Woman who admitted to Slender Man attack to be freed from institution Monday

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman who admitted to helping stab a classmate to please online horror character Slender Man will be freed Monday from a mental health institution under strict conditions, a judge ruled Friday.

Anissa Weier, 19, will be released after spending almost four years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh. A conditional release plan calls for her to live with her father, submit to around-the-clock GPS monitoring and receive psychiatric treatment, among other things. She won’t be allowed to use the internet except at home, and the state Department of Corrections will monitor her online activity.

Weier and a friend, Morgan Geyser, both were committed to Winnebago after pleading guilty to attacking Payton Leutner when they were all 12 years old. Geyser stabbed Leutner multiple times as Weier urged her on. Leutner suffered 19 stab stab wounds — including one that narrowly missed her heart — and barely survived.

Weier eventually pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide. Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren sentenced her to 25 years at Winnebago in December 2017.

In her petition for conditional release, she argued that she had exhausted all her treatment options at the facility and needed to rejoin society. She vowed she’d never let herself “become a weapon again.”

Bohren ruled in July that Weier no longer posed a threat and ordered state officials to draw up a release plan.

Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide. Bohren sentenced her to 40 years in a mental health facility in February 2018.

Bohren said the conditions of Weier’s release were fair and the plan “provides for the protection of the community” as well as for Leutner and for Weier herself.