Girl in Slender Man stabbing case had a ‘broken mind’: lawyer

A Wisconsin girl who told investigators she helped stab a classmate was convinced the crime would protect her and her family from a horror character called the Slender Man who she thought was real, her lawyer told jurors Tuesday.

The defence is trying to convince jurors that Anissa Weier was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the stabbing at a Waukesha park in 2014 and therefore is not criminally responsible.

Payton Leutner was stabbed 19 times in a plot by Weier and co-defendant Morgan Geyser and left in a wooded park where she eventually crawled for help after the girls left, according to prosecutors. A passing bicyclist found Leutner. Weier and Geyser were arrested later that day and said they were walking to meet Slender Man in a northern Wisconsin forest. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

“Anissa’s broken mind caused her to lose touch with reality,” defence lawyer Joseph Smith told jurors. “Anissa was under the command and control of a delusional disorder.”

During his opening statements, Smith played portions of a police interrogation of Weier shortly after her arrest in which she described a plot to kill Leutner in order to become a proxy of Slender Man, whom she described as tall and faceless with numerous tentacles capable of killing her family in a matter of seconds.

Weier, now 15, sat nearby while the snippets of the interview were played on a large screen for jurors.