Who Are Geyser and Weier?
Morgan Geyser, now 23, and Anissa Weier, now 24, first met in the sixth grade at Horning Middle School in Waukesha, Wisc., about 20 miles outside of Milwaukee. The pair bonded over their mutual obsession with Slender Man—a fictional, macabre character on the internet who is believed to use his supernatural powers to kill and manipulate his victims. Images depict him as a tall and faceless man, dressed in a black suit, with tentacles extending from his back.
But before the pair became friends, classmates alleged Geyser began to act “weirdish” in the fourth grade, expressing her infatuation with the phony creature.
“She talked about more suicidal things and she was [like], 'Slender Man was coming to get all of us.' She was a part of Slender Man's tribe or something,” a classmate told WITI-TV in 2014.
Geyser’s mother, Angie Geyser, said she was aware of her daughter’s interest in the online boogeyman, but it didn’t raise any red flags.
“She would show us some of the pictures, and she would read us some of the stories, and while some of the subject matter was a little dark, I wasn’t concerned,” Angie told Good Morning America in 2018. “When I was Morgan's age, I was reading Stephen King novels. I remember being 11 years old and riding home from the library with [the book] IT under my arm. And that's a very scary and dark story, so I just thought it was normal for a child of middle school age to be interested in scary stories.”
On the other hand, Weier’s mom admitted she had never heard of Slender Man, and that her daughter kept her eerie fascination a secret.
“[Anissa’s father] and I, although we were divorced, we were still very active parents,” Weier’s mother, Kristi Weier, said in the same interview. “I did search her iPad. I did watch over her shoulder. Anissa never talked about Slender Man to me.”
The Terrifying Motive to Kill
Geyser and Weier spent months orchestrating their plot to murder Leutner, they told investigators.
During police interviews, Geyser confessed the heinous attack was “necessary” to appease Slender Man, according to court documents. The girls admitted they planned to kill Leutner during Geyser’s birthday sleepover at her house, but pivoted to ambushing her at the park the following day.
A psychologist testified that Geyser claimed “she stabbed the victim because she was motivated to do Slender Man’s bidding,” court documents read. Geyser also said that, “had she not acted on behalf of Slender Man, he could have very well killed her or her family and that she didn’t want to die.”
Without personally evaluating the perpetrators, “from a distance, it's as if they lived in an alternate reality,” Louis Schlesinger, professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “To an extent, it seems like this is an example of AI before AI became cool.”
He adds that “12-year-old kids live in a fantasyland much of the time” and that “seems to be” what inspired the girls’ actions.
Months after the attack, Geyser was diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. At the same time, experts determined Weier suffered from a shared delusional disorder—a condition where a specific delusion is adopted by two or more people, the outlet reported.
Geyser and Weier's Fates
In October 2017, Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide, but a jury found her not guilty by reason of mental disease or disorder. A judge sentenced her to 40 years in a psychiatric hospital, citing her schizophrenia and psychotic spectrum disorder, according to the Times.
Earlier that year, Weier pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of attempted second-degree homicide as a party to a crime, and was also found not guilty for the same reason as her co-defendant. She was sentenced to 25 years in a mental health facility. In 2021, she was released under the conditions that she live with her father and remain under constant GPS tracking.
A Breakout Thrusts the Case Back Into the Headlines
Geyser petitioned for her freedom several times, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that she was granted conditional release and transferred to the YoYo Quality Care group home in Madison, Wisc., from which she fled on November 22, according to WISN-TV.
The daring escape thrust Geyser and the Slender Man case back into the spotlight.
Twenty-four hours later, police captured Geyser with her 43-year-old friend, Chad Mecca, at a truck stop 100 miles away in Posen, Ill. She was extradited back to Wisconsin and is currently being held at the Waukesha County Jail, according to jail records.
In a letter penned December 1 and obtained by WLUK-TV, Geyser’s attorney, Anthony Cotton, pleaded to Judge K. Scott Wagner that he transfer his client out of jail and to the Winnebago Mental Health Facility, citing a lack of new criminal charges and her psychological well-being.
“Given that she has been previously found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect on the underlying offense, it is our position that she should be housed in a mental health facility, not a correctional institution," Cotton wrote.
Geyser is scheduled to appear in court December 22.
Leutner Reacts to Her Attacker’s Escape
Leutner’s family issued a statement following Geyser’s shocking breakout.
"Payton Leutner and her family [are] aware of the most recent situation regarding Morgan Geyser. Payton and her family are safe and are working closely with local law enforcement to ensure their continued safety,” a spokesperson for the family told the Sentinel, in part.
Speaking with 20/20 in 2019, Leutner said that, if given the opportunity to talk to Geyser, she would express gratitude for the horrifying incident.
"I would probably initially thank her," Leutner said. "I would say, just because of what she did, I have the life I have now. I really, really like it and I have a plan. I didn't have a plan when I was 12, and now I do because of everything that I went through."
