Morgan Geyser — the Wisconsin woman who nearly stabbed a classmate to death at age 12 to please the fictional horror character Slender Man — was found in Illinois after she cut off her electronic monitoring device and left a Madison-area group home, authorities said.
Madison police issued the alert Sunday after Geyser, now 23, was last seen around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult acquaintance. She was found early Monday at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, about 25 miles south of Chicago.
Posen police said the geyser was found with a 42-year-old man, who was arrested on charges of criminal trespass and tampering with identification. He has since been released.
Parole raised concerns
Geyser was moved to a group home earlier this year after a judge paroled her from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. She has been committed there since 2018 after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree murder in a deal that allowed her to avoid prison.
Prosecutors strongly opposed her release, arguing that Geyser remains a risk. “She was not to be trusted,” they told the court at the time.
Monitoring failure and delayed notification
According to Madison police, authorities were not notified that she was missing until nearly 12 hours after she left the group home.
The Department of Corrections received an alert Saturday evening that the geyser’s ankle monitor had failed. About two hours later, staff at the group home confirmed he was gone and removed the device.
The agency issued an arrest warrant just after midnight, but Madison police said they did not learn of her disappearance until the following morning when the group called home.
The DOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Concerns about her behavior before release
State health officials tried to block her release in March, raising concerns about her behavior and reading.
They told Judge Geyser that he had read Rent Boy, a novel involving murder and organ trafficking, without discussing it with her therapy team. They also claimed she communicated with a man who collects memorabilia of the murder, sending him a drawing of a headless body along with a postcard expressing romantic interest.
Her lawyer, Tony Cotton, defended her at the hearing, saying she only consumed material approved by staff and cut off contact with the collector last year. “Morgan is no more dangerous today,” he said.
Ultimately, the judge ruled that she was hiding nothing and approved her release.
Slender Man stabbing
Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier were 12 when they lured classmate Payton Leutner to a wooded park in Waukesha, Wisconsin, after a sleepover in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner more than a dozen times while Weier encouraged her. Leutner survived despite his severe injuries.
The girls told police they attacked the victim to earn the right to serve Slender Man, an online horror character created in 2009 by Eric Knudson. They also claimed they feared he would hurt their families if they did not comply.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree murder and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. She was granted release in 2021.
