A Wisconsin teenager who admitted to taking part in the stabbing of a classmate to please the horror character Slender Man will not serve time in prison, CBS News reports.
A jury determined on Friday that Anissa Weier was mentally ill at the time of the attempted murder.
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Weier and Morgan Geyser lured classmate Payton Leutner into the woods in 2014, where the latter stabbed Leutner 19 times while the former urged her on.
A passerby found Leutner, who barely survived the attack. The girls were 12 at the time of the incident.
The jury’s decision means Weier will be sent to a mental hospital for at least three years instead serving time in prison.
Three psychologists testified that Weier suffered a shared delusion that she and Geyser had to kill Leutner and become Slender Man’s servants in order to prevent the character from killing their families.
They both told detectives the reasoning for the attack, claiming they had to protect their families.
Weier, 15, pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide after accepting a deal with prosecutors in August. She claims she was mentally unstable at the time of her attack and believes she is not responsible for her actions.
The jury’s deliberations began on Friday morning. The judge told the jury that there only needed to be 10 people to agree on the verdict for it to pass, although he would prefer a unanimous decision.
The teen’s attorney, Maura McMahon, revealed during her closing statement that Weier was lonely and depressed after her parent’s divorce causing her to latch onto Geyser. The two became obsessed with the horror character causing them to develop a shared delusional disorder.
Weier believed Slender Man had the ability to read her mind and would kill her or her family anytime she spoke about him.
Geyser’s trial starts Oct. 9. She pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease to being a party to first-degree attempted intentional homicide.
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