A person who stabbed a classmate when they were 12-years-old to please the fictional horror character Slender Man can be released from a psychiatric hospital, a judge has ordered.
In 2014, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier – both aged 12 at the time – lured classmate Payton Leutner to a park after a sleepover where Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times. The pre-teen was lucky to survive.
They later told police they had stabbed their classmate to earn the right to be servants of the fictional Slender Man, claiming that they feared their families would be harmed if they didn’t do it.
Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide and in 2018 was sent to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, Wisconsin, with a 40 year sentence.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was sent to the same facility with a 25 year sentence, but released in 2021 to live with her father on the condition that she wear a GPS monitor.
AP now reports that yesterday (9 January), a judge ordered that Geyser be released from the psychiatric hospital.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren has been petitioned four times by Geyser for release since June 2022, though the first two petitions were withdrawn and the third one denied last April on the grounds of still being a threat to the public.
A teenager when sent to the psychiatric hospital, Geyser is now 22 and Boren has granted release with the judge finding them to no longer be a risk.
The judge ordered the state’s Department of Health Services to make plans within 60 days to house Geyser in a group home where they can be supervised.
Boren described the stabbing as a ‘brutal, terrible offense’ but said that Geyser had since grown up and must exist as part of society if there is to be rehabilitation.
AP further reports that three psychologists who have worked with Geyser at the psychiatric hospital say there has been progress in the last few months.
Dr. Brooke Lundbohm told a hearing that the 22-year-old had been weaned off their anti-psychotic medication in 2023 and not suffered symptoms since then.
Another expert, Dr. Deborah Collins, said that there would always be a risk from Geyser since they had stabbed someone but had worked on their coping skills and emotional control, and hates what they did to Leutner.
The longer she’s there, at this point, ‘the harder it’s going to be to re-integrate’, was the opinion of Dr. Ken Robbins provided to the judge.
