Morgan Geyser, one of the perpetrators of the 2014 “Slender Man” stabbing, was taken into custody near Chicago Sunday after cutting off an ankle monitor and leaving a Wisconsin group home.
Officials were alerted Saturday night when her GPS monitoring bracelet malfunctioned and the group home reported she was not there and had removed the device. Madison police said they were not made aware of her disappearance until about 12 hours later. As authorities searched, Geyser’s attorney, Tony Cotton, posted a video urging her to turn herself in, saying, “Do not continue to remain on the run like this. It is not in your best interest to handle this matter that way.”
Posen, Ill., police said officers responded Sunday to a report of a man and woman loitering behind a truck stop and found them sleeping on the sidewalk. The woman repeatedly refused to give her name and initially provided a fake one. After repeated attempts to identify her, she reportedly said she didn’t want to tell officers who she was because she had “done something really bad,” and suggested they could “just Google” her name. Once she gave her true identity, officers confirmed she was Morgan Geyser, wanted by Wisconsin for escape after walking away from the group home. Geyser and the male companion were taken into custody without incident.
Geyser, now 23, moved into the Madison-area group home this fall after being released from the psychiatric facility where she had been held for about seven years. In May 2014, when she and a friend were 12, they lured classmate Payton Leutner into the woods after a sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while the other girl encouraged her. The pair then left Leutner for dead and began walking toward a forest they believed housed the fictional Slender Man. Leutner survived, crawling out of the woods and later undergoing emergency surgery; one doctor said a wound had missed a major artery by less than a millimeter.
Both defendants were tried as adults, found guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in 2017, and committed to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute — Geyser for 40 years and Anissa Weier for 25. Weier was released in 2021. Geyser appealed for release multiple times and a judge approved her conditional release after a January hearing in which three experts testified about her progress in treatment.
Her move from the hospital was delayed for months by legal and logistical issues. Wisconsin health officials opposed the release plan, citing concerns that Geyser had not disclosed reading certain materials and had been communicating with a man who collects murder memorabilia; Geyser’s attorney said staff were aware and that she stopped communicating when she learned he was selling items she sent. Prosecutors later objected to the original group home placement after Leutner’s mother expressed concern that it was only eight miles from where her daughter lived. A revised plan was approved in July, but multiple potential placements fell through later in the year amid logistical problems and community backlash.
Cotton has said it is unclear whether Geyser left the group home voluntarily or was abducted. He warned previously that his biggest fear after her release was her ability to navigate new relationships, particularly with older men he said might not have her best interests in mind. Cotton wrote that during his 12 years representing Geyser he saw “seemingly normal men” behave inappropriately toward her.
Leutner has said the attack motivated her to pursue a medical career; she has spoken publicly about lingering trauma and, at one point, sleeping with broken scissors under her pillow “just in case.”
NPR contacted Madison and Posen police for more information but had not heard back by publication.