‘Slender Man’ stabber recaptured. A timeline of the original case, her disappearance and return to custody
By Amanda Musa, CNN
(CNN) — A woman who pleaded guilty to the 2014 stabbing of her sixth grade classmate is back in custody after Wisconsin police say she vanished from a group home where she lived under supervised release Saturday night.
Morgan Geyser, 23, was found over 100 miles away approximately 24 hours later in Illinois with an acquaintance.
Geyser’s disappearance comes more than 10 years after investigators say she and a friend, Aniss Weier, stabbed their classmate, Payton Leutner, with the goal of pleasing the fictitious character Slender Man. The girls were all 12 years old at the time. Here’s what we know.
May 2014
Leutner had gone to Geyser’s home for a slumber party to celebrate her birthday, she previously told ABC.
When she woke up the next morning, Leutner said Geyser and Weier were downstairs at a computer where she joined them for doughnuts before heading to the park. They told her the plan was to play hide-and-seek and asked her to lie down under the leaves and sticks as part of the game, she said.
There in the woods, Geyser repeatedly stabbed her with a kitchen knife, and she and Weier left her alone in the woods, bleeding and struggling to get help. After Leutner crawled out of the woods, a passing bicyclist found her and called 911.
Leutner was stabbed near her heart, and she was “one millimeter away from certain death,” court documents said.
When the bicyclist found her, the girl pleaded, “Please help me. I’ve been stabbed,” audio from the 911 call revealed.
Summer 2015
CNN affiliate WISN reported Geyser was diagnosed with schizophrenia a few months after the attack.
August 2017
Weier, then 16, pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree homicide due to mental illness or defect as part of a similar plea agreement stipulating she would accept commitment to institutional care.
October 2017
Geyser, then 15, entered a guilty plea to a charge of attempted first-degree murder. As part of the deal, under Wisconsin law, Geyser avoided further jail time and would be committed to a mental institution.
“It’s a confusing thing to describe because clearly she committed an offense but the law doesn’t treat her as responsible for that crime because of her mental illness,” Anthony Cotton, Geyser’s attorney, explained to CNN at the time.
In the end, Cotton said, Geyser “would not be considered to have a criminal record.”
December 2017
A Wisconsin judge ordered Weier be committed to state mental care for 25 years.
February 2018
Geyser was sentenced to 40 years in a mental institution instead of serving jail time, according to a judge’s order.
September 2021
Weier was granted release from a mental health facility on the condition she live with her father and wear a GPS monitor.
Early 2025
In January, a judge ordered Geyser could be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she spent nearly seven years, The Associated Press reported.
Prosecutors attempted to block her release, alleging she has been quietly reading gory novels and communicating with a man who collects memorabilia from murderers.
However, a Waukesha County Circuit judge later ordered her release after state and county health officials completed a community supervision and housing plan.
Sunday, November 23
Police in Madison, Wisconsin, announced they were searching for Geyser, who was last seen in a residential neighborhood on the west side of the city around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult acquaintance.
She had disappeared Saturday night after cutting off her monitoring bracelet, police said. Authorities later said in an update they received confirmation around 10:34 p.m. Geyser had been taken into custody in Posen, Illinois.
The pair traveled from Wisconsin by bus, Posen police said.
On Sunday, officers in Posen responded to a report of people loitering behind a truck stop building and discovered a man and a woman sleeping on the sidewalk, police said.
Geyser initially gave officers a false name when they confronted her, according to Posen Police.
“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,” police said.
Monday, November 24
Lesli Boese, the district attorney for Waukesha County, said Monday her “office will not get involved again in this case until a motion to revoke for conditional release is filed,” and Dane County law enforcement is investigating Geyser for “leaving her placement.”
Geyser faces no additional charges in Illinois, Posen police said, but will be held at Cook County jail to await extradition back to Wisconsin. Her next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 11 a.m. CT in Cook County, Illinois.
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