Wisconsin woman who stabbed classmate to please Slender Man caught after leaving group home

A 23-year-old Wisconsin woman who nearly stabbed a classmate to death 11 years ago to please the 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 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, Madison police said.

Police released a recent image of Geyer that was captured on security video.

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.

Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, lured Payton Leutner to a Waukesha park after a sleepover in 2014. 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.