The woman who was convicted of the stabbing of a classmate and ordered to serve time in a Wisconsin mental health facility will be released.
Anissa Weier, 19, was sentenced to 25 years but will be freed after serving only 3 1/2 years in the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. She had asked for conditional release saying she was no longer a threat to anyone, The Associated Press reported.
Her release will occur once state officials develop a conditional release plan. Weier has a hearing to determine her release on Sept. 10. Once free, she will have a case manager who will track her until she is 37 years old, the age she will be at the completion of her 20-year sentence.
Weier and a friend, Morgan Geyser, lured Payton Leutner into a park after a sleepover, The Washington Post reported. Geyser stabbed Leutner as Weier encouraged the attack. The girls were all 12 years old and were sixth-graders at Horning Middle School in Waukesha, according to the Post.
Geyser and Weier left Leutner for dead, but Leutner, who had 19 stab wounds, was able to crawl from the suburban Milwaukee woods and was found by a cyclist. She survived the attack, the AP reported.
Doctors said one of the stab wounds was within a millimeter of cutting an artery, the Post reported.
Geyser and Weier said they attacked Leutner to appease the creature Slender Man and had hoped that it would keep him from killing their families, the AP reported. They thought Slender Man was real and lived in a mansion in the woods, the Post reported.
Geyser was sentenced to 40 years in a mental health facility for her role in the attack.