MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin woman who admitted to nearly stabbing a classmate to death at age 12 to please the online horror character Slender Man has been found in Illinois after she cut off an electronic monitoring device and left a group home, authorities said.
Madison police issued an alert saying Morgan Geyser, now 23, was last seen around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult acquaintance. She was apprehended late Sunday at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, approximately 25 miles south of Chicago.
Geyser was placed in a group home this year after being granted conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. She was sent to the psychiatric institute in 2018 following her guilty plea to attempted first-degree intentional homicide to avoid prison. The stabbing incident occurred in 2014.
Her attorney, Tony Cotton, expressed concern for his client and urged her to return voluntarily.
The Madison Police Department reported that they were not notified of Geyser's disappearance until nearly 12 hours after she left the home, and it was only after the state Department of Corrections sent an alert that they were made aware of the situation.
Authorities detail that Geyser, alongside her friend Anissa Weier, lured their classmate Payton Leutner to a suburban Milwaukee park, where Geyser stabbed Leutner over a dozen times as part of a belief in Slender Man's power. Remarkably, Leutner survived the attack.
Slender Man was conceived online in 2009 by Eric Knudson, and has since become a well-known figure in internet folklore, inspiring various media appearances including a 2018 movie.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was also sent to the psychiatric facility, where she was granted release in 2021.
