Morgan Geyser, the woman convicted in the infamous 2014 Slender Man stabbing case, was apprehended by Illinois police after escaping from a group home in Madison, Wisconsin. Geyser, now 23, removed her monitoring bracelet and fled the facility on Saturday night, remaining at large until her capture at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, on Sunday. When confronted by officers, Geyser reportedly told them to ‘just Google’ her name, acknowledging she had ‘done something really bad.’
Geyser was just 12 years old when she and her friend Anissa Weier lured their classmate, Payton Leutner, to a park and stabbed her 19 times in an attempt to appease Slender Man, a fictional online character. The victim survived the attack, which shocked the nation and drew widespread media attention. In 2018, Geyser was sentenced to 40 years in a mental hospital but was granted conditional release in July 2023.
At the time of her capture, Geyser was found with a 42-year-old man, who was charged with trespassing and obstructing identification before being released. Police reported that the pair were discovered sleeping on the sidewalk near the truck stop, approximately 170 miles south of Madison. Geyser initially provided a false name but eventually revealed her identity, leading to her detention.
The Slender Man case, which involved Geyser and Weier’s belief that the character would harm their families if they did not commit the attack, has become a haunting example of the influence of online folklore on vulnerable minds. Weier, who was also 12 at the time, was sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric hospital but was released in 2021. Slender Man, a shadowy figure created in 2009 as part of an online contest, has since been the subject of numerous cautionary tales and warnings.