Morgan and Anissa first met at the bus stop in the fall of 2013. Both lived in Sunset Homes, a 120-unit condominium complex.
At first their relationship involved Anissa punching Morgan in the arm. The dynamic came naturally to each of them: Morgan took her frustrations out on herself; Anissa took them out on other people. From the very start, their differences clicked together with vicious intensity.
Years later, Morgan would write a story from the point of view of the Grim Reaper. In it, he met a female murderer with “rainforest green eyes”—the same color as Anissa’s.
“There was something hypnotic about her,” Morgan wrote. “Something that made me feel dizzy in the chest.”
Drawn in by Anissa’s aggression, Morgan started sitting with her on the bus. As weeks passed, they bonded over their shared love of horror stories, urban legends, and Harry Potter books. Anissa still punched Morgan from time to time. But she liked her, too.
“Her and I could talk about the same topics with enthusiasm,” Anissa later recalled. “I clung to her for dear life.”
Anissa’s dad, Bill, would testify at Anissa’s trial that his initial perception of Morgan had been that she was “curious.” He recalled dropping Anissa off at the bus stop and noticing a small blond girl coming down the hill wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mask. Another time, Morgan arrived wearing Vulcan ears from Star Trek.
“What’s the story here?” he asked Anissa.
“Oh, that’s just Morgan,” Anissa said.
Desperately lonely, and lacking any real reference point for friendship, Anissa quickly began to think of Morgan like a sister.
The only problem was that Morgan already had a best friend: Bella.
At first, Morgan thought they could all be friends. In her imagination, she and Bella were the kittens, and Anissa was their alpha cat.
But Bella didn’t like Anissa. She thought Anissa was “very rude” because, as Bella observed, “she hits people all the time and says bad words.”
Perhaps sensing Bella’s dislike, Anissa started to bully Bella at school. On one occasion, she threw her backpack at Bella and said, “Hold it, bitch.”
Instead, Morgan pulled Anissa’s backpack off Bella’s lap and held it for her, a silent motion of support meant to convey to Bella that she was sorry Anissa had thrown her backpack, and that it made Morgan very sad.
But the gesture struck Bella as eerie. Morgan was a leader in her games with Bella. She invented whole worlds for their Barbie dolls. Yet she became passive and deferential around this neighbor girl. She seemed to accept everything Anissa did without question.
At home Morgan and Anissa emailed late into the night, pinging messages back and forth across the condominium complex. In response to an email from Morgan that referenced girls they didn’t like, Anissa wrote, “Kill them all with fire and brimstone,” adding in a follow-up email, “AND KNIVES.”
One day, the two walked together from Sunset Homes to the playground across the street, where Morgan discovered the word “CUM” scrawled on the door to the boys’ bathroom. Morgan thought “cum” meant “come in,” and before Anissa could stop her, Morgan was inside the bathroom, gawking at some boys who were peeing at the urinals.
“Oh God,” Anissa said, dragging Morgan out by the arm. “I’m so sorry about her. She’s special needs. I’m her sister. My mom told me to watch her. Come on, Morgan. We’re going to go home. I’m taking her home now. It’s all okay. It’s all okay.”
But at school, Morgan and Bella remained close in a way that Anissa couldn’t penetrate. She watched them skip away together down the hallway.
“Anissa finds peer rejection to be more painful than other people do,” a psychiatrist later testified.
Even on the bus, where Anissa’s friendship with Morgan appeared to be blossoming, Anissa soon faced another rival for Morgan’s attention; Lance,* an older boy on their bus, had developed a crush on Morgan.
In Anissa’s opinion, Lance was “very inappropriate.” His feelings for Morgan made him hyper and indecorous. He broke Morgan’s favorite Ninja Turtle doll. At school, teachers saw him shove Morgan into the lockers. Lance was sent to the principal’s office, where Assistant Principal Kirk Woosencraft wrote a no-contact order between Lance and Morgan.
After that, Lance wasn’t supposed to talk to Morgan anymore. Anissa likely thought she’d finally have Morgan to herself. Instead, Lance kept sitting with Morgan, boxing Anissa out of the conversation, and talking almost exclusively about violent video games, prison weapons (“shanks”), and “S-E-X,” as Anissa still called it. He asked Morgan filthy questions loudly enough for anyone to hear, like “Do you want me to shank you in the boobs?” Once he even poked Morgan in the chest.
Worst of all, Morgan seemed to like him back.
“I made a rape baby with a stripper,” he bragged to her one day. “Do you want to be raped next?”
Before Morgan could answer, Anissa stood up and punched Lance so hard that he started to cry. She hated when people broke the rules, and despite being one herself, she hated other bullies.
Emboldened by Anissa’s protection, Morgan slapped Lance.
Together the two girls watched transfixed by the older boy’s tears—this supposed tough guy who had bragged about violent video games and S-E-X.
It was their first act of violence as a team.