Morgan Geyser, the Wisconsin woman who in 2014 at 12 years old stabbed another child in a case that became widely known as the Slender Man stabbing, has been found after cutting off her ankle monitor and escaping a group home.
On Sunday, the Madison, Wisconsin, police department wrote on Facebook that Geyser was last seen at 8 p.m. Saturday night in Wisconsin with an adult acquaintance. Police were notified of her disappearance on Sunday morning. Police urged anyone who saw Geyser to call 911.
Geyser, now 23 years old, was found Sunday evening in Posen, Illinois, “loitering” behind a truck stop. Geyser and a man were sleeping on the sidewalk. Geyser initially refused to offer her real name.
“After continued attempts to identify her, she finally stated that she didn’t want to tell officers who she was because she had ‘done something really bad,’ and suggested that officers could ‘just Google’ her name,” Posen police wrote on Facebook.
Geyser eventually provided her real name, and she, along with the man she was with, were taken into custody, Posen police said.
In 2014, then 12-year-olds Geyser and Anissa Weier lured their 12-year-old friend Payton Leutner into the woods, where Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times to appease Slender Man, a popular fictional internet character. Leutner crawled out of the woods until a bicyclist discovered her.
Three years later, Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, but both were determined to not be guilty because of mental illness and were placed in psychiatric care. Weier was eventually released to her father with 24/7 GPS tracking and continued psychiatric care. Geyser was placed in a mental institution, but in July, she was released to a group home in Wisconsin.
In 2019, Leutner told “20/20” that she’s not afraid of Geyser and Weier, but that she sleeps with scissors under her pillow “just in case.”
She said, “It just makes me feel safer.”