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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast.

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Speaker 2: Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters.

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Speaker 2: This podcast was recorded on It's a Saturday Morning in Waukeshire,

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Speaker 2: Wisconsin in May twenty fourteen. And friends Bella, Morgan, and

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Speaker 2: Anissa are playing at a local park after spending the

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Speaker 2: night at Morgan's for a birthday sleepover. It was a

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Speaker 2: lovely afternoon. The girls went skating, they played the sims,

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Speaker 2: giggled endlessly, and eat cheese pips, just regular twelve year

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Speaker 2: old girl stuff. But Anissa and Morgan had a secret plan,

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Speaker 2: a plan to kill Bella to appease a fictional character

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Speaker 2: called slender Man, who they'd read about online and planned

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Speaker 2: to run away with. It was supposed to happen at

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Speaker 2: two am, then five thirty am, then nine thirty am,

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Speaker 2: but the girls keep chickening out. Bella keeps telling them

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Speaker 2: no when they try and get her to lie down

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Speaker 2: or pretend to be asleep, or to sit in the corner.

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Speaker 2: It's harder than they anticipated. Finally, during a game of

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Speaker 2: hide and seek at the park, Morgan takes charge. She

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Speaker 2: straddles her best friend in the dirt and tells her

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I have to do this because it's the

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Speaker 2: only way to save my life. Someone from Creepy Pasta

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Speaker 2: is stalking me. She stabs Bella nineteen times and flees

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Speaker 2: with Anissa by her side, bleeding. A gravely injured Bella

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Speaker 2: drags herself into a clearing where she's spotted by a

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Speaker 2: passing cyclist. You will find a twelve year old female

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Speaker 2: who appears.

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Speaker 1: To be stabbed. Stab Are you with this twelve year

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Speaker 1: old female? Yeah? She says she's having trouble breathing. She

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Speaker 1: said she was stabbed multiple times, sab multiple times.

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Speaker 2: As news of the stabbing lands in the inboxes of

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Speaker 2: newsrooms globally, it becomes clear very quickly, this is a

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Speaker 2: story that the whole world is about to have an

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Speaker 2: opinion on. I'm Jemma Bath and this is true Crime

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Speaker 2: Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes

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Speaker 2: by speaking to the people who know the most about them.

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Speaker 2: Slenderman is a creepy, faceless character with long arms and

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Speaker 2: legs and black tentacles that protrude from his back. He

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Speaker 2: wears a black suit, and his victims are pulled into

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Speaker 2: a hypnotized state utterly helpless against him. By twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 2: he was viral, gaining notoriety, in particular on a site

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Speaker 2: called creepypasta dot com, a place for amateur horror stories

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Speaker 2: and young adult content. That's where twelve year olds Morgan

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Speaker 2: Geyser and Anissa Wire found him and became obsessed with him.

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Speaker 2: Morgan had been seeing and hearing things, and they were

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Speaker 2: afraid he had control of her mind and was coming

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Speaker 2: to kill her family. They had to take action. They

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Speaker 2: had to kill someone first, then then run away to

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Speaker 2: Slender Mansion with him and become his proxies. It was

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Speaker 2: the stuff of magic and fantasy for two very young girls,

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Speaker 2: but it was intermixed with severe mental illness on Morgan's

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Speaker 2: part and an undiagnosed disability and mental health condition on

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Speaker 2: a Nissa's side. But it's those details, the mental health

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Speaker 2: of these tween girls that got left behind in twenty

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Speaker 2: fourteen and the years that followed, as the girls were

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Speaker 2: tried as adults and prosecuted with the world's eyes and

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Speaker 2: judgment upon them. When journalist Kathleen Hale decided to write

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Speaker 2: about this case, she wanted to tell the whole story,

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Speaker 2: the story that got lost in the media, the story

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Speaker 2: that not only honored the victim and shared her terror

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Speaker 2: and recovery, but tried to understand what actually happened, why

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Speaker 2: it happened. Result was her book slender Man, A Tragic

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Speaker 2: Story of Online obsession and mental illness, and Kathleen joins us. Now, Kathleen, firstly,

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Speaker 2: can you take us inside the obsession that was slender

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Speaker 2: Man in twenty fourteen ish? It was pretty huge online,

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Speaker 2: wasn't it.

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Speaker 1: It had been about five years in twenty fourteen since

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Speaker 1: Slenderman first emerged online in two thousand and nine as

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Speaker 1: part of like a photoshop contest in the paranormal sort

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Speaker 1: of message boards of a horror forum. And he was

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Speaker 1: born basically in these doctored photos that people that someone

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Speaker 1: made of their children playing and having a good time,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't notice that from afar was a very tall,

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Speaker 1: sort of thin spectral figure watching them, stocking them, and

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Speaker 1: it sort of just captured the attention of horror fans

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Speaker 1: online who are beginning to congress gate in different forums.

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Speaker 1: And by the time this case rolled around in twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: he had become a semi popular character on creepypasta dot com,

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Speaker 1: which was a fan fiction horror site where people could

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Speaker 1: read each other's amateur horror stories and sort of borrow

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Speaker 1: characters from each other and write original horror fiction. And

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Speaker 1: he was one of many characters featured on the site.

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Speaker 1: And actually, ironically, he wasn't super super popular in twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: not as we know him to be now. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: until a crime, a heinous, globally and famous crime, was

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Speaker 1: committed in his name that he really became the popular

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Speaker 1: sort of horror icon that people know him as today.

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Speaker 2: And the idea of him as this kind of horror

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Speaker 2: character was that too, did he stalk paople, manipulate people,

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Speaker 2: kill people? What was his deal?

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Speaker 1: So his sort of powers are more about rolling other

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Speaker 1: people and having them do his bidding. He in some

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Speaker 1: stories he is violent, but for the most part his

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Speaker 1: narratives really revolve around him using mind control to inspire

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Speaker 1: other people to commit violence in his name, and so

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of scary stories about him, you know,

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Speaker 1: getting in the heads of people and making them kill

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Speaker 1: their whole families, and then when they're all done, he

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Speaker 1: comes and he takes them away. But that's basically his

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Speaker 1: number one power is mind control and getting other people

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Speaker 1: to kill for him. He doesn't have to do it

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Speaker 1: himself because he can. He can worm his way into

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Speaker 1: the minds of vulnerable people, and that's how he enacts violence.

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Speaker 2: And Creepy Pasta it's kind of just like a forum, right,

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Speaker 2: a website.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a website and it's in twenty fourteen.

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Speaker 1: It was very low fi like. It basically looked like

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Speaker 1: a middle schooler's horror blog, like black background, red words,

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Speaker 1: really sort of simple interface, and in fact, a lot

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Speaker 1: of the stories on it were written by children, you

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Speaker 1: could just tell. So it was popular among a certain

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Speaker 1: age group. It wasn't sophisticated like you know, Reddit or

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Speaker 1: a place like that. It was. It was a bit dorky,

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Speaker 1: very pg. Thirteen. The submission guidelines were pretty you know, strict.

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Speaker 1: Nothing could have any kind of like sexual overtones. Everything

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Speaker 1: had to be sort of accessible for middle schoolers. It

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Speaker 1: really felt like a site that was catered toward children.

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Speaker 2: Well, I guess that makes sense with a name like

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Speaker 2: Creepy Pasta as well.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you know it's creepy Pasta. Yeah, yeah, no, it's

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Speaker 1: it's a great it's a great site name. It's a

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Speaker 1: word play on copy and paste, creepy pasta copy and paste,

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Speaker 1: So it's it's evocat of what the site is for,

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Speaker 1: which is to basically copy and paste each other's stories

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Speaker 1: into a new, fresh word document, take away a lot,

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Speaker 1: add some more of your own, upload it, and the

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Speaker 1: cycle continues.

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Speaker 2: Can you tell us about where this crime is set?

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Speaker 2: It was a town or city in Wisconsin that you're

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Speaker 2: actually very familiar with, right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I grew up nearby. The crime took place in Waukeshaw, Wisconsin,

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Speaker 1: which is one of the three most conservative counties in

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Speaker 1: all of Wisconsin, which is sort of saying something people

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Speaker 1: who are not from Wisconsin or not from the United

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Speaker 1: States to really understand it. I guess it reminds me

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Speaker 1: a lot of the Shirley Jackson story. The Lottery. People

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Speaker 1: are really, really, really friendly, but there are these very

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Speaker 1: strong Gothic undertones, lots of secrets, lots of vengeful attitudes

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Speaker 1: when lines are crossed. But you know, just in terms

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Speaker 1: of what it looks like so people can picture it,

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Speaker 1: extremely suburban, extremely pristine, clean white, and the sort of

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Speaker 1: extreme far right political culture of this locale cannot be overstated.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of trump Ism there and when this

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Speaker 1: case was first unfolding, it was two years before he

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Speaker 1: won the twenty sixteen election, and all of the forces

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Speaker 1: that were poised to put him into the White House

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Speaker 1: were very much alive and electric and brewing in a

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Speaker 1: state at that time. It's the sort of place where

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Speaker 1: people are very, very wary of outsiders. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of sort of quiet racism, and there's a sort of

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Speaker 1: misplaced idea that the reason that Waksha is so safe

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Speaker 1: is because of these tough on crime laws as they're

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Speaker 1: called in the United States, which you know, which is

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Speaker 1: you know, not true, But it's the sort of self

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Speaker 1: reinforcing ideology that things are safe because things are the

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Speaker 1: way they are, and so that's sort of what the

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Speaker 1: environment is like. But it's beautiful. It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

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Speaker 1: It's a place where you can have a really good

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Speaker 1: life at little cost to yourself, so long as you

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Speaker 1: fit in to what everyone thinks, you know, you should be.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like the kind of place where a crime

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Speaker 2: like this would be particularly shocking.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think that the prior to this, in

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Speaker 1: all of Waukesha, there's a lot of people there. There

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Speaker 1: had been less than one murder per year, and this

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Speaker 1: was not a murder case. It was it would be

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Speaker 1: widely mistaken as a murder case. But just to give

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Speaker 1: you an idea of how safe and crime free the

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Speaker 1: area was. Like any suburban place in the US, it

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Speaker 1: had its issues with drugs, you know, there were things

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Speaker 1: like that going on, but in terms of violent crime, no,

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Speaker 1: there is nothing. This was the kind of place were

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Speaker 1: something like this would never No one would have expected

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Speaker 1: this to happen.

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Speaker 2: It took you seven years or so to write your

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Speaker 2: book on this. How did you find writing it? Approaching

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Speaker 2: the people in the story, trying to gain their trust,

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Speaker 2: and it helped being as somewhat local.

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Speaker 1: It helped me having been local. Once they would speak

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Speaker 1: to me, I mean a group so close to where

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Speaker 1: this took place, like that the girls involved in the

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Speaker 1: story and I we had a lot of the same

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Speaker 1: sort of childhood touched ones the same place where these

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Speaker 1: three girls spent Morgan and Anissa's last night of freedom.

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Speaker 1: That was the roller rink where I first held hands

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Speaker 1: with the crush. Like, we had these sort of common

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Speaker 1: cultural monuments. And so once somebody would speak to me,

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Speaker 1: and once maybe they heard the way I spoke and

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Speaker 1: they could understand that I understood them on this sort

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Speaker 1: of deeper level. I do think that that helped us.

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Speaker 1: I was looking at it from the point of view

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Speaker 1: of not just this was a horrible crime. I was

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Speaker 1: also looking at it from the point of view of

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Speaker 1: this is a horrible crime that we committed on the

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Speaker 1: so called criminals involved in the case. The judicial process

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Speaker 1: that unfolded was a circus, and the laws that came

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Speaker 1: crashing down on these young girls they need to be

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Speaker 1: revoked and amended. And I just couldn't believe what was happening,

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Speaker 1: and nobody really wanted to look at it from that

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Speaker 1: point of view. To them, my having any compassion for

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Speaker 1: the other two children who were involved in the crime

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Speaker 1: the assailants was the same as saying that the victim's

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Speaker 1: experience didn't matter, which is not how I felt at all.

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Speaker 1: But unfortunately, in the US were in this place where

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Speaker 1: the two things cannot be true, right a lot compassion.

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Speaker 1: You can't have compassion for a victim and have compassion

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Speaker 1: for her attackers. Those two ideas seemed mutually exclusive to

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Speaker 1: most of the people that I talked to, so it

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Speaker 1: was very hard getting people to talk to me, but

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Speaker 1: Morgan's family opened up to me and I got to

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Speaker 1: speak to Morgan, and from there, just because of all

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Speaker 1: of the extensive documentation on the case, Thousands and thousands

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Speaker 1: of pages of interviews, etc. And all of the previous reporting,

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Speaker 1: I was able to vary laboriously and as you mentioned,

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Speaker 1: slowly build a factual timeline of what had happened, which

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Speaker 1: was shocking because the truth of the story was so

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Speaker 1: at odds with the myth that had grown around it.

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Speaker 1: An urban legend had grown around the case, just as

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Speaker 1: the case had grown around an urban legend, and so

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Speaker 1: the true story was almost I mean, it was so

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Speaker 1: much more shocking than what had been reported in the

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Speaker 1: media prior to that.

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Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned Morgan, and she's the reason that this

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Speaker 2: case is back in the headlines again. She was released

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Speaker 2: only a few weeks ago the judge made the decision.

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Speaker 2: So January twenty twenty five, how did you first come

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Speaker 2: to talk to her? And what was she like?

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Speaker 1: I came to talk with her because her mom and

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Speaker 1: I had been talking and I got permission from her

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Speaker 1: mom to speak to her. And Morgan was curious about

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Speaker 1: talking to me because she is a writer and an artist,

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Speaker 1: and we talked a lot about her life, but we

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Speaker 1: also talked a lot about her writing. We would have

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Speaker 1: little sort of like creative writing workshops in the hospital

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Speaker 1: cafeteria when I went to go visit her, and she

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Speaker 1: was fifteen when I first met her, and she was

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Speaker 1: a child. She was so childlike, so seft spoken, so

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Speaker 1: self loathing, so sweet, and so vulnerable. And at that

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Speaker 1: point she had been taken away from her family for

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Speaker 1: three years and had not hugged her parents outside of

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Speaker 1: a legal or medical setting for that entire time. She'd

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Speaker 1: actually been prohibited. She hadn't been allowed to hug them

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Speaker 1: for four months after her arrest when she was twelve

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Speaker 1: years old, so it was and they had never seen

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Speaker 1: where she slept. I mean, all these obvious things about

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Speaker 1: being incarcerated, but she was on an adult ward at

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Speaker 1: the age of I mean, she was so young, So

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Speaker 1: I think that that was sort of for me. The

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Speaker 1: most sort of salient quality that I got from her

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Speaker 1: is just how young she was, and I was shocked

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Speaker 1: by it every time we got together, especially given the

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Speaker 1: context of our meetings. In terms of her personality, she's

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Speaker 1: very smart, can be very funny, very creative, very troubled

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Speaker 1: and wasn't getting any help at all despite the environment

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Speaker 1: that she was in. Like you would think, especially in

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Speaker 1: the US, there's a misconception that these kinds of forensic hospitals,

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Speaker 1: which used to be called hospitals for the criminally insane,

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Speaker 1: are more nurturing environments than prisons. I would say they're

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Speaker 1: definitely less dangerous, less physically dangerous than a prison less

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Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that they're safe. But they're not nurturing.

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Speaker 1: She was receiving almost no therapy, She was receiving no

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Speaker 1: juvenile resources when we met. She was not receiving any education.

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Speaker 1: She had not been in any kind of a classroom

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Speaker 1: setting or received any kind of academic support since sixth

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Speaker 1: grade when she was arrested. And the entire ward, because

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Speaker 1: of the institutionalization in the US in the seventies and eighties,

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Speaker 1: the entire ward was manned not by doctors or nurses,

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Speaker 1: but by these psychiatric care technicians who are entry level.

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Speaker 1: They have no specialized education, they're paid minimum wage, and

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Speaker 1: they're overworked and burnt out, and some of them have

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Speaker 1: criminal records themselves. And the way that they control people

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Speaker 1: on the board is by using spit hoods, just like

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Speaker 1: last sewing a patient's head with a hood so that

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Speaker 1: they and restraint boards. So everything about this situation was

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Speaker 1: so surreal and unfair, Like, I mean, that's not justice,

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Speaker 1: you know, that's revenge. That's there's supposed to be two

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Speaker 1: separate things. I can understand why the victim's family in

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Speaker 1: this situation would want Morgan to suffer, but I don't

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Speaker 1: know that the entire judicial system should be built around

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Speaker 1: that that same impulse.

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Speaker 2: Well, especially because the idea of sending someone to a

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Speaker 2: hospital rather than a prison, you would think is to

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Speaker 2: treat them right. But from what I'm hearing, it sounds

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Speaker 2: very old fashioned as well, like like something out of

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Speaker 2: a horror movie.

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Speaker 1: It was something out of a horror movie. The campus

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Speaker 1: was completely open, so I was able to walk around it,

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Speaker 1: and it was a very old hospital that was built

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Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineth when they first started admitting patients.

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Speaker 1: It was all women at the time, in the eighteen nineties.

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Speaker 1: They were bringing them in for anger and promiscuity and

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Speaker 1: all of this stuff. But the treatments at the time

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Speaker 1: when it first started were very quaint and gentle. It

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Speaker 1: was like brandy and dancing and gardening, and then the

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Speaker 1: institution over the years, it just it was deformed into

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Speaker 1: this awful, awful place. So there's a dire, dire need

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Speaker 1: for psychiatric hospitals in our country, but because there's no

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Speaker 1: funding for them, a place like whin a Bago, where

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Speaker 1: Morgan spent so many years of her childhood, is basically

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Speaker 1: being turned into a prison and only taking patients found

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Speaker 1: not guilty by reason of insanity, and there's no room

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Speaker 1: for sort of anything else, and there's no resources to

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Speaker 1: even employ full time doctors and nurses in the way

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Speaker 1: that they desperately need to.

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Speaker 2: Did Morgan was she subjected to the spit hoods and

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Speaker 2: the being strapped to boards and all of those things

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Speaker 2: that you mentioned.

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Speaker 1: No, she really, i think learned very quickly how to

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Speaker 1: keep her head down and spent a lot of her

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Speaker 1: time feeling really frightened, and she was quite docile because

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Speaker 1: of the heavy duty drugs that they had her on.

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Speaker 1: They had her on really heavy duty antipsychotics for a

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Speaker 1: long time. But she was attacked by another patient at

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Speaker 1: the hospital. Everyone knew what she had done, and so

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Speaker 1: that made her sort of a target. She was not

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Speaker 1: abused by the staff to that extent to the extent

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Speaker 1: that some patients at Winnebago have been, but she was

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Speaker 1: not nurtured by them either, not helped in any way.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to true crime conversations me, Jemma Bass. I'm

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Speaker 2: speaking with author Kathleen Hale about the slender Man stabbing

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Speaker 2: case in the US. Up next, Kathleen explains the early

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Speaker 2: signs that Morgan Geyser was mentally ill and what the

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Speaker 2: lack of diagnosis led to. I know you didn't speak

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Speaker 2: to her a lot about the crime itself, but you

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Speaker 2: did really delve into her childhood and how her mental

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Speaker 2: health and illness kind of manifested and it started really young,

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Speaker 2: kind of when she was a toddler. She has memories.

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Speaker 2: Can you take us inside her brain and the descriptions

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Speaker 2: that she gave you?

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Speaker 1: Sure? Yeah. So Morgan was telling me that some of

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Speaker 1: her first memories are being you know, bitten by ghosts,

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Speaker 1: ghosts pulling her hair, ghosts hugging her. She would see

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Speaker 1: colors sort of floating like like chalk or dust, rainbow

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Speaker 1: colors floating in front of her face. She would see

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Speaker 1: rainbow colors sort of dripping down the walls of her

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Speaker 1: bedroom like paint, and then very gradually her world became

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Speaker 1: populated by these imaginary friends. One of them was named sev.

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Speaker 1: She could see him. He took care of her. He

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Speaker 1: was like a handsome boy in his twenties always, you know.

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Speaker 1: He stayed that age for her, and as she got older,

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Speaker 1: he was the same age. And then there was a

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Speaker 1: voice in her head named Maggie who sort of kept

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Speaker 1: her company and was kind for a long time until

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Speaker 1: she became quite cruel as she got older and the

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Speaker 1: crime got closer and closer, her mental unraveling. The way

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Speaker 1: that that looked to her was that more and more

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Speaker 1: imaginary friends started to populate her life, and she stopped

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Speaker 1: being able to control them when they talked to her,

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Speaker 1: when they didn't talk to her, and they began to

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Speaker 1: scare her, you know, And that that was sort of

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Speaker 1: the shift that occurred. Prior to the stabbing.

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Speaker 2: Her father was a diagnosed schizophrenic, but her parents, I mean,

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Speaker 2: prior to the crime, they didn't really kind of look

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Speaker 2: into her mental health, did they.

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Speaker 1: No, they didn't. They had plans to tell her about

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Speaker 1: her father, Matt's mental illness, struggle with mental illness, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't want to scare her. They thought she was

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Speaker 1: too young to know about it, and they had plans

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Speaker 1: to tell her when she turned sixteen. Uh, sort of

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Speaker 1: like magical age, you know in the US, where you

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Speaker 1: get to drive and you get to go to prom.

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Speaker 1: And I guess that they thought that at that age

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Speaker 1: she would be ready. In reality, Morgan knew that something

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Speaker 1: was wrong with her dad and she would ask who

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Speaker 1: She would ask him, point plank, what is wrong with you?

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Speaker 1: Because he was unmedicated and he was her full time

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Speaker 1: caregiver from the time she was a baby until this

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Speaker 1: crime occurred, so she spent a lot of time with him,

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Speaker 1: and she saw him behave in really strange ways, and

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Speaker 1: he would say, I'll tell you when you're sixteen. I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you when you're sixteen. Morgan's mom, Angie, was very

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Speaker 1: devoted to her family and she was the primary earner

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Speaker 1: and her job was really intense. She assisted on brain

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Speaker 1: and spine surgeries and she was on call and would

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Speaker 1: be driving within one hundred miles of her house at

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Speaker 1: a moment's notice, and she sometimes worked seven days a

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Speaker 1: week just to kind of keep the family afloat. On

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Speaker 1: a single salary as a surgery technician, so she was

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Speaker 1: often leaving before dawn before Morgan woke up in the morning,

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Speaker 1: coming home after bedtime, not always, but a lot, and

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Speaker 1: so she was really relying on Matt to be an

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Speaker 1: accurate reporter of what was happening at home, and unfortunately

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Speaker 1: that just wasn't happening. I do I always feel very

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Speaker 1: protective of Angie in this story because I know that

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Speaker 1: it's common for people to say, like, but where were

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Speaker 1: the parents, especially where was the mother? And you know,

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Speaker 1: as like a mom, I feel really protective of her

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Speaker 1: because she was doing everything she could to keep her

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Speaker 1: family safe and secure, and I think, like any working mom,

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Speaker 1: would have loved to have spent more time with her children.

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Speaker 1: But unfortunately that just wasn't the situation at the time,

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Speaker 1: and so a lot of warning signs were missed, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of it had to do with the lack

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Speaker 1: of communication that was happening between the adults in Morgan's life,

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Speaker 1: especially her teachers. It was actually at school that you

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Speaker 1: see the most documented evidence that something was going very

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Speaker 1: very badly for Morgan, that she was really suffering and

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Speaker 1: that she was struggling and that she was confused. But

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Speaker 1: the school didn't I mean they just didn't. They didn't

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Speaker 1: rope her parents into a conversation about it, they didn't

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Speaker 1: address it. They ignored it. They told police Slater that

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Speaker 1: they thought if they just they thought that Morgan was

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Speaker 1: just trying to get attention, which culturally in that area

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Speaker 1: is considered a very bad character flaw. Right, What could

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Speaker 1: be worse in a Scandinavian culture than wanting to be

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Speaker 1: an individual, not wanting to conform, not wanting to be

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Speaker 1: part of the collective. And so they tried to correct it,

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Speaker 1: and they said this themselves by withholding the attention that

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Speaker 1: they thought that she craved. So they just ignored her.

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Speaker 1: And that to me was much more upsetting than anything,

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Speaker 1: you know, on Angie's part, because Angie wasn't seeing Morgan

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Speaker 1: painting with her own blood, which is what Morgan's math

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Speaker 1: teacher saw her doing, or like barking on the playground,

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Speaker 1: or you know, any of the other things writing die

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Speaker 1: over and over again in her notebook. And so her

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Speaker 1: mother had a really incomplete picture of what was happening

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Speaker 1: with Morgan. And by the time I met them, Angie

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Speaker 1: felt so bad. I mean, I can't. Morgan felt terrible

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Speaker 1: for what she had done, and Angie felt an immense

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Speaker 1: amount of anguish and guilt too. She had missed this,

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Speaker 1: She had missed this, and as a result, she had

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Speaker 1: lost lost her daughter.

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Speaker 2: Those kind of antics that you described Morgan doing, writing

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Speaker 2: in her blood, things like that. You know, she didn't

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Speaker 2: have a lot of friends. She was considered weird by

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Speaker 2: kids at school because of stuff like that. But she

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Speaker 2: did have a really close friendship with a girl called Peyton,

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Speaker 2: who you referred to as Bella because that was her

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Speaker 2: nickname at the time. Can you tell us about their friendship,

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Speaker 2: because they really were from your descriptions kind of chalk

430
00:26:56,662 --> 00:26:58,502
Speaker 2: and cheese. They were completely different.

431
00:27:00,022 --> 00:27:02,942
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were very, very different. Morgan was very dark,

432
00:27:03,262 --> 00:27:07,622
Speaker 1: Bella was very light. Bella was bubbly and sweet and

433
00:27:09,382 --> 00:27:13,902
Speaker 1: normal and not very imaginative and very literal, and Morgan

434
00:27:14,022 --> 00:27:18,862
Speaker 1: was extremely imaginative. And you know, she wore dark clothes

435
00:27:18,982 --> 00:27:22,662
Speaker 1: and patterned with like human skulls, and she wore a

436
00:27:22,862 --> 00:27:26,142
Speaker 1: black heart pendant around her neck, and Bella wore like

437
00:27:26,302 --> 00:27:28,942
Speaker 1: rainbows and butterfly wings, and it just sort of captures

438
00:27:28,942 --> 00:27:31,622
Speaker 1: the dynamic of their friendship and basically the way that

439
00:27:31,662 --> 00:27:36,382
Speaker 1: they came together was in fourth grade. Bella was for

440
00:27:36,422 --> 00:27:39,462
Speaker 1: some reason, even less popular than Morgan was who knows.

441
00:27:39,462 --> 00:27:43,062
Speaker 1: I mean, kids have all sorts of ways of deciding

442
00:27:43,102 --> 00:27:46,622
Speaker 1: what the social hierarchies are. And no one would sit

443
00:27:46,622 --> 00:27:52,022
Speaker 1: with her at lunch. And Morgan one day across the

444
00:27:52,062 --> 00:27:55,982
Speaker 1: cafeteria to sit with Bella because she liked the way

445
00:27:56,422 --> 00:27:59,622
Speaker 1: that Bella drew kitty cats, and that was the thing

446
00:27:59,782 --> 00:28:02,702
Speaker 1: that sort of brought them together. And they both loved

447
00:28:02,982 --> 00:28:08,022
Speaker 1: dolls and cats and the color purple, and you know, Bella,

448
00:28:08,142 --> 00:28:11,942
Speaker 1: for Morgan's sake, pretended to like start. She also pretended

449
00:28:11,982 --> 00:28:15,782
Speaker 1: to see and hear Morgan's imaginary friends, and that sort

450
00:28:15,782 --> 00:28:19,302
Speaker 1: of binded them together. And you know, fast forward two

451
00:28:19,382 --> 00:28:24,902
Speaker 1: years to sixth grade, things are really shifting fast. Bella

452
00:28:25,142 --> 00:28:28,022
Speaker 1: is now becoming more liked by her peers because she's

453
00:28:28,022 --> 00:28:32,462
Speaker 1: so kind and so sweet, and Morgan is becoming more

454
00:28:32,502 --> 00:28:37,342
Speaker 1: and more unpopular. People are really bullying her. They'll, you know,

455
00:28:37,462 --> 00:28:40,662
Speaker 1: pretend to they'll bump into our purpose just to pretend

456
00:28:40,702 --> 00:28:43,102
Speaker 1: to need to wash their hands and scream that they've

457
00:28:43,102 --> 00:28:48,262
Speaker 1: touched her. And Bella is approached by the popular crowd

458
00:28:48,382 --> 00:28:50,702
Speaker 1: and they say, you know, you can join us if

459
00:28:50,742 --> 00:28:55,782
Speaker 1: you stop being friends with Morgan. And Bella refused because

460
00:28:55,862 --> 00:28:59,222
Speaker 1: Morgan had come to her aid during a time when

461
00:28:59,262 --> 00:29:02,302
Speaker 1: she had nobody, and that had inspired such a deep

462
00:29:02,342 --> 00:29:05,622
Speaker 1: loyalty in her that she was willing to stick it

463
00:29:05,662 --> 00:29:08,502
Speaker 1: out with Morgan. And obviously that's the decision that she

464
00:29:08,662 --> 00:29:10,062
Speaker 1: really came to regret.

465
00:29:10,902 --> 00:29:13,942
Speaker 2: Even Bella's parents were quite wary of Morgan.

466
00:29:14,462 --> 00:29:21,062
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean Morgan set their basement on fire. That'll

467
00:29:21,102 --> 00:29:23,462
Speaker 1: do it. But you know they didn't tell her parents.

468
00:29:23,822 --> 00:29:28,262
Speaker 1: H I mean, I can't imagine if somebody set fire

469
00:29:28,342 --> 00:29:31,422
Speaker 1: to my house, if one of like, it's reflective of,

470
00:29:31,662 --> 00:29:36,382
Speaker 1: like I said, a very very specific Wisconsin Midwestern Gothic

471
00:29:36,382 --> 00:29:39,102
Speaker 1: culture where there's a lot of silence around anything that

472
00:29:39,142 --> 00:29:43,502
Speaker 1: would require a social interaction a confrontation that might not

473
00:29:43,622 --> 00:29:46,542
Speaker 1: be just like friendly talking about the weather keeping things

474
00:29:46,582 --> 00:29:49,342
Speaker 1: at the surface, like, that's a difficult conversation to have.

475
00:29:49,822 --> 00:29:53,582
Speaker 1: And so she just didn't have it. And so, but

476
00:29:53,662 --> 00:29:59,822
Speaker 1: they really didn't. Bella's mom, Stacy, really didn't like Morgan,

477
00:30:00,222 --> 00:30:03,902
Speaker 1: and Morgan later told me that she felt like, and

478
00:30:03,942 --> 00:30:07,502
Speaker 1: she said this almost in an admiring way, that Stacy

479
00:30:07,702 --> 00:30:10,742
Speaker 1: was the only person in her life who knew that

480
00:30:10,782 --> 00:30:14,462
Speaker 1: there was something wrong with her. She noticed, Yeah, she noticed.

481
00:30:14,502 --> 00:30:17,742
Speaker 1: She noticed something that nobody else noticed about Morgan, and

482
00:30:17,822 --> 00:30:20,062
Speaker 1: she did what she could to try to extricate the

483
00:30:20,062 --> 00:30:21,742
Speaker 1: two girls. But she did it in sort of a

484
00:30:21,822 --> 00:30:25,222
Speaker 1: roundabout way where she would try to like encourage Bella to,

485
00:30:25,862 --> 00:30:29,302
Speaker 1: you know, hang out with more popular kids, or you know,

486
00:30:29,702 --> 00:30:32,342
Speaker 1: make up an excuse for why Bella couldn't go to

487
00:30:32,422 --> 00:30:36,382
Speaker 1: Morgan's things that were sort of easily ignored or circumvented.

488
00:30:36,982 --> 00:30:39,182
Speaker 1: I don't think that there was ever a conversation like

489
00:30:39,262 --> 00:30:43,502
Speaker 1: I just don't this doesn't feel good. And in fact,

490
00:30:43,822 --> 00:30:47,022
Speaker 1: she and Bella's dad, Joe, were sort of at odds

491
00:30:47,022 --> 00:30:51,142
Speaker 1: about it. Joe was pretty warm toward Morgan. I saw

492
00:30:51,182 --> 00:30:54,422
Speaker 1: it in the courtroom too, the way that Bella's parents

493
00:30:54,422 --> 00:30:59,062
Speaker 1: were divided by their approach to the aftermass of the crime.

494
00:30:59,782 --> 00:31:04,022
Speaker 1: Bella's mom was at every hearing really wanted the most

495
00:31:04,102 --> 00:31:10,142
Speaker 1: extreme punishment for Morgan, which anyone can understand why Bella's

496
00:31:10,182 --> 00:31:13,542
Speaker 1: mom would want that, And Joe was a bit more expansive.

497
00:31:14,182 --> 00:31:18,222
Speaker 1: He held the door for Morgan's mom in court, little

498
00:31:18,262 --> 00:31:23,382
Speaker 1: gestures that I think they frayed the relationship over time,

499
00:31:23,702 --> 00:31:27,222
Speaker 1: and they ended up divorcing after this this crime unfolded.

500
00:31:27,342 --> 00:31:29,942
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's just because of that, obviously, It's

501
00:31:30,062 --> 00:31:32,262
Speaker 1: just that, you know, you could see the differences in

502
00:31:32,302 --> 00:31:36,062
Speaker 1: their reactions to this tragedy, and that's something that pulls

503
00:31:36,102 --> 00:31:38,542
Speaker 1: couples apart when they don't react to something like that

504
00:31:39,382 --> 00:31:41,222
Speaker 1: in lockstep with each other.

505
00:31:42,342 --> 00:31:46,382
Speaker 2: When did Anissa come into their lives and how did

506
00:31:46,462 --> 00:31:49,702
Speaker 2: she kind of change the dynamic between the girls.

507
00:31:50,342 --> 00:31:56,942
Speaker 1: Anissa she joined Morgan and Bella's middle school at the

508
00:31:56,942 --> 00:32:01,102
Speaker 1: beginning of sixth grade. Anisa switched school districts, so they

509
00:32:01,102 --> 00:32:03,422
Speaker 1: were all going to a new middle school. Middle school

510
00:32:03,462 --> 00:32:05,942
Speaker 1: starts in sixth grade in the US, but Bella and

511
00:32:05,982 --> 00:32:08,702
Speaker 1: Morgan had gone to elementary school together and Anissa was

512
00:32:08,742 --> 00:32:12,902
Speaker 1: the new kid. And Anissa also happened to be Morgan's

513
00:32:13,262 --> 00:32:17,662
Speaker 1: neighbor in the same apartment complex, and she began as

514
00:32:17,822 --> 00:32:21,022
Speaker 1: Morgan's bully. She would bullied Morgan just like the other kids,

515
00:32:21,102 --> 00:32:25,782
Speaker 1: believe Morgan, but sort of gradually she realized that Morgan

516
00:32:25,862 --> 00:32:28,502
Speaker 1: was interested in the same things that she was interested in,

517
00:32:28,542 --> 00:32:30,942
Speaker 1: which made them both very different. I mean, they both

518
00:32:31,062 --> 00:32:34,342
Speaker 1: liked horror stories, they liked dark things. It's not something

519
00:32:34,582 --> 00:32:39,462
Speaker 1: that girls in Waukeshaw, Wisconsin are really like celebrated for

520
00:32:40,262 --> 00:32:42,982
Speaker 1: being into I mean, this was when people were doing

521
00:32:43,022 --> 00:32:47,862
Speaker 1: like the ice bucket challenge, you know, like Bella wanted

522
00:32:47,902 --> 00:32:49,782
Speaker 1: to do the ice pocket challenge. She wanted to do

523
00:32:49,822 --> 00:32:53,622
Speaker 1: like social media pranks to raise awareness for like causes,

524
00:32:54,102 --> 00:32:59,582
Speaker 1: and Morgan wanted to like like read conspiracy theories online.

525
00:32:59,622 --> 00:33:02,622
Speaker 1: It was a very different thing, and so Anissa noticed

526
00:33:02,622 --> 00:33:05,902
Speaker 1: that about her and something kind of clicked between them.

527
00:33:06,302 --> 00:33:09,582
Speaker 1: At the time, Anissa's parents were getting divorced. Stuff at

528
00:33:09,622 --> 00:33:11,982
Speaker 1: home was really bad. She had a lot of reasons

529
00:33:12,102 --> 00:33:16,022
Speaker 1: to want to leave home, and she was lonely. She

530
00:33:16,102 --> 00:33:19,742
Speaker 1: was super lonely. She doesn't She was a bully, which

531
00:33:19,822 --> 00:33:22,782
Speaker 1: meant that in some ways she had power over other children,

532
00:33:22,822 --> 00:33:28,022
Speaker 1: but she didn't have any friends. She operated kind of

533
00:33:28,022 --> 00:33:31,302
Speaker 1: as a rule enforcer, which is where her bullying came from.

534
00:33:31,302 --> 00:33:34,182
Speaker 1: Like she would when kids didn't follow the rules in class,

535
00:33:34,222 --> 00:33:36,222
Speaker 1: she would punch them or call them names while the

536
00:33:36,262 --> 00:33:39,982
Speaker 1: teacher wasn't looking. She was very good at executing that

537
00:33:40,102 --> 00:33:44,742
Speaker 1: kind of like justice in her mind when adults weren't looking. Later,

538
00:33:45,022 --> 00:33:47,622
Speaker 1: all of her teachers would be like she was amazing,

539
00:33:47,702 --> 00:33:49,142
Speaker 1: and all of the kids would be like, she was

540
00:33:49,502 --> 00:33:52,102
Speaker 1: a nightmare and she had this fantasy of wanting to

541
00:33:52,782 --> 00:33:55,342
Speaker 1: save the world, but basically she just wanted friends and

542
00:33:55,902 --> 00:33:59,582
Speaker 1: she was obsessed with Morgan. But Bella stood between them.

543
00:33:59,782 --> 00:34:02,062
Speaker 1: Morgan already had a best friend, and that was always

544
00:34:02,102 --> 00:34:04,702
Speaker 1: sort of a thorn in a Nissa's side.

545
00:34:04,942 --> 00:34:08,942
Speaker 2: Slender Man kind of became this common ground between a

546
00:34:09,022 --> 00:34:13,102
Speaker 2: Nissa and Morgan, like an obsse They started to read

547
00:34:13,142 --> 00:34:18,862
Speaker 2: about Slenderman and obsess about human his character. But how

548
00:34:18,902 --> 00:34:23,462
Speaker 2: did an obsession with this creepy fictional character kind of

549
00:34:23,582 --> 00:34:27,182
Speaker 2: morph into there's no other way to describe it but

550
00:34:27,262 --> 00:34:29,862
Speaker 2: a murder plot and a murder plot to kill Bella.

551
00:34:30,982 --> 00:34:35,622
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was gradual and it was also it would

552
00:34:35,622 --> 00:34:39,142
Speaker 1: also never have happened. If Morgan and Anissa had not

553
00:34:39,262 --> 00:34:42,982
Speaker 1: found each other, none of this would have happened. Basically,

554
00:34:43,182 --> 00:34:46,142
Speaker 1: Morgan had no one to talk to about the things

555
00:34:46,142 --> 00:34:49,182
Speaker 1: that she was seeing and hearing, the hallucinations that she

556
00:34:49,302 --> 00:34:51,622
Speaker 1: was having. She tried to talk to Belle about it.

557
00:34:51,702 --> 00:34:54,502
Speaker 1: Bella was like, I lied about seeing and hearing your

558
00:34:54,502 --> 00:34:56,702
Speaker 1: imaginary friends. I don't want to play this game anymore.

559
00:34:56,982 --> 00:34:59,582
Speaker 1: I'm scared you're scaring me. It's not nice, it's mean,

560
00:35:00,062 --> 00:35:03,422
Speaker 1: and so Morgan felt like if she were to confide

561
00:35:03,462 --> 00:35:05,942
Speaker 1: in Bella that she was going to lose Bella, and

562
00:35:05,942 --> 00:35:09,502
Speaker 1: she didn't want to lose Bella. And eventually it came

563
00:35:09,582 --> 00:35:12,142
Speaker 1: up with Anissa that Morgan saw and heard these things,

564
00:35:12,182 --> 00:35:16,062
Speaker 1: and Anissa was intrigued because she believed in magic and

565
00:35:16,142 --> 00:35:18,742
Speaker 1: dark forces, and you know, she had this creeping sense

566
00:35:18,782 --> 00:35:20,862
Speaker 1: of dread and that's why she loved horror stories because

567
00:35:20,862 --> 00:35:23,622
Speaker 1: they validated this feeling that she had all the time.

568
00:35:24,222 --> 00:35:27,582
Speaker 1: And so Morgan at that point was really afraid that

569
00:35:27,622 --> 00:35:29,342
Speaker 1: she might be going crazy. You can see that in

570
00:35:29,342 --> 00:35:31,742
Speaker 1: her Google searches. She was searching for like what kind

571
00:35:31,782 --> 00:35:36,102
Speaker 1: of insane am I? If Anissa had said like, I

572
00:35:36,702 --> 00:35:40,142
Speaker 1: think maybe you are, like, you know, crazy, things might

573
00:35:40,142 --> 00:35:42,022
Speaker 1: have gone differently. But instead she goes, no, I think

574
00:35:42,102 --> 00:35:45,822
Speaker 1: you're a medium. I think that you straddle to worlds

575
00:35:45,902 --> 00:35:49,142
Speaker 1: and you're in touch with this side of life that

576
00:35:49,222 --> 00:35:52,222
Speaker 1: like no one else understands. So she made Morgan feel,

577
00:35:52,582 --> 00:35:57,422
Speaker 1: you know, special in this way that was really reassuring

578
00:35:57,462 --> 00:36:00,222
Speaker 1: to Morgan, but also scary, right, because then it means

579
00:36:00,262 --> 00:36:02,102
Speaker 1: that all of these things that she's seeing and hearing

580
00:36:02,142 --> 00:36:05,022
Speaker 1: are real and so she keeps opening up to Anissa,

581
00:36:05,062 --> 00:36:07,502
Speaker 1: and she shares that at one point in her childhood,

582
00:36:07,502 --> 00:36:10,422
Speaker 1: the scariest thing she ever saw was she was looking

583
00:36:10,502 --> 00:36:14,742
Speaker 1: in the mirror and she saw this shadowy figure standing

584
00:36:14,742 --> 00:36:20,662
Speaker 1: behind her, really tall and thin, and anisays, like, I've

585
00:36:20,822 --> 00:36:23,422
Speaker 1: seen him too. His name is Slenderman. And that's when

586
00:36:23,462 --> 00:36:27,902
Speaker 1: she introduced Morgan to creepypasta dot com. And basically, between

587
00:36:27,942 --> 00:36:30,262
Speaker 1: all of these different variables, what they came up with

588
00:36:30,542 --> 00:36:33,582
Speaker 1: was that Slenderman had appeared to Morgan when she was

589
00:36:33,622 --> 00:36:36,622
Speaker 1: a young child as a warning, and now he was

590
00:36:36,702 --> 00:36:43,782
Speaker 1: sending like demons at her to sort of like to

591
00:36:43,902 --> 00:36:48,062
Speaker 1: warn her that he would come back and kill her

592
00:36:48,142 --> 00:36:50,982
Speaker 1: and her family in Anissa and a Nissa's family, and

593
00:36:51,022 --> 00:36:54,462
Speaker 1: maybe the whole human race like in the creepypasta stories

594
00:36:54,462 --> 00:36:58,902
Speaker 1: that they read, if they didn't sacrifice another human being

595
00:36:58,942 --> 00:37:02,502
Speaker 1: in his name, like in the scary stories that they read.

596
00:37:02,902 --> 00:37:05,062
Speaker 1: So they just put all these pieces together and it

597
00:37:05,142 --> 00:37:08,582
Speaker 1: was basically, when you sort of zoom out, it was

598
00:37:08,622 --> 00:37:11,302
Speaker 1: two twelve year old girls. One of her, Anissa, had

599
00:37:11,342 --> 00:37:14,422
Speaker 1: a very severe learning disability that was undiagnosed at the time,

600
00:37:14,982 --> 00:37:18,422
Speaker 1: where she could not tell the difference between reality and fantasy,

601
00:37:18,862 --> 00:37:21,302
Speaker 1: and then you have another girl who's severely mentally ill,

602
00:37:21,662 --> 00:37:24,822
Speaker 1: and together at the age of twelve, they're trying to

603
00:37:24,982 --> 00:37:28,622
Speaker 1: diagnose her. They're trying to figure out without any help,

604
00:37:28,662 --> 00:37:30,862
Speaker 1: what is wrong. And so this is what they came

605
00:37:30,982 --> 00:37:35,182
Speaker 1: up with. Now, in terms of choosing Bella as the victim,

606
00:37:35,302 --> 00:37:38,062
Speaker 1: that is the one piece of this puzzle that will

607
00:37:38,102 --> 00:37:41,742
Speaker 1: probably always be a mystery. It's the only place where

608
00:37:41,782 --> 00:37:47,942
Speaker 1: Morgan and Anissa's testimonies diverge. Each one blamed the other

609
00:37:48,302 --> 00:37:52,982
Speaker 1: for picking Bella. So, like what Morgan said to me

610
00:37:53,422 --> 00:37:56,422
Speaker 1: is that Anissa said that it had to be someone

611
00:37:56,462 --> 00:38:01,102
Speaker 1: that Morgan loved, and isn't that convenient? Also that Anissa

612
00:38:01,582 --> 00:38:05,822
Speaker 1: happens to hate Bella, and Morgan really only loved one

613
00:38:05,822 --> 00:38:07,422
Speaker 1: person other than her family, and that's Bella. So it

614
00:38:07,422 --> 00:38:10,262
Speaker 1: was pretty obvious who Anissa was talking about. And Anie

615
00:38:10,742 --> 00:38:13,462
Speaker 1: would tell police that it was Morgan's idea. That Morgan

616
00:38:13,542 --> 00:38:16,382
Speaker 1: was like, we got to kill Bella first lender man,

617
00:38:16,422 --> 00:38:20,422
Speaker 1: and so it's unclear whose idea it was exactly, But

618
00:38:20,742 --> 00:38:24,342
Speaker 1: I think the one thing that is consistent even in

619
00:38:24,342 --> 00:38:28,022
Speaker 1: that piece of the story is that Morgan and Anissa

620
00:38:28,382 --> 00:38:32,582
Speaker 1: chose Bella because Morgan loved Bella. So it wasn't because

621
00:38:32,662 --> 00:38:36,662
Speaker 1: Morgan hated Bella. It was because it was the opposite.

622
00:38:36,742 --> 00:38:38,822
Speaker 1: It was that Bella was the most important person in

623
00:38:38,862 --> 00:38:41,982
Speaker 1: the world to her, and that was the only thing

624
00:38:42,542 --> 00:38:46,302
Speaker 1: she thought that would make the sacrifice count.

625
00:38:48,062 --> 00:38:50,862
Speaker 2: After the break, Kathleen tells us what Morgan and Anissa

626
00:38:50,862 --> 00:38:53,662
Speaker 2: were planning to do to Bella and what exactly went

627
00:38:53,742 --> 00:39:00,062
Speaker 2: down on the night of the Slender Man's sacrifice. When

628
00:39:00,102 --> 00:39:03,742
Speaker 2: you read the details of what these two twelve year

629
00:39:03,782 --> 00:39:08,142
Speaker 2: olds did to Bella, you know, flat on a news report,

630
00:39:08,182 --> 00:39:10,102
Speaker 2: it's kind of like they lured her into the forest

631
00:39:10,102 --> 00:39:13,062
Speaker 2: playing hide and seek, they stabbed her. When you read

632
00:39:13,062 --> 00:39:18,622
Speaker 2: it in your book, it's so obvious when you break

633
00:39:18,662 --> 00:39:21,582
Speaker 2: it all down that these are doing help Like they're

634
00:39:21,622 --> 00:39:26,902
Speaker 2: twelve year old girls, and the way they're thinking into

635
00:39:26,942 --> 00:39:30,822
Speaker 2: how this plot kind of unravels really kind of shows that.

636
00:39:30,902 --> 00:39:33,622
Speaker 2: And I want to kind of help the audience understand

637
00:39:33,702 --> 00:39:38,862
Speaker 2: that by kind of explaining that this started with skating

638
00:39:38,982 --> 00:39:43,302
Speaker 2: at a sleepover, playing sims, eating cheese puffs, sping in

639
00:39:43,342 --> 00:39:47,422
Speaker 2: a pillow for like regular twelve year old girl stuff,

640
00:39:48,462 --> 00:39:50,742
Speaker 2: and then this plan that they kind of had in

641
00:39:50,782 --> 00:39:53,622
Speaker 2: the back of the back of the sleepover, which was like,

642
00:39:53,662 --> 00:39:55,502
Speaker 2: we've got a killer, but how do we do it?

643
00:39:55,542 --> 00:39:58,742
Speaker 2: And they kind of keep chickening out, don't they. Over

644
00:39:58,742 --> 00:39:59,862
Speaker 2: the course of the night.

645
00:39:59,902 --> 00:40:02,662
Speaker 1: They've chicken out several times, and Morgan comes up with

646
00:40:02,742 --> 00:40:06,662
Speaker 1: these kind of magical thinking type ways of avoiding the stabbing,

647
00:40:06,902 --> 00:40:09,542
Speaker 1: like without actually stopping it, Like she thinks she can

648
00:40:09,582 --> 00:40:11,662
Speaker 1: stop it if she does, she can stopish she does that.

649
00:40:12,342 --> 00:40:15,342
Speaker 1: When you said that the real timeline of events leading

650
00:40:15,422 --> 00:40:17,462
Speaker 1: up to the stabbing, the most glaring thing about it

651
00:40:17,502 --> 00:40:19,542
Speaker 1: is that these were twelve year old girls. Like I

652
00:40:19,662 --> 00:40:22,702
Speaker 1: laughed a little bit, not because it's not because it's funny,

653
00:40:22,702 --> 00:40:25,542
Speaker 1: but because it's so true. Like it's like when you

654
00:40:25,622 --> 00:40:29,182
Speaker 1: read the police reports and the interviews and the way

655
00:40:29,222 --> 00:40:33,222
Speaker 1: that they were thinking the things that they were doing it,

656
00:40:33,382 --> 00:40:39,502
Speaker 1: they were so unbelievably shockingly young, and the way that

657
00:40:39,542 --> 00:40:42,942
Speaker 1: their minds worked were it was, you know, their minds

658
00:40:42,982 --> 00:40:46,182
Speaker 1: worked with the absurdity of a child's minds, like and

659
00:40:46,662 --> 00:40:50,422
Speaker 1: and so there are moments in that narrative leading up

660
00:40:50,462 --> 00:40:53,742
Speaker 1: to the stabbing where you kind of it's it's it's

661
00:40:53,822 --> 00:40:58,302
Speaker 1: absurd to the point of feeling like it it's yes,

662
00:40:58,422 --> 00:41:01,502
Speaker 1: So anyway, so what happened was it was a Friday

663
00:41:01,542 --> 00:41:04,902
Speaker 1: Saturday sleepover. On Friday night, they went to Skateland, which

664
00:41:04,942 --> 00:41:08,422
Speaker 1: is a roller rink, and they you know, they skated,

665
00:41:08,902 --> 00:41:12,902
Speaker 1: They had they had a fun time. They held hands,

666
00:41:13,462 --> 00:41:16,782
Speaker 1: they ate creamsicles. They went home. They gave Morgan her

667
00:41:16,782 --> 00:41:20,342
Speaker 1: birthday presents, which included the stuffed banana and the Star

668
00:41:20,422 --> 00:41:25,142
Speaker 1: Trek mug, among other things. They played the sims. Anissa

669
00:41:25,222 --> 00:41:28,542
Speaker 1: and Bella shared a bed. They slept head to foot.

670
00:41:29,022 --> 00:41:32,502
Speaker 1: Bella slept with a dolly. She brought nine cat magazines

671
00:41:32,542 --> 00:41:33,502
Speaker 1: with her to the sleepover.

672
00:41:34,382 --> 00:41:36,742
Speaker 2: It's so innocent. It sounds also innocent.

673
00:41:36,862 --> 00:41:40,502
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds so innocent. And the plan kept getting subverted.

674
00:41:40,542 --> 00:41:43,742
Speaker 1: The plan had been to kill Bella that night right away.

675
00:41:43,862 --> 00:41:46,582
Speaker 1: The initial plan that they came up with was that

676
00:41:47,342 --> 00:41:51,622
Speaker 1: after Bella fell asleep, Anissa was going to stab her

677
00:41:51,902 --> 00:41:53,982
Speaker 1: and then to death, and that they were going to

678
00:41:54,062 --> 00:41:56,422
Speaker 1: leave her body in a sleeping bag and slip out

679
00:41:56,422 --> 00:41:58,742
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night so that if anyone

680
00:41:58,822 --> 00:42:01,462
Speaker 1: came in it would look like she was sleeping. But

681
00:42:01,502 --> 00:42:05,422
Speaker 1: by the time Bella fell asleep, Anissa was so tired

682
00:42:05,542 --> 00:42:10,222
Speaker 1: from roller skating so much that she was too tired

683
00:42:10,222 --> 00:42:14,022
Speaker 1: to kill anybody. So Morgan said, well, let's just rest.

684
00:42:14,022 --> 00:42:16,582
Speaker 1: I'll set an alarm on my phone for two thirty am.

685
00:42:17,262 --> 00:42:19,742
Speaker 1: But she didn't set the alarm because she didn't want

686
00:42:19,782 --> 00:42:22,702
Speaker 1: the stabbing to happen, but because she was a child,

687
00:42:23,222 --> 00:42:26,422
Speaker 1: she thought that that was like a way to avoid

688
00:42:26,462 --> 00:42:29,182
Speaker 1: the tragedy. She didn't anyway, she didn't want to make

689
00:42:29,222 --> 00:42:31,422
Speaker 1: Anissa mad. Is sort of the thing that was like

690
00:42:31,502 --> 00:42:34,102
Speaker 1: leading her. So then Anissa woke up in the morning

691
00:42:34,102 --> 00:42:37,542
Speaker 1: and she was furious at Morgan for not setting the alarm.

692
00:42:38,622 --> 00:42:41,342
Speaker 1: And then Morgan got permission from her parents to go

693
00:42:41,422 --> 00:42:45,262
Speaker 1: play outside at the nearby park. They'd only let her

694
00:42:45,262 --> 00:42:48,982
Speaker 1: do it like once before, but you know, they reasoned

695
00:42:49,102 --> 00:42:52,222
Speaker 1: that girls are safer in a group usually, so they

696
00:42:52,302 --> 00:42:56,862
Speaker 1: let them go. And then the plan had become to

697
00:42:56,982 --> 00:43:02,942
Speaker 1: kill Ella in the playground restroom because Anissa thought it

698
00:43:02,942 --> 00:43:05,262
Speaker 1: would work because it had a drain for the blood

699
00:43:05,262 --> 00:43:08,422
Speaker 1: to go down. So they brought her in there, telling

700
00:43:08,462 --> 00:43:10,662
Speaker 1: her that they wanted to show her some vandalism them

701
00:43:10,662 --> 00:43:14,462
Speaker 1: in the toilets. She quickly realized that this was not true,

702
00:43:15,462 --> 00:43:19,702
Speaker 1: and then but she didn't leave because, I mean, who

703
00:43:19,742 --> 00:43:23,142
Speaker 1: would think that who would think. She thought that they

704
00:43:23,182 --> 00:43:25,342
Speaker 1: were being mean, that they were like that they were

705
00:43:25,382 --> 00:43:28,302
Speaker 1: gossiping about her, that they were whispering about her. She

706
00:43:28,382 --> 00:43:31,142
Speaker 1: wasn't having fun. She wanted to go home. She felt

707
00:43:31,182 --> 00:43:34,182
Speaker 1: like they were excluding her, but she didn't call her

708
00:43:34,182 --> 00:43:36,102
Speaker 1: mom because she wanted to be a good friend to Morgan.

709
00:43:36,862 --> 00:43:41,022
Speaker 1: Anissa tried to knock Bella unconscious in the bathroom, which

710
00:43:41,062 --> 00:43:44,702
Speaker 1: sounds quite violent. It sounds like anybody would have left

711
00:43:44,742 --> 00:43:47,622
Speaker 1: that situation if they had been Bella. But Anissa was

712
00:43:47,902 --> 00:43:50,342
Speaker 1: by her own admission, she used these words, I'm not

713
00:43:50,422 --> 00:43:53,582
Speaker 1: very athletic. She's also twelve. She also thought that to

714
00:43:53,662 --> 00:43:55,382
Speaker 1: kill somebody just like kind of booped them on the

715
00:43:55,422 --> 00:43:58,222
Speaker 1: head like in a video game, and so she just

716
00:43:58,262 --> 00:44:02,702
Speaker 1: like sort of pushed Bella's head like that, and Bella

717
00:44:02,822 --> 00:44:06,022
Speaker 1: was like, wow, like you're you know, like but but

718
00:44:06,182 --> 00:44:09,142
Speaker 1: she obviously was not knocked unconscious, and so then Anissa

719
00:44:09,142 --> 00:44:12,142
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do. So they thought, let's go

720
00:44:12,182 --> 00:44:15,542
Speaker 1: into the woods. So they asked Bella if she wanted

721
00:44:15,582 --> 00:44:18,902
Speaker 1: to go bird watching. She said no. She was sulking

722
00:44:18,942 --> 00:44:21,902
Speaker 1: at this point, so they said hide and seek. She

723
00:44:21,982 --> 00:44:24,102
Speaker 1: agreed to play hide and seek. They actually played one

724
00:44:24,222 --> 00:44:27,982
Speaker 1: game the normal way they you know, Morgan counted and

725
00:44:28,502 --> 00:44:30,622
Speaker 1: they hid and she kind of found them, and then

726
00:44:30,622 --> 00:44:35,822
Speaker 1: they played again. And that time when Morgan found Anissa

727
00:44:35,902 --> 00:44:40,502
Speaker 1: and Bella in a clearing, she couldn't go through with

728
00:44:40,542 --> 00:44:43,182
Speaker 1: it at first, and Anissa got into a fight about

729
00:44:43,182 --> 00:44:45,382
Speaker 1: who was going to do it. They're fighting off at

730
00:44:45,422 --> 00:44:48,422
Speaker 1: the side of this clearing, passing the knife that they've

731
00:44:48,422 --> 00:44:51,582
Speaker 1: taken from Morgan's kitchen. They're passing it back and forth,

732
00:44:52,622 --> 00:44:57,062
Speaker 1: and Morgan's finally, you know, said something that annoyed Anissa

733
00:44:57,142 --> 00:44:58,862
Speaker 1: so much because she's not sticking to the plan that

734
00:44:58,902 --> 00:45:01,982
Speaker 1: Anissa turns to leave and just walk away, and if

735
00:45:01,982 --> 00:45:04,862
Speaker 1: she had, this would not have happened. But instead she

736
00:45:04,902 --> 00:45:07,662
Speaker 1: turned around and she said kitty now. And kitty was

737
00:45:07,742 --> 00:45:12,022
Speaker 1: her like pet name for more and it sort of

738
00:45:12,062 --> 00:45:16,542
Speaker 1: ignited something in Morgan. She said to Morgan, goberzerk go crazy.

739
00:45:17,382 --> 00:45:21,222
Speaker 1: Morgan tackled Bella. She said, don't worry, I'm just a

740
00:45:21,222 --> 00:45:26,422
Speaker 1: little kitty cat, and then she stabbed Bella nineteen times.

741
00:45:28,342 --> 00:45:33,902
Speaker 2: It's a miracle she lived nineteen times. How did she live?

742
00:45:34,742 --> 00:45:37,582
Speaker 1: Well, there's a few things. One is that it was

743
00:45:37,582 --> 00:45:41,862
Speaker 1: a medical miracle. One of the stab wounds missed her

744
00:45:41,942 --> 00:45:46,502
Speaker 1: heart by a millimeter or something crazy like that. So

745
00:45:46,542 --> 00:45:49,142
Speaker 1: that's part of it. There was one stab wound that

746
00:45:49,862 --> 00:45:52,702
Speaker 1: should have killed her. She was stabbed in the torso,

747
00:45:53,382 --> 00:45:58,022
Speaker 1: in the arms. It was awful. The other thing is

748
00:45:58,062 --> 00:46:03,462
Speaker 1: that Morgan was still in this mindset of I don't

749
00:46:03,462 --> 00:46:06,822
Speaker 1: want this to happen. I don't want this to happen.

750
00:46:07,382 --> 00:46:10,582
Speaker 1: And if you look at the side, at the the

751
00:46:10,622 --> 00:46:14,422
Speaker 1: scope of the each individual wound, and by that I

752
00:46:14,462 --> 00:46:18,382
Speaker 1: mean in the police report they measure it centimeters millimeters

753
00:46:18,382 --> 00:46:22,342
Speaker 1: the whole she was using a six inch blade and

754
00:46:23,382 --> 00:46:27,622
Speaker 1: barely breaking the surface in a lot of these in

755
00:46:27,662 --> 00:46:31,302
Speaker 1: a lot of these strikes, very very very small wounds.

756
00:46:31,382 --> 00:46:34,942
Speaker 1: And that's not to minimize the violence of this crime

757
00:46:35,062 --> 00:46:38,262
Speaker 1: is awful, and Bella suffered enormously. She had to have

758
00:46:39,102 --> 00:46:43,422
Speaker 1: multiple life saving surgeries that left her with so much

759
00:46:43,422 --> 00:46:47,582
Speaker 1: scarring from her throat to her abdomen. I mean, and

760
00:46:47,662 --> 00:46:50,262
Speaker 1: it's a huge, huge trauma. But what I'm saying is

761
00:46:50,822 --> 00:46:55,262
Speaker 1: Morgan was not she was not pressing very hard. She

762
00:46:56,222 --> 00:46:58,942
Speaker 1: was she was flailing and going through the motions of

763
00:46:58,942 --> 00:47:01,582
Speaker 1: this stabbing. And of course, when you stab somebody that

764
00:47:01,622 --> 00:47:07,502
Speaker 1: many times you're going to create devastating consequences. But if

765
00:47:07,622 --> 00:47:10,422
Speaker 1: you imagine somebody who doesn't really want to be doing it,

766
00:47:10,422 --> 00:47:12,782
Speaker 1: who's kind of holding their arm back a bit, who's

767
00:47:12,822 --> 00:47:16,302
Speaker 1: flailing a bit more than actually striking, those were Those

768
00:47:16,302 --> 00:47:19,702
Speaker 1: were the kinds of wounds that a lot of, not

769
00:47:19,902 --> 00:47:22,502
Speaker 1: all nineteen wounds were kill wounds.

770
00:47:22,942 --> 00:47:27,542
Speaker 2: A few things happened after the stubbing. One Morgan at

771
00:47:27,542 --> 00:47:29,982
Speaker 2: one point tried to administer some first aid with a

772
00:47:30,102 --> 00:47:34,142
Speaker 2: leaf and yeah, but then they kind of said to Bella,

773
00:47:34,582 --> 00:47:37,982
Speaker 2: we'll go and get help. But they weren't going to

774
00:47:38,062 --> 00:47:40,142
Speaker 2: go get help. They were basically going to run away

775
00:47:40,582 --> 00:47:44,342
Speaker 2: to be with Slenderman, because that was the plan. How

776
00:47:45,702 --> 00:47:48,462
Speaker 2: How was Bella found? How was she saved?

777
00:47:49,302 --> 00:47:53,822
Speaker 1: It's really miraculous, and it's a testament to her bravery

778
00:47:54,022 --> 00:47:58,582
Speaker 1: and fortitude and intelligence because she, you know, she had

779
00:47:58,622 --> 00:48:06,142
Speaker 1: believed them all day about everything, and she, in her desperation,

780
00:48:06,302 --> 00:48:08,582
Speaker 1: might have believed them when they said they were going

781
00:48:08,622 --> 00:48:11,942
Speaker 1: to get help. I think another person might have, you know,

782
00:48:12,102 --> 00:48:15,062
Speaker 1: in that sort of vulnerable moment, and she didn't, and

783
00:48:15,102 --> 00:48:17,782
Speaker 1: so she started to drag herself through the woods. She

784
00:48:17,822 --> 00:48:22,422
Speaker 1: couldn't see, she couldn't breathe, and she managed to drag

785
00:48:22,502 --> 00:48:25,462
Speaker 1: herself all the way out of the woods, probably like

786
00:48:25,502 --> 00:48:29,822
Speaker 1: one hundred yards to a trail off the street. And

787
00:48:30,062 --> 00:48:34,102
Speaker 1: at that very moment, a bicyclist named Greg Steinberg, who

788
00:48:34,142 --> 00:48:37,342
Speaker 1: had just finished running a five K in downtown Waukeshaw

789
00:48:37,502 --> 00:48:41,062
Speaker 1: and he was bicycling home. He crossed the path and

790
00:48:41,102 --> 00:48:44,582
Speaker 1: he saw her, and he saved her. He made the

791
00:48:44,702 --> 00:48:47,982
Speaker 1: nine one one call that saved her life.

792
00:48:48,502 --> 00:48:53,382
Speaker 2: What about Morgan and Anissa? How were they because obviously

793
00:48:53,422 --> 00:48:56,462
Speaker 2: word of a stabbing got out very quickly. Police are like,

794
00:48:57,782 --> 00:49:00,222
Speaker 2: we've got to find these other girls that you know.

795
00:49:00,622 --> 00:49:02,502
Speaker 2: How would they tracked down? And in what state were

796
00:49:02,542 --> 00:49:02,782
Speaker 2: they in?

797
00:49:03,662 --> 00:49:06,862
Speaker 1: So Morgan and Anissa after stabbing Bella, they took off.

798
00:49:06,942 --> 00:49:09,022
Speaker 1: Their plan was to go to what they thought was

799
00:49:09,062 --> 00:49:12,302
Speaker 1: slender Man's mansion, slender Mansion, and they thought that it

800
00:49:12,342 --> 00:49:14,662
Speaker 1: was in the Nicolae National Forest, which was three hundred

801
00:49:14,702 --> 00:49:17,502
Speaker 1: miles away, and they were going to walk there without

802
00:49:17,542 --> 00:49:21,142
Speaker 1: a map or a phone or any provisions other than

803
00:49:21,342 --> 00:49:24,062
Speaker 1: some Maxi pads because Morgan had just gotten her period,

804
00:49:24,542 --> 00:49:28,182
Speaker 1: and a couple granola bars and some water bottles and

805
00:49:28,982 --> 00:49:32,142
Speaker 1: they were twelve, and that was their plan, and you know,

806
00:49:32,382 --> 00:49:35,462
Speaker 1: they because they didn't have a compass or anything, they

807
00:49:35,622 --> 00:49:38,222
Speaker 1: walked a lot. They spent a lot of time walking

808
00:49:38,222 --> 00:49:41,222
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. They followed the Fox River north

809
00:49:41,262 --> 00:49:43,102
Speaker 1: they knew that that went north, and then after that

810
00:49:43,142 --> 00:49:46,742
Speaker 1: they were meandering sort of walk trying to get around

811
00:49:46,742 --> 00:49:49,502
Speaker 1: the highway, and that slowed them down. They did manage

812
00:49:49,542 --> 00:49:51,902
Speaker 1: to walk about ten miles. But then what happened was

813
00:49:52,182 --> 00:49:57,382
Speaker 1: they decided to cross a busy highway by walking onto

814
00:49:57,422 --> 00:50:01,382
Speaker 1: the highway rather than under the highway. And they got

815
00:50:01,422 --> 00:50:05,942
Speaker 1: into the highway and a driver, you know, saw these

816
00:50:05,942 --> 00:50:09,942
Speaker 1: little girls four feet tall walking along the side of

817
00:50:10,142 --> 00:50:11,982
Speaker 1: a big the road and called the police. And the

818
00:50:12,022 --> 00:50:15,422
Speaker 1: police were looking for two girls matching that description, one blonde,

819
00:50:15,502 --> 00:50:20,342
Speaker 1: one brunette, just under four feet and they came and

820
00:50:20,342 --> 00:50:23,102
Speaker 1: got them very quickly. And by that point Morgan and

821
00:50:23,142 --> 00:50:27,342
Speaker 1: Anissa were relieved because they were it had stopped being

822
00:50:27,422 --> 00:50:30,542
Speaker 1: fun and they had started to realize that slender Man

823
00:50:30,622 --> 00:50:31,942
Speaker 1: wasn't coming for them.

824
00:50:32,862 --> 00:50:36,702
Speaker 2: And Bella had been able to give those descriptions through

825
00:50:36,822 --> 00:50:38,102
Speaker 2: all of her injuries.

826
00:50:38,302 --> 00:50:41,982
Speaker 1: She was able to tell them it was my best friend.

827
00:50:42,742 --> 00:50:46,182
Speaker 1: Then she was whisked away into surgery, so she gave

828
00:50:46,382 --> 00:50:48,742
Speaker 1: the police the names of those girls. They were able

829
00:50:48,782 --> 00:50:52,182
Speaker 1: to then go to Morgan's house where her parents were,

830
00:50:52,222 --> 00:50:56,302
Speaker 1: and they also went to Anissa's house and got descriptions

831
00:50:56,342 --> 00:50:58,862
Speaker 1: of them and what they'd been wearing that way from

832
00:50:58,862 --> 00:50:59,582
Speaker 1: their parents.

833
00:51:00,022 --> 00:51:03,142
Speaker 2: I want to skip to those initial conversations that the

834
00:51:03,142 --> 00:51:08,462
Speaker 2: girls had with police, because one their parents went with

835
00:51:08,502 --> 00:51:09,422
Speaker 2: them was that local.

836
00:51:09,662 --> 00:51:11,582
Speaker 1: It is in Wiscon and a lot of strange things

837
00:51:11,582 --> 00:51:15,462
Speaker 1: are legal in Wisconsin, and one is that you can

838
00:51:15,582 --> 00:51:18,622
Speaker 1: interview a child about a crime without a parent or

839
00:51:18,702 --> 00:51:23,902
Speaker 1: attorney present, unless the child specifically asks for a lawyer, which,

840
00:51:23,942 --> 00:51:27,262
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, most kids are not thinking that way.

841
00:51:27,262 --> 00:51:29,422
Speaker 1: They've been taught to trust the police. Why would a

842
00:51:29,422 --> 00:51:32,302
Speaker 1: police officer want to trick me? Why would a police

843
00:51:32,302 --> 00:51:35,062
Speaker 1: officer want to hurt me? Especially in suburban communities, in

844
00:51:35,062 --> 00:51:38,662
Speaker 1: white suburban communities, people feel that way. So the police

845
00:51:38,862 --> 00:51:44,182
Speaker 1: interviewed them, I'm interrupted for eight hours, and they lied

846
00:51:44,222 --> 00:51:46,022
Speaker 1: to their parents too about what they were talking to

847
00:51:46,062 --> 00:51:47,782
Speaker 1: them about. And it's all legal.

848
00:51:48,542 --> 00:51:51,662
Speaker 2: How would you describe those conversations. The stuff that jumped

849
00:51:51,662 --> 00:51:53,982
Speaker 2: out to me, particularly from a Nissa, was I don't

850
00:51:53,982 --> 00:51:56,662
Speaker 2: think she really grasped what had happened. She was asking

851
00:51:56,742 --> 00:51:58,942
Speaker 2: things like what am I going to get my clothes back?

852
00:51:58,982 --> 00:52:01,222
Speaker 2: And oh, I haven't taken my antihistamy today. It was

853
00:52:01,262 --> 00:52:05,182
Speaker 2: almost like she didn't realize what had happened. Yeah, how

854
00:52:05,222 --> 00:52:08,622
Speaker 2: would you kind of look at those conversations?

855
00:52:08,942 --> 00:52:13,502
Speaker 1: I think is is wild, But if you watch it,

856
00:52:13,622 --> 00:52:16,622
Speaker 1: I mean what I thought was just in Morgan's case,

857
00:52:16,662 --> 00:52:19,022
Speaker 1: I thought, this cop really has it out for her.

858
00:52:19,062 --> 00:52:23,502
Speaker 1: He really hates her. And also you can see how

859
00:52:23,702 --> 00:52:26,262
Speaker 1: mentally ill Morgan is. You can see all of the

860
00:52:26,302 --> 00:52:29,462
Speaker 1: science that she's just completely unraveling and that she's sick

861
00:52:29,502 --> 00:52:32,982
Speaker 1: and that she needs she needs help. And with a Nissa,

862
00:52:34,262 --> 00:52:37,262
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you see a learning disability on

863
00:52:37,302 --> 00:52:40,942
Speaker 1: full display. Like that's something that kind of comes out

864
00:52:40,982 --> 00:52:43,102
Speaker 1: throughout this case. Is if you want to see a

865
00:52:43,142 --> 00:52:45,702
Speaker 1: monster in these girls, you can see a monster. But

866
00:52:45,742 --> 00:52:48,662
Speaker 1: if you go into it with the context of their

867
00:52:48,702 --> 00:52:56,382
Speaker 1: situations of a Nissa's incredibly difficult disability in terms of

868
00:52:56,422 --> 00:53:00,702
Speaker 1: her processing information and in terms of Morgan being in

869
00:53:00,742 --> 00:53:02,982
Speaker 1: a state of psychosis, you can see that she's in

870
00:53:02,982 --> 00:53:05,902
Speaker 1: a state of psychosis. That's the short answer, is that

871
00:53:05,942 --> 00:53:08,622
Speaker 1: she is in a state of psychosis. For the entire interview,

872
00:53:09,142 --> 00:53:14,622
Speaker 1: and the the police officer questioning her is treating her

873
00:53:15,382 --> 00:53:21,342
Speaker 1: like a serial killer. And that's the dynamic in her

874
00:53:21,382 --> 00:53:24,902
Speaker 1: interrogation room and with a nieceas she has no idea,

875
00:53:25,382 --> 00:53:27,422
Speaker 1: she has no idea how much trouble she is, and

876
00:53:27,542 --> 00:53:29,422
Speaker 1: she wants to go back to school on Monday. She

877
00:53:29,462 --> 00:53:31,662
Speaker 1: wants to make sure that she'll be able to do that.

878
00:53:32,422 --> 00:53:35,342
Speaker 1: And they just they talk and talk and talk and

879
00:53:35,382 --> 00:53:39,222
Speaker 1: talk and talk for hours, and by the time they

880
00:53:39,542 --> 00:53:42,942
Speaker 1: go out of there, the police have secured a lengthy

881
00:53:43,022 --> 00:53:48,262
Speaker 1: confession with the explicit purpose of trying to put the

882
00:53:48,302 --> 00:53:51,262
Speaker 1: girls into an adult prison for over one hundred years.

883
00:53:52,062 --> 00:53:55,302
Speaker 1: The police officer's goal that day was to incarcerate the

884
00:53:55,342 --> 00:53:58,582
Speaker 1: girls for as long as possible and the most extreme

885
00:53:59,302 --> 00:54:03,382
Speaker 1: environment possible at an adult women's prison. It was not

886
00:54:03,502 --> 00:54:06,382
Speaker 1: to understand the crime or why it happened, and it

887
00:54:06,422 --> 00:54:09,062
Speaker 1: was not to yeah, it was not to have a

888
00:54:09,062 --> 00:54:11,582
Speaker 1: deeper understanding of the case to punish the case, and

889
00:54:11,622 --> 00:54:14,142
Speaker 1: so they went about it using the methods that would

890
00:54:14,182 --> 00:54:15,102
Speaker 1: best serve that goal.

891
00:54:15,662 --> 00:54:20,462
Speaker 2: Morgan's mental health kind of was assessed five or so

892
00:54:20,622 --> 00:54:23,422
Speaker 2: days into prison, so all does it happened? She'd been

893
00:54:23,742 --> 00:54:28,782
Speaker 2: placed into a prison. How did her mental health kind

894
00:54:28,782 --> 00:54:32,702
Speaker 2: of continue to unravel once she was incarcerated, because it

895
00:54:32,782 --> 00:54:36,022
Speaker 2: was in that first prison visit that her parents finally

896
00:54:36,102 --> 00:54:39,262
Speaker 2: kind of clicked and were like, oh yeah, yeah.

897
00:54:39,902 --> 00:54:42,542
Speaker 1: People are like, well, how did she manage? How did

898
00:54:42,582 --> 00:54:44,302
Speaker 1: no one manage to see it? Well, part of it

899
00:54:44,342 --> 00:54:47,542
Speaker 1: is that she hid it, and you know, she hid

900
00:54:47,582 --> 00:54:52,582
Speaker 1: it as well as an extremely intelligent, high IQ twelve

901
00:54:52,622 --> 00:54:56,422
Speaker 1: year old girl with emerging psychosis can hide it. And

902
00:54:56,502 --> 00:54:58,022
Speaker 1: at the end, she was having a lot of trouble

903
00:54:58,062 --> 00:55:00,422
Speaker 1: hiding it leading up to the crime, but her friends

904
00:55:00,462 --> 00:55:03,462
Speaker 1: were helping her hide it. Anissa was helping her hide it,

905
00:55:03,502 --> 00:55:05,382
Speaker 1: like Bella was helping her hide it. Other kids were like,

906
00:55:05,422 --> 00:55:07,302
Speaker 1: what's going on? But they were managing to sort of

907
00:55:07,302 --> 00:55:11,022
Speaker 1: protect her from any sort of adult scrutiny. After the

908
00:55:11,062 --> 00:55:14,022
Speaker 1: crime occurred, she could no longer hide it because she

909
00:55:14,102 --> 00:55:17,382
Speaker 1: had also gone through a traumatic event. When you try

910
00:55:17,422 --> 00:55:21,222
Speaker 1: to kill somebody, it sticks in your brain in a

911
00:55:21,262 --> 00:55:25,262
Speaker 1: real way. It causes PTSD the same way that you

912
00:55:25,302 --> 00:55:27,662
Speaker 1: know with someone else trying to kill you will stick

913
00:55:27,662 --> 00:55:31,822
Speaker 1: in your brain. It's extremely violent and it broke her

914
00:55:32,022 --> 00:55:34,622
Speaker 1: and it made her snap, and from then on she

915
00:55:34,662 --> 00:55:37,782
Speaker 1: could not hide the symptoms that had been plaguing her

916
00:55:37,822 --> 00:55:41,262
Speaker 1: prior to that, so she was talking to herself in

917
00:55:41,302 --> 00:55:43,742
Speaker 1: the open, in front of everybody. As soon as she

918
00:55:43,822 --> 00:55:46,742
Speaker 1: was checked into the jail, she was flagged for a

919
00:55:46,742 --> 00:55:50,942
Speaker 1: psych evaluation and when her parents, by the time her

920
00:55:50,942 --> 00:55:53,142
Speaker 1: parents managed to get in to see her, which didn't

921
00:55:53,142 --> 00:55:56,742
Speaker 1: happen for many, many many days, they weren't allowed in.

922
00:55:57,342 --> 00:56:01,102
Speaker 1: She had not washed, she was muttering to herself. She

923
00:56:01,142 --> 00:56:03,462
Speaker 1: didn't even seem to know that they were there, so

924
00:56:03,502 --> 00:56:06,822
Speaker 1: she had a full psychotic break post crime.

925
00:56:07,382 --> 00:56:11,662
Speaker 2: Was Anissa also assist for her mental health at that time.

926
00:56:11,982 --> 00:56:16,942
Speaker 1: So that's the really messed up part about the post

927
00:56:16,982 --> 00:56:19,742
Speaker 1: crime phase of this story is that because they were

928
00:56:19,822 --> 00:56:23,182
Speaker 1: charged as adults, because that is the law in Wisconsin,

929
00:56:24,022 --> 00:56:28,982
Speaker 1: they did not receive any therapeutic services, which is very

930
00:56:29,022 --> 00:56:32,702
Speaker 1: messed up. We do provide them to children automatically in

931
00:56:32,742 --> 00:56:36,022
Speaker 1: the United States, but not to adults, and so because

932
00:56:36,062 --> 00:56:39,822
Speaker 1: they were adults, they were denied you know, counseling, They

933
00:56:39,822 --> 00:56:42,862
Speaker 1: were denied you know, sort of diagnostic services for a

934
00:56:42,942 --> 00:56:46,862
Speaker 1: very very long time. And it was only because Morgan's

935
00:56:46,902 --> 00:56:53,142
Speaker 1: attorney was having doctors assess her for the trial phase

936
00:56:53,782 --> 00:56:56,742
Speaker 1: that she was able because and it was only because

937
00:56:56,782 --> 00:57:00,422
Speaker 1: her attorney petitioned really, really, really hard to get her

938
00:57:00,462 --> 00:57:03,822
Speaker 1: assessed that she was taking care of a niece of

939
00:57:03,942 --> 00:57:08,822
Speaker 1: was never really taking care of therapeutically, at least not

940
00:57:08,942 --> 00:57:13,422
Speaker 1: during the pre incarceration phase, which is just so sad

941
00:57:13,662 --> 00:57:17,422
Speaker 1: she I mean, she really could have used some help

942
00:57:17,502 --> 00:57:18,422
Speaker 1: during that time.

943
00:57:18,262 --> 00:57:20,342
Speaker 2: Because it's not too And this is what a lot

944
00:57:20,382 --> 00:57:24,222
Speaker 2: of people think that talking about mental health is excusing

945
00:57:24,222 --> 00:57:27,422
Speaker 2: the crime, which it's not. But it's hard to separate

946
00:57:27,462 --> 00:57:30,622
Speaker 2: the two when it comes to this particular story, particularly

947
00:57:30,622 --> 00:57:32,142
Speaker 2: when we kind of skip forward a bit and we

948
00:57:32,222 --> 00:57:34,862
Speaker 2: do talk about the assessments that these two girls end

949
00:57:34,942 --> 00:57:40,742
Speaker 2: up getting. Morgan is eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I mean,

950
00:57:40,782 --> 00:57:42,582
Speaker 2: you've used a sentence in your book that stick to me.

951
00:57:42,942 --> 00:57:45,542
Speaker 2: Sickness cooked her brain like a fever to the point

952
00:57:45,542 --> 00:57:48,782
Speaker 2: where she didn't even really remember the crime, right, Can

953
00:57:48,822 --> 00:57:49,422
Speaker 2: you talk to that?

954
00:57:49,942 --> 00:57:52,942
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was really insulated from the event itself. She

955
00:57:53,182 --> 00:57:56,022
Speaker 1: seemed to the people around her to be remorseless because

956
00:57:56,062 --> 00:57:58,422
Speaker 1: she was just lost in a world of her of

957
00:57:58,742 --> 00:58:04,462
Speaker 1: her own making. From her perspective, Slenderman is coming for her.

958
00:58:04,862 --> 00:58:06,822
Speaker 1: She is right now in a jail, but she's also

959
00:58:07,062 --> 00:58:12,102
Speaker 1: there's unicorns in the jail, and there's like Barack Obama

960
00:58:12,342 --> 00:58:17,502
Speaker 1: is riding through naked on a purple dinosaur. Like that's

961
00:58:17,542 --> 00:58:20,502
Speaker 1: what she That's what she was seeing during that time.

962
00:58:20,942 --> 00:58:24,262
Speaker 1: So it wasn't until they put her on medication. She

963
00:58:24,422 --> 00:58:26,662
Speaker 1: told me once that it took four years for her

964
00:58:26,702 --> 00:58:29,342
Speaker 1: to accept that Slenderman wasn't coming and to realize what

965
00:58:29,462 --> 00:58:29,982
Speaker 1: she had done.

966
00:58:31,342 --> 00:58:35,422
Speaker 2: Right, which people would say is her not showing remorse.

967
00:58:35,542 --> 00:58:39,182
Speaker 1: Right, I'll tell you that she feels an extreme amount

968
00:58:39,182 --> 00:58:42,862
Speaker 1: of remorse. I mean it's she hates herself to this

969
00:58:42,982 --> 00:58:46,182
Speaker 1: day on such a deep level. This is something that

970
00:58:46,222 --> 00:58:50,542
Speaker 1: she lives with and relives every day. And she misses Bella.

971
00:58:51,222 --> 00:58:53,822
Speaker 1: That's why she chose her when they were children, or

972
00:58:53,822 --> 00:58:56,462
Speaker 1: that's why you know, that's why this was the crime

973
00:58:56,622 --> 00:58:58,742
Speaker 1: is because Morgan loved Bella, not because she hated her.

974
00:58:58,782 --> 00:59:02,262
Speaker 1: She misses her so much. From one person's point of view,

975
00:59:02,302 --> 00:59:04,902
Speaker 1: it might look like evil, and then if you look

976
00:59:04,942 --> 00:59:06,822
Speaker 1: at it in a different way, it's like this person

977
00:59:06,942 --> 00:59:10,262
Speaker 1: is extremely sick and a danger to themselves and others.

978
00:59:10,862 --> 00:59:14,702
Speaker 1: But it was definitely mistaken as remorselessness, and it wasn't that.

979
00:59:14,822 --> 00:59:17,542
Speaker 1: It was just that her reality contact was so limited

980
00:59:17,942 --> 00:59:22,822
Speaker 1: that she wasn't even really grounded in the realization that

981
00:59:23,182 --> 00:59:24,502
Speaker 1: she had stabbed her best friend.

982
00:59:25,462 --> 00:59:28,782
Speaker 2: And then with a Nissa, you've talked about the kind

983
00:59:28,822 --> 00:59:32,502
Speaker 2: of learning disability, but she is also eventually diagnosed with

984
00:59:32,942 --> 00:59:35,302
Speaker 2: and I'm like, butcher this, but fully you do, which

985
00:59:35,342 --> 00:59:37,502
Speaker 2: is kind of like a shared psychotic disorder.

986
00:59:37,702 --> 00:59:40,342
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. One thing I do want to say

987
00:59:40,382 --> 00:59:43,542
Speaker 1: about the emotional, the remorse and the mental illness thing

988
00:59:43,622 --> 00:59:45,302
Speaker 1: is that something that Morgan's mom said to me that

989
00:59:45,302 --> 00:59:47,262
Speaker 1: I thought was really profound and simple and true is

990
00:59:47,262 --> 00:59:50,862
Speaker 1: that when you're when you have psychosis, you don't have emotions.

991
00:59:51,822 --> 00:59:55,262
Speaker 1: You don't have them at all. So that's another way

992
00:59:55,302 --> 00:59:59,462
Speaker 1: of looking at it. Yes, So after the crime, A

993
00:59:59,622 --> 01:00:06,622
Speaker 1: Nissa was diagnosed with FALIA and she got very, very

994
01:00:06,902 --> 01:00:11,102
Speaker 1: lucky in this Wisconsin legal system. In the US legal system,

995
01:00:11,142 --> 01:00:16,142
Speaker 1: it is so hard to get an NNGRI verdict not

996
01:00:16,182 --> 01:00:18,862
Speaker 1: guilty by reason of Sandy. People think it's very widespread

997
01:00:18,862 --> 01:00:23,742
Speaker 1: in common. It is statistically almost impossible to get that

998
01:00:23,902 --> 01:00:27,502
Speaker 1: verdict from jury's So she was very lucky to have

999
01:00:27,502 --> 01:00:31,062
Speaker 1: gotten it at all. But the defense was very creative.

1000
01:00:31,102 --> 01:00:33,062
Speaker 1: They had to get creative because she didn't have a

1001
01:00:33,102 --> 01:00:36,942
Speaker 1: mental illness. She had a learning disability, which I don't

1002
01:00:36,942 --> 01:00:39,902
Speaker 1: know why they didn't lean into that more honestly, but

1003
01:00:39,982 --> 01:00:43,182
Speaker 1: they might have just it might have been too precarious

1004
01:00:43,222 --> 01:00:46,862
Speaker 1: an outcome, but they just The Falia did thing where

1005
01:00:46,862 --> 01:00:48,662
Speaker 1: it came from is that she hadn't been diagnosed with

1006
01:00:48,702 --> 01:00:51,262
Speaker 1: a mental illness, but they needed to. They were trying

1007
01:00:51,262 --> 01:00:53,982
Speaker 1: to put her into a safer environment than prison, and

1008
01:00:54,022 --> 01:00:56,022
Speaker 1: a hospital would have been a safer environment because she

1009
01:00:56,062 --> 01:00:59,062
Speaker 1: was going to be in an adult setting regardless. And

1010
01:00:59,102 --> 01:01:02,342
Speaker 1: so Falia does a nineteenth century French diagnosis, which means

1011
01:01:02,382 --> 01:01:06,182
Speaker 1: the madness of tune. It basically is when one person's

1012
01:01:06,862 --> 01:01:09,942
Speaker 1: mental illness spreads to the other because of the closeness

1013
01:01:10,022 --> 01:01:12,622
Speaker 1: of their real relationship. And it usually only happens in

1014
01:01:12,662 --> 01:01:17,742
Speaker 1: like married couples, and it does happen where two people

1015
01:01:17,742 --> 01:01:20,142
Speaker 1: get wrapped in a delusion even though only one of

1016
01:01:20,142 --> 01:01:23,702
Speaker 1: them has a mental illness diagnosis. And so they used

1017
01:01:23,702 --> 01:01:27,222
Speaker 1: that argument with Anissa. But I thought the more persuasive thing, honestly,

1018
01:01:27,742 --> 01:01:31,702
Speaker 1: was that she was so severely learning disabled. I mean,

1019
01:01:31,742 --> 01:01:34,182
Speaker 1: that's kind of all you have to know in that situation.

1020
01:01:34,702 --> 01:01:40,342
Speaker 1: But it was a very very like creative argument to

1021
01:01:40,502 --> 01:01:45,422
Speaker 1: use and the jury, the jury agreed and they got

1022
01:01:45,502 --> 01:01:46,182
Speaker 1: very lucky with that.

1023
01:01:47,142 --> 01:01:49,422
Speaker 2: So what was the decision? What did the jury decide?

1024
01:01:49,662 --> 01:01:54,942
Speaker 1: The jury decided to give her an nngri verdict, which

1025
01:01:54,982 --> 01:01:58,862
Speaker 1: meant that she would be serving out a sentence yet

1026
01:01:58,902 --> 01:02:02,462
Speaker 1: to be determined by the judge in a hospital instead

1027
01:02:02,502 --> 01:02:07,782
Speaker 1: of a prison, and he gave her twenty years, which

1028
01:02:08,342 --> 01:02:12,142
Speaker 1: was less than she would have been serving in prison. Luckily,

1029
01:02:12,262 --> 01:02:14,902
Speaker 1: she got up sooner. Sooner than that she didn't. She

1030
01:02:14,942 --> 01:02:16,782
Speaker 1: had to spend the rest of her childhood in an

1031
01:02:16,782 --> 01:02:19,902
Speaker 1: adult psychiatric board, but she got up.

1032
01:02:20,782 --> 01:02:25,982
Speaker 2: Morgan's proceedings happened after a niece's. How different would they

1033
01:02:26,102 --> 01:02:28,822
Speaker 2: because she didn't end up going to trial. She took

1034
01:02:28,822 --> 01:02:30,062
Speaker 2: a play agreement.

1035
01:02:29,902 --> 01:02:32,862
Speaker 1: Right, There were a couple of things happening. Bella's family

1036
01:02:32,902 --> 01:02:35,062
Speaker 1: wanted to avoid a trial because if there were a trial,

1037
01:02:35,342 --> 01:02:38,222
Speaker 1: then Bella would have to testify and they were really

1038
01:02:38,222 --> 01:02:40,662
Speaker 1: concerned about that and what it would do to her psychologically.

1039
01:02:41,502 --> 01:02:44,342
Speaker 1: Morgan's team wanted to avoid it because if she had

1040
01:02:44,382 --> 01:02:46,822
Speaker 1: been found guilty, you know, she's going to go to

1041
01:02:47,062 --> 01:02:50,662
Speaker 1: prison for at least sixty five years and she was

1042
01:02:50,702 --> 01:02:55,822
Speaker 1: sick and she had been denied medication for nineteen months.

1043
01:02:55,862 --> 01:02:59,622
Speaker 1: She was still, you know, really really struggling, and they

1044
01:02:59,662 --> 01:03:02,902
Speaker 1: wanted her to get therapeutic treatment, and they thought that

1045
01:03:02,902 --> 01:03:05,182
Speaker 1: that would be more likely to happen in a hospital.

1046
01:03:06,062 --> 01:03:10,422
Speaker 1: There was also a concern that a niece's verdict would

1047
01:03:10,542 --> 01:03:13,182
Speaker 1: had shocked the local community. People were very at odds

1048
01:03:13,222 --> 01:03:16,262
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, on its face, it doesn't sound

1049
01:03:16,302 --> 01:03:20,662
Speaker 1: great that a girl who conspired to stab another local

1050
01:03:20,662 --> 01:03:27,582
Speaker 1: girl got out of prison time because of I mean,

1051
01:03:27,822 --> 01:03:31,942
Speaker 1: the entire thing was just very controversial locally, especially because

1052
01:03:32,022 --> 01:03:34,862
Speaker 1: so many of the local population did not believe that

1053
01:03:34,902 --> 01:03:36,902
Speaker 1: mental illness was real, and so the fact that she

1054
01:03:37,022 --> 01:03:39,462
Speaker 1: had gotten off and she didn't even have a mental

1055
01:03:39,502 --> 01:03:43,062
Speaker 1: illness diagnosed was really angering to people. And Morgan's team

1056
01:03:43,182 --> 01:03:46,262
Speaker 1: was concerned that if her case went to child even

1057
01:03:46,262 --> 01:03:48,862
Speaker 1: though she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, even though there

1058
01:03:48,942 --> 01:03:51,702
Speaker 1: was all of this documentation around her mental illness, they

1059
01:03:51,702 --> 01:03:54,942
Speaker 1: were concerned that people would be so angry that the

1060
01:03:55,022 --> 01:03:58,142
Speaker 1: jury would issue a reactionary verdict and at least want

1061
01:03:58,182 --> 01:04:00,382
Speaker 1: to send one of them to prison, you know, So

1062
01:04:00,462 --> 01:04:02,502
Speaker 1: they didn't feel like it was a short bet, even

1063
01:04:02,542 --> 01:04:04,902
Speaker 1: though it probably should have been. So they took a

1064
01:04:04,942 --> 01:04:10,102
Speaker 1: plea agreement and the judge agreed to give her an

1065
01:04:10,182 --> 01:04:15,262
Speaker 1: energy and he sentenced her to the forensic hospital for

1066
01:04:15,262 --> 01:04:16,102
Speaker 1: forty years.

1067
01:04:16,742 --> 01:04:20,662
Speaker 2: How did Bella and her parents react to those sentences

1068
01:04:20,702 --> 01:04:21,622
Speaker 2: or verdicts?

1069
01:04:22,502 --> 01:04:28,862
Speaker 1: I mean Bella's family. What they said, their sort of

1070
01:04:28,902 --> 01:04:35,742
Speaker 1: press quotes about it and things basically conveyed that it

1071
01:04:36,062 --> 01:04:43,302
Speaker 1: was unfair that she didn't have to meet the harshest

1072
01:04:43,742 --> 01:04:46,742
Speaker 1: consequences for her behavior. So I don't think that they

1073
01:04:46,782 --> 01:04:49,302
Speaker 1: were were thrilled about it at the time. I think

1074
01:04:49,302 --> 01:04:52,342
Speaker 1: that they wanted the harshest punishment for her. I think

1075
01:04:52,422 --> 01:04:55,862
Speaker 1: that Bella probably is just from what I know of her,

1076
01:04:55,902 --> 01:04:57,782
Speaker 1: would have been the kind of person who actually would

1077
01:04:57,782 --> 01:04:59,422
Speaker 1: have been happy that Morgan was going to be at

1078
01:04:59,422 --> 01:05:02,662
Speaker 1: a hospital getting sort of the help that she needed,

1079
01:05:02,822 --> 01:05:05,982
Speaker 1: but that her representatives and her spokes sorry, her spokes

1080
01:05:06,382 --> 01:05:08,062
Speaker 1: people said that it wasn't fair.

1081
01:05:08,302 --> 01:05:12,102
Speaker 2: Well, these girls didn't end up serving twenty and forty years,

1082
01:05:12,262 --> 01:05:14,662
Speaker 2: and Lisa got out in twenty twenty one, and as

1083
01:05:14,742 --> 01:05:18,862
Speaker 2: we've mentioned, Morgan was released this year January twenty twenty five,

1084
01:05:19,382 --> 01:05:22,742
Speaker 2: so three years and you know a few more than that, respectively.

1085
01:05:23,822 --> 01:05:27,542
Speaker 2: Do we know how they're doing. Have you spoken to Morgan.

1086
01:05:28,302 --> 01:05:35,182
Speaker 1: I've heard from her family very I mean, I think

1087
01:05:35,262 --> 01:05:39,022
Speaker 1: that it's surreal the idea that she might be able

1088
01:05:39,142 --> 01:05:43,102
Speaker 1: to that she will that might that she will be

1089
01:05:43,182 --> 01:05:45,982
Speaker 1: able to hug her mother outside of a legal medical

1090
01:05:46,182 --> 01:05:48,462
Speaker 1: setting for the first time since she was twelve years old.

1091
01:05:49,622 --> 01:05:54,542
Speaker 1: And I think like is struggling to wrap her mind around,

1092
01:05:54,942 --> 01:05:57,422
Speaker 1: in a good way, around the idea that she might

1093
01:05:57,422 --> 01:05:59,342
Speaker 1: be able to go do normal things like go to

1094
01:05:59,382 --> 01:06:03,862
Speaker 1: a library, you know, be allowed in and out of

1095
01:06:03,902 --> 01:06:08,302
Speaker 1: the building where she lives, you know, Like, I think

1096
01:06:08,382 --> 01:06:10,902
Speaker 1: it's I think it's surreal, and I think her family

1097
01:06:11,022 --> 01:06:14,502
Speaker 1: is completely overjoyed to have her back. They really didn't

1098
01:06:14,502 --> 01:06:16,902
Speaker 1: think that they were gonna that they were going to

1099
01:06:17,342 --> 01:06:19,342
Speaker 1: have this moment. They weren't, you know, they weren't sure

1100
01:06:19,342 --> 01:06:19,702
Speaker 1: about that.

1101
01:06:19,782 --> 01:06:24,462
Speaker 2: So when the media started reporting on Morgan's release in

1102
01:06:24,542 --> 01:06:27,742
Speaker 2: January twenty twenty five, so many years after those aditial headlines,

1103
01:06:27,782 --> 01:06:31,502
Speaker 2: do you think that the media has learned anything? Do

1104
01:06:31,502 --> 01:06:33,662
Speaker 2: you think society has learned anything? Are we treating this

1105
01:06:33,782 --> 01:06:34,862
Speaker 2: case differently now?

1106
01:06:35,382 --> 01:06:38,422
Speaker 1: I think we are, I think, and I think it

1107
01:06:38,502 --> 01:06:41,622
Speaker 1: makes me feel really proud again to be from Wisconsin,

1108
01:06:41,942 --> 01:06:45,822
Speaker 1: a place that has such a progressive history, such a

1109
01:06:45,862 --> 01:06:52,222
Speaker 1: community oriented history. And I also think that it signals

1110
01:06:52,822 --> 01:06:56,182
Speaker 1: a few changes in the culture at large. I think

1111
01:06:56,182 --> 01:06:59,542
Speaker 1: that there is much more awareness about mental illness and

1112
01:06:59,622 --> 01:07:03,622
Speaker 1: mental health in general, and neurological diversity. You know, there's

1113
01:07:03,662 --> 01:07:08,382
Speaker 1: a real understanding now of neurodiversity, and so we can

1114
01:07:08,462 --> 01:07:10,902
Speaker 1: talk about the case unlike we did back then. We

1115
01:07:10,942 --> 01:07:13,862
Speaker 1: can talk about the case taking for granted that these

1116
01:07:13,902 --> 01:07:17,382
Speaker 1: things are true, that different human brains are different depending

1117
01:07:17,422 --> 01:07:21,062
Speaker 1: on the circumstances of our upbringings and also our biology.

1118
01:07:21,862 --> 01:07:29,542
Speaker 1: So the same sort of reviled girl who was really

1119
01:07:29,582 --> 01:07:35,182
Speaker 1: burned by society in twenty fourteen, she can, you know, exit,

1120
01:07:35,342 --> 01:07:37,382
Speaker 1: she can be released in the same people who are

1121
01:07:37,382 --> 01:07:40,022
Speaker 1: so angry about her don't even know that she's out there.

1122
01:07:40,182 --> 01:07:41,822
Speaker 1: They don't even know she out there anymore. So I

1123
01:07:41,822 --> 01:07:45,022
Speaker 1: think I don't know that the way the internet was

1124
01:07:45,062 --> 01:07:47,102
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, if it were still that way, I

1125
01:07:47,182 --> 01:07:49,982
Speaker 1: don't know if we'd be getting this same decision, because

1126
01:07:50,622 --> 01:07:55,262
Speaker 1: the judge would on the case would still feel very scrutinized.

1127
01:07:56,182 --> 01:07:59,582
Speaker 2: Lastly, what do you want people to take away from

1128
01:07:59,622 --> 01:08:02,782
Speaker 2: hearing kind of this version of events, your version of

1129
01:08:02,782 --> 01:08:06,942
Speaker 2: events from the book of kind of delving into more

1130
01:08:06,982 --> 01:08:07,822
Speaker 2: than just the headline.

1131
01:08:08,582 --> 01:08:13,022
Speaker 1: I would invite people to be interested in the gray

1132
01:08:13,142 --> 01:08:16,222
Speaker 1: areas of like good and evil. And you know, we

1133
01:08:16,222 --> 01:08:20,502
Speaker 1: can be very black and white as as human beings

1134
01:08:20,502 --> 01:08:23,022
Speaker 1: in terms of understanding the world. And if you put

1135
01:08:23,022 --> 01:08:25,262
Speaker 1: it into these two categories, you feel a bit safer

1136
01:08:25,342 --> 01:08:28,502
Speaker 1: because of course, none of us would ever be exposed

1137
01:08:28,502 --> 01:08:32,422
Speaker 1: to evil because we're good, you know. But yeah, I

1138
01:08:32,422 --> 01:08:34,422
Speaker 1: would just invite people into the gray area of this

1139
01:08:34,542 --> 01:08:39,422
Speaker 1: story because I think once, once you understand more about it,

1140
01:08:39,822 --> 01:08:42,222
Speaker 1: you realize that something like this could happen to anybody.

1141
01:08:42,742 --> 01:08:44,862
Speaker 1: When a lot of people hear about this story, they think,

1142
01:08:45,582 --> 01:08:48,182
Speaker 1: what if my child was stabbed? And now, having looked

1143
01:08:48,222 --> 01:08:52,022
Speaker 1: at it a bit more closely, I am more haunted

1144
01:08:52,062 --> 01:08:54,302
Speaker 1: by the question of like, what if my child stabs somebody?

1145
01:08:54,622 --> 01:08:57,342
Speaker 1: What if I miss something like what will you know?

1146
01:08:58,262 --> 01:09:04,622
Speaker 1: And and something like this happened. I think anybody, anybody,

1147
01:09:04,742 --> 01:09:10,902
Speaker 1: under the wrong set of circumstances, can become an attempted killer.

1148
01:09:11,062 --> 01:09:14,622
Speaker 1: And I think understanding that part of human reality and

1149
01:09:14,622 --> 01:09:17,822
Speaker 1: a human psyche I don't know to me it feels important.

1150
01:09:21,662 --> 01:09:24,102
Speaker 2: Thanks to Kathleen for helping us to tell this story.

1151
01:09:24,542 --> 01:09:27,662
Speaker 2: True Crime Conversations is a Muma MEA podcast hosted and

1152
01:09:27,702 --> 01:09:31,422
Speaker 2: produced by me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio

1153
01:09:31,462 --> 01:09:34,862
Speaker 2: design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll

1154
01:09:34,902 --> 01:09:37,462
Speaker 2: be back next week with another True Crime Conversation