As Morgan and Anissa began their escape to Slender Mansion, the sound of people cheering could be heard from downtown Waukesha, as if in celebration of Bella’s death. The usually quiet city buzzed with activity that morning, as spectators crowded the paved trails around the Fox River to watch amateur athletes cross the finish line of that morning’s five-kilometer charity race, Run for the Bucket, a pun on the event’s cause: a rare, nonfatal condition known as cyclic vomiting syndrome.
After finishing the race, Waukesha resident Greg Steinberg bicycled home. Around 9:53 A.M., he turned onto Big Bend Road, which opened onto a bike trail that would give him a straight shot to the highway.
As he veered toward his shortcut, Greg noticed a little girl with brown hair lying on the grass by the trail’s edge. From one of her bare feet dangled a blue-and-white-striped Adidas athletic slide. Behind her grew a hedge of Queen Anne’s lace. Hours later, a K-9 unit would find her missing sandal in the trees.
The girl turned her head to face Greg, looking ghostly pale, and said, “I’ve been stabbed multiple times. Please help me.”
Miraculously, Bella was still conscious, but not very alert. Somehow, while struggling to breathe or even see, she had managed to drag herself, bleeding, out of the forest.
Greg swung off his bike and rushed to her side. When he saw the extent of Bella’s injuries, his hands began to shake. He rooted frantically for his cell phone.
“911, what’s the address of your emergency?”
“I’m with a twelve-year-old female,” Greg said, relaying her answers to the operator.
He communicated the necessary details with calm efficiency, quickly listing Bella’s injuries, their cause, and her location in a couple of swift sentences.
But the male 911 operator seemed unable to move past the word “stabbed.” “She appears to be what?”
“Stabbed.”
“Stabbed?”
“Yes!”
The operator cautioned Greg to keep an eye out. He asked if there was anyone suspicious lurking around. When Greg said no, the operator seemed incredulous.
“No cars?” he asked. “Nothing?”
He assumed that whoever had attacked her was at least of driving age.
Officer Dan Klein stood in the parking lot of Waukesha’s video rental store. The business marquee was supposed to read HOT HIT SALE. But overnight, someone had rearranged the letters into what Officer Klein described in his police report as “a very inappropriate message.” (Klein would not elaborate on the anagram, but possibilities include HOT SHIT ALE and A SHIT HOLE.)
Klein was taking a photo of the inappropriate message when his police radio crackled with news of a twelve-year-old girl being attacked about a mile and a half away. Klein assumed that there had been a mistake. Children were not attacked in Waukesha—nothing much happened there at all. He arrived at the scene minutes later to find a man with a bicycle, and a little girl lying on the ground. Klein could see some blood. He assumed she needed stitches.
“Hi, I’m Officer Dan,” he said.
The closer he got, the more blood he could see. He promised Bella that help was on the way.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
“My best friend.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.”
Moments later, paramedics arrived and cut off Bella’s clothes with scissors, covering her with towels for privacy. As Officer Klein followed Bella’s gurney into the ambulance, he requested that a female photographer be dispatched to the hospital. The stab wounds were not just a medical emergency. They were evidence.
As requested, a police camera crew was waiting at Waukesha Memorial Hospital when Bella’s ambulance arrived. As an officer photographed Bella’s stab wounds, Officer Klein stepped into the hallway to brief the newly arrived detective, Michelle Trussoni, on what he knew.
Klein told Trussoni that Bella, although cooperative, couldn’t answer complex questions. She had been stabbed just below her left breast. Her injuries were life-threatening, and she would need emergency surgery if she were to have any hope of survival. At best, they had only a few moments to get information from her.
Detective Trussoni entered the emergency bay. Bella, still in immense pain, could no longer talk, but the detective was undeterred. She knew she might very well be working on a murder case, and this could be her only chance to get a statement from the victim. The detective asked Bella if she could answer yes or no questions by shaking her head. Bella nodded. Trussoni wasted no time in asking them.
Had Bella been stabbed in the woods? Yes.
Had she wanted to go in the woods? No.
Had she been pushed in? Yes.
Had there been another girl there? Yes.
As Detective Trussoni took Bella’s fractured statement, Officer Klein quietly collected the clothes that the paramedics had cut off her body and bagged them as evidence. He steeled himself for the next task: informing Bella’s family.
“They said, ‘Is Payton home?’” Stacie recalled years later. “And I said, ‘No.’ And they said, ‘Was she at a sleepover last night?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, she was.’”
Klein told Stacie that Bella had been stabbed.
“Are the wounds superficial?” Stacie asked.
“Call your husband,” Klein said. “And find somebody to take care of your son.”
Stacie Leutner stormed into the hospital where Bella had been born to find her daughter on a gurney. Doctors and nurses swarmed around her. Stacie heard a nurse say, “There’s five on her arm.”
“There’s seven on her leg,” another nurse chimed in.
“Seven what?” Stacie thought, unable to process what was happening.
“All right, I count nineteen,” one nurse announced.
“I count nineteen as well,” another confirmed.
Stacie approached the gurney. They were counting stab wounds. The gurney started to move. Stacie jogged to keep up. They were wheeling Bella into surgery. She took Bella’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “You’re gonna be okay,” Stacie said. “It’s gonna be fine.” She held on until the double doors to the OR swung shut between them.
Meanwhile, at Sunset Homes, armed officers searched Morgan’s condo, as Angie followed them from room to room.
“Where’s Morgan?” they demanded.
“She’s at the park with her friends—what happened, what’s going on?”
Their answers were vague. They told Angie that one of the three girls at her slumber party had been hurt and that the other two were missing. They would not name names.
Across the condominium complex, police pounded on the door to unit K. But the Weiers’ condo was empty. Bill was in Milwaukee that morning, loading up a moving van with Sarah’s and Bubba’s belongings. Around 11:15 A.M., he received a call on his cell from a Waukesha detective.
“He said that they were looking for Anissa,” Bill later testified. “I asked him why, and he responded that he wasn’t entirely sure … All he knew at the time was that one girl was injured, and two girls were missing.”
Realizing that Anissa was either missing or hurt, Bill frantically calculated his distance from home, kicking himself for being so far away. “I instantly called Anissa’s mother, asked how close she was to the condo, and that she get there as soon as possible because I didn’t have that ability driving a fully loaded moving van.”
When Kristi arrived at the condo, she found Anissa’s LG cell phone in her bedroom. The day before, Anissa had typed up what appeared to be a last will and testament in the LG’s notes application, saying simply, “I want everything I own to go to my parents.” There was also a goodbye note that read: “My final wish to those who care, do not grieve my absence but remember me for who I was. I love and cherish you all and wouldn’t do you harm … best wishes to all that know me personally. Do not miss me.”
Kristi handed over the phone to the police, warning that it contained a disturbing message that might be a suicide note.
Physical descriptions of Morgan and Anissa went out over the radio: one blond, one brunette, both standing just under four and a half feet tall.