#It's an. odd thing. to sit with. to accept. to grieve. after 25 years of knowing him. of only ever knowing life with him and loving him.

[luciensbabbles]

Allowing myself to sit with the realisation that I don't love my brother anymore.

[wxlawson]

[ WAGNER ‘WOODY’ LAWSON. 42. CISMALE. HE/HIM] is here! They’ve lived in Silver Lake for [ THREE YEARS ] and are originally from [ TENESEE]. They are a [ MANAGER AT A DUDE RANCH ] and in their downtime love [ COLT STARTING ] and [ TAKING NAPS IN THE HAYLOFT ]. They look a lot like [ MILO VENTIMIGLIA] and live [ IN OASIS APTS ]

Name: Wagner ‘Woody’ Lawson

Age: Forty-Two

Birthday: January 25, 1979

Sign: Aquarius

Home: Quaint two-bedroom home with a small yard

Occupation: Manager at a dude ranch

Character Quote: “Sometimes I feel like Jesse James / Still tryin’ to make a name / Knowing nothing’s gonna change what I am” ~Troubadour by George Strait

Pos. Traits: Hard-Working, Steady, Humble

Neg. Traits: Blunt, Firm, Dissonant

Likes: farm work, aged whiskey, loping through the open country

Dislikes: people who push around others, well-done steak, warm beer

Aesthetic: tennessee whiskey, the smell of fresh hay, roping

~bio~

Born in Tennessee Wagner Lawson was raised along the banks of Mississippi mud, never given a chance to be anything but the down-home country boy, which had always suited Wagner just fine. His daddy was a colt starter and former rodeo champion, having won national titles for roping and reining. From the moment Wagner could waddle he was following his daddy around everywhere, at first just watching as his father worked and as he got older helping with the chores himself. He found that spending time tending to the many horses cathartic and volunteered for just about any chore that would get him around them. Never once did he need to be asked to pitch in to do what was needed at the family ranch, from picking vegetables in the garden for his mama to helping his daddy check the cattle fences. As far as most childhoods go, his was pretty perfect. Sure, sometimes his dad drank too much and sometimes his mom just would not stop fussing over him, but he had no cause to complain.

His father, seeing his boy take an interest in horses at such a young age decided to help Wagner begin to follow in his footsteps. As a kid he enrolled Wagner in the pee-wee portion of rodeos where his wife would take pictures of the young boy struggling to stay on the back of a wildly running sheep, but in the end, he stayed on. He almost always did. With natural talent like that his father was quick to get his son started on the path to becoming a bull-rider. His mama threw fits and got into fights with his daddy, it was too dangerous, he could be hurt, killed even, but as he got older and started to have a mind of his own there was nothing that he wanted to do more. So he practiced, and practiced. By sixteen he was competing on broncs, a safer alternative to the bull, and was cleaning up at junior rodeos, his room becoming full of belt buckles, the tack room full of all the special made trophy tack he had won. But being bucked was far from his only talent. At age ten he had broke his very first colt and at twelve he was winning local roping competitions. He even became adept at helping his dad sort and catch cattle, something he was never fond of but did anyways as it was expected of him. Despite how it sounds, his childhood wasn’t all work. While never the best in school he managed to get passing marks and had a group of boys he roughhoused and fucked around with who were constantly getting him into trouble as a teenager.

Fast forward a few years and he was one of the hottest young bull riders to hit the circuit. But his career as a rider didn’t last as long as anyone would have hoped. The reason? He fell in love. Some would have called the pretty woman he fell in love with a buckle bunny, what with her affinity of dating all the big rodeo stars, but when him and her spent one night together the rest was history. Now twenty-two and married with a baby on the way, Wagner knew he could not be as hell mell as he had been for the past few years. He now had a family to think about; and so, he quit bull riding and switched exclusively to broncs. It was still dangerous, but the risks less than if he was on the back of a bull. Life went on and for the most part the little family was happy, until tragedy struck. On the night of his twenty-eighth birthday, with his wife and little girl in the stands, he overtightened the strap around his hand. At first everything seemed to be going well, he had one of his best times, but as he threw himself off the bucking bronco his hand caught. It was an instant disaster. The animal began to panic, bucking harder and higher, with Wagner hanging on for dear life. His only blessing was that the first hoof to his head knocked him out cold. He was rammed into the side of the fence and drug for minutes before those in charge of wrangling the horse were finally able to calm it down. In the midst of the chaos, his wife, fretting over her husband, had not noticed her daughter slip down through the stands calling out for her daddy. No one noticed her presence in the ring until it was too late. All it took was one wrong move from the frightened animal and the sunshine of Wagner’s life was no more.

The blow to Wagner’s own head had been so severe that he was kept in a medically induced coma for two-weeks, giving the wounded flesh time to heal. When he awoke, his whole world was shattered. He grieved, and as he did his grief turned to anger. Anger at the situation, anger at the long arduous healing process, and anger at himself. But all that anger had to go somewhere, and with the only person around during his recovery being his wife, she took the brunt of it. It took him a little over a year to fully heal physically, and during that time he began to develop a dependency on his pain medication. He spent his days sitting in front of the tv drinking beer after beer on top of the opiates as his wife worked in a small diner to try and keep the roof over their heads. One day, a year and half after the tragic accident, the woman had decided that she had had enough. She gave Wagner an ultimatum, get help or she was gone. It led to largest fight yet, a massive blowout that made it clear where Wagner stood.

At that point he was nearing thirty and with nowhere else to go moved back in with his parents. His father though older now was still tough as nails and no patience for his son’s pansiness as he called it. He put Wagner to work. Sober or not he was expected to help, and if he didn’t, God help him. At first he railed, his rage boiling over and eclipsing everything. Rather than argue with his son, the elder Lawson simply gave him a new task. It would be his only job- start the colts. It was something Wagner had used to excel at, but his anger and rage at the horse’s mis compliance made things difficult. The gentle animals became scared of him and began to lash out. One colt in particular, a beautiful bay, resented Wagner more than any of the others, and he let him know it. That was Wagner’s wake up call. He ended up forming a bond with that colt that pulled him out of his stupor and set him back on track. His special relationship with that animal also earned him a nickname, Woody, because wherever Woody went, Buzz followed. Buzz and Woody quickly began racking up wins in roping and reining competitions, and for the next years, Woody allowed himself to feel the happiness that had come into his life. The two traveled all over the countryside, with Woody picking up odd jobs such as stable hand or working cowboy. Until one competition where in the middle Buzz came up lame with an injury too bad to fix, leaving Woody the tough choice of having to put his beloved companion down.

The loss of his friend sent Wagner ass-first back into the destructive patterns of his life, drugs and alcohol once more waging war inside his body. Only this time he wasn’t a young man, and the substances were taking a heavy toll on his health, not that he cared. His parents, unable to reach him, packed his things and kicked him out. Woody’s father, unable to completely give up on his son, reached out to an old friend who owned a dude ranch an hour outside of LA. For over a year Woody lived there, forced to claw his way back to sobriety through back-breaking labor. The option was always there for him to quit the job, fend for himself, but the company of the horses and being the source of looking after their well-being brought him back from the brink much like it had the last time. A year and a half later he was completely back on the wagon, though he can be known to slip with the drinking whenever the subject of his daughter is brought to the forefront of his mind, mainly around birthdays, his and hers, as well as holidays. 

Wanting more independence Woody turned in his resignation, thanking his father’s friend for getting him back on his feet. Much to his surprise, rather than accept his two weeks notice, he offered Woody a promotion: to oversee the entire running of the dude ranch. It is a big job and one he takes very seriously, knowing that the overall welfare of the horses depends on him, even if he is no longer responsible for their day to day care. That was three years ago.

Since then he’s moved into an apartment at Oasis Apartments in Silver Lake, a place where he could have his freedom yet still manage his responsibilities. Anyone who’s ever been inside his apartment will say it looks like a country movie blew up, with saddles scattered on stands throughout the place and rodeo memorabilia hung up throughout, but for him, it’s the closet thing to home.

[thetrumpdebacle]

Standing in a Wisconsin police station lobby, Angie Geyser said she was in disbelief when detectives, who had just interrogated her daughter, told her that her 12-year-old had admitted to a stabbing a classmate and leaving her for dead as part of a plot she and her friend had planned for months.

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“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Angie Geyser told ABC News’ “20/20.” “I never would have imagined that my daughter was capable of hurting another person.”

Watch the full story on ABC News “20/20” THIS FRIDAY, FEB. 2 at 10 p.m. ET

Morgan Geyser, pictured, and Anissa Weier allegedly stabbed another 12-year-old girl and have been charged with attempted murder.

It was the case that rocked the town of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and stunned the nation: Two then 12-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, arrested on May 31, 2014, for stabbing then 12-year-old Payton Leutner, with the intent to kill her to appease the online fictional character, “Slender Man.” Prosecutors have said that both Weier and Geyser were obsessed with the character, who is often depicted in fan fiction stories online as a horror figure who stalks children.

Payton, now 15, crawled to a nearby road and was helped by a passing bicyclist before she was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. She survived the attack.

Both girls’ mothers told “20/20” that they never saw any warning signs from their daughters that they would harm someone else.

“They [Morgan and Payton] would sit up in Morgan’s room and they would do each other’s nails, and they would laugh, and make a mess,” Angie Geyser said. “They were just typical girls.”

Abe Van Dyke

Anissa Weier, pictured, and Morgan Geyser allegedly stabbed another 12-year-old girl and have been charged with attempted murder.

Morgan’s mother said she knew about her daughter’s fascination with Slender Man and talked about it with her.

“She would show us some of the pictures, and she would read us some of the stories, and while some of the subject matter was a little dark, I wasn’t concerned,” Angie Geyser said. “When I was Morgan’s age, I was reading Stephen King novels. I remember being 11 years old and riding home from the library with [the book] ‘IT’ under my arm. And that’s a very scary and dark story, so I just thought it was normal for a child of middle school age to be interested in scary stories.”

But Anissa’s mother, Kristi Weier, said her daughter “never mentioned anything to me about her belief in Slender Man.”

Play

Who Is Slender Man? Fictional Horror Character Explained

Anissa Weier pleaded guilty last year to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, as a party to a crime, with the use of a dangerous weapon as part of a plea deal. A jury then found Weier not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In December a Wisconsin judge ordered Weier, now 16, to be placed under a mental health commitment for a period of 25 years, with credit for her three-and-a-half years already spent in jail. She has agreed to remain in a state mental institution for at least three years before seeking release on community supervision. If released, Weier will remain under state supervision until the year 2039, when she will be 37 years old.

Earlier this year, the court also accepted a plea deal for Morgan, now 15, who pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide. In accordance with the plea deal, the court also found Geyser not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect despite her earlier guilty plea. Geyser’s sentencing is set for Thursday.

Michael Sears/AP, FILE

Morgan Geyser, one of two Wisconsin girls charged with stabbing a classmate, Payton Leutner, in 2014, to impress the fictitious horror character Slender Man, appears in court in Waukesha, Wis., Sept. 29, 2017.

C.T. Kruger/AP, FILE

Anissa Weier passes a note to defense attorney Joseph Smith Jr. during closing arguments in her case before Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren, Sept. 15, 2017, in Waukesha, Wis.

On the morning of May 31, 2014, Anissa, Morgan and Payton had been over at Morgan’s house for a sleepover to celebrate her birthday. That morning, Angie Geyser said the girls had asked if they could go to the park. The first sign that something was wrong, she said, was when the police were at her front door.

“I was vacuuming in the basement and my son, who was 6 at the time, came downstairs and he told me that the police are here, and they’re looking for Morgan,” Angie Geyser said. “Of course, my heart dropped down into my stomach and I went upstairs. Not only were there police in my living room, but they were wearing riot gear.”

“They asked me, ‘Where’s Morgan?’ I said, ‘She’s at the park with her friends,’” she said.

Angie Geyser said the police didn’t believe her and started searching the house, thinking she was hiding Morgan.

“I just kept asking ‘what happened, what’s going on,’ and they wouldn’t tell me other than to say there had been an incident in the park and one of the girls was hurt,” said Geyser.

ABC News

Morgan Geyser’s mother Angie Geyser is seen here during an interview with “20/20.”

When the police first reached Kristi Weier, she said they told her Anissa was missing and she feared her daughter had been abducted. As neighbors and law enforcement began looking for the girls, Kristi Weier found her daughter’s cellphone which she had left behind at Morgan’s house.

“I checked all of her text messages, trying to figure out the people that she called and contacted last,” she said. “And I went into [the] Notepad [app]… and I found, basically, her goodbye notes.”

The note from Anissa, which Kristi Weier showed to police, said, “This is 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.”

At the time, Kristi Weier still had no idea that the victim had been stabbed 19 times.

After Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier were located, police questioned the girls separately. During their interrogation, the girls revealed they had been planning the attack on Payton for more than five months, with Morgan saying “it was necessary” to please “Slender Man.” The girls told police they had originally planned to stab Payton in Morgan’s room at the sleepover, but changed the plan to stab her in the park the next day instead.

Play

Chilling Video of Girls’ Interrogation in Slender Man Case

“I get up and then Morgan hands me the knife and says, ‘I can’t do it, you know where all the soft spots are,’” Anissa told police during the interrogation. “And then I give it back to her and say, ‘You do it… Go ballistic. Go crazy. Make sure she’s down’ … Morgan said, ‘I’m not doing it until you tell me to.’ I started walking away and then, like, when I was five feet away I said, ‘Now.’”

Morgan told police that is when she stabbed Payton repeatedly. Then the officer asked Morgan what she did with the knife she used.

“I put it back in the bag and walked,” Geyser told police. “I sort of wiped it off on my jacket. It was weird. I felt no remorse.”

Afterwards, police told the girls’ parents, who had been waiting in the police station lobby, what Anissa and Morgan had said.

Play

Mom of guilty teen in ‘Slender Man’ case on hearing daughter admit to stabbing

“The interrogation is very difficult to watch because that’s not my daughter saying those things,” she said. “That’s not the way she speaks. That’s not the way she acts.”

“She appears to have no remorse for what’s happened, and she just talks about it in such a flat manner,” Angie Geyser continued. “That’s odd for a 12-year-old child sitting in a police station with a detective, not to be frightened about what’s going on.”

Weier said she had no idea her daughter had fallen so completely under the influence of Slender Man, a character many adults have never heard of. Listening to her daughter’s interrogation, she was shocked to hear Anissa speak about Slender Man and that Anissa believed in such things.

ABC News

One of many internet drawings of the fictional character, Slender Man.

“[Anissa’s father] and I, although we were divorced, we were still very active parents. I did search her iPad. I did watch over her shoulder,” Weier said. “Anissa never talked about Slender Man to me.”

Payton had also talked to her parents about Slender Man before the attack.

“Morgan had been talking with her about Slender Man, and Payton was terrified,” Payton’s mother, Stacie Leutner, told “20/20” in 2014.

Play

Meet the 12-Year-Old ‘Slender Man’ Attack Survivor

Anthony Cotton, Morgan’s attorney, said it was clear to him the moment he met Morgan that she was struggling with mental illness.

“It was apparent right out of the gate. She’d be looking around the room. She’d be looking in the corner. She seemed to be responding to things that weren’t in the room,” Cotton told “20/20.” “It was odd.”

Both the Geysers and the Weiers were allowed to see their daughters briefly before they were arrested and taken to jail.

“I remember her saying she was ‘very, very scared.’ That day plays out almost every night in my nightmares,” Kristi Weier told “20/20.” “We hugged and kissed our daughter and told her that it would be all right. We’re still here for you. We’ll figure this out.”

Two days after their interrogations, Morgan and Anissa were charged as adults, facing the possibility of up to 65 years in prison.

“I mean it was shocking,” Angie Geyser said.

“Seeing her in the courtroom with the jumpsuit with the shackles and the handcuffs and the belly-chain really hit me hard that my daughter did something so terrible. That was a really, really low day,” Kristi Weier said.

ABC News

Anissa Weier’s mother Kristi Weier sat down for an interview with “20/20.”

In the aftermath of the stabbing, investigators searched Morgan’s room and found disturbing evidence of a deteriorating young mind, which included drawings of Slender Man with children and the words, “I want to die,” and “help me escape my mind” scrawled across a page.

“Just knowing how long she was sick and suffering inside her own head before we had any idea… makes me sad,” Angie Geyser said.

As prosecutors built their case against Morgan and Anissa, the girls adjusted to life locked up and surrounded by other teenage criminals.

“In the beginning, they would make fun of her or bully her to a point of, ‘You’re a psycho. You’re a monster. Why did you do such a stupid, psychotic thing?’ The children just wouldn’t let it go,” Kristi Weier said of her daughter Anissa’s experience.

Both girls’ mothers were making the hours-long drive to see their daughters in jail. Kristi Weier said in the last 35 months that her daughter was in jail, Anissa maybe had “40 hours of fresh air.”

ABC News

Anissa Weier’s mother Kristi Weier spent hours driving back and forth to the jail where her daughter was held.

“The visiting area … there’s a cement table and a piece of glass,” she said. “We can see each other, but we can’t touch her. I can’t wipe away a tear, I can’t give her a hug. I can’t kiss her.”

Kristi Weier said because all of her interactions with her daughter were recorded, she and Anissa never talked about what happened on the day of the stabbing. She said they didn’t want their conversations to be used against Anissa in court.

“We’ve actually, in a sad sort of way, had more of a mother-daughter bonding time than we’ve ever had before without the distractions of cellphones or video games or phone calls or TV. It’s just her and I divided by glass talking, and she’s able to open up to me and tell me what’s troubling her, what’s on her mind,” Kristi Weier said. “There are moments where I can’t think of a happy thing when I come up here, where my heart is so full of sadness that I don’t even know what to say when I get in there. That’s when I put on a mask and I pretend that life is really, really good even though I’m breaking inside. I try not to show that emotion to Anissa because she needs to see me as being strong.”

“I don’t allow myself to break down in front of her and see how much this is hurting me to see her behind bars,” she added.

Angie Geyser said it has been painful to see her daughter behind glass and not being able to touch her.

“Initially, I mean, she really behaved like a caged animal. Her hair was wild,” she said of her daughter Morgan.

ABC News

Morgan Geyser’s mother Angie Geyser is seen here driving to visit her daughter in jail.

Angie Geyser said there were times she thought Morgan didn’t want to see her.

“The first time I went to visit her, she looked at me and she had sort of this flat expression on her face and she said, ‘Why are you here?’ It’s heartbreaking,” Angie Geyser said.

While behind bars, both girls received mental health evaluations. Angie Geyer says that during an extensive psychological evaluation several months after the stabbing, Morgan received an extraordinarily rare diagnosis for such a young girl: early onset schizophrenia.

Angie Geyser said she wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis because Morgan’s father has schizophrenia. In fact, according to testimony, Morgan’s father had been hospitalized at least four times as a teenager to treat his own schizophrenia.

“When they told us what had happened and that she had done it because she believes Slender Man is real … that’s where my mind went, is that she must be sick,” Angie Geyser said.

Angie Geyser later learned from Morgan that her daughter had been experiencing visual hallucinations since she was 3 years old.

“One of her hallucinations was a tall, slender, shadowy figure,” Geyser said. “And I think that’s probably what ultimately solidified her belief in Slender Man.”

When her daughter was growing up, Geyser said she did notice something when she and her husband let Morgan watch the movie, “Bambi.”

“We had been concerned to show Morgan the movie because she was a sensitive and empathetic child, at least towards other people, so we were afraid that when she saw the movie, that when Bambi’s mother died, she would be devastated,” Geyser said. “She, in fact, had quite the opposite reaction. After Bambi’s mother was shot, Morgan just said, ‘run, Bambi, run!’ and had no reaction whatsoever to the mother dying, so it was just kind of the opposite reaction that we’d been expecting.”

For more than a year at jail, Morgan remained untreated and continued to believe she could communicate with Slender Man and Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter book series. It wasn’t until her family successfully petitioned a judge to civilly commit her that she was moved to a mental health institution where she received medication for schizophrenia.

Angie Geyser said she saw a dramatic change in her daughter after she was able to get mental health help.

“The best way to describe it is that it was like the light came back on behind her eyes,” said Angie Geyser.

She said as hard as it may be for some to believe, she did not know how mentally ill her daughter was before the day of the stabbing.

“If I had had any idea that she believed Slender Man was real, we would have done something about it. We had no idea,” said Angie Geyser. “I think on some level, I’ll always feel responsible for not knowing that my daughter wasn’t well. As a mother, you’re supposed to be there to protect your child, and you know, I think on some level, I’ll always feel that I failed in that regard.”

She said she believes Morgan actively hid her delusions from those around her.

“I think that, as she got older, and she realized that, hey, maybe this isn’t normal, that she did make a conscious effort to hide it,” Angie Geyser said. “A lot of her hallucinations were friends to her, and I don’t think that she wanted to lose those friends.”

“It can go unnoticed. You know, especially with delusions. Delusions can remain compartmentalized for people. So unless you’re talking about the delusion, you may not know that it exists,” Dr. Melissa Westendorf, who was one of the court-appointed forensic psychologists who evaluated Anissa and testified at the trial, told “20/20.”

Westendorf diagnosed Anissa with a “shared psychotic disorder,” saying that Morgan’s schizophrenia coupled with both girls’ delusions about Slender Man created a perfect storm.

“Once you find this character on the internet, you can read all these stories that look real. They look like newspaper articles. It’s hard for a lot of people to differentiate … let alone a 12 year old,” Westendorf said.

Both mothers said their daughters are remorseful for what they did to Payton.

Play

Slender Man Stabbing Survivor’s Remarkable Recovery

Kristi Weier worries what Anissa’s life will be like after years of being cut off from society.

“My fear is that she’ll be institutionalized and she will not really know how to interact with normal people at Walmart, at the gas station, at Pick ‘n Save,” she said. “After spending 25 years in a mental institution with other adults, I don’t know if she’s going to be any better. That’s my worry.”

Angie Geyser believes her daughter is not dangerous.

“Morgan’s untreated mental illness is what made her a danger. We will know what to look for in the future,” she said. “She does not [still believe Slender Man is real]. … Morgan lives in reality now.”

“I might be naïve, but in my heart I believe she doesn’t believe in Slender Man anymore. But I can’t ignore the obvious that she does need therapy and she does need mental help,” Kristi Weier said of Anissa.

Angie Geyser said she hopes Morgan will be able to return home to her family, but wants the family to move away from Waukesha, Wisconsin.

“It’s difficult living in the community where you experienced the worst thing that’s ever happened to you,” she said. “I frequently drive by these places that hold horrible memories. And I just want to get us all away from that.”

via The Trump Debacle