‘Slender Man’ attacker found after fleeing group home in Wisconsin
Morgan Geyser, who stabbed his classmate 19 times to appease Slender Man, was found after cutting off his monitor bracelet and fleeing, police said.
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The brief disappearance of a Wisconsin woman from a group home has reignited public interest in the so-called Slender Man stabbing in which she was the perpetrator.
Morgan Geyser was taken into custody in Illinois on November 23 after fleeing a group home the day before. She went missing after cutting off her Department of Corrections monitoring bracelet, according to police in Madison, Wisconsin.
Geyser, now 23, was charged with attempted murder when he was 12 years old after stabbing his friend Peyton Leutner and leaving her dead in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Geyser and co-defendant Anissa Weir claimed they carried out the stabbing to appease the fictional character Slender Man.
The two were acquitted on grounds of mental defect in 2017 and sentenced to mental confinement.
Who is Morgan Geyser?
Geyser was one of two suspects in the attempted murder of Leutner in 2014. Geyser and Weier admitted to the crime, but told police they believed they were following Slender Man’s orders.
Geyser and Weier were found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2017. After his arrest, Geyser was diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia and sentenced to 40 years in mental confinement.
She was granted conditional release earlier this year after a judge determined she posed no danger to the public or to herself, according to the USA TODAY Network’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Previously, she had unsuccessfully petitioned for conditional release three times.
According to the Journal Sentinel, Geyser moved into a group home in October, but the exact location of the facility was sealed by the court.
How did Morgan Geyser escape from the group home? Was she found?
According to Madison Police, Geyser was last seen with an adult acquaintance on Nov. 22 around 8 p.m. local time near Kroenke Drive in Madison, Wisconsin.
Later that night, the Department of Corrections received an alert that Geyser’s GPS monitoring bracelet was malfunctioning. When authorities contacted the group home where she was staying, staff at the facility confirmed that her GPS bracelet had been removed.
By 8 a.m. on Sunday, November 23, Madison police were notified of Geyser’s disappearance and issued an alert to the public.
Police said Geyser was found in Illinois around 10:30 p.m. and taken into custody.
What happened in the Slenderman stabbing incident?
After a sleepover on May 31, 2014, Geyser and Weier lured Leutner into the woods and stabbed him 19 times with a 5-inch knife.
Leutner survived the attack after crawling to a path where he was spotted by a passing cyclist.
Geyser and Weier were found by police on the side of the road. They told investigators they intended to live with the fictional character “Slender Man” and were charged with attempted murder the next day.
The two teenagers were later tried as adults and found not guilty by reason of mental defect in 2017.
Melina Khan is USA TODAY’s national trends reporter. Contact her at melina.khan@usatoday.com.
Contributions: Anna Kleiber, Christopher Kuhagen, Jim Riccioli, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, USA TODAY Network
