'Slender Man' stabbing victim speaks out for first time
WAUKESHA, Wis. -- It's been five years since Peyton Leutner was stabbed repeatedly and left to die by classmates trying to please the fictional character "Slender Man." In a new interview with ABC News, Leutner spoke out for the first time since the attack, revealing to ABC's David Muir what it was like the day she almost lost her life.
"They just wanted to go on a walk. I didn't think much of it -- it's just a walk. It's in Waukesha, what bad stuff happens in Waukesha, Wisconsin?" Leutner recalled.
She continued: "Anissa told me to lie on the ground and cover myself in sticks and leaves and stuff. But it was really just a trick."
It was then, according to investigators, that Leutner's classmates stabbed her 19 times and left her for dead. She said she didn't feel any of the stabbing "because my body was in shock...the adrenaline, I didn't feel a thing."
"I think I remember them running away. I kind of just laid there for a minute," she continued. "I got up, grabbed a couple of trees for support, I think, and just walked until I hit a patch of grass where I could lay down."
It was there, at the end of Big Bend Road, that a bicyclist found her and called 911. Police and EMT workers arrived. Leutner's focus, she said, faded in and out while in the ambulance.
"I couldn't focus much because my body was working so hard to keep itself alive," she said. "It was probably like, 'Vision isn't really a priority right now.'"
Leutner's two classmates, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, were charged in adult court with first-degree attempted intentional homicide after the attack.
Weier pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was found by a jury to be not guilty by mental disease or defect in 2017. Geyser pleaded guilty to the first-degree charges against her. In 2018, as a part of her plea agreement with prosecutors, Geyser was convicted but found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
Weier and Geyser each were sentenced to up to 25 years and up to 40 years, respectively, in a mental health institution.
