Murder Files: 12-Year Old Girl Stabbed By Two Of Her Classmates 19 Times And Left For Dead In The Forest, Assailants Claim Imaginary Figure On The Internet Told Them To Kill For Him

A bicyclist discovered Payton Leutner, 12, on the side of the road covered in blood. It was May 31, 2014, and the young girl had crawled for dear life out of the nearby woods, where she’d been viciously stabbed 19 times in her arms, her legs, and her torso. She managed to survive, despite suffering major injuries to her vital organs. And she remembered who tried to kill her, leaving her alone amid the trees to bleed to death.

Even bigger shocks were in store for the suburban town of Waukesha, Wisconsin, when police apprehended Leutner’s alleged attackers—two other 12-year-old girls, one of them her longtime bestie who blamed an unlikely culprit for making them do it: Slenderman, the thin, tall, faceless, child-preying imaginary figure they’d come across on the Internet. 

Slender Man is described in fictional stories as an unnaturally tall, thin demon-like figure that lacks facial features. He is said to live in a mansion in a forest. Authorities say the girls hoped to live in that fictional home after the attack. They claimed that Slenderman promised to bring them to paradise if they spilled blood.

Scary stuff.