One of the two girls charged in the “Slender Man” attack is changing her plea to not guilty by reason of insanity. According to the Wisconsin Journal, experts have already testified in court that she “suffers from schizophrenia and oppositional defiant disorder and maintains relationships with imaginary characters”. Cotton said he thought it was important that an evaluator have some familiarity with Geyser’s condition closer in time to the incident, and not just how she appears now after months of treatment and medication at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.
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If Geyser is found to be mentally unstable, she could be confined to a mental hospital.
The girls, both of them 14 years old now, are being tried as adults for attempted murder and will face decades in prison if convicted.
Morgan Geyser, now 14, and her friend Anissa Weier reportedly lured their victim Payton Leutner into the woods in May 2014, after inviting her to a sleepover in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bohren on Thursday said he would look to schedule her trial for March as well.
Also in court Friday, Weier’s attorney noted he is filing for the jury in his client’s case to be brought in from a different county.
The Associated Press hadn’t previously named the girls because their attorneys had been seeking to move their cases into juvenile court, where they could be incarcerated for three years and then supervised under age 18. Their attorneys had been fighting to move them into juvenile court but a state appeals court in July ruled they should remain in adult court.
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Police captured Geyser and the other girl on Waukesha’s outskirts later that day. The bleeding tween crawled to a walking path, where a passing bicyclist discovered her and called for help.
