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.
“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.
