Morgan Geyser, who admitted to nearly killing a classmate at the behest of the fictional character Slender Man, is back in custody after escaping from a group home in Wisconsin.
The Madison, Wisconsin Police Department reported Geyser, now 23, missing from the group home on Nov. 22. She was last seen at around 8 p.m. that night at the home with an “adult acquaintance,” before allegedly cutting off her Department of Corrections monitoring bracelet and disappearing.
Geyser and her acquaintance, an unidentified 42-year-old man, were eventually found Sunday night, Nov. 23, at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois. The Posen Police Department said in a statement that Geyser initially declined to give her real name and “gave a false one.” She eventually told officers that she didn’t want to give her real name because she had “done something real bad,” then told the cops to “just Google” her.
Geyser is expected to make an appearance in Cook County court this morning before being extradited back to Wisconsin. Her unnamed acquaintance was released Monday morning (Nov. 24) after being charged with obstruction. The man told CBS New Chicago that the two are friends, and that he didn’t want Geyser to be alone after she left the group home. He said they traveled from Madison to Chicago by bus, then walked to Posen. They stopped after Geyser reportedly injured her foot.
A lawyer for Geyser did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
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Geyser was 12 when she and her friend, Anissa Weier, stabbed their classmate, Payton Leutner, 19 times in 2014. (Weier and Leutner were also 12 at the time.) The case gained national attention and notoriety, especially after Geyser and Weier told investigators that they feared the online meme figure Slender Man would harm their family if they did not attack Leutner.
In 2018, Geyser, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to 40 years in a mental institution. (She was found to have been not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.) In January, after serving seven years, a judge approved her release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute; she was eventually released in March and placed in a group home on supervised release. A judge had ruled Geyser was no longer a safety risk, after her doctor previously stated that Geyser had “improved quite dramatically” and that the psychiatric institution could no longer offer the care she needed to help her with socialization, education, and “becoming independent.”
