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Two 12-year-old girls have confessed to the police that they viciously stabbed a classmate 19 times so they could join the online cult of the 'Slender Man' after reading about him online.
The girls told investigators they believed the Slender Man was real and they wanted to prove it by slaughtering their friend after inviting her for a sleepover in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin.
The girls told police they read about the fictional character on a website known as Creepypasta Wiki, where scary stories are submitted by users.
One of the suspects is understood to have told police a user must kill someone in order to climb into the Slender Man's realm, CNN has reported.
They said they had planned to run away and join the Slender Man in his mansion in the woods outside of town. One girl even had a picture of her family with her. She said she packed it because she didn't want to forget what they looked like.
The Slender Man is a prevalent internet myth that has been a viral sensation since it emerged online in 2009. The paranormal creature stalks, abducts and traumatizes children for its own amusement. It can also supposedly control people and communicate telepathically.
Every student at the middle school where the girls attend had recently been given iPads. Parents say officials promised to monitor the students' online activity, but never did.
The Slender Man is a prevalent internet myth that has been a viral sensation since it emerged online in 2009
When the girl escaped in the midst of the assault, her assailants grabbed her and pulled her into the woods and told her to lay down and be quiet, hoping she would bleed out and die, according to court documents.
She eventually crawled out of the woods, covered in blood after being stabbed in the legs, arms and torso. A passing cyclist saw her and called police. The girl was taken to the hospital and is expected to live, despite being stabbed a dozen and a half times.
Surgeons say she was a 'millimeter from death' - one of the stab wounds nearly sliced open a major artery.
'It was weird that I didn't feel remorse,' one of the girls told detectives.
'The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live,' the other girl said.
INTERNET MYTH OF SLENDER MAN
The Slender Man is a fictional character prevalent on the internet after originating as a meme in 2009.
The mythical creature is often depicted as an unnaturally tall, thin figure with a blank, featureless face, wearing a black suit.
The character is said to have long, tentacle-like arms, which can be extended to capture prey.
It is said to stalk, abduct and traumatize children and, depending on interpretations of the myth, can cause memory loss, insomnia and paranoia.
It is also said to be able to create distortions in photographs and teleport.
It is understood to have originated in a photoshop contest on the Something Awful Forums in 2009.
It then went viral with numerous works of fanart and short scary stories published online known as 'creepypasta'.
Both girls are charged as adults with attempted per-meditated murder. If convicted, they face 65 years in prison and are being held on $500,000 bail each.
The girls were found walking near an interstate highway shortly after their victim was rescued. They had a backpack full of snacks and a five-inch knife.
Both girls appeared in court on Monday, wearing shackles and jail jumpsuits. They were surrounded by sheriff's baliffs, who towered over them. Family members of one of the girls wept openly as reporters snapped photographs. The other girl's family sat stone-faced.
According to the criminal complaint, one of the girls told an investigator they began planning to kill their friend in December. The other girl told police they decided to kill her so they could become proxies of Slender Man, who would accept them and let them live with him in his mansion in the Nicolet National Forest.
The other girl said she sees Slender Man in her dreams. She said he watches her and can read her mind and teleport.
'It's extremely disturbing as a parent and as chief of police,' Waukesha Police Chief Russell Jack said at a news conference ahead of the court appearances Monday.
The girls invited their friend to a slumber party on Friday evening, the complaint said. They planned to kill her during the night so they wouldn't have to look into her eyes, one girl told police, and then run away. They decided to put it off, but the next day, during a hide-and-seek game in a wooded park, they attacked their friend with a knife. One girl told the other to 'go ballistic, go crazy,' according to the complaint.The victim began to scream that she hated them and started stumbling away, one of the girls told police.
The girls left the victim lying in the woods. She crawled to a road where a bicyclist found her lying on the sidewalk. Police arrived and she gave them the name of one of the girls who attacked her.
She was rushed into surgery, police said.
One of the girl's attorneys, Donna Kuchler, asked Pieper to remove reporters from the courtroom because she planned to attempt to get her client waived into juvenile court. Pieper refused. Kuchler escorted the girl's family out of the courtroom, telling reporters only that the family was horrified at what happened.
The other girl's attorney, Joseph Smith Jr., led her family out of court. He declined to comment.
Both girls are due back in court on June 11 for a status conference.
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This is the first known appearance of the 'Slender Man' online - Photoshopped into a picture 2009 - it has been a viral internet phenomenon ever since
Culled from Daily mail, PHOTO from CNN
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