Judge says plans to release a woman in Slender Man case can go forward
[March 07, 2025]
By TODD RICHMOND
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin woman who nearly killed her classmate
years ago to please horror character Slender Man can be released from a
psychiatric hospital as planned, a judge decided Thursday, rejecting
state health officials’ last-minute attempt to keep her committed.
Morgan Geyser has spent the last seven years at the Winnebago Mental
Health Institute. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren in
January ordered her released after state and county health officials
completed a community supervision and housing plan.
State Department of Health Services officials were approaching a 60-day
deadline to present the plan to the judge when they abruptly asked him
last week to keep her committed.
Agency officials argued that Geyser didn't volunteer to her therapy team
that she had read “Rent Boy,” a novel about murder and selling organs on
the black market. They also alleged that she has been communicating with
a man who collects murder memorabilia, and has sent him her own sketch
of a decapitated body and a postcard saying she wants to be intimate
with him.
Waukesha County Deputy District Attorney Abbey Nickolie said during a
hearing Thursday that Geyser only told her treatment team about the book
and the collector when she was asked.
“The state has real concerns these things are, frankly, just red flags
at this point,” Nickolie said.
Geyser's attorney, Tony Cotton, argued Geyser hasn't done anything wrong
and blasted the state's request to keep her in the hospital as a “hit
job."
He told the judge that Geyser only reads what Winnebago staff allow,
adding that she has a wide range of reading interests, including
biographies.
As for the collector, Winnebago staff knew that he had visited her three
times in June 2023 and that Geyser cut off communications with him last
year after she realized he was selling things she sent him, Cotton said.
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Morgan Geyser appears in a Waukesha County courtroom, Jan. 9, 2025,
in Waukesha, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)
“Morgan is not more dangerous today,” Cotton said.
Bohren heard testimony from the same three psychologists who
recommended her release in January. All of them said that they don't
see how she presents any more of a risk now.
The judge found that the state's request lacked substance. He said
that he didn't think Geyser was trying to hide anything from her
treatment team and was simply responding to questions she was asked.
“I don't see the risk to the public,” Bohren said. He set a new
hearing on a release plan for March 21.
Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, lured Payton Leutner to a
Waukesha park after a sleepover in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19
times while Weier egged her on. All three girls were 12 years old.
Leutner barely survived her wounds. Geyser and Weier told
investigators that they attacked her to earn the right to be Slender
Man’s servants and to ensure Slender Man didn’t hurt them or their
families.
Geyser pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted first-degree
intentional homicide in 2017 but claimed she wasn’t responsible
because she was mentally ill. Bohren committed her to the
psychiatric hospital for 40 years in 2018.
Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree
intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in 2017, but like
Geyser claimed she wasn’t deemed responsible because of her mental
illness. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital but was
granted release in 2021 if she agreed to live with her father and to
wear a GPS monitor.
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