes. The attack was set for Morgan's 12th birthday. She would invite both Anissa and Peyton over to her house for a sleepover and would go forth with their plans from there. The first idea they came up with to sacrifice their friend was
Starting point is 00:54:10 to duct tape her mouth to keep her from screaming and stab her in the neck before running out into the night at around 2 a.m. Such brutal... Unreal. Unreal. Horrific things for a child, a 12-year-old to be planning for their birthday party, you know?
Starting point is 00:54:26 Do you think that some of these... Do you think that the idea like... I'm wondering... Well, a couple things I'm wondering. one it has to be in the lore somewhere that people were sacrificed or is it just from like the games and stuff where it's like slender man picks up people trying to find him so therefore that that it's not from the games or anything like that it's just kind of i mean but there were hundreds of creepy pasta stories right so it's just any of the media that were people probably wrote that like you had to sacrifice someone wrote something about sacrificing a slender and that was enough for this to roll with um because all the mainline stuff he's just kind of like a figure that's a lurker or stalks here or something like that but i mean maybe someone did write a story where he just said you people should sacrifice children to him that's all it took for you know the mind to run wild right in the weeks leading up to the murder the girls would constantly discuss their plans in school or when they hung out to avoid any suspicion they began
Starting point is 00:55:25 using code words to hide some of the grotesque details crackers were used for the knife they were going to use and itch was used to refer to the killing itself they also gave each other nicknames with morgan being kitty and annissa being scorpio more again it's tragic how these are like things a 12 year old girl would do you know but it's around killing someone well just it's just the level of delusion yeah just the just the i mean it's just so horrifying the people the amount of people too that probably have these conversations that don't go through with it is also probably fucking frightening. You know, that's kind of what I'm thinking about is the amount of people that are upset or translating these thoughts into, uh, possible actions.
Starting point is 00:56:14 And maybe it just never comes to fruition or the amount that do end up happening. It's just, yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Morgan believes that these personas would help them be better proxies. She planned to draw whiskers on her face and have a signature catchphrase.
Starting point is 00:56:29 Don't be afraid. I'm only a little kitty cat. With each discussion, Morgan grew more obsessed and repeatedly searched up how to get away with murder, and what kind of insane am I? On her personal computer. As a day approached, thought of murder was no longer something out of reach and was slowly becoming a reality. Morgan would send out the invites one month before her birthday on May 30th. The night before the sleepover, both girls packed backpacks with granola bars,
Starting point is 00:56:56 water bottles, and clothes in preparation for the long trek to the National Forest where Slyderman lived. The next day, Peyton was overjoyed and excited to go hang out with her friends. She had packed her overnight bag with pajamas and her favorite American girl doll before her mother dropped her off at the Gaser home. After all the guests arrived, the girls headed over to the local indoor skating rink, skate land, and had a great time before heading back to Morgan's house for the sleepover. As 2 a.m. approached, the girls woke up and mulled over whether they would go through with their plan,
Starting point is 00:57:28 sitting in the dark, the girls discussed how to start until Morgan said she thought the plan would fail since hiding the body would be impossible. So they scrapped their initial plan saying they wanted to give Peyton one more day. Before heading to bed, Morgan and Anissa agreed to go with their backup plan to take Peyton to a public park. The plan was to knock her out and murder her in the bathroom stall so her blood would go down the floor drains. The next morning, the girls woke up as normal and went about their day. They ate strawberries and donuts for breakfast and played dress up while messing around with silly putty. Payne's mother was expecting her to call around 10.30 a.m. So the girls knew they were running out of time to save their families.
Starting point is 00:58:10 They finished playing and went up to Morgan's mother, Angie, to ask if they could go to David's Park, which was near the home and filled with dense woods. Morgan's mother said yes, and the girls all walked down to the park, taking the next step in their plan. Again, these things are so, it's heartbreaking how childish they are between like the American girl doll and like oh well if we kill them in the bathroom all the blood will go down the train like that's how they think it works um yeah it's miserable having the having this having this conversation around uh Peyton while she's sleeping of being like no like to imagine that you're sleeping at your friend's house and they're plotting to kill you is I mean I can't ugh yeah
Starting point is 00:58:56 Just cave around my head around that. You know, I mean, it's just unbelievable. Yeah, no joke. Before leaving the guys her home, Morgan grabbed a five-inch-long kitchen knife and slipped it in her waistband. Seemingly unable to contain her excitement, Morgan would lift her jacket and show Insa the knife
Starting point is 00:59:13 on the way to the park while they walked with Peyton. Once they arrived at the destination, the girls played for a bit before Morgan and Anissa led Peyton toward the public bathroom and persuaded her to go inside with him. unsure of why her friends were so adamant about going into the bathroom, Peyton hesitated but eventually headed inside. The loud metal doors slammed behind the trio as they all stood in the entryway. As Morgan looked around the concrete bathroom where the attack was supposed to happen, panic began setting in.
Starting point is 00:59:43 Seeing her accomplished dress, Anissa asked Peyton if she could step out for a little while so she could talk to Morgan privately. When Peyton was outside, Morgan handed the knife to Inissa and said, I can't do this. I'm too scared. You have to. This began to feel the pressure of the situation as well, hooked her friend and petted her like a cat to calm her down. Minutes later, Anissa brought Peyton back in and sat down with her against the wall
Starting point is 01:00:09 while Morgan nervously hovered around the sinks. This is when Anissa initiated their plan and asked if Peyton could put herself to sleep. Payton replied, No, I'm not tired. Morgan then beckoned Nissa over and asked if she could knock Peyton out, so they could get on with the murder. Andissa agreed and sat back down next to Peyton. Andissa described the next moment saying,
Starting point is 01:00:32 So I asked Bella if she could put herself to sleep. I kind of went like that to her forehead, banged her up against the concrete wall. Pant reacted defensively and pushed Nissa's hand away, as she said. Excuse me. Feeling awkward. Andissa replied, Sorry, I got bored.
Starting point is 01:00:47 And I need something to do with my hands. I think, too, that Peyton is, um, maybe Bella was like her nickname or something. Yeah, maybe. In that case, who knows? Oh, God. My word.
Starting point is 01:01:03 It's one of those, I mean, yeah, yeah, my God. Even in the moment being like, I can't do this and handing it off to someone else. And like, it's just the level of delusion there is. I mean, and also, I mean, just manipulation too of like this other child, right? being coerced into doing this thing is just wild. Yeah. It's so like the, again, there's something tragically pathetic about how bad they are at it. Like she kind of softly hits her head on the wall and Peyton's like, why are you doing that?
Starting point is 01:01:40 And she's like, oh, I got bored. It's like she can't even, hasn't even thought of what to do here. Like, yeah, just the childness. The childnessness of it. is very tragic. It's crazy to me that this situation too, which you don't even wrong, they're obviously so far gone.
Starting point is 01:01:58 But it's like there's still this like, there's still this like level of humanity of like trying to hold them back from doing this, from doing this action. You know, like, oh, I don't, like they're fighting this, this urge to do this thing.
Starting point is 01:02:13 But yet they still are able to like push past that initial gut reaction and follow through with it. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. The girls did not have the confidence to kill Peyton in the bathroom, so they moved on to their final plan, Lauren Payton into the woods. To say they were already at the park, they asked Payton if she'd like to play a game
Starting point is 01:02:32 of hide and seek. She agreed, and all three girls exited the bathroom and made their way towards the nearby tree line. Morgan and Anissa chose these nearby woods, hoping they could coax Payton deeper into the woods so they could commit the crime. As they walked deeper in, they told Peyton to go hide and both Morgan and Anissa would seek. Anissa described the moment saying, She's going to hide one place, I was going to hide another, and then Morgan and I were going to be like a lioness chasing down a zebra.
Starting point is 01:03:01 Likening the murder to an act of nature, unsuspecting prey about to be slaughtered by a predator for the sake of their family's survival. As Peyton ran off to find a hiding spot, the girls met up once again and began to exchange the knife back and forth, unsure of who was going to do the killing. Morgan approached Anissa and began panicking as an unwilling, Ness took over. Anissa said she had to reassure her friend once again, saying, Morgan hands me the knife and says, I can't do it. You know where all the soft spots are. Oh, yeah. Nissa hands Morgan the knife again and states, You do it. Go ballistic. Go crazy. Make sure she's down. Morgan replied, I'm not doing it until you tell me to.
Starting point is 01:03:45 Girls parted ways and began to circle around where Payton was hiding. When Morgan was five feet away, Anissa yelled. Now! Morgan and Nessa pounced on to Peyton, pushing her to the ground and restraining her arms and legs. While fighting against her friend, Morgan muttered her catchphrase. Don't be afraid.
Starting point is 01:04:02 I'm only a little kitty cat. And pulled out the kitchen knife. Scared by what was going on, Peyton began to freak out as her friend stared down at her and brandished the large blade. As Morgan raised the weapon, she got close to pain and whispered in her ear. I'm so sorry.
Starting point is 01:04:18 Before plunging the blade, deep into Peyton's body. Time seemed to slow down as Morgan repeatedly stabbed her best friend, someone she knew for most of her life, someone she loved. Payton's abdomen and chest would be punctured repeatedly with such force that it caused blood to splatter over both Morgan and Anissa's clothing as well as the nearby trees. Peyton screams of agony. I hate you. I trusted you. I can't see. echoed out into the air as Anissa stood by and watched. Egan on her best friend to continue the bloodbath. When all was said and done, Peyton had been stabbed 19 times. Her diaphragm had been repeatedly punctured, causing extreme internal bleeding and severe damage to her stomach and liver.
Starting point is 01:05:02 My God. Believing she was dead, Morgan stood up, put the knife in her bag, and began getting ready for the trek to Slytherman's mansion. Payton lay on the ground, clinging to life as her love, hope, smile, beautiful dream, t-shirt, and yellow jeans soon grew soaked with her own blood. thinking they had successfully sacrificed their friend, the girls began to walk away when Peyton showed signs of life. Her breaths were incredibly shallow, and it was hard to speak, but she had miraculously survived the attack. Slowly but surely, she managed to pull herself up to her feet and stumble around before securing herself on a tree. Her limbs were weak from the blood loss, causing her to wobble faintly from tree to tree in a desperate attempt to save herself. Unsure of what to do, both Nissa and Morgan ran back over and urged her.
Starting point is 01:05:48 their friend to lie down while they ran off to get help. Girls never intended to help and made their way out of the woods. The knife, still dripping with blood, was stashed in Morgan's bag as she began to dab paint and stab wounds using a leaf on the ground. Realizing they needed to flee the area, both girls walked to a nearby Walmart to clean themselves. Inside the bathroom, the girls splashed water on their bloody clothes, watching as the pinkish water went down the train.
Starting point is 01:06:15 Once they left the store, their journey consisted of occasionally, home. hiding from police and tall grass and singing songs as if nothing was wrong. Though they tried to be excited about what they had just done, waves of emotions crept over them, triggering crying fits and panic. The girls would then make their way through the streets of Wakesha, eventually walking along Interstate 94 to Chihuamagan, Nicolet National Forest. It's fascinating.
Starting point is 01:06:44 the how much it sounds like a kid who like broke something in the house and their mom's going to find out soon, you know, like this childish panic for something they've done wrong. Because it's like to them, that's what it is. It's like, oh, if we act normal, if we do this, it'll be fine. And then these random bouts of panic when you fear you're going to get in trouble. It's, no, it's, I mean, the roller coaster. of just, I mean, just think back to what was just read. I mean, it's the thing of stabbed her. She gets up. They run back.
Starting point is 01:07:23 They pretend that they're going to help her. Or they probably think like, oh, God, okay, here. And then they pretend they're going to help her. They leave again. They're like having these like emotional fits or they're crying. And then all of a sudden they start singing as if nothing's wrong. I mean, it's just like such a chaotic. It's a fucking chaotic storm that's happening right now.
Starting point is 01:07:42 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it's uh it's tragic i mean all of it's tragic obviously the biggest tragedy falls with Peyton of course uh man just what a what a sick world where a child can be exposed to an illness that uh makes her develop these delusions and hurt others man it's rough with their friends long gone Peyton would roll over and begin to crawl along the forest floor as twigs and leaves gray against her open wounds, she relentlessly fought as her consciousness threatened to flick her out
Starting point is 01:08:18 with each labored moment. Her vision would fade in and out, and her shallow breathing would worsen as she pulled the weight of her weak body. For what felt like hours, Peyton crawled until she finally made it out of the dark forest and felt the sun hit her skin. Grass was warm as she continued to crawl, hoping to find help until she reached a bike trail running parallel to the woods. Within minutes, Greg Steinberg, Oakesha resident, was riding his bike and saw the young girl line in the grass and asked if she was okay. Through her weak state, Peyton mumbled. Can you help me? I've been stabbed multiple times. Greg immediately called the authorities and waited by her side until they arrived. Unbelievable to have that kind of dexter. I mean, like to hold on that
Starting point is 01:09:06 long. Yeah. I mean, oh, God, it's so fucking, it's sick. I mean, I'm like, it's, it's just such a fucking badass move. I'm like, God. I can't even imagine. First of all, she gets up earlier, walks around, tries to hold herself up. Imagine being stabbed 19 times and like even being able to
Starting point is 01:09:23 utter a single word or move whatsoever. Not only that, but to find like your way out through the midst of that. Officer Dan Klein was the first to arrive on the scene and could immediately tell that something was very wrong. She wasn't moving a whole lot.
Starting point is 01:09:41 As I approached her, I said, Hi, I'm Officer Dan, are you okay? She said no. As it got closer, I started to see a lot of blood. And the closer I got, the more blood I saw. Payne was able to talk to the officer and identify Morgan Geiser as her attacker. And said that there was another girl with her who she identified as Anissa Weyer. A manhunt for the girls was launched as Wakesha Police frantically searched the city for the young culprits.
Starting point is 01:10:07 One of the first places official searched was the Gaser home, believing the girls had fled there, and were hiding inside. At the time, Angie Gaser was vacuuming in the basement when her six-year-old son ran down the stairs, saying the police were at the front door asking where her daughter was. Confused, she rushed upstairs and was met with the police standing in her home, adorned in riot gear. The police asked where the girls had gone, and she stated they had gone down to the park. Seemingly not believing her, they began searching her home as she frantically asked what was going on.
Starting point is 01:10:39 officers then said that one of the girls was hurt in an accident. This sent Angie spiraling. Police arrived at the Weir house around the same time and told Anissa's mother, Christy, her daughter was missing. Believing her daughter had been kidnapped, Christy made her way over to the gayser residence, where police were swarming the streets. She made her way into the home and found her daughter's cell phone, hoping it would have clues about where the girls might be. As she searched through the phone, she opened the notes app and found that her daughter had left to note detailing her final wishes.
Starting point is 01:11:11 Christy quickly showed the message to the police, which read, This is my final wish to those who care. Did not agree with my absence, but remember me for who I was. I love and cherish you all. It wouldn't do you harm. While all of this was going on, Peyton's mother was at home peacefully painting an old patio set and awaiting her daughter's phone call to pick her up from the sleepover. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw police quickly walking towards her along the side of her house.
Starting point is 01:11:39 Before she could speak, they asked, Are you Peyton's mom? Immediately, Stacey's heart sank, wondering whether they were for her daughter or her husband, who had been at work at the time. The worry she felt soon turned utter dread when police informed her that her daughter had been stabbed 19 times by her best friend and was fighting for her life at the hospital.
Starting point is 01:12:00 Stacey ran inside and called her husband frantically, saying, Morgan Stap Peyton, you need to come home. Payton's younger brother had been playing inside the whole. time and watched as his mother broke down in tears. After her phone call, she approached him and the two began to cry as they loaded into the car and went to the hospital. When Stacey identified herself as Peyton's mother, it wasn't long before she was guided through the busy ER to her daughter who lay looking lifeless on a hospital gurney. Peyton's mother couldn't believe her daughter's condition, stating, she was pale as a ghost.
Starting point is 01:12:32 She was terrified. She was crying. She couldn't breathe. Man. What a horrifying situation. I mean, I can't even imagine. I can't, I cannot fucking even fathom, dude. Yeah. And I won't. I won't even speculate on it. Me, I refuse.
Starting point is 01:12:48 I simply love, but I can't imagine it. I can't imagine it. And I'll tell you what I was, yeah. I simply won't. I also feel bad for, um, uh,
Starting point is 01:12:59 not Morgan, uh, Anissa's mother, right? Because Morgan's, I mean, I also feel, you know,
Starting point is 01:13:05 sympathy, of course, but there were signs that, her daughter was unwell, but I imagined for Anissa's mother who just knew that her daughter didn't get along well with school and, you know, was a little behind her other classmates and stuff. I mean, you just think your daughter has a friend and then you find out all of this. That's got to be crushing as well, right? Oh, my God. I mean, like, oh, hey, I got a new friend school.
Starting point is 01:13:30 That's so cool. You're happy for her, right? And then all of a sudden it's like, by the way, we're planning a fucking murder for a fictitious, For Slynderman. I mean, it's, it's like, it's bordering on the line of being like,
Starting point is 01:13:44 hey, we murdered someone because we thought that we could steal their V bucks or something. It has like that level of fucking like memery too. It's unbelievable. Murdering someone for their V bucks. I mean, it's kind of like that,
Starting point is 01:13:57 right? Or no? I mean, I guess. I mean, I don't know. I'm, I'm fine.
Starting point is 01:14:07 All I can say, and I can, all I can say is this is I very, very happy that, uh, very happy that, I just, I still cannot believe somebody getting stabbed 19 times and just being like, also a child, mind you, getting stabbed 19 times. And then just having the sheer willpower also just be like, I'm not fucking dying. And then to even just be like, yo, I need to go to the hospital. It's kind of what you just straight up said to the guy when he came up.
Starting point is 01:14:33 Hey, by the way, they stabbed my guts like 20 times. I need to get to the hospital quick. I looked up, um, I looked up has anyone ever killed anyone over V bucks. Um, and the, the helpful is always Google AI says, nope.
Starting point is 01:14:50 However, there was, uh, I don't believe it. A case of a man shooting his stepson in 2024 over a dispute involving a nine year old playing the game against parental rules. And also a 10 year old boy made national headlines after shooting and killing his mother in 22 because she refused to buy him a VR head.
Starting point is 01:15:08 set. I still feel like I well first off I don't trust the AI with my life but I will say that I refuse to believe that someone has not been shot and or stabbed uh four B bucks or because of V bucks actually four V bucks for as if
Starting point is 01:15:24 someone was like stealing petty cash off someone yeah I I think there has to be a V bucks murder yes people have been physically assaulted robbed and violently targeted in real life over Fortnite V bucks you gotta watch out there's a beautiful document it's a big currency
Starting point is 01:15:42 multiple document cases of players meeting up in person to trade accounts or give V-bugs only to be robbed at gunpoint or be this. God. Dude, I don't know what kind of waterhead you have to be to sit there
Starting point is 01:15:57 and I don't know what kind of waterhead you have to be to sit there and be like I'll be right back. I'm going to go to Chipotle down the road real quick and meet up a guy to do a V bucks transfer. there's got to be other ways bro there's got there's got to be other ways man i got a okay this is a topic for a later day but i got to know about the v bucks i gotta know about the v bucks is this is a future wind winding moon i mean it might be oh minutes before her arrival peyton was ushered into a keshire Memorial Hospital, or trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Huxdorf rushed down to the ER to inspect a 12-year-old
Starting point is 01:16:35 girl suffering severe trauma from stab wounds. When he arrived, he couldn't believe his eyes. By all accounts, Peyton should not have survived the attack, let alone been able to crawl out of the woods. He quickly noticed how badly damaged her internal organs were, but what scared him the most was the stab wound that entered what is referred to as the cardiac box, where the heart and major arteries are located. During his analysis, Dr. Huxdorf and other doctors saw that the blade of the knife had missed a major artery in Peyton's chest by less than a hair,
Starting point is 01:17:06 saving her from an almost instant death. Doctors knew she needed life-saving surgery and began to prep her as her mother stood next to her daughter. Stacey repeated over and over again. You're going to be okay. It's going to be fine. As her little girl faintly lifted her hand out seeking comfort. The longer she stayed in the trauma room, the more the severity of her daughter's situation sank in.
Starting point is 01:17:28 The nurses next to her were counting out the stab wounds. There's five in her arm, there's seven on her leg. Okay, I count 19. I count 19 as well. Hearing these words was something no mother could ever imagine. Before she could even begin to process her emotions, her daughter was rushed off to surgery room with a 25 to 50% chance of survival. By the time Peyton was entering surgery, multiple police departments were on the hunt for two suspects of a supposed stabbing.
Starting point is 01:17:55 While driving along Interstate 94, 5 miles from David's Park, Wakesha Sheriff's Department Lieutenant Paul Rincus saw the two girls walking along the interstate after receiving a call of a possible siding. When he stopped and got out of the car, he was shocked to see that the supposed stabbing suspects were two little girls. Before he did anything else, he asked if they had anything that could poke him, to which the girls responded that they had a knife in their bag. Before he placed the girls in the back of his squad car,
Starting point is 01:18:23 Lieutenant Rinca's noticed the ungodly amount of blood staining Morgan's clothing and asked if she had been injured. Morgan shook her head and said no, which confused Rinkas even more, prompting him to ask where it came from. Without hesitation, Morgan replied, I was forced to stab my best friend to death. My God. Yeah, well, I mean, like, again, it's, she's delusional. She thinks that she's doing this to save her, you know. 100% it's just fuck yeah good god almighty this was the exact moment all doubt was erased in paul's mind realizing she was the suspect he read her her miranda writes and kindly asked if she'd be willing to
Starting point is 01:19:03 talk to him about it yeah dude well that checks enough boxes for me i better call this in it's like yeah dude what all right well hold my doubts also i've got a feeling here Two little girls covered in blood walking down the interstate. Color me curious. Do you have anything that could poke me? I had to stab my friend from Elk for a fictional for a fictional tumbler character. Okay. Another box checked.
Starting point is 01:19:35 He has a box that says staffs friend. Bring him in. It's like, my God. He has a box that is labeled stat. I had to stab friend for fictional internet character. It's as big as. It's as big as Steve's notebook from Blue's clues. And he's using a giant crayon.
Starting point is 01:19:53 He's like doing check marks in the boxes. This is like the SpongeBob case from last week. Okay. But that was television. This is the internet. What do you think blue? He just has a dyed blue German shepherd in the back of his car. Just barking viciously.
Starting point is 01:20:10 Frothed in at the mouth. Yeah, I think it's a bit of a quinky dink, isn't it, buddy? Burr. We just got a letter. You guys are going to sit back there with blue. Don't put me back there with him. Now I'm thinking of this cop character going to different like scenes and stuff like that. Like he goes to like someone,
Starting point is 01:20:35 someone took their own live and there's a note on the table. He's like, we just got a letter. Wonder. I wonder who's from. a suspicion that this was the, this was the victim's note. It's like, yeah. All right, girl, what if you looked at him? What if you looked at him? He said, all right, girls, get in the battle bus. I think this is always worried with these things that I'm being disrespectful of the story.
Starting point is 01:21:03 And my rule is always that as long as I'm not, you know, discrediting the tragedy that happened or the people going like, you know, suffering through it. I feel like this is like, this is riding the handrail of that. I am just trying to make a light of, I'm, I'm just trying to make, I mean, weird. I am not at all making light of the, what the girl went through, but just the idea of a cop walking up on two girls covered in blood on the interstate. And it's like, okay, well, we're looking for two girls. He's like, okay, that might be them.
Starting point is 01:21:38 They are riddled with blood. No, just two kids, just two girls covered in blood here. Nothing to report. Hey, guys, sorry to inconvenience to you. I know you're covered in blood. Did you get any scrapes? No. Okay.
Starting point is 01:21:50 Well, do you have anything that's just a thing where it's like, I don't know. Just a little silly. Just going through the whole question here. Can we not have a bit of brevity in this moment? Sure. Right. Hey, man. It's your world.
Starting point is 01:22:01 I'm just living in it. Realizing she was a suspect, he read her Miranda rights and kindly asked if she'd be willing to talk to him about it. Once again, Morgan repeated that she had to sleep over at her house and she and Inissa were forced to stab Peyton. Ball's mind began to race, wearing. that if this story were true, there was a victim in Wakesha who needed assistance. After loading them into the cop car, he called dispatch, letting them know he found the two suspects and wondered if the
Starting point is 01:22:28 victim had been found. After being informed that Peyton was in surgery, Paul rushed the girls back to the Waukesha Police Department to be questioned further. Headlines would soon come out about the attack, causing uproar in the little town of Okesha as reports began flooding the town. Slender Man was now at the forefront of every TV as the entire world was being exposed to it. The creepypasta community came under fire for the attacks, with people believing the forum was solely responsible by corrupting the girls. The creator of Slyrinderman, Eric Nutsin, publicly apologized and condemned the act. I am deeply sad by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those
Starting point is 01:23:03 affected by this terrible act. He said in a statement to the media. Moderators of the forum also spoke out against the crime, thinking it was absurd to blame the creepypasta community for the girls' actions. Placing blame solely on an interest in reading slash writing about horror, paranormal myths, urban legends, etc. for a tragedy would be off the mark. The really young kids, while I don't believe that creepypast stories will cause them to become evil or sick, I do think it could scare them and or make them very anxious. And if your child has issues with violence or
Starting point is 01:23:33 destructive or depressive issues, it's really important to make sure that they're not interacting with things that will exacerbate that. Yeah, correct. I agree. The creepypasta form was under a media frenzy as people began to view it as an evil entity responsible for corrupting two innocent little girls. The media was so distracted by the creepypast of forums that they neglected to pay any attention to the real monsters that were currently being interrogated. I do think it's funny that they, I do think it's funny that they like go to the guy who created the slender man image. And they're like, how do you feel? And like, you know for sure the media was twisting it. Yeah. Exactly. The media is like twisting it to him to have him basically like, I mean,
Starting point is 01:24:15 like I mean I don't particularly feel great about it I think it sucks so you you you feel remorse you you feel sorry for it it's just twisting in that way it's just so fucking scummy man yeah it's uh I remember when this was happening it was all the news reports like creepy pastas is this the next school shooting more at 11 like just no understanding of what happened or why it happened things. It was a mentally ill child who wasn't being regulated in a way they should have been and then acted on those like depraved ideas and delusions.
Starting point is 01:24:54 But all the news can do because they just minimize it. Like I said, same as the video game conversation. While Slender Man was popular in online circles, did this event truly skyrocketed into a like into a very mainstream thing? No one knew who Slytherman was in the mainstream. Like, internet users did.
Starting point is 01:25:15 Or even creepypastas as well? Well, I mean, like if you knew creepypastas, you knew who Slender Man was. No, no, no.
Starting point is 01:25:21 Sorry, what I meant was, did it also just like give more, did it give more eyes to also like creepy pastas and like those kind of horror communities in general? Yeah. I remember coming home from school when this, or no,
Starting point is 01:25:32 it was in the summers right of school. I remember coming to the living room one day. And I remember my mom being like, Whatever this is, make sure you stay away from it. And I'm like, what? And she's like, this slender man thing, you don't know about that, right? And I'm like, all right. So we need context.
Starting point is 01:25:52 I mean, I was 15, so I was old enough that, you know, my mom trusted me when I was like, this isn't a bad thing. This is just clearly the news has no idea what it's talking about. You were swirling your glass of whole milk. You're like, listen, Princess. I've been showing you. Calling your mom. versions of this. I've been showing the ladies these things for quite a while now.
Starting point is 01:26:16 Why don't you suck on your chug and calm down because I've been showing, I've been showing girls of Mr. creepypasta versions of this for a long time. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just like, it's how the news is with anything. You have a bunch of people set around a table. Of course, sensationalize it. Yeah. And they're like, can you believe this?
Starting point is 01:26:33 Like, is, should this be allowed? Should the internet be allowed to use words like die and kill in front of kids. Anyway, after the commercial break, we're going to talk about a car bomb in Lebanon in which 13 children were killed. It's like, well, yeah, whatever. If it benefits them, it's justified. If it can be sensationalized, it's about whatever. But yeah, this projected the idea of Slender Man into the stratosphere. But because of that, a bunch of people's interpretation of Slyder Man is that it's something that makes kids kill each other online. Oh, sure. Like now it's like change. the lore of it in the public perception in the public percent i mean it didn't really change the
Starting point is 01:27:14 online scene i don't think that much most people kind of have like a reference for the story to not touch it or incorporate it you know um but if you ask like some adult like a boomer who's never read a creepy pasta but heard about from the news it's like oh slender man yeah that's that that's that that girl that stab that girl right over that cartoon thing yeah so in the dimly lit rooms of the Kesha police station, the girls were questioned for hours on end. Morgan, being the main suspect, was questioned for longer and calmly discussed every detail with the officer. When asked about her motive, she went into great detail about Slyndermann and how they had to become proxies, otherwise their families would have been killed. Throughout the interrogation, she implied that
Starting point is 01:27:57 Anissa was the main person behind the crime. Morgan claimed Anissa was the main planner. She was the one who insisted on the murder and that she was less remorseful. unaware that Peyton already identified her as the main suspect. Morgan tried to portray herself as an innocent accomplice. With each passing question, she slowly revealed her sinister mental state by expressing how she felt while stabbing her friend. I felt no remorse. I actually felt nothing. She would continue to say as she questioned why she didn't feel as guilty as she thought she would for the betrayal.
Starting point is 01:28:31 When she got to the details of the sacrifice, she broke down crying, recalling hearing her friend's cries, ringing in her head. Morgan opened up about her visions, her fantasies of hurting people. When she ended her side of the story, she started shutting down, saying she was numb. Down the hall, Nissa was given a lot of the same information. She explained how they planned the murder months in advance and that they had to become proxies. She, on the other hand, was putting all the blame on Morgan. Nissa said that it was Morgan who initially proposed killing Peyton. Though she painted Morgan as the mastermind, and Nissa admitted to pushing Peyton to the ground in the woods and restraining her on the ground.
Starting point is 01:29:10 This is all very brutal too. I don't know if you've ever seen the documentary. Beware the Slender Man on HBO. But these you can kind of get, they have a lot of the police interrogation room footage of this. And it's, uh, very haunting. Very, uh, very, very tough to watch. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:27 Yeah. It's, uh, I mean, I don't know. It's, uh, it's tragic situations like this. And you want to be mad at someone. you know but then it's like you for me at least i look at the the perpetrators it's like gosh they to like you have a mentally old child and another one who um was developmentally behind and stuff like that's like just what a horrible circumstance to lead all between all three of them to lead this to happen you know two lost children that were able to uh ruin their fantasies for too long
Starting point is 01:30:03 yeah yeah yeah no no one helps yeah yeah yeah yeah The questions kept coming one after the other, as Anissa said and answered everyone. Slowly, she began to question everything about stabbing and her beliefs about Slytherman. Anissa told the officer that, while out on the interstate, she had a nervous breakdown and laid down on the side of the road. Morgan began to panic and called out to the woods. Sunder, if you're listening, please help us. Oh, God. This was when the wave of panic would fully consume both girls as they slowly began to realize maybe Slyerman wasn't real.
Starting point is 01:30:38 Oh, God. Not even halfway through the interview, she coyly told the officer. Forehand, I believe, but now I know that it's just teenagers who really like scaring people and making them believe false things. Oh, God. Yeah. The tragic clarity there. My God, man. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:30:57 Well, I mean, kids should have just never been exposed to this kind of thing. You know, they can't handle it. In her mind, Anissa was trying to control the damage as much as possible and make herself seem innocent. She clearly stated that she said, she feared for her family's life and more importantly feared going to prison. She claimed to be squeamish and could never stab anyone. She claimed she wasn't a violent person yet she was there every step of the way and only showed remorse when the murder attempt was over. And just asked if Peyton was alive and when they said she was in surgery,
Starting point is 01:31:27 she said she was kind of happy but worried that she would hate her when they met again. Again, like the childness of it, the childness of it where it's like, oh, well, will my friend be mad at me? now. Kind of adds to the sorrow of the whole thing. It's so hard not to lash out emotionally at that kind of thing, too. You know what I mean? Like I can see a lot of people who will listen to this or, you know, see the documentary, read about it, do whatever, and then just be like, oh, you're just covering your ass.
Starting point is 01:31:56 You don't give a shit, you know, without understanding, like, the complexities of, like, I guess this is the absolute mental turmoil and they're like how just severely mentally broken and destroyed this person's brain as you know what I mean yeah doesn't condone what she did I'm just saying that like it's
Starting point is 01:32:16 it's not a justification it's just a reason not at all it's just what a fucking murky murky waters that is for a person's brain yeah as they were being questioned police dug through Morgan's room
Starting point is 01:32:29 and discovered all of her mutilated dolls in the pages in her diary but that point the police were already seeing how oblivious the parents and school staff were during the months leading up to the attack.
Starting point is 01:32:40 Police intern questioned the parents about what they knew about their children's unhealthy obsession with the creepypasta. Morgan's parents claimed she was just a typical girl who had an obsession with horror. Her mother said, she would show us some of the pictures and she would read us some of the stories and while all the subject matter was a little dark, I wasn't concerned. When I was Morgan's age, I was reading Stephen King novels. I remember being 11 years old and writing home from the library with the It book under my arm. That's a very scary and dark story. So I just thought it was normal for a child of middle school age to be interested in scary
Starting point is 01:33:13 stories. I mean, that, so that kind of justification is the exact kind of thing I would probably say, right? Like a million percent. A million percent. Once again,
Starting point is 01:33:24 though, you're, you know, I mean, it just comes down at the point of being like, huh, does my child have schizophrenic tendencies? Yeah,
Starting point is 01:33:31 also how off, like, I mean, there's, there's just, No, knowing the specific child and the nuance of them. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:33:39 Let me ask you this, Isaiah. If you were, let's say if your kid was like, I like, which obviously your kid's gonna like horror stories and all that. I mean, that's just a given. She could also just despise me and everything to do with me, but more than likely, yeah. Yeah. They're just also like, I actually fucking hate you. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:33:55 You're like, that's weird, buddy. I'm not going to. Okay. You're five. I'm going to shut my door. I'm going to shut your door and you get to have six hours alone time in your room. now the uh if you went up to your kid's room and you saw like mutilated dolls and on that kind of stuff like at what point are you do you do you sit the kid down like hey buddy but are you okay
Starting point is 01:34:14 what is this all about if they're like yeah if they're caught i feel like if they pulled the heads off dolls no because i used to do that with action figures just because uh not in any murderous intent i think i was just like oh how's the head work on the puppet thing um but if they were like carving symbols into their chest and stuff like that. I think that's the set down on the bed and have a long talk, you know, at least kind of stuff. I would probably, even if it was a person, because also I'm going to be like, because even if, if that was you, if I was your dad, Isaiah and I went into a room, there was, there
Starting point is 01:34:51 was heads off dolls or whatever, you're like, take them off. I'm just curious. Yeah. I'm just curious how they work. I want to see how the blood works. Yeah. be, I would, I feel like at some point, at some point, this story has made me, or like this, the scenario where they basically like this crime has definitely made me be like, if you see
Starting point is 01:35:15 something weird, you just need to sit down and be like, you realize buddy that like, you know, this is make believe, right? Or like, you know, what's, what's just fascinating? What's going on there, champ? I don't think it necessarily just immediately means that like, I think that my child's going to murder someone. Yeah. But it's good to do a temperature check, right?
Starting point is 01:35:33 There needs to be some check-ins, I think, yeah. Because there's a layer between reading it and, uh, you know, writing about how you have to kill someone to save your family. Like, right. Right. Which I, you know, once again, who, I mean, who knows the amount of like insight she had and yada. I mean, like, I'm just saying in general.
Starting point is 01:35:57 There's a layer in there. I mean, parenting's hard. I completely sympathize with that. But there's got to be a stopgap. There also has got to be signs. It has to be. Well, I mean, they said that she was taking the psychologist and stuff like that and talked about demons biting her.
Starting point is 01:36:15 So. Also, I want, even in the school, there's got to be something. I mean, like the rubber mallet. The counselor turning a blind eye. All of these things to where even like, let's say, not even the rubber mallet. There's got to be things of like things said. Who was turning a blind eye and just be like, ah, kids,
Starting point is 01:36:34 kids, kids. There had to be a bunch of people that could have done something, drop the ball. I feel like situations like this are prevented a lot because at least one adult down the pipe was like, hey, should someone say something, do something,
Starting point is 01:36:50 you know? How do you as a teacher? Let's say you're the teacher here, Isaiah, and you're in the class. What do you try to do here? here to check in on the kid and maybe divert their path, right? There were, uh, there were some kids at my school in high school who were a little questionable as to they might hurt someone.
Starting point is 01:37:13 And I remember one day, there was a kid who made a joke about having an AK in his backpack. Uh, and the moment, he made that joke in school. And one of the kids, uh, when, to a teacher and that teacher ripped him out of the hallway immediately. I'd like took a like with the principal and they like searched his backpack and everything. And I don't think he had one, but there was, I don't know all the details about it. Because, you know, it's good on everyone past rumors around and stuff like that. Good on that teacher.
Starting point is 01:37:50 But he got expelled for that. But there was, because you know, I don't, I don't think he had, I'm pretty sure he did not have a weapon. but there was something else found in combination with that that led to enough suspicion that it wasn't just a joke. Maybe they found a note or something like that. I don't know. The people. It just takes one. It just takes one adult to be like, hey, hold on.
Starting point is 01:38:11 What's going on here? The people that are doing these things, I feel like they nonchalantly say that stuff because I feel like they want the attention for someone to stop them or just give them that attention to where I'm curious, once again, all speculative, hindsight, 2020. right i'm not i'm just talking because we're on a podcast and i get a talk i i bet you fucking anything morgan said something said said said something well i'm going to have ghost biting her and stuff like that like ghost biting her and stuff like that like ghost biting but i'm i'm even saying to the extent of being like
Starting point is 01:38:46 gonna have to make a sacrifice to slender man oh gonna have to do it i bet you it was that casual and people probably were like what the like and kids are probably like what the fuck are you talking about, you know what I mean? And like discarded it. But I'm just saying, now with this story, with this information, if I was a teacher and I heard something like that, I would pull her aside and I would say, what in the fuck are you talking about? Explain.
Starting point is 01:39:12 Yeah. Because if she's this far gone, she might be like, oh, well, I just, I mean, we have to make a sacrifice. Yeah. She might be that nonchalant. You see that. That's what she did when she was being interrogated. And there's, that happens.
Starting point is 01:39:23 That's what I'm saying. That was a lot with mentally ill people. who commit like murder, you'll see an interrogation tapes. They're just like, yeah, well, I killed them. Yeah, well, I had to kill him. So I just killed them. Like, it's just so matter of fact. If you, if you, if you, if you got that if you, if you were able
Starting point is 01:39:38 to get that far beforehand with just a simple conversation of asking a kid, like how they're doing, what is it? I just, how much of this could have been prevented? Once again, hindsight, 2020. Just saying. Yeah. Nissus mother said, she never mentioned anything to me about her belief in Slyner Man. Both fathers
Starting point is 01:39:54 were supposedly oblivious to their daughter's beliefs. Yearly, however, a month before the murder, Morgan's dad posted a picture on Instagram of a slender man drawing made by his daughter. Once the interrogations ended, there was little doubt the girls would face prison time. They were handcuffed and taken a jail to a way trial.
Starting point is 01:40:12 I don't know about the Morgan's thing, but do what? What do you know about them? What do you mean about the Morgan's side? I was saying I don't know how much Morgan's dad actually knew versus like, oh my daughter drew a picture right you know oh 100% I'm just saying now let me just to be a just to be devils or just to fucking be the devil on your shoulder a bit here that's what that's your job on this podcast do you really believe that they didn't understand some shit um so again
Starting point is 01:40:44 going back to morgan's father having schizophrenia and not taking his medication because he liked the entities that he would speak to um I hate that we keep bringing that up. Because now every time, because every time you're doing it in a way that's justified and you're like, you're putting reason behind it, right? But I'm dumb, Isaiah. And what I'm doing is I'm now taking it. And then the mom's like, I don't think that she really believes in this right.
Starting point is 01:41:10 And he's like, no, I doubt it. Right, Mr. Bolopatis? And it's like a giant polka dot man. And he's like, oh, I doubt it. I doubt it. Mr. Morgan's dead. So like in my mind, that's where my mind is. going that this is a full
Starting point is 01:41:26 on insane man, which I know is not true. But the way you keep ringing it up, I just keep picturing this giant like pocotot-d man who's just like yeah, we all have a crazy interest, don't we? Yeah, man, something like that.
Starting point is 01:41:44 We could gut that. I mean, I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny. Okay. But the I, because of that, I wonder if the father did know something, how reluctant he would be to share it or to prevent it. Or if he'd get in a position to prevent it.
Starting point is 01:42:07 Because all that we get from this document is that he didn't take it when he was younger when, or he quit taking it when he was younger because he liked the entities he was talking to. That doesn't necessarily mean he didn't take it into adulthood or got better or anything like that. Just at one point that was his idea. but I wonder if he'd be in a state or willing to share if he knew something. So who knows? I fully believe that they, they, I fully believe that they thought that it was a phase, right? But I am hesitant.
Starting point is 01:42:48 I'm, I'm hesitant to believe that she never once ever said, Slyner Man's real. And they were like, mm-hmm, you know, and just did, you know, like, that's nice. Whatever. I, I'm wondering if that ever popped up of the idea of her, of Morgan being like, yeah, I don't know. I just think he's really cool. I can't wait to meet him. Something like that.
Starting point is 01:43:11 Right. Yeah. Doesn't mean like, hey, guys, this is my God. I don't think that she ever said something like that. Yeah. But I just mean that something to where, you know, if I was like doing the dishes, I would like turn off the fuss and be like, you know, say what? You know, like that kind of like, what do you, like what?
Starting point is 01:43:24 Yeah. Because then I'm, I'm curious if that ever actually happened. Because, you know, I, them just saying like, no, I, you know, we had no idea about her belief of it. I don't know, man. To quote Michael Scott, which, you know, is a funny thing to do. Crazy. Crazy pull right now. I'm not super.
Starting point is 01:43:41 I'm not superstitious. I'm a little stitious. And that's what I was going to say. Okay. Thank you. And actually legitimately cut that because I wanted. I'm going to fucking kill myself of that. It's just.
Starting point is 01:43:51 No. It should go up. You in the midst of this story. Editor, if you want to keep your job. In the words of Michael Scott. During the slenderman step. Yeah, during the slender.
Starting point is 01:44:01 Legitimately, if you want to keep your job, if you fucking cut that. Editor, if you want to get paid double. He has no pay double whatever Hunter's paying you. No, no. Leave that in. Thank you. If you leave that in, unironically, I will send you a tip.
Starting point is 01:44:16 So. Okay. You cannot fight. Do not bribe the editor. I just did. With tips. I just did. It's 50% might wire.
Starting point is 01:44:23 I can bribe whoever I hope. You want it? You want Isaiah's tip? I said that. I'm really smart. Isaiah's going to give you the tip. Uh-huh. If you leave that in.
Starting point is 01:44:34 Just the tip. You can scare him out of it all you want. It's already done. The fate is already sealed. If Nate's editing this, you couldn't pay him to cut that. Baitin would undergo a six-hour surgery before being intubated. Her breathing, was weak and her voice was gone, forcing her to communicate with the police and her parents
Starting point is 01:44:57 by writing on a pad of paper. Two days after the attack, she was able to speak, and one of the first things she asked was if Anissa and Morgan had been caught. I remember the first thing that I thought after I woke up was like, did they get them? Are they there? Are they in custody? Are they still out? Her father knelt by her side and assured her that the girls had been caught. This is my little girl who's lying there. Who just said there's something incredibly horrendous happened. But now she's scared for her life because these two people could potentially find her again. No shit, dude. With Inissa and Morgan in custody, the girls were getting set up for their trial as prosecutors sought to lock them away. Psychological evaluations were issued to both girls
Starting point is 01:45:36 and led to Morgan getting an official schizophrenia diagnosis. Her symptoms would only worsen the longer she was in jail, with her mother describing her as floridly psychotic. Initially, I mean, she really, oh, this is a quote, go ahead. Initially, I mean, she really behaved like a caged animal. Her hair was wild. The first time I went to visit her, she looked at me. And she had sort of this flat expression on her face. And she said, why are you here?
Starting point is 01:46:04 It's heartbreaking. I sympathize with the parents in that way, once again. Of course, yeah. This revelation and stuff. At the same time, Peyton's dad fully on, I mean, if I was Peyton's dad, I would be in the same mindset of like these people did this for a fictional character. What makes you think they are going to stop at like...
Starting point is 01:46:26 I could only imagine the rage. I imagine they would sneak in or something would happen. I could only imagine the rage that Patent's parents would feel. Oh, I would be like, my heel, your fucking temple. And I would do a fucking street fighter kick. I'd look like King from Tekken. That's what I would do. I want to let's get let's get a tally going of times hunter makes pop culture references in the midst of the child's stabbing video
Starting point is 01:46:56 I will stop once again my brain simple I only have references that I can use I'm trying to basically I'm just skirting around the idea that I would find these children and I would fucking kill them is what I'm right right right yeah no I get it I think that'd be the I was trying to have a more palatable digestible version of that yeah yeah And I think there would be an understandable, you know, anger for the parents to have in that moment. Because, I mean, my gosh, your child stabbed 19 times. What kind of parent wouldn't, you know? Caretakers at the jail recorded Morgan talking to figures that were not there. On herself, she continued to talk to Sunderband as well as Severus Snape, Lord Voldemortemort, and one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.
Starting point is 01:47:41 Unicorns. That's a rough match for you. That sentence. A lot of land. minds for you than that one. Literally right after the pop culture reference and you hit me with that. Yeah. Go ahead.
Starting point is 01:47:55 Tell me. Take your comment. No, no, no. I said I wouldn't. Dude, actually didn't. You never said you wouldn't. I said I said I'm done. I said I won't.
Starting point is 01:48:05 Unicorns allegedly filled her room as she pretended to be a cat and kept ants as pets. During one of her competency reviews, she squatted on a chair and laughed uncontrollably while a psychologist questioned her. She told her doctor directly that she wasn't afraid of going to prison because she could use Vulcan mind control from Star Trek to believe whatever she wanted. Go ahead, Hunter. No, no, no. Well, I'm trying to find this is, this, see, this is another problem with me.
Starting point is 01:48:36 And you're going to, you need to ground me. Okay. Ground me right now. My problem right now is I want to say, oh, how convenient that once you're caught now, now you're starting to act like a fucking nut in there. You know what I mean? I don't know. Does it not feel a tad performative? I mean, am I wrong?
Starting point is 01:48:54 No, am I just being a bit doomed? No, not someone who's that gone. So what it was is more than likely is when she was outside before she got arrested, she had so many barriers adjusting her. Like for example, if you imagine someone. You're saying the floodgates are open now. Yeah, floodgates are open now. Like think about this way.
Starting point is 01:49:15 If you have a condition where you imagine, people who aren't really there, right? And you're in public or your, your house with your family, and you're the only one who sees them and no one else addresses them. That kind of acts as like barriers for your mind to be like, okay, they don't. I'm the only one. I'm the only one. But then you're locked up by yourself all day.
Starting point is 01:49:38 Well, then, you know. Oh, I see what you're saying. So solitary confinement because there is no. Well, let me ask you this. I don't even think she was in solitary confinement, but just being outside of that. setting where you have constant buffers for your mindset. Would the buffer not be the cop, though? Would the buffer not be the cop being like that this is not real?
Starting point is 01:49:58 Well, there's not a cop setting there all day doing that with her. Well, sure. And also, not all day, but there's also the fact that mental illnesses tend to compound when exposed to things like stress and paranoia. I mean, the trauma of actually performing the act was probably also the opening of the floodgates. Yeah. And now she's in jail and she's a, she's a young girl who. doesn't go to school anymore, doesn't see people anymore.
Starting point is 01:50:21 She's now locked in a room. Like all of those stressors would compound with the illness. I'm reacting. I'm reacting emotionally and not, and not, you know, I'm, I'm reacting emotionally. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Because I'm just, I'm at this point where I'm like, you cannot get out of this. You know, I'm just, I don't know. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:50:37 Yeah. Well, I mean, spoilers. That's where it goes. But so when her parents heard her diagnosis, they said they were not surprised because of her father's history. Well, they told us what had happened in that she had to, and that she had. done it because she believed Slynderman is real. That's where my mind went.
Starting point is 01:50:53 She says she must be sick. Angie and her husband even admitted that they knew their daughter liked basic empathy. We had been concerned to show Morgan the movie Bambi because she was a sensitive and empathetic child, at least towards other people. So we were afraid that when we, we were afraid that when she saw the movie, that when Bambi's mother died, she'd be devastated. She in fact had quite the opposite reaction. After Bambi's mother was shot, Morgan just said, run Bambi, run.
Starting point is 01:51:18 and had no reaction whatsoever to the mother dying. So it was kind of the opposite reaction that we expected. Interesting. I don't think that's like that crazy response, is it? Well, Bambi, get the fuck out of there. Well, more so, I mean the fact that because not showing empathy is sociopathy or psychopathy,
Starting point is 01:51:37 which is different, very different from schizophrenia. But the idea that maybe she couldn't really project empathy onto something else. That's an interesting idea from the parents. But also the parents could just be, you know, this is a circumstantial story. Like you said, it could just be
Starting point is 01:51:56 she was just thinking of Bambi and didn't really process the mom yet or something. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah. All speculative, everything we're saying, take with a great assault. Yeah. With all of her psychological diagnosis,
Starting point is 01:52:11 her parents finally took notice and began to listen to their daughter's delusions. For years, Morgan cried out and no one listened. Only after committing a heinous crime, did people begin to give her the treatment and care she needed. Her parents petitioned that she'd be moved to a mental institute to receive proper care. After a judge approved the move, her overall condition improved, though she still had bouts of mental instability.
Starting point is 01:52:35 After numerous visits, her own mother said, The best way to describe it is that it was like the light came back behind her eyes. If I had any idea that she believed Slynderman was real, we would have done something about it. We had no idea. I think on some level I always feel responsible for not knowing that my daughter wasn't well. As a mother, you're supposed to be there to protect your child. And, you know, I think on some level, I always feel that I failed in that regard. Despite improvement, Morgan had fought hard against being medicated, just like her father,
Starting point is 01:53:05 knowing that once she swallowed the first pill, her lifelong friends would disappear. Morgan is adamant in her perspective that she does not want medication. She has been told that the medication by a clinician, not myself, that the medication will take away the voices. She wants the voices to stay if she doesn't want medication. Yeah, same as her father. Anissa had been separated from Morgan as soon as she walked through the front doors of the Wakesha Police Department. After her interrogation, Anissa was moved to the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center, where guards described her as a model inmate.
Starting point is 01:53:38 She excelled in her schooling and looked after other inmates, acting as a big sister. Though she appeared to be doing fine, the memories of the attack still haunted Anissa. Other inmates harassed her and called her a monster which ate away at her psyche. That's what I am. Exactly what they called me. Her psychological evaluation found that she suffered from Foli Adieu, adopting and reinforcing Morgan's delusions as a form of escapism because the fantasy world felt safer and more appealing than reality. For years, Anissa's mother struggled to watch her little girl through the glass in the meeting room while she awaited trial.
Starting point is 01:54:14 The visiting area, there's a cement table on a piece of glass, and we can see each other, but we can't touch her. I can't wipe away a tear. I can't give her a hug. I can't kiss her. For three years, the girls were held in separate facilities and brought in and out of courtrooms as they fought for their innocence. After a lot of back and forth between doctors and lawyers, both girls were deemed competent to stay in trial, despite their psychological evaluations and were said to be sentenced in an adult court. Their defense argued they should be tried as juvenile since they were only 12 years old at the time of the crime.
Starting point is 01:54:47 But the judge denied their request. We misguides the situation based on the nature of schizophrenia and mental health law. Once she left the juvenile system, there would be no oversight or control. No way to protect public safety. Stacey Lutner celebrated the court's decision. Adult crime is adult court. If they had stolen the candy bar, sure. That's a child.
Starting point is 01:55:10 But you try to kill somebody. That's an adult crime. I think we talked about that in a previous episode or I talked about somewhere where typically the whole like charged as a child is just for like not capital offense level crimes. Like once you do that, then it suddenly not a juvenile court anymore. It's now adult court. Knowing how violent the crime was and that it was planned months in advance, there was no way either girl was going to be tried as a juvenile.
Starting point is 01:55:38 Anissa had expressed remorse for the crime, but Morgan only began to show regret after she was medicated. It was the opinion of one of her doctors that she simply needs to grow up to be deemed competent. In 2017, Anissa was charged with the tempted second-degree intentional homicide as a party to a crime with the use of a dangerous weapon. It's pretty specific, but I think that covers everything. A jury found her guilty, but not guilty due to mental disease or defect. With all the evidence laid out before him and after hearing the jury's verdict, Judge Michael Boren sentenced Anissa to 25 years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, with mandatory three-year confinement and communal supervision until the age of 37. Morgan's trial would take place
Starting point is 01:56:25 six weeks later, where she would also be found guilty but not guilty due to mental disease or defect for her charges of attempted first-degree intentional homicide as a party to a crime. She would be sentenced to the maximum sentence of 40 years in a mental institute after her psychological evaluations were read to the court. When the sentencing was over, Payton's family breathed a sigh of relief knowing justice had been served. Years of waiting and anticipation were over with one hit of a gavel. Peyton returned home from the hospital one week after the attack. She constantly ran fevers and had shallow breathing, even when walking short distances. It was hard to move on after such a traumatic experience.
Starting point is 01:57:04 At only 12 years old, her life was almost ripped from her by her best friend, only surviving by the grace of a good Samaritan passing by and the will to live. Thankfully, it wouldn't be long until things started to return to normal. Just six weeks after the attack, Peyton was allowed to go swimming again. Thousands of letters poured into her mailbox showing nothing but support as she recovered. By September, she had fully recovered and could once again attend school. Though her body had recovered, Peyton's mind still reads. live the horrors of that day constantly.
Starting point is 01:57:37 She could no longer sleep alone and had to sleep with a pair of broken scissors under her pillow while her mother lay next to her. Even as she had to console her daughter every night, Stacey was just happy to have her daughter home alive, but she knew she had a long road ahead to truly return to normal. Her daughter had lost all trust in her friends and family, fearing they might attack.
Starting point is 01:57:58 She has friends, but initially, even with those friends, she kept them at arm's lengths. And for a long time, even trusting family members was hard for her. As time went on, she grew more curious about her friend's motives and wasn't surprised when she learned that the girls wanted to appease Sunder Man. After I heard what she did, it was all like, well, this doesn't even surprise me at all because she believed so hard in this thing that she would do anything for it. Most people were shocked to hear how forgiving Payton was, especially after hearing
Starting point is 01:58:27 how critical people were of Morgan's mother, Angie. I thought about what she's going through and how hard it must be for her. Because I'm sure a lot of people are trashing on her and hating her. It's saying it was her fault. She raised Morgan wrong. It wasn't Angie's fault. Morgan Schizophrenic. There's nothing she could have done to stop that or control that.
Starting point is 01:58:45 It was not her fault. God damn. Does this woman, does this girl have angel wings? Good Lord. What is, what a, what is swimming? Like, my God. Yeah, well, I mean, it is a very inspiring level of, you know, forgiveness.
Starting point is 01:59:05 Yeah. Forgiveness and understanding at that age, after being that traumatized. And the clarity that comes with it, yeah. And even facing her own demons of the trauma that that gave her. She's still able to have the clarity to just be like, you know what, man?
Starting point is 01:59:20 You'd like, it's unbelievable. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, she's, she's cool. Payton's mother had bought into the hatred spewed at the gazers for what their daughter did, but she too learned to forgive them. I was angry for a long time, especially at Morgan's parents,
Starting point is 01:59:38 knowing that Morgan's dad had schizophrenia for a long time. I thought that they were maybe just in denial and ignoring her symptoms, but I'm not angry anymore because I recognize that they're going through their own hell. That's also a piece of clarity from the mother. There is suffering involved with them. Didn't it say that when she was a child,
Starting point is 01:59:57 they had her tested and she had like schizophrenia-like symptoms? like she was little, little thing about the ghost, biting her. Yeah. Since she was little, Morgan had experienced weird visual phenomenon. Yeah, as a toddler, she would approach her parents to tell them the ghosts, we're talking about her. Oh, a psychologist would later reveal she had vivid dreams
Starting point is 02:00:17 and wish she would change. Okay. So they didn't take her to get tested or something like that for a long time. The father had schizophrenia. No, yeah. And she said things that should have raised alarm, but were bypassed, yeah. I see.
Starting point is 02:00:29 Right. I see. The gazers and Weir family endured widespread hate from random strangers nationwide. Their daughters had committed the unthinkable, and they had been ostracized from society. Even after Inissa came home in 2021, her father did their best to keep her at home and out of the public eye. To the public surprise, Morgan in 2025 would also be set free from the mental institution and placed in a groom home where she could be more independent. Once her friend Anissa was allowed to go home, Morgan began sending petitions to be released to a group home, which were rejected until a judge finally appelled her petition and agreed to send her
Starting point is 02:01:07 to one. Wait, Morgan would be sent. Okay, Morgan started sending them after Anisa got released. I got it. For months, Morgan's caretakers searched for a home that would take her, but nobody was willing. A group home in Milwaukee was initially considered for Morgan's placement, but the plan was quickly abandoned after officials realized it was only eight miles from the Lutner family home. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. This stuff is so, I mean, this happens all the time when people get declared as like mentally incompetent or unwell, which obviously is justified the majority of the time.
Starting point is 02:01:44 But sometimes it'll be horrific case like this and they'll get sent. And then after five years, it's like, you're doing better, you know, to kick a, kick a. back out there. See how it goes. Now this case is different. They're not just releasing her. They're putting her in a group home, which is a bit, you know, less stringent. But man.
Starting point is 02:02:02 Yeah. But still, just eight. I mean, oh, my God. I would fucking loose sleep over that. The next place they looked was in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, where the presiding judge was optimistic, stating, I don't see the wrist of the public. That's the exact point. I can't remember the story.
Starting point is 02:02:22 But when you're like, did I mention I'm, crippling alcoholic. I don't see the risk to the public. Also, I forgot to tell you I'm blind. Oh, I dared my best friend to ruin my life. That's it. I don't see why not? However, a city attorney from Sun Prairie was quick to reject this transfer and had her move
Starting point is 02:02:48 to another facility in Madison, believing she was still a threat to society. citizens of the city were also worried about living in close proximity to Morgan out of fear that she would escape. I like how they're true. I mean like, yes, I understand keeping her locked up and stuff like that. But the people in the town next to the facility, like she's the joker in there. I mean, at a certain point, it has to be a thing of being like, I don't, we don't want that fucking, we don't want that near our families. Look, I get it, but there's already a, like, mentally unwell criminal facility there. It's like, that's true.
Starting point is 02:03:28 This one is, this one has a, you know, this one just has a reputation. Yeah. So it's, it's able, people that have the other mental facility, they're like, well, I don't know their story. They can, like, lie to themselves and be like, well, it's okay. Versus this is like, I don't want my kid getting stabbed 19 times. Maybe they're only there because they stole money to give to the homeless. It's like, yeah, sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:03:48 It's a building full of Robin Hood. That's what happens in the criminally insane building. A building full of wrong. Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe. They're all misunderstood. Yeah. They're all heroes and they're all right. I bet if you went in there, it'd be like the green mile like a thousand times in a row.
Starting point is 02:04:07 Yeah. Let John coffee go. Let John coffee go. It's like 1,200 people were killed today. God. Morgan's attorney argued that the. move was actually a good thing and would help her adjust to living in society again. People should be aware of what is going on in their community.
Starting point is 02:04:27 But people have been released somewhere. And so if you permit cities to object, then you'd have everybody objecting. You'd never release people. That sounds great. Can we do that? Yeah, exactly. Can we get them in there? So she's getting transferred to a home, right, instead of the, like it's still a facility.
Starting point is 02:04:49 It's just not like. still going to be a facility. Yeah, yeah. But it's just way more, I don't think it's definitely not. I mean, it's not a group home. You know what I mean? It's a group home.
Starting point is 02:04:57 Yeah. Yeah. It turns out people were right to be afraid of Morgan moving into their neighborhood because one month after her release, she cut her ankle monitor and fled 170 miles south to Pose in Illinois with 43-year-old Chad Mecca whom she met at the group home. My fucking God! I mean.
Starting point is 02:05:20 Could you imagine all these people in town who were terrified of her getting out? And everyone's like, she's not going to get out. Yeah. Well, I can't possibly see the right. I don't see the risk of that. She's 170 miles. I'd be burned that motherfucker's house right there. We'd have a straight up pig roast of that motherfucker after that happened.
Starting point is 02:05:40 Oh, boy. Not four weeks into her being released. Immediately. Like comedic timing. Kids out runs away. Oh. After removing her monitor. she simply walked out the front door
Starting point is 02:05:52 and off on a Greyhound bus in Chicago. She didn't even have to break a window. She cut it with a pair of children's safety scissors and walked out the goddamn front door. All right, you can be trusted. Off you go. From there, they walked through Chicago
Starting point is 02:06:08 to a pace bus station and rode 20 miles to Posen. Police would find her at a truck stop aided by numerous tips and surveillance footage across Chicago. When officers confronted her, she refused to identify herself and sniped at police saying, Just Google me.
Starting point is 02:06:26 Police knew. That's her voice now. Police knew who both of them were, arrested them, and extraded them back to Wisconsin. Morgan was sent back to Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she will reside for the remainder of her 40-year sentence. Wow. So she had to go back to the original place?
Starting point is 02:06:44 Yes. Obviously, wow. Well, I mean, they trust you in a group home and you're out in four weeks. Like, no, you can't go back to one. Well, exactly. It just seems like it, God, it's, man, I, sometimes the rehabilitation aspect, like, she, was she just putting on a show? She saw that Anissa was able to get out and then someone told her and she's just like, I should just put it in for the same thing. I think, like, the intention of these facilities is originally is there are some people who are so unwell, they cannot be trusted to interact with a society.
Starting point is 02:07:17 But also, because they're unwell, it's not their fault. and they shouldn't be punished for it in like a prison or execution or something like that. But if people, you know, are to the degree that the rest of us are not safe if they're around, then that's what these facilities are.
Starting point is 02:07:35 And she clearly seems like a case of that because the moment she had any leeway, another guy was like, hey, cut your monitor and run. And they're like, yeah, of course. That makes sense to me. So all it takes is someone else to meet her and be like,
Starting point is 02:07:48 thank God. Hey, attack someone else. Thank God for the tips and the surveillance And thank God that there was another Another cop there with the Giant Blues Clues notebook Hey Do I think you are who you are
Starting point is 02:08:01 You think what? I don't know, just Google me You think what she said that he just pulled out a comedically large phone And started typing it like You had a giant old person phone It looks like one of it. It's just huge buttons He's like hold on a second
Starting point is 02:08:15 You have to tap through the numbers To get to the letters Yeah Oh, I gotta go back now. Dang it. Backs me. Got big fingers. It's been 12 years since that fateful day.
Starting point is 02:08:32 Payne graduated from high school in 2020 and wanted to pursue a medical degree inspired by the doctors who saved her life. She thanked Morgan for changing her life and turning her into the person she is today. I would probably initially thank her. Lunar said to Muir. I would say, just because. what she did, I had the life I have now. And I really, really like it. And I have a plan. I didn't have a plan when I was 12. And now I do because everything that I went through. I wouldn't think that someone who went through what I did would ever say that. But that's truly how I feel about
Starting point is 02:09:06 the whole situation. I wouldn't be who I am. That is a girl who had such a horrific tragedy happened to her, but she has such a great perspective on where she is now that she doesn't I'm telling you, that's true forgiveness. The world is going to be a better place with her in it in that perspective. Yeah, of course. Whatever she does, she is going to impact people in such a positive way. God bless that child. Yeah, I think being able to have that optimism afterwards is a very, very blessed thing, very cool person.
Starting point is 02:09:39 Worried that other young girls might face the same fate as her. Peyton urges parents to educate themselves and talk to their kids about the content they consume online. She also offered some wisdom to other children who may be stuck in toxic, manipulative friendships. Get out before something bad happens to you. Even if you're guilted into it. If you've been friends with them for years, if you feel like something's bad, you need to get out while you still can. Preach! She never would have suspected that her lifelong best friend would be the one to nearly take her life. Life can truly be fragile. The distance of one human hair would have changed this story in lives of those in the town of Oakesha. Forever. And that, my friends, as of, as of recent, as of today is the story of the Slyndermann
Starting point is 02:10:24 Stabbing. It is the anniversary. Cannot believe it's been 12 years. I feel like it's insane. It's been that long now. But my God, I got to tell you, that is the, to end it on that quote from, uh, Peyton is so true. Toxic relationships, friendships, even is something that I feel like people get walked over all
Starting point is 02:10:45 the time. It's crazy. And I think that like there's been so many cases, especially from online communities that have transferred the things they do online into actual tangible physical relationships. Like another example that's a great video online from Frederick Nudson is the final fantasy house. Have you heard that? That's another one where it's people online interactions. They have like it's just a niche community. Those people meet up in real life.
Starting point is 02:11:13 And then the toxic traits of that person completely consumes the other person. and like it basically just ends in abuse. And in this case, was almost murder. Uh, it's just insane. And that's, that's the true fucking horror story of this.
Starting point is 02:11:26 That's the true horror of the story is the, is the kind of relationships you put yourself through or the kind of things that you do that can result in actual physical altercations or even life and death scenarios. Pretty fucking crazy, man. Yeah, I think, uh, it's, um, it's tragic, but I do love the optimist that came out of it.
Starting point is 02:11:45 And man, thank God she lived. in many senses, but gosh, unbelievable, it's amazing. It is a miracle she lived and I'm glad she did, of course, and also all the optimism she's able to have on the other side of it. But you see that a lot with like a lot of tragedies that happen. It's because someone had a friend who got them closer and closer to a spot that they should have come out of but didn't.
Starting point is 02:12:09 I mean, like the classic example, Columbine, right, Dylan and Eric. And then you have like, I mean, tragedy. the shooting that happened just the other day at the mosque in California, two friends that knew each other from school. And then they got into the 7-6-4, which, I mean, that group is responsible for, I don't know, how many deaths at this point between mass shootings and stuff like that. But again, that entire group operates on getting people to be your friend,
Starting point is 02:12:36 inducting them, blackmailing them, stuff like that. So I don't know. At some point, I understand that relationships can be hard to break off. off and you know you can't have dependence on people but that doesn't object you from any of the wrong you do with them so yeah it's a it's a slippery slope man and i think it all starts with self-love it starts with knowing how you should be treated by people and as long as you have that and also too just know that like man there's better people out there and also too i mean this is a huge case for unchecked mental illness.
Starting point is 02:13:16 And I mean, like, it's just, this is such a crazy, what a crazy storm that results in this. It's like fucking getting struck by lightning or something. It's just like the perfect storm that hit this, you know what I mean? It could have happened to anybody, but it happened to this girl. And then it just got, it got swept in with everything else. It's just, uh, such a wild, wild story. Um, and I don't know.
Starting point is 02:13:39 I mean, like, we were talking about this. It was the anniversary. of the stabbing and it was just such a crazy thing and we had just recently uh within the past like however many months just finished the marble hornet series as well we just i remember we were just talking about it and we figured that we would try to do this format i know it's a little new hopefully you all enjoyed it i thoroughly enjoyed this i thought that it was a fun way to kind of tell the story in a way that still let you narrate and we can kind of use these quotations and stuff for the normal things that we do um also what we'll do as well for all the
Starting point is 02:14:10 the documentation and stuff of the story. We'll be sure to put our links and sources below in the description. And just want to thank our researchers and stuff for writing up this document because it was, uh, it was very informative and just eye opening. I mean, gut wrenching at times too. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode. We appreciate you. If you are listening on the audio platforms like Spotify and Apple podcast, anywhere you can listen to podcast. Be sure to give us a nice rating if you enjoyed the episode. And also to our beautiful patrons, who just got some more episodes this week. We just read one that was really funny.
Starting point is 02:14:45 I think the, or it was a good story. You have to be there to listen to it. But yeah, kind of a, it was a bit of a recording, but it was a fun one. So thank you to the patrons
Starting point is 02:14:54 who helped the content and also get a little extra on the side. We appreciate you. Until next time, guys, stay creeped. I don't, I feel like this is too serious to have a funny final line with.
Starting point is 02:15:06 So what he said, stay creeped or whatever. Bye. Thank you.

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