A woman from Wisconsin, who infamously stabbed a classmate at age 12 to please the online character Slender Man, has been located in Illinois after fleeing from a group home by cutting off her electronic monitoring device. Madison police issued an alert for Morgan Geyser, now 23, who was found with an adult companion but has since been taken into custody in Illinois.
Geyser was discovered at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, around 25 miles south of Chicago. She was accompanied by a 42-year-old man who faced charges of criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, though he has been released. In 2018, Geyser was placed in a psychiatric institution after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide for the 2014 stabbing incident.
Her attorney, Tony Cotton, expressed a lack of information on her whereabouts and urged Geyser to surrender. The Madison Police Department acknowledged a delay in being informed of her disappearance, with the Department of Corrections receiving an alert regarding the malfunctioning ankle monitor before discovering she had left the group home.
Authorities recounted the disturbing incident where Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, both 12 at the time, lured their classmate Payton Leutner to a park near Milwaukee, where Geyser stabbed her multiple times with encouragement from Weier. The motive was to supposedly become servants of Slender Man, a fictional character, under the belief that failing to do so would result in harm to their families.
Slender Man originated in 2009 as an online creation and went on to become a popular internet legend, appearing in various media forms over the years. Weier, who also participated in the attack on Leutner, pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was granted release from the psychiatric center in 2021.