Morgan Geyser, one of the teenage perpetrators in the infamous 2014 “Slender Man” stabbing case, has disappeared after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and fleeing a group home in Madison, Wisconsin, authorities confirmed.
Law enforcement has issued an urgent public appeal as they search for the now-adult Geyser, who was just 12 years old when she and friend Anissa Weier lured classmate Payton Leutner into the woods and stabbed her 19 times in a twisted attempt to appease a fictional internet horror character. “If you see Geyser, please call 911,” officials warned in their alert.
A Crime That Shocked America
The 2014 attack stunned the nation for both its brutality and the disturbing motivations behind it. Geyser and Weier, sixth-graders from Waukesha, Wisconsin, attacked their friend after a birthday sleepover, believing their actions would prove the existence of the internet horror meme Slender Man and protect their families. “The girls later told investigators that they attacked Leutner to earn the right to be Slender Man’s servants and they feared he’d harm their families if they didn’t follow through,” according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.
What happened after the stabbing reveals the girls’ disturbing state of mind. The pair “filled their water bottles at Walmart and ‘washed off the blood.’ They ‘wandered around’ for a while and ‘hid because we saw the police,'” court records show. Despite their attempts to evade capture, authorities soon apprehended them.
Miraculously, Leutner survived by crawling to a nearby road where a cyclist found her. She had been stabbed in the arms, legs and torso, with wounds that narrowly missed a major artery.
Mental Health and Legal Consequences
The case raised profound questions about juvenile justice, mental illness, and the power of internet folklore over impressionable minds. Both girls were diagnosed with serious mental health conditions — Geyser with early-onset schizophrenia.
Following lengthy court proceedings, Geyser received the harshest sentence. She was “given the maximum sentence, 40 years to life, an indeterminate sentence requiring at least three years confinement in addition to involuntary treatment in a state forensic psychiatric institute until complete resolution of symptoms or until age 53, whichever will happen first,” according to legal documents cited by legal experts.
Could this escape have been prevented? The circumstances surrounding Geyser’s disappearance remain murky, including whether she received assistance in removing her monitoring device and fleeing the facility.
Her attorney, Tony Cotton, has made a public appeal for her to turn herself in. “It’s in her best interest for her to turn herself in immediately and not continue with this course of action,” Cotton stated. “We don’t know any of the facts about what happened or who might have assisted her.”
The Department of Corrections has yet to release details about when exactly Geyser removed her monitoring device or how long she may have been missing before authorities noticed her absence.
For residents of Madison and surrounding communities, the disappearance of a woman once capable of extreme violence has raised significant safety concerns. Still, mental health advocates caution against assumptions about current risk without understanding Geyser’s recent psychological state and treatment progress.
As the search intensifies, the case serves as a haunting reminder of how the Slender Man stabbing continues to reverberate nearly a decade later — a crime born from adolescent delusion that now sees its perpetrator vanished into the shadows once again.
