Slender Man Stabbing Assailant Arrested After Fleeing Wisconsin Group Home
Morgan Geyser, whose name became synonymous with the disturbing “Slender Man” stabbing case that shocked the nation in 2014, was arrested Sunday night in a south Chicago suburb after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and fleeing from a Wisconsin group home, authorities said.
The 24-year-old was located at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, approximately 150 miles from Madison, in the company of a 42-year-old man. When approached by police, Geyser initially provided a false identity before eventually telling officers that she didn’t want to reveal who she was because she had “done something really bad” and suggested they could “just Google” her, according to reports.
A Crime That Captivated and Horrified
The case that brought Geyser to national attention occurred a decade ago, when she was just 14 years old. On May 31, 2014, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier lured their classmate Payton Leutner into the woods near Waukesha, Wisconsin, during a game of hide-and-seek. There, they pinned Leutner down and stabbed her 19 times in the arms, legs, and torso with a five-inch blade, leaving her to die. The attack was documented as an attempt to appease “Slender Man,” a fictional supernatural character that had gained notoriety in internet horror stories.
Remarkably, despite her severe injuries, Leutner managed to crawl to a nearby road where a cyclist found her and called for help, saving her life.
What made the crime particularly chilling? The perpetrators were children themselves, operating under what was later determined to be severe mental illness and delusions.
From Institution to Group Home
Following her arrest, Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide but was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. In 2018, she was sentenced to up to 40 years in a psychiatric institution and placed in the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, as confirmed by court records.
More recently, Geyser had been granted conditional release from the mental health institute and was living in a group home. The circumstances of her escape remain troubling. The Madison Police Department said they weren’t made aware that Geyser was missing until nearly 12 hours after she left the facility. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections had received an alert Saturday night that Geyser’s ankle monitor had “malfunctioned” — a euphemism, it seems, for her deliberately cutting it off.
Red Flags Before the Escape
This wasn’t the first sign of potential issues with Geyser’s rehabilitation. State health officials had opposed her release in March, citing several concerning behaviors. They told the judge that Geyser had failed to disclose to her therapy team that she had read “Rent Boy,” a novel about murder and selling organs on the black market.
Even more troubling, officials alleged she had been communicating with a man who collects murder memorabilia, sending him her own sketch of a decapitated body and a postcard expressing desire to be intimate with him, according to testimony from the March hearing.
Geyser’s attorney, Anthony Cotton, defended his client at that time, stating that she only reads what staff allows and had cut off communication with the collector last year. “Morgan is not more dangerous today,” Cotton insisted during the March court hearing.
That assertion now stands in stark contrast to her flight from supervision and discovery hundreds of miles away with an unidentified older man.
Authorities have not yet released details about the man found with Geyser or whether he faces any charges in connection with her escape. It remains unclear what additional legal consequences Geyser herself might face for fleeing supervision.
For many following this case since 2014, the latest development serves as a sobering reminder of the complex intersection of mental illness, violent crime, and the challenges of rehabilitation — particularly in cases that begin with juvenile offenders whose crimes were fueled by delusion rather than typical criminal intent.
