A Wisconsin woman who stabbed a classmate nearly to death to please online horror character Slender Man will be released from a psychiatric hospital and continue her rehabilitation in a group home, a judge ruled.
Morgan Geyser spent nearly seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute after she was sentenced in the 2018 death of her sixth-grade classmate, Payton Leutner.
In 2014, Geyser and Anissa Weier lured Lautner to a wooded park in a suburb of Milwaukee. Investigators said Geiser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier egged her on. Leutner survived after crawling out of the woods onto the trail where a passing cyclist found her.
Morgan Geyser appears in a Waukesha County courtroom on Thursday, January 9, 2025, in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Maury Gash/Associated Press
Both Weier and Geyser told investigators they felt they had to kill Leutner in order to become “agents,” or servants, of the Slender Man, and protect their families from him. The three girls were 12 years old at the time.
Geyser, who pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder, was sentenced to 40 years in a mental hospital while Weier, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
However, Weier was released in 2021 and given permission to live with her father and ordered to wear a GPS monitoring device.
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Geyser, now 22, has petitioned Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren — who bound her — for release four times since June 2022. While she withdrew her first two petitions, Bohren denied her third request in April 2024, saying she remains a threat to the public.
Her fourth petition, filed in October, secured her release from the psychiatric facility, and Bohren determined Thursday that she had maximized her treatment options at the facility and no longer posed a safety risk. He ordered the Department of State Health Services to develop and supervise a plan to place her in a group home for consideration at a hearing within 60 days.
“She did what she was supposed to do,” Bohren told the court, describing Geiser’s crime as a “brutal and terrible crime.”
“She seems to have a good attitude.”
Three psychologists who have been working with Geyser since she joined the institute testified at Thursday’s hearing that she has made impressive progress in just the past six months and should be released.
Dr. Brooke Lundbohm testified that Winnebago employees weaned Geyser off her antipsychotic medication by early 2023 and she has not experienced any symptoms since.
Dr Deborah Collins said Geezer was always at risk of reoffending simply because she had almost killed someone but she had worked on her coping skills, improved her emotional control and retreated into fantasy less frequently. Collins added that Gesser told her that she hated what she did to Lautner and could not forgive herself.
Morgan Geyser appears in a Waukesha County courtroom on Thursday, January 9, 2025, in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Maury Gash/Associated Press
Dr. Ken Robbins told the judge she could become dangerous if she remained confined to the Winnebago and lost hope.
“The longer she’s there, at this point, the harder it is to reintegrate,” Robbins said.
Assistant Waukesha County Prosecutor Ted Szczubakiewicz argued that Geiser could not be trusted, noting that she claimed during evaluations last year that she had faked her delusions about the Slender Man and actually attacked Leutner as a way to escape her abusive father. He insinuated that this was a ploy to make the release more likely.
The judge brushed that aside, saying it was not unusual for a mental illness diagnosis to develop.
— With files from The Associated Press
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