‘Slender Man’ victim Payton Leutner sleeps with scissors ‘just in case’, she says, speaking out for first time since brutal attack
- Leutner was 12 when she was lured into woods by friends and stabbed 19 times in effort to please fictional horror character
- Case drew widespread attention because of youth of attackers, both also 12, who said they were afraid Slender Man would hurt them and their families
A Wisconsin girl who was lured into the woods by two friends and stabbed 19 times in an effort to please a fictional horror character called Slender Man said she has come to terms with aspects of the attack but still sleeps with broken scissors “just in case.”
In her first interview about the 2014 attack, which is set to air Friday, Payton Leutner told ABC News that despite her lingering trauma, she has “come to accept all of the scars that I have”.
“It’s just a part of me,” she said.
Leutner was 12 when two of her 12-year-old friends, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, lured her from a sleepover to a nearby wooded park in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, investigators said.
In the ABC interview, Leutner recalled how, before the stabbing, Weier told her to lie down on the ground and cover herself with sticks and leaves, as part of what Leutner believed to be a game of hide-and-seek.