Trial date set for Wisconsin girl charged in Slender Man attack

(Reuters) - One of two Wisconsin girls accused of attacking a classmate to please a fictional character named Slender Man will head to trial in October outside Milwaukee after a judge denied a change of venue for the much publicized case, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Monday.

The trial for Morgan Geyser, 14, is scheduled to begin on Oct. 2 in Waukesha County, the newspaper reported.

Anthony Cotton, an attorney for Geyser, did not respond to request for comment.

There was no need to change the venue because the media coverage of the case had not been "rabble rousing" and was without "embellishment, exaggeration or outrageousness,"

Circuit Judge Michael Bohren told the court on Monday, according the newspaper article.

Confessions by Geyser to police will also be admissible in court, online court documents showed.

Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier, 15, were charged with attempted first-degree homicide in the May 2014 stabbing of their classmate in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb. Both have pleaded not guilty and remain in custody. All three girls were 12 at the time.

After a sleepover with their classmate and friend, Weier and Geyser lured her into the woods and stabbed her 19 times with a kitchen knife, according to a criminal complaint.

The girls told investigators they stabbed her to impress Slender Man, a tall, creepy fictional bogeyman they insisted was real, the complaint said.

A Wisconsin appeals court ruled in July 2016 that the teenagers should be tried as adults. Weier and Geyser could each be sentenced to up to 65 years in prison if convicted as adults.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago)