A 23-year-old Wisconsin woman who stabbed a classmate nearly to death 11 years ago to please the fictional horror character Slender Man has been captured in Illinois after cutting off a monitoring bracelet, leaving a group home and going missing, Madison, Wisconsin officials said late Sunday night.
Morgan Geyser was found at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, the Posen Police Department confirmed early Monday. Posen is about 25 miles south of Chicago and 170 miles south of Madison.
Geyser was found with a 42-year-old friend who was charged with criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, Posen police said. The friend has since been released from custody.
Geyser had been last seen around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult acquaintance, city officials said.
The Madison Police Department said Sunday that it wasn’t made aware that Geyser was missing until nearly 12 hours after she left the group home. The state Department of Corrections received an alert Saturday night that Geyser’s ankle monitor had malfunctioned. The department contacted the group home where she lived about two hours later and was told she wasn’t there and had removed the bracelet, police said.
Police released a recent image of Geyser that was captured on security video.
Morgan Geyser, seen in recent security footage, was missing after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and leaving a group home in Madison, Wisconsin.
Madison Police Department
Geyser has been living in a group home after she was released earlier this year from Winnebago Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital where she had spent the last seven years. She was released after three experts testified she had made progress battling mental illness.
The friend who was with Geyser spoke to CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezael after being released from police custody on a charge of obstruction for initially giving police a false identity. The friend, who declined to share their name, said they didn’t want Geyser to be alone, so the two of them hopped on a bus from Madison to Chicago and eventually just started walking. According to the friend, Geyser injured her foot during the trip and wasn’t able to go on any longer, and they were detained at a truck stop after someone called the police on them for loitering.
An extradition hearing is set for Tuesday on sending Geyser back to Wisconsin.
In 2014, Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, lured Payton Leutner to a Waukesha park after a sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier egged her on. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.
Geyser and Weier fled after the attack but were arrested as they were walking on Interstate 94. They told investigators they attacked Leutner to earn the right to be Slender Man’s servants and feared he would hurt their families if they didn’t follow through. They had planned to walk to Slender Man’s mansion in northern Wisconsin after the attack, they said.
Leutner barely survived. Geyser ultimately pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in 2017 but claimed she wasn’t responsible because she was mentally ill. The following year, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren had committed her to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years.
Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in 2017, but like Geyser, claimed she was mentally ill and not responsible for her actions. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital but was granted release in 2021 after agreeing to live with her father and to wear a GPS monitor.
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