Morgan Geyser, who gained notoriety for her involvement in the Slender Man stabbing, has been taken back into custody after removing her ankle monitor and fleeing a group home.
The 23-year-old made her escape on Saturday night from a facility situated in Sun Prairie, a suburb near Madison, Wisconsin, as reported by local authorities.
Geyser was last observed in the company of an adult acquaintance near the group home. Law enforcement in Posen, Illinois, later verified to WISN that both Geyser and the other individual were located at a Thornton’s truck stop.
The pair apparently took a bus to Posen, located roughly 25 miles south of Chicago, before being apprehended by the police.
The future course of action for Geyser is uncertain. Earlier this year, she was conditionally released from a mental health facility and placed in the group home for ongoing treatment for a psychotic spectrum disorder.
At the age of 12, Geyser, alongside Anissa Weier, lured their friend Peyton Leutner into the woods in Waukesha during a sleepover, where they proceeded to stab her 19 times.
During the vicious attack, Geyser carried out the stabbing while Weier, who was also 12, cheered on the cold-hearted act of violence.
The sinister duo then abandoned Leutner – leaving her to die – but she miraculously survived. She managed to crawl out of the woods, where a cyclist found her.
Weier and Geyser had conspired for months to slaughter Leutner in the name of the fictional horror character Slender Man.
Morgan Geyser appeared in court in January, when a judge ruled that she could be released if three experts testified that she was making progress in her battle against mental illness. She is now back in custody after cutting off her ankle monitor and fleeing her group home
Anissa Weier, pictured after the attack, cheered on Geyser as she stabbed the helpless victim
Peyton Leutner, pictured as a child, miraculously crawled her way out of the woods and survived after Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier lured Leutner for a sleepover and stabbed her 19 times
The pre-teens told detectives they had to kill Leutner to become Slender Man’s ‘proxies,’ or servants, and that the character would kill their families if they did not comply.
They were both charged in adult court with first-degree attempted intentional homicide.
Slender Man is a fictional horror character
Weier had pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of attempted second-degree intentional homicide as a party to a crime, but the jury found her to be not guilty by mental disease or defect in 2017.
Geyser, who has schizophrenia, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, but as part of her plea deal, was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in 2018.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren, who has since retired, had committed her to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years – a sentence she only served about 25 percent of.
In January, Bohren said Geyser could be released after three experts testified that she was making progress battling her mental illness.
Geyser, pictured at age 12, stabbed her friend 19 times as a sacrifice to Slender Man
During the same hearing, Geyser also came out as transgender, but female pronouns have continued to be used for court consistency, Dr Brooke Lundbohm, who psych evaluated Geyser, explained.
At the time, Dr Kenneth Robbins claimed that Geyser no longer had the psychosis symptoms that played a significant role in the violent assault she committed.
Lundbohm’s treatment team came to the same conclusion.
‘I think either she was experiencing transient psychotic symptoms, which is to say psychotic symptoms that didn’t persist and gradually went away,’ Robbins explained.
‘Or the intensity of her fantasies based on some of the trauma she had experienced were so intense that she believed them to be true.’
The trauma Robbins referred to was Geyser’s claims of sexual abuse by her father, who died in 2023.
Geyser’s father had also reportedly been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Stacie Leutner told ABC.
But Geyser’s symptoms more closely align with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and autism, Robbins said.
Geyser, pictured in 2017, pleaded guilty, but was found not guilty by reason of mental illness
While Bohren agreed to Geyser’s release to a group home – effectively slashing her sentence by about three decades – the plan had to be reworked several times.
The judge approved it in July, but the process to remove Geyser from the secure mental hospital was difficult, as multiple group homes had turned her away.
But the decision was not made without pushback.
In March, state health officials argued that Geyser was in no condition to walk free from the institution after evidence emerged of an unsettling correspondence she was having with an ‘older man’ called Jeffrey, who sold murder memorabilia.
Jeffery, who first visited her in June 2023, sent her a letter after she was granted conditional release in January 2025.
Geyser reportedly ripped it up and threw it away, Nicole Whiteaker, her conditional release program supervisor, testified in March.
Whiteaker said Geyser then asked for a no-contact order from Jeffrey, adding that she found details about Geyser on the man’s Facebook that were ‘concerning.’
Nicole Whiteaker claimed Geyser drew a concerning image of a decapitated man that she sent to Jeffery
Geyser had sent him her own sketch of a decapitated body and a postcard saying she wanted to be intimate with him.
The drawings were described as ‘horror’ art. Jeffrey was reportedly selling the pieces that Geyser sent him.
One of the drawings, shown in court, depicted an unearthly creature with the message ‘they crumble as they crawl.’
