‘Slender Man’ stabber found after cutting ankle monitor, fleeing group home

A Wisconsin woman who confessed to nearly stabbing her classmate to death in 2014 to please the fictional horror character Slender Man has been located in Illinois after she cut off a wearable tracking device and left a group home, authorities said.

The Madison Police Department issued an alert for Morgan Geyser — who is now 23 but was 12 at the time of the stabbing — on Sunday, saying she was last seen around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult man.

Police said Sunday that it only received notification that Geyser was missing about 12 hours after she removed her ankle monitor and left the group home.

The state Department of Corrections received an alert Saturday night that Geyser’s ankle monitor had malfunctioned and issued an apprehension request shortly after midnight. The group home where she lived was contacted about two hours later and told corrections staff that she was not there and had removed the bracelet, Madison police said.

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Madison police said it did not learn Geyser was missing until someone from the group home called the next morning. The department issued an update late Sunday stating that Geyser had been recaptured and taken into custody in Illinois.

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She was located at a truck stop in Posen, Ill., the local police department confirmed early Monday. Posen is about 40 kilometres south of Chicago and 274 kilometres south of Madison.

She was found sleeping on a sidewalk with a 42-year-old male, Posen Police said on Facebook, adding that Geyser refused multiple times to give her real name, and initially gave a false one, before telling officers to “Google her” because she had “done something really bad.”

The man she was with was charged with criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, but is no longer in custody, according to police.

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Geyser was moved to a group home this year after being granted conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she was sentenced to 40 years in 2018 as part of a deal to avoid prison after she pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide for the 2014 stabbing.

Geyser’s lawyer, Tony Cotton, said on Sunday that he did not know what happened with his client and urged Geyser to turn herself in.

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Authorities say Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier, who was also 12 at the time of the stabbing, lured their friend Payton Leutner to a wooded park area in suburban Wisconsin after a sleepover, where Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times. Leutner survived after she crawled out of the woods to a path where a cyclist found her.

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According to authorities, the girls later told police they stabbed Leutner to become Slender Man’s servants.

View image in full screen Morgan Geyser is brought into Waukesha County Circuit Court for a motion hearing on April 10, 2024, in Waukesha, Wis. Scott Ash/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP

Slender Man is a fictional character who often appears in stories featuring themes of abduction and violence, particularly against children. The girls said they believed that if they didn’t attack their friend, Slender Man would harm their families.

Slender Man was created online by Eric Knudson in 2009 as a mysterious figure photo edited into everyday images of children at play. He grew into a popular boogeyman, appearing in video games, online stories and a 2018 movie.

Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide. She was also sent to the psychiatric centre but granted release in 2021 to live with her father, subject to wearing a GPS monitor.

Geyser has petitioned for release four times since June 2022. While she withdrew her first two petitions, her third request was denied in April 2024 because she remained a threat to the public.

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Her fourth petition, filed in October 2024, secured her release from the psychiatric facility. The judge ordered the state Department of Health Services to develop a plan to place her in a group home.

At the time of this writing, it’s unclear where she will be held following her recent arrest.

— With files from The Associated Press and Global News staff

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