‘Beware the Slenderman’ Doc: What You Need to Know About the Meme-Motivated Attempted Murder Before You Watch

On May 31, 2014, two Wisconsin tweens lured a third into the suburban Waukesha woods, stabbed her 19 times, and left her to die while they washed up at a nearby Walmart. The true crime tale, which has become known as “the Slenderman stabbing,” only got weirder from there as details of why — or more accurately for who — the then 12-year-olds attacked Payton “Bella” Leutner. In separate interrogation rooms, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser told detectives that they were attempting to become “proxies” of the Slenderman, a fictional and frightening supernatural character born on the Internet, which required a blood sacrifice.