- Why did two 12-year-old girls
plot to kill for a mythical online creature?
- And Anissa thinks to herself
"Oh, dear God, this is really happening."
- Would the infatuation lead to violence?
- Slender Man crossed that very dangerous threshold
from fantasy to reality.
- And what prompted a 24-year-old
to post his darkest delusions
before acting them out?
- As we watched his videos,
it made it so much more disturbing.
- Did he think it would make him a star?
- Fame has become a holy grail.
- But the chase for fame can lead to violence.
Even murder.
- They discover a massacre.
- And going viral guarantees notoriety.
- One of the surefire ways to get more likes
is to commit a crime.
- Online, you can live an alternate life
that nobody knows about.
- I'm Soledad O'Brien.
This is "Mysteries and Scandals:
Death by Social Media."
Fame is the ultimate drug of choice,
and some people are so desperate for celebrity
they'll do anything to get it.
Social media has made fame attainable for almost anyone
including those who find notoriety
by committing horrible crimes.
- Cleveland police are scrambling to find
a man who they say shot someone point-blank
while live-streaming it on Facebook.
- In the social media culture,
there's not really a big distinction
between getting success for good deeds
and getting success for bad deeds.
And so there is a whole new area of crime
known as performance crime
where people actually undertake crimes
in order to post them on social media.
- On his Facebook page, which has been taken offline,
Stevens claims to have killed up to 15 people.
- He posted a video manifesto about the killing spree
before live-streaming the suspected murder.
A horrifying new reality--
murder streamed live on social media.
- The lure of fame is hard to escape
and for people whose mental health is vulnerable,
it can be impossible to distinguish
between getting attention for something of value
and just plain notoriety.
- The need to be famous sort of short-circuits
any long-term vision here--thinking,
but it really speaks to how the world has so incentivized
viral fame that I think people are willing to overlook
jail time for their moment in the sun.
- When people are troubled,
they can bypass talking to people in their lives
and instead just go and get more and more involved
in the narrative in their heads
without anybody stopping them
because there isn't anybody there.
- We've always had people doing crimes
and wanting attention for it,
but it's grown exponentially through the internet.
- Now with social media,
everybody can create a legacy.
- Just after midnight on June 8, 2017,
police in a rural area of Pennsylvania
received a frantic 911 call about an active shooter
in a local supermarket.
- My first involvement was getting
that phone call at 2:00 in the morning,
and I went out to the
Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Tunkhannock
and talked to the chief investigating officers,
ascertained what had happened,
tried to determine if there's a suspect
who was on the loose.
- It was very early in the morning,
and I had a text message from my editor
saying that there's been an incident
over in Wyoming County,
"We need you to go out there."
- I was one of several reporters
that got a call early in the morning
and was told that--that this was going to be our day.
And we didn't really know a whole lot at that point
other than several people were dead.
- The three people merely doing their jobs overnight
at that Weis market when police say a coworker
barricaded the exits and started shooting.
- Initially it was the local Tunkhannock police
that got there.
And the officers got inside,
not really knowing what to expect.
They discovered... a massacre.
- There was crime tape everywhere.
State troopers walking around.
You know, otherwise you wouldn't really know
anything so violent had happened from the outside.
The real violence of it was on the inside.
- Four people were dead inside the supermarket--
Three workers on the night shift
gunned down by a fourth employee
brandishing two pistol-grip shotguns
who then turned one of the guns on himself
and committed suicide.
The killer's name was Randy Stair.
The 24-year-old left behind a disturbing legacy.
- At least seven state police vehicles
were parked outside the home on Ransom Road
where Randy Stair lived.
Troopers are carrying out a search warrant
to learn more about Stair.
- I began to assist the state police
with search warrants to get information about his phone.
We soon learned that he had extensive amount
of information online, on social media.
So we had to get all the search warrants approved,
working with Facebook and Twitter
and those types of social media companies.
As the investigation went on, it became increasingly clear
that he was a lone actor.
- What's up, humans?
Pretty much my entire video collection is on
that MediaFire page.
And it's not worthless stuff.
It's all my stuff.
It was my life.
Download while you can.
- Shortly before he committed the murders,
he used his twitter account with the name Andrew Blaze
which is the persona that he preferred to be called
to tweet out more than a hundred gigabytes
of journal entries, audio files, and videos.
- I remember speaking to a state trooper,
who I have a good relationship with,
on the scene very early on that morning,
and he said, "These days
"that's the first thing we check.
"Once the scene is secure,
we see what people's digital footprint looks like."
And... and it was there for them.
It was laid out.
It was very complicated and violent and disturbing.
- Just hours before the supermarket killings,
Randy Stair posted a link to a massive trove of videos
documenting the disintegration of his mental state
in gut-wrenching detail.
What dark secrets would these videos reveal?
Why were three people murdered in cold blood?
- I think that Randy did this because he wanted notoriety.
- The last thing Randy Stair did
before gunning down three coworkers
in a midnight rampage was to post hours
of disturbing videos on social media.
For the 24-year-old,
it was a twisted bid for fame.
- The immediate reaction in the community
is one of utter shock and disbelief.
This is a small town,
and this sort of thing doesn't happen here.
- It's quintessential small town Pennsylvania.
Truly, everyone knows each other,
and there's a real close-knit sense of community there.
- If burglary were to happen in this area,
that would be news,
but for a triple murder and then a suicide?
It's unheard of.
- What made the killings even harder to process
was the seeming lack of motive.
None of the early reports indicated
that Randy Stair had any grudge against the victims
or the supermarket.
- It would have made more sense...
if Randy Stair was a disgruntled employee.
If someone inside the Weis Markets had wronged him
in some definitive way.
- The key to figuring out this tragedy
lay buried somewhere within the staggering amount
of digital evidence that Randy left behind
just before the massacre.
- As we watched his videos
and read what he wrote
and found out what a tormented person he was,
it made it so much more disturbing
and so much more sad for the people who lost their lives
because it really did seem so random
that these people were the people who unfortunately
were in his way that day.
- The twisted online legacy also helped investigators
learn much more about who Randy Stair really was.
- So, I'll take you through every single room
you know, just show you where I lived my whole life.
You know, just take you inside,
- I think he lived a very isolated life.
We know that he was 24,
living with his parents,
working overnights
at the Weis Markets in Tunkhannock.
- When he worked, the store was not open.
It was closed, and he would work
as the crew would get the supermarket ready
for the next day of business.
- I think whenever he wasn't at the Weis Markets
he was in his room
probably working on some of these videos.
- Randy's video career started
when he was about ten years old.
- Elementary school I just loved
having the video camera out, just recording anything.
Like fourth and fifth grade, I started making my own
like little pretend movies.
Throughout middle school
I just kept doing that, even just by myself.
You know, at the time, it was just parody anything
that's popular and just have fun with it
and you might get some views out of it, which I did.
I did a parody.
I got 11,000 views,
and it blew my mind.
And I couldn't believe how popular it got so quick.
- Within a few years, Randy began creating
elaborate animated videos for the internet.
He spent nearly all his waking hours filming, editing
and recording voices for his movies.
- Randy wanted everything to be absolutely perfect.
So if it wasn't, it was worth throwing out
and never to be shown to the public
or be released.
- Yo, I'm perfectionist.
This is just how it's gonna be.
- Randy poured his obsessive attention to detail
into his passion project called "Ember's Ghost Squad."
The main character was inspired
by an animated TV series with a large online following.
- Skater Landau became a fan of Randy's online videos.
- I contacted Randy asking for a job as a voice actress.
He was like, "Yeah, sure, we can find a spot for you,"
and I didn't even know that
that would spark a good friendship.
- To his online friends,
Randy Stair presented a pretty normal picture.
- I never got a sense
that Randy was ever going to hurt himself or hurt others.
He seemed like a very nice person
and never showed any hostility.
- When it comes to Randy, I think he used social media
in place of human-to-human connection.
He created a world where he felt comfortable.
And he reached out to people who thought like him,
who maybe could relate to him.
- Online you can either go online as yourself,
or you can be completely anonymous.
You can live an alternate life
that nobody knows about.
- I think that social media provides you
a platform to have community
even when you are uncomfortable
having a community face to face.
So I think it was his world.
It was his only connection to anyone outside
of the walls of his bedroom
where he did most of his creations.
I think it allowed him to be someone who he wasn't.
- He would never leave unless someone asked him
to come out and do something.
He was never talking to anyone in real life.
He was very disconnected from reality.
- Around the time Randy turned 20,
his mental state took a much darker turn
which he documented in a secret video diary.
- So college was wrapping up for my first year
and that's really when I first started to feel down.
A bad thing after another kept happening
and happening and happening.
I lost some family members
I lost some friends.
I lost my car.
I lost so much within a four-month span
that my mind couldn't even handle what was going on.
- Randy had a severe mental health illness.
And the videos that he created just shows a downward spiral.
At first maybe he was expressing his interest
in cartoons
and the cartoon characters that he created.
This became something much more ominous as time went on.
- There was an episode called, "Unleash the Candy"
where Randy's character was with a character named Froggy,
and they went trick-or-treating.
And the minute the guy opens the door
and Froggy's like, "Trick-or-treat."
- Trick-or-treat.
- Randy's character
shoots the guy in the head.
- If you were to watch it without context
it would be dark and disturbing,
but with benefit of hindsight now,
it's utterly chilling.
- Somehow it became an obsession
that literally possessed him to the point
that he thought that the world he had created was real,
and he thought that that's
where he was going to go after he died.
- This isn't who I am. I'm not this here.
I'm that. I'm not this.
You know, I can't emphasize that enough.
- In Randy's own words,
he did this because he truly wanted to live
in his cartoon world.
He thought when he killed himself
that he'd be going to this cartoon world.
- In the early months of 2017,
Randy Stair made the fateful decision to commit suicide,
but with a tragic twist.
- Okay, so here's the deal...
Got a 1983 quarter right here.
If it's heads,
I'll do it here.
If it's tails,
supermarket.
Let's go.
- The coin flip would determine
would Randy kill just himself
or would he murder innocent victims first.
- Land behind the camera.
That is a tails, folks.
Which means there's gonna be a loss of human life
besides my own.
- As the days ticked down,
one constant in Randy's life was making videos
he believed would bring him fame after death.
Was there any way to stop Randy Stair
from carrying out his fatal plan?
- He recognized that he would have
a very limited time
to barricade the supermarket exits.
- In the weeks leading up to June 8, 2017,
24-year-old Randy Stair led a double life.
He continued to post animated material
to numerous social media accounts
as he had for years.
At the same time, he secretly documented
his every action and thought in a series
of disturbing videos and journal entries.
- A few days ago, I got my baby. Check it out.
You know, short barrel, pretty much sawed off.
It is gonna be my ticket out of here.
Just under five months, that'll be in my mouth.
Gone.
Just like that.
Dead.
- Randy didn't post any of these videos
until moments before his killing spree,
depriving anyone in his online community
the chance to raise a red flag.
- Counting down the days and like I can't tell anybody.
You know, it's the saddest thing.
People don't know this is the last five months
they have to talk with me.
And I can't post that gun on social media either
'cause then it's gonna cause concern from...
just about anybody.
- I think one thing that the Randy Stair case demonstrates
is that someone can build an entire world for themselves
without anyone ever knowing.
- Portions of the following video were filmed
by Randy Stair in the supermarket
just weeks before he put his deadly plan
into place.
- Randy came to work at 11 p.m. on June 7th.
It was the third shift, the night shift.
- According to his videos that he left behind,
he recognized that he would have a very limited timeframe.
He would wait until people were on break
before he would start to barricade the five exits
that the supermarket had.
- Was in his uniform, in a Weis Market shirt
that he'd usually be wearing to work.
He began to blockade the doors
to the store.
He went outside to get his guns.
Came back into the store
and then began to shoot.
- I don't have an exact sense
on exactly how long the shooting took,
but it's believed that it only lasted for a few minutes.
I'm sure that anybody who was in there,
it was an eternity.
- A total of 59 shots were discharged
and an additional 48 live rounds were recovered
within and throughout the store.
- Amazingly, one of Randy's coworkers
managed to escape and alerted the police,
but it was too late
for the three victims who died in the attack.
- A night of mourning for a devastated community
after a senseless shooting claimed three innocent lives.
Now outside the Weis here on Route 29,
mourners left behind flowers and candles for the victims,
63-year-old Terry Sterling of South Montrose,
25-year-old Victoria Brong of Factoryville,
and 47-year-old Brian Hayes of Springville.
- The first time I heard the name Randy Stair
was that morning
from a Pennsylvania State Trooper
telling us what they knew at that point
as it was unfolding.
My understanding was they were trying
to figure out a motivation
and the relationship between the people who were killed
and Randy Stair.
- As the tight-knit community in Tunkhannock
began the healing process,
many focused on why this terrible event happened
and how to prevent it from happening again.
Investigators hoped some answers might be found
in the material Randy had posted online.
- We knew very early on that there was vigorous effort
by the state troopers to try and pin down his motivation.
- Randy's disturbing video files
contain many surprising revelations
including the fact that Randy identified as transgender.
- I've just--I've always been a girl.
I just--that's one of the biggest things
I wish I could have told you from day one.
- He felt he was a woman inside that wanted to get out,
and by doing this and committing suicide
he was going to join "Ember's Ghost Squad"
as who he really was, Andrew Blaze,
who is a female persona.
- I think that, for investigators especially,
was something that jumped out
that provided some kind of an explanation.
- It wasn't until these videos and writings came out
after his suicide that it really became knowledge
among a wider group of people.
Kept it secret.
- I think what Randy identified as doesn't matter
in this situation at all,
and people should stop focusing on that kind of stuff.
Honestly, this tragedy was just horrible.
- I think that Randy did this
because he was desperately mentally ill,
and I think he did it because he wanted notoriety.
- I feel like Randy wanted to get "Ember's Ghost Squad"
in the newspapers
so everyone would see this.
- This could be headlines, you know.
"Man shoots up place over cartoon."
- He wanted notoriety for this.
and fortunately, because he had such a digital footprint,
I believe he accomplished that.
- The red flags were there,
but it's a question of whether or not
anybody was picking them up in the right way.
Randy said that this isn't something
that you really can stop.
This is something you can only endure.
- It's the truth.
You can't prevent mass shootings,
no matter how hard you try.
- Which...
It's a scary thought but--and you hope that it's not true,
but... moving forward, you know, who knows?
- After spending much of his life on social media,
Randy Stair's mental illness
and obsession with a digital cartoon world
drove him to commit terrible deeds.
In the same way Randy Stair found community
and escaped reality online,
two 12-year-old girls became immersed
in an online fantasy world.
Their worship of an imaginary creature
triggered unspeakable violence.
- And Anissa thinks to herself,
"Oh, dear God, this is really happening."
- Studies show that kids who use social media
are more likely to value fame,
and what happens when the desire for fame
crosses the line into violence?
- It was in these woods of a Milwaukee suburb
that a young girl was found fighting
for her life Saturday,
the victim of a disturbing attack.
- On May 31, 2014,
a passing cyclist found 12-year-old Payton Leutner
on the side of the road,
bleeding badly from numerous stab wounds.
Payton managed to tell police that she'd been attacked
by two friends, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser.
Local law enforcement quickly began their investigation.
- I didn't expect that.
As a law enforcement officer,
if you respond to an accident
you expect the worst, and you expect the worst
so when you see the worst, it doesn't surprise you.
This point in time, it was confusing to me
because I expected, you know, gang members
or young males or young adults
involved in a violent situation,
not a 12-year-old girl.
I knew that we only had a golden hour
to get her to a trauma center
being that she was stabbed multiple times with a knife.
Then we started looking for our two stabbing suspects.
- My son came downstairs and he said,
"Mommy, the police are at our house."
I assumed he meant they were, like, outside,
there for the neighbors, and he's like,
"No, no, no, they're in our house."
And, "What--what? How--how?"
And there's several officers,
and one of them had a big riot shield.
They just asked if Morgan was home.
I said, "No,"
that she was at the park with her friends,
but they wouldn't tell me what had happened.
They just told me that--that her friend was hurt,
and she said that Morgan did it.
And I mean instantly I just-- I couldn't even fathom
how that could have happened.
- While I was responding to an area
where the two suspects later located,
I could see two silhouettes inside the tree-line.
I assumed that it was young males
that were involved,
and then the persons started complying
with my directions and my orders,
and they started walking back towards me.
I could see that it wasn't a young male,
that it appeared to be a girl.
I could observe blood on her clothing
and I asked her at that point
where all the blood was coming from.
And she stated that she had
just stabbed her 12-year-old best friend to death.
- They said they had found Morgan
and she was at the police station
and that they just needed to, um--they needed to ask her
some questions to sort of clear up what had happened.
- We decided to just drive to the police station
and, I mean, we thought we were going to pick her up.
That's how, like, clueless we were
about everything that had happened.
We thought that we were just going to go and pick her up
and go home, and that would be that.
And finally they came out and they told us
that Morgan tried to kill her friend,
and that she did it for Slender Man.
And that they had been planning it they said.
And, I mean...
And basically that she was being charged
with attempted homicide.
- Prosecutors say the girls
had planned the attack for months.
According to court documents,
the two plotted to kill their friend
to please Slender Man,
a demon-like fictional character
on the horror site Creepypasta.
- Slender Man is an urban legend
born and raised on the internet.
In 2009, there was an online contest
asking people to submit fake supernatural photos
that were so good they could pass for the real thing.
One person submitted two black and white photos
with a tall, thin figure stalking children.
He called it "Slender Man."
- One of this things that's so compelling to young people
is this veracity,
is, "It's real, I saw it."
- I had no idea who Slender Man was at all.
And as we started to look into this
and I started to educate myself,
I found that my children and every child that I knew
knew who Slender Man was.
I found that some of the children are afraid of him
because he's faceless,
and then I find that some of the kids actually embrace that.
- They are many incarnations for the Slender Man legend,
but in most of them, he's a tall, menacing figure.
He wears a black suit.
He has a white, feature-less face,
tentacles that come out from his back,
and they can kill you.
For most people, this is a scary story.
For two 12-year-old girls in the suburbs of Milwaukee,
Slender Man crossed that very dangerous threshold
from fantasy into reality.
- They were actually embracing it,
and they were fixated with it.
- Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier
were two 12-year-old girls growing up
in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
In many respects, they were two typical 12-year-old girls.
- But both of these girls
lived relatively difficult lives.
They were outcasts at school.
This is a town where you should be good at sports
or want to be a cheerleader.
These were not those girls.
- They weren't the only kids who knew about Slender Man,
but the difference was that
they gradually started to believe he was real.
- And so their friendship and Slender Man
together allowed them to create a world that was...
better than the daily lives that each one of them had.
- What is also happening in a young girl's mind
to want to do something like this?
And when we really think about it,
in some way it's sort of where myth and legend
meet how many young people have often behaved
in the face of fandom and celebrity-dom,
even in traditional circles,
in that, at some level, they wanted to perhaps impress
or appease something that they viewed
as more powerful than them.
- As that fantasy turned into reality,
Morgan and Anissa decided they wanted
to become proxies of Slender Man.
To them, they believed that becoming Slender Man's proxy
meant that they would prove themselves worthy of him,
and according to the criminal complaint,
Morgan and Anissa believed that the only way to do that
was to kill someone.
- How was this possible
that two young girls could be capable of such violence?
What caused Morgan and Anissa to cross the line
between harmless online fantasy and deadly reality?
- News reports coming out of Wisconsin
in the spring of 2014
caused parents and teachers everywhere to ask
how a myth created on the internet
could compel two young girls to try to kill
one of their closest friends.
- This was a bizarre and truly gruesome crime.
It defied everything we thought we understood
about girlhood and innocence
in the internet era.
- According to what the girls told police,
Morgan and Anissa had been talking about how to do it,
when to do it,
and what they would do afterward
for a very long time.
- The account you're about to hear of what happened
in Waukesha, Wisconsin is drawn directly from police interviews
with Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier.
On May 30, 2014,
Morgan invited Anissa and Payton Leutner
to spend the night to celebrate her birthday.
- Payton Leutner was Morgan Geyser's friend.
They had been friends since early elementary school.
Everybody called Payton "Bella."
It was Morgan's 12th birthday party,
and the girls met up at Morgan's house
after school for a sleepover.
They fool around on their computers,
and they go to bed.
In every way, it seemed like
a completely normal 12-year-old sleepover.
Then the next morning,
Morgan's mom gives them
strawberries and donuts for breakfast,
and then Morgan says,
"Can we go out to the park and play?"
And this park is really, really close to their house.
- But before they leave,
Morgan went into her parents' kitchen...
And she took a knife.
- So they walk outside.
They walk toward the woods.
Bella's walking ahead.
At a certain point,
Morgan lifts up her jacket
and shows Anissa that she's taken a steak knife
from the kitchen.
And Anissa thinks to herself,
"Oh, dear God, this was really happening."
- This was where everything that Morgan and Anissa
had been talking about for months
with respect to Slender Man came to a head.
And so Anissa takes a few steps back,
and she says, "Now."
And that's when Morgan starts stabbing Bella.
Morgan stabs her 19 times.
She pierces her pancreas, her stomach, her liver,
and she misses a major artery near her heart
by just a millimeter.
- Bella is screaming,
"I trusted you."
And then she gets up and tries to walk,
and the girls sort of pick her up
and lead her deeper into the woods.
She's too close to the road
and they don't want her to be found.
- And then Morgan and Anissa leave her there to die.
And they flee for Slender Man's mansion.
Miraculously, Bella manages to crawl to a nearby road,
blood soaking through her clothes.
And a cyclist comes by, and he sees her.
And he calls 911.
- She's rushed to the hospital where she has surgery
and she's treated for her wounds.
Now meanwhile there's a massive police hunt going on
for Morgan and Anissa.
Bella knew who stabbed her.
According to the criminal complaint
and their interviews with the police,
there was no question
about who had committed this crime.
The police just had to find the two girls.
- Information came across the radio that...
there was stabbing suspects located by a passerby.
- As local police swarmed the scene,
Morgan and Anissa were separated.
Paul Renkas was the first officer to reach Morgan.
- I put her into the squad car,
and she started singing.
And I thought it was a bit odd that she was singing.
I asked what song she was singing.
She gave me some type of song which I've never heard of.
Asked her where she was going.
She said that she was going to the forest.
I said, "Where in the forest are you going?"
And she said she was going to stay with Slender Man.
And she said Slender Man was going to take care of her.
In the state of Wisconsin currently,
if you commit a crime at 17
you can be charged as an adult.
Anything below that
takes a matter of a court proceeding
to be waived into adult court.
I've seen it as low as 14.
I've never seen it as low as 12.
- I remember saying, "Nothing bad,
she's only 12."
And he said, "That doesn't matter.
"In the state of Wisconsin somebody as young as ten
could be charged as an adult."
That came as a shock to me.
- So Morgan and Anissa are both charged
with attempted first-degree intentional homicide.
- Both girls enter pleas of not guilty
by reason of mental disease or defect.
- They're both being tried as adults,
and they each face up to 45 years in prison.
- The idea of these two young girls spending
most of their lives in prison is hard to imagine,
and yet they're alleged to have done something truly awful.
Was an internet obsession to blame
or would a startling diagnosis change the outcome
of this story?
- You can't hold somebody responsible
for the rest of their life
for something they did when they were 12.
- In May 2014,
two 12-year-old girls faced charges
for attacking their best friend and leaving her to die.
Even more troubling was what the girls told police--
that they acted on behalf of Slender Man,
an evil fantasy creature who captured the imagination
of many teenagers as his legend spread
across social media sites.
- It's quite clear that there was a break with reality
and that they were trying to render
themselves more important.
And that's something that children in adolescence
do struggle with.
"Am I important?"
They're interacting with something that is a celebrity,
and even though Slender Man is a fictional,
sort of strange urban internet legend,
he was a celebrity to them.
- For Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier,
things were much more complicated.
A court-appointed psychiatrist testified
in a pre-trial hearing that Morgan suffered
from Early Onset Schizophrenia.
- Typically we identify cases of schizophrenia
at the age of 18 and older.
When the symptoms of schizophrenia
are identified prior to the age of 18,
it's termed "Early Onset Schizophrenia."
- I asked Morgan, "Why didn't you ever tell me about this?"
And she says, "Because you would have done something."
- Yeah. - Like, well, yeah.
Of course I would have done something.
- I can only imagine some of the anguish
that these parents are going through
and sort of second guessing themselves.
One of the things parents must always be mindful of
is that if you notice your children
withdrawing from anything they typically like,
start paying attention because changes in behavior
for us in mental health
are the real canaries in the coal mine.
- On August 21, 2017,
Anissa Weier pleaded guilty to a reduced charge
of attempted second-degree homicide
in a deal with prosecutors.
On September 15, 2017,
a jury found that 15-year-old Anissa was suffering
from a mental disorder
that required treatment, not prison time.
Three months later she was sentenced to the
maximum term. 25 years in a mental hospital.
Morgan Geyser also cut a deal.
She pleaded guilty to the original charge
of first-degree attempted homicide
with the understanding that she would avoid a trial
and remain in a mental hospital for treatment.
- I think that there's this idea
that if you show some compassion
for Morgan and Anissa that you are in turn
not being supportive of the victim.
I mean, we loved Bella.
She ate dinner at my table.
I hugged her good night when she had sleepovers.
We loved Bella. We still do.
- Bella's parents and Bella have been heroic
in her recovery and in their public facing this, and...
She went through something really traumatic
that will define her for the rest of her life.
- As Bella continues to heal,
Morgan and Anissa will have to come
to terms with their actions,
but can they find the community
they searched for online?
These stories serve as a cautionary tale.
Social media can become a deadly tool
for vulnerable people who seek notoriety at any cost,
but the fact is social media is often inescapable
and so is the desire for fame.
For more on "Mysteries and Scandals"
go to oxygen.com.