Slender Man stabber who attacked 12-year-old classmate in 2014 is granted release from psychiatric hospital
A Wisconsin woman who stabbed her classmate to please the fictional horror character Slender Man is set to be released from a psychiatric hospital, a judge ruled on Thursday.
Morgan Geyser, 22, has been at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute for nearly seven years after being convicted in the 2014 stabbing attack of Payton Leutner.
Geyser and another classmate Anissa Weier were 12 in 2014 when they lured Payton Leutner, who was also 12, to a Waukesha park after a sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier egged her on. Leutner barely survived.
The girls later told investigators they wanted to earn the right to be servants of the fictional Slender Man and that they feared he would harm their families if they didn’t carry out the attack.
Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide and was sent to the psychiatric institute due to mental illness in 2018.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide. She was also sent to the psychiatric center but was granted release in 2021 to live with her father and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor.
Geyser previously filed a petition with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren seeking her release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. The petition marks the third time in the last two years she has asked Bohren to let her out of the facility.
Bohren decided to grant her release after a day-long hearing Thursday, finding that she had maximized her treatment options at the facility and was no longer a safety risk.
He said that her crime was a “brutal, terrible offense” but Geyser has since grown up and to be truly rehabilitated she must exist as part of society.
“She’s done what she’s supposed to do,” Bohren said. “She appears to have a good attitude.”
He ordered the state Department of Health Services to set up a plan to house her in a group home and supervise her for his consideration at a hearing within 60 days.
The plan to kill Leutner in 2014 was fuelled by the girls’ desire to please Slender Man.
According to a criminal complaint, the plan was initially supposed to be carried out on May 30, 2014, the night of Geyser’s sleepover to celebrate her 12th birthday. But then they changed the plan and decided to kill her the next morning at a nearby park in Waukesha.
Once at the park, Weier suggested they go for a walk to play hide-and-seek in nearby woods, she told investigators.
