Police say she stabbed her sixth-grade classmate to win favor with a fictional internet character called “Slender Man” more than a decade ago when she left a group home where she lived after cutting off her monitoring bracelet.
Morgan Geyser, 23, was last seen in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Madison, Wisconsin, around 8 pm Saturday with an adult acquaintance, and her whereabouts are unknown, police said in a statement.
In a crime that stunned the nation, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier, both 12 at the time of the crime, lured their classmate to a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2014, where they stabbed her 19 times to impress Slender Man, a boogeyman for the internet age.
The victim, Peyton Leutner, also 12 at the time, survived, crawling out of the woods to safety where she was discovered by a passing cyclist.
The trio spent a lot of time together, Leutner previously told ABC. Geyser talked constantly about Slender Man, a character that terrified Leutner, she said.
The night of the stabbing, Leutner had gone to Geyser’s house for a slumber party to celebrate her birthday.
At the age of 15, Geyser pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted first-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors to be placed in a mental institution instead of serving prison time.
In her 2018 sentencing, Geyser apologized to Leutner and her family.
“I never wanted this to happen,” Geyser said through tears. “I hope it’s going well.”
In January, a judge ordered she could be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she spent nearly seven years, The Associated Press reported.
Geyser’s attorney, Tony Cotton, urged her to turn herself in immediately in a statement Sunday. “We worked too hard to ensure her freedom to continue on this path,” Cotton added.
It is not clear how Geyser got out of the group home or who helped her, Cotton said in a video posted on social media.
In August, a facility in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, refused to take her in because of negative publicity they were receiving about the potential move, according to CNN affiliate WMTV, but Madison police confirmed to the news station Geyser is currently living in a group home in Madison, on the same street where she was last seen.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree murder by reason of mental illness or defect in the use of a knife as part of a plea agreement. She was committed for 25 years in a mental hospital, the AP reported, but was released in 2021 on the condition that she live with her father and wear a GPS monitor.
CNN’s Dakin Andone contributed to this report.
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