A woman from Wisconsin is set to be discharged from a mental institution more than ten years after she almost fatally stabbed a fellow student in an attempt to win the favor of the fictional horror entity, Slender Man. This decision was made by a judge on Thursday.
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Judge Scott Wagner of Waukesha County Circuit gave his approval for the conditional release of Morgan Geyser, who is now 22 years old, from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital where she has spent the past seven years. In January, a different judge concluded that she could be released, following testimony from three experts who indicated she had made significant progress in addressing her mental health issues.
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Earlier in April, prosecutors had objected to Geyser’s initial conditional release plan based on concerns from the victim, Payton Leutner’s mother, since Geyser’s designated group home was just eight miles from Leutner’s residence. Consequently, the judge instructed the Department of Health Services to formulate a revised plan, which received approval on Thursday.
Details of the plan and the timing of her release were not shared in court, and Geyser’s attorney did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, lured Leutner to a Waukesha park after a sleepover in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier egged her on. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.
Geyser and Weier fled after the attack but were arrested as they were walking on Interstate 94. They told investigators they attacked Leutner to earn the right to be Slender Man’s servants and feared he would hurt their families if they didn’t follow through. They had planned to walk to Slender Man’s mansion in northern Wisconsin after the attack, they said.
Leutner barely survived. Geyser ultimately pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in 2017 but claimed she wasn’t responsible because she was mentally ill. The following year, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren had committed her to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years.
State health officials argued in March that Geyser couldn’t be trusted after learning that she hadn’t told her therapists that she had read a novel about murder and black market organ sales. They also alleged she had been communicating with a man who collects murder memorabilia and sent him her own sketch of a decapitated body and a postcard saying she wants to be intimate with him.
Cotton countered that Geyser only read what the facility allowed, and staff knew she had been communicating with the collector. He added that she stopped talking to the man in 2024 after she discovered he was selling things she sent him. Bohren concluded that Geyser wasn’t trying to hide anything and ordered state health officials to continue developing a release plan.
Wagner took over Geyser’s release request after Bohren retired this past April.
Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in 2017, but like Geyser claimed she was mentally ill and not responsible for her actions. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital but was granted release in 2021 after agreeing to live with her father and to wear a GPS monitor.
The case has drawn widespread attention in part because of the girls’ fascination with the Slender Man character. Slender Man was created online by Eric Knudson in 2009 as a mysterious specter photo-edited into everyday images of children at play. He’s typically depicted as a slim, spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face. He has grown into a popular boogeyman and has appeared in video games, online stories and a 2018 movie.
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