Roughly 4% of people found guilty of violent crimes plead guilty by reason of mental illness. However, it is assumed that 44% of people in jail have a mental illness, diagnosed or undiagnosed. Morgan Geyser, a 12-year-old convicted felon from Milwaukee, falls into this statistic. She and her best friend, Anissa Weir, were found accused of stabbing their other close friend, Payton (Bella) Leutner 19 times in the middle of the woods. Bella miraculously survived, and the girls were charged with attempted homicide and faced over 100 years combined jail time. However, it was later on discovered that Bella had been struggling with incredibly severe schizophrenia, which she had been diagnosed with as a child. She was easily manipulated, very gullible, and extremely vulnerable to abuse. The book Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale expanded my understanding of who is at fault in the Slenderman stabbing case. One reason why I believe that Morgan is not entirely at fault in the case of the stabbing is that she was suffering from severe schizophrenia at the time of the crime. Morgan’s father, Matt, and her mother, Angie, both tested positive for the schizophrenia gene, with Matt presenting with symptoms from early on. Angie found out about …show more content…
Right before she was about to stab her, Morgan tackled Bella to the ground and forced her down. Bella struggled and tried to escape, but ultimately failed. That’s when Morgan began apologizing profusely. “‘I’m sorry,’ Morgan said. I have to do this because it’s the only way to save my life. Someone from Creepypasta is stalking me’” (Hale 86). A few months later, “...Bella said Morgan held her down in the woods, ‘got her face real close,’ and whispered in Bella’s ear, ‘I’m so sorry’” (Hale