Authorities in two states scrambled over the weekend after the woman convicted in the notorious Slender Man stabbing vanished from a Wisconsin group home.
She was tracked down by authorities nearly a day later behind an Illinois truck stop where officers found her sleeping on a sidewalk.
Morgan Geyser, now 23, was taken into custody in Posen, Illinois, following an overnight search that began when she slipped away from her assigned residence in Madison and removed the electronic bracelet that tracked her movements.
The Madison Police Department said correctional officials first realized something was wrong on Saturday night when the device began showing signs of malfunction, prompting a call to the group home.
Staff members checked and learned she was gone and that the bracelet had been removed entirely.
The alert to local police, however, did not occur until Sunday morning, nearly 12 hours after her disappearance.
By late that evening, authorities in Illinois informed Madison officials that Geyser had been located roughly 20 miles south of Chicago.
Posen police said they received a call about a man and woman lingering behind Thornton’s Truck Stop and found the pair asleep outdoors.
Officers said the woman repeatedly avoided revealing her identity, giving a false name and refusing to provide her real one.
In their statement, officers recounted that she eventually admitted she did not want to tell them who she was because she had “done something really bad” and suggested that officers could “just Google” her name.
Once she shared her actual identity, police confirmed she was the Wisconsin fugitive wanted for escape after leaving her supervised living arrangement.
The man who accompanied her was identified as 43-year-old Chad Mecca, who police said was arrested for criminal trespassing and obstructing identification.
Authorities said he was later released, and officials have not provided details about any role he may have played in her decision to flee.
According to the police report, Geyser told officers she felt mistreated at the group home.
She said she had been upset that Mecca was not permitted to visit her and claimed he entered her room through a window on several occasions.
Mecca, who preferred to be identified as Charly, told WGN that Geyser had been frightened and believed she was unsafe in the residence.
Lock Them Up! Russiagate is reigniting…
Obama, Clinton, Comey, and Brennan are all on the hook!
CLICK HERE to demand Russiagate conspirators got to prison!
He said they met at a Madison church in September and became friends.
On the afternoon of Nov. 22, according to Mecca, Geyser informed him she planned to leave the home.
He said she cut off the ankle monitor, left the facility, and boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Chicago with him at her side.
“You could just tell she was just floored and devastated,” Mecca told the outlet, adding that he knew accompanying her was not the right choice, but he did not want her to travel alone.
Posen police said the two traveled by bus from Wisconsin and then walked from downtown Chicago to Posen before officers encountered them at the truck stop.
The police report stated that Geyser acknowledged cutting the monitor with scissors and that she and Mecca had considered continuing on to Nashville.
Geyser’s flight from the group home immediately revived widespread attention to the 2014 Slender Man case, a crime that stunned the country and launched years of legal proceedings.
When she was 12, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier lured their classmate Payton Leutner into the woods in Waukesha, Wisconsin, after a sleepover.
There, under the ruse of playing hide and seek, Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier encouraged the attack.
The two girls later told investigators they carried out the assault in hopes of appeasing Slender Man, a fictional character that originated on an internet forum.
Leutner managed to crawl from the forest and was discovered by a bicyclist who rushed for help.
Doctors later recounted how one stab wound narrowly missed a major artery by less than a millimeter.
Both attackers were tried as adults and were found guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in 2017.
Weier was committed to a mental health facility for 25 years and Geyser for 40.
Weier was released in 2021, while Geyser sought release multiple times over the past two years.
In October of 2024, she again asked to be allowed to move out of institutional care.
A judge approved her conditional release in January after three experts testified about her progress, although administrative hurdles delayed her move for more than six months.
In September, another judge authorized her transfer from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute to the Madison group home, despite prosecutors warning that she had been in contact with a man outside the facility and had been reading material with themes involving violence.
At that time, Leutner’s mother voiced concern, noting the home was located only about eight miles from her daughter’s residence.
Following Geyser’s arrest in Illinois, she appeared in court Monday and was ordered held at Cook County Jail.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said an out-of-state warrant had been executed and that she is scheduled to return to court Tuesday in Chicago.
Waukesha County District Attorney Lesli Boese, who prosecuted Geyser during the original case, said her office hopes Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services will immediately petition to revoke the conditional release granted in September.
“We fully support that motion,” she said at a news conference, outlining the process that would follow such a filing.
According to Boese, a judge would then determine whether Geyser should return to conditional release or be placed back into institutional care.
Boese noted her office had argued strongly in January against Geyser’s release into the community.
An extradition hearing to return her to Wisconsin is expected to take place Tuesday.
