‘Slender Man’ attacker Morgan Geyser found a day after cutting off monitoring bracelet

By Chris Boyette, Amanda Musa, CNN

(CNN) — A woman who stabbed her sixth-grade classmate to win favor with a fictional internet character named “Slender Man” more than a decade ago has been taken into custody, a day after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and leaving a group home where she’d been living, police said.

Morgan Geyser, 23, was found Sunday at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois – roughly 20 miles south of Chicago, Posen police told CNN. She was found with another person, whom police did not identify.

“There is no longer a need to search for Morgan Geyser at this time,” police in Madison, Wisconsin, said in a statement late Sunday. Police said they received confirmation around 10:34 p.m. Sunday that Geyser had been taken into custody in Illinois.

Geyser was last seen in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Madison around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult acquaintance, police said in an earlier statement.

In a crime that stunned the nation, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier, both 12 at the time of the crime, lured their classmate into a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2014, where they stabbed her 19 times to impress Slender Man, a boogeyman for the internet age.

The victim, Peyton Leutner, was also 12 at the time and survived, crawling out of the woods to safety where she was discovered by a passing bicyclist.

The trio spent a lot of time together, Leutner previously told ABC. Geyser constantly talked about Slender Man, a character that terrified Leutner, she said.

The night of the stabbing, Leutner had gone to Geyser’s home for a slumber party to celebrate her birthday.

At age 15, Geyser pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted first-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors to be placed in a mental institution instead of serving jail time.

At her sentencing in 2018, Geyser apologized to Leutner and her family.

“I never meant this to happen,” a tearful Geyser said. “I hope that she is doing well.”

In January, a judge ordered she could be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she spent nearly seven years, The Associated Press reported.

Geyser’s attorney, Tony Cotton, had urged her to turn herself in immediately in a statement Sunday. “We worked too hard to secure her freedom for her to continue on this path,” Cotton added.

It is unclear how Geyser broke out of the group home or who helped her, Cotton said in a video posted to social media.

In August, a facility in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, declined to take her due to negative publicity they were receiving about the potential move, according to CNN affiliate WMTV, but Madison police confirmed with the news station Geyser is currently living at a group home in Madison, on the same street where she was last seen.

Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree homicide due to mental illness or defect in the stabbing as part of a plea agreement. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital, the AP reported, but was released in 2021 on condition she live with her father and wear a GPS monitor.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Dakin Andone, Alex Stambaugh and Karina Tsui contributed to this report.