Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 'Slender Man' Stabber's Dramatic Escape and Capture — Everything We Know

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Morgan Geyser, 23, was living in a group home after her conditional release from a mental health facility where she was being housed following her involvement in stabbing of her friend in 2014. Madison Police said Geyser cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and walked away from the group home in Wisconsin on Saturday, November 22. Geyser was captured in Posen, Illinois the following night at a truck stop with a man. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes over the latest in the developing story in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code CRIMEFIX at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Mark Weaver https://x.com/MarkRWeaverProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. That's Morgan Geyser being led out of a police station in Illinois in handcuffs after police said she escaped from her group home in Wisconsin over the weekend. Her lawyer issuing a plea for her to surrender. We just heard the news that Morgan has walked. away from the group home that she was housed at. Obviously, it's in her best interest to turn herself in immediately and not continue with this course of action. Morgan Geiser was one of two girls known for the infamous slender man stabbing in the Badger State that nearly killed a girl.

I'll tell you about how police say Morgan Geiser escaped, how she was captured and the case that made her a household name in Wisconsin. I'm Janette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Let me tell you something. If you think the crime stories we cover here are scary, wait until you hear what's happening with your personal data online. Your name, your phone number, even your address, it's all floating around the internet for data brokers to sell or scammers to steal. Our sponsor Incogni lets you take back control of your info. They find which data brokers have your information and demand they remove it. When I signed up, they found more than 50.

brokers with my data, and within days it started disappearing. Setup takes just minutes, create an account, authorize Incogni to act for you, and they do the rest. And with their new unlimited plans, custom removals feature, you can submit custom links where your data shows up and a team of privacy experts will remove it for you. So if you care about your online safety, and you really should, take your data back with Incogni, use code crime fix for 60% off an annual plan. Morgan Geiser is in jail in Illinois after being on the run for a little more than 24 hours. Police in Madison, Wisconsin issued an alert after they got word that Geiser cut off her GPS monitoring ankle bracelet and walked away from a group home in Madison on November 22nd. That was a Saturday night. Police in Posen, Illinois, say they found Geiser Sunday evening at a Thornton's truck stop there.

That's about 180 miles from Madison, Wisconsin. Morgan Geiser. She is part of that horrific case that made national news back in 2014. She and her friend, Anissa Wire, who were both just 12 years old at the time, attacked and stabbed one of their friends during a sleepover at Morgan's house for her birthday. Now, before I get into the manhunt for Morgan, I'll just give you a little bit of background on this case. And it's really, really hard to believe even now. Morgan and Inissa lured their friend Peyton Lutner to a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin. in west of Milwaukee. For a game of hide-and-seek, they held her down, and they stabbed her. Peyton dragged herself to a road where a cyclist found her and called for help. Hi, sir. So are you with this 12-year-old female? Yes, she says she's having trouble breathing.

She said she was stabbed multiple times. They had multiple times? Yes. Okay, sir, are you with it right now? Yes. Is she awake? She's awake. Is she breathing?

Yeah, she's breathing. She said she can take shallow breaths. She's alert. Okay, stay with her. We're sending the police department. Don't hang up, okay? Thankfully, Peyton survived, and Inissa and Morgan were arrested and charged with attempted murder. During their police interviews, the girls told detectives they stabbed their friend to impress a fictional internet character known as Slender Man. The girls said they believed they would be killed if they didn't kill someone else first. It took years for Morgan and Anissa's cases to work their way through the courts, both appealed being tried as adults. Both said they were mentally ill. Morgan's attorney said she suffered from early onset schizophrenia, something her father suffered from around the same age. Morgan entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors where she was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and a judge ordered that she'd be placed in a mental health facility for 40 years. But then Morgan Geiser asked to judge, to grant her conditional release, and a series of hearings were held. The Department of Health Services actually tried to stop Morgan Geiser's release, expressing concern

about material that she was reading that had sadistic themes and a man who was sending her letters saying he was aroused by her crime. But her release ended up going forward. Morgan's going to do, I'm very confident Morgan will do well. I mean, of course, you know, that's balls in her court, obviously, to make sure she's addressing her issues and taking it seriously. We can only do so much. And we never have a crystal ball, of course. Now, that was all back in the summer. Then came Morgan Geyser's escape from her group home on Saturday. night. Madison Police posted on Facebook on Sunday, officers are searching for a woman who cut off her Department of Corrections monitoring bracelet and left a group home Saturday

night. Morgan Geiser was last seen in the area of Cronky Drive around 8 p.m. with an adult acquaintance. Her whereabouts are unknown as of Sunday morning. The Madison Police Department was notified of her disappearance Sunday morning. A recent image of Geiser captured on security video from this past month is attached below. If you see her, please call 911. Tony Cotton, Morgan Geiser's defense attorney, he appeared shocked by her escape and posted on Instagram Sunday night,

urging her to turn herself in. We just heard the news that Morgan has walked away from the group home that she was housed at. Obviously, it's in her best interest to turn herself in immediately and not continue with this course of action. We don't know any of the facts about what happened or who might have assisted her, but certainly if there is somebody who's assisted her,

that person will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If anybody has contact with Morgan, hears from her, or if Morgan happens to see this, turn yourself in, do not continue to remain on the run like this. It is not in your best interest to handle this matter that way. So it was all hands on deck. Police were on high alert on the lookout for Morgan Geiser. And as I told you earlier, she was captured on Sunday night. Monday morning, Posen Police posted on Facebook last night. Posen officers were dispatched to the Thornton's truck stop at 14840 Western Avenue for a report of a male and female loitering behind the building. When officers arrived, they located both subjects sleeping on the sidewalk. The female repeatedly refused to provide her real name and initially gave a false one. After continued attempts to identify, her. She finally stated that she didn't want to tell officers who she was because she had,

quote, done something really bad and suggested that officers could just Google her name. Once she provided her true identity, officers confirmed she was Morgan Geiser, who was wanted out of Wisconsin for escape after walking away from a group home where she had been placed. For background, Geyser was one of the two juveniles involved in the 2014 Slender Man Stabbing, a case that received national attention. She was convicted in that incident and later assigned to a secure residential facility from which she recently absconded. The male subject with her was also taken into custody. Both individuals were safely detained without incident by Posen officers. We are proud of the professionalism and diligence of our officers demonstrated in bringing this situation to a safe

conclusion and ensuring that a wanted escapee was located and returned to custody. Madison police in Wisconsin put out a timeline and they said Morgan Geiser was last seen at the group home at 8.15 p.m. on Saturday night. At 9.30 that night, the Department of Corrections received an alert that Morgan's ankle bracelet was malfunctioning. At 1130 that night, staff at the group home told the Department of Corrections that Morgan Geiser was not there and had removed her GPS bracelet. At midnight, the Department of Corrections issued an apprehension request for Morgan Geiser. But Madison PD said, says that request wasn't relayed to them. So something went wrong there. Something fell through the cracks and precious time was lost. Just after 7.30 a.m. Morgan Geiser was reported missing on Sunday. That public alert went out for Morgan Geiser. And by 10.34 p.m. on Sunday, the Madison Police Department was notified that Morgan Geiser had been captured. Now, I think it's important to point out that the Waukesha County District Attorney's Office, that office prosecuted Morgan Geiser. her friend for stabbing Peyton Lutner back in 2014 all the way up until the present,

they opposed Morgan Geiser's release in the first place. Here's the DA. With regard to what happens from here once Ms. Geyser is brought back to Waukstra County, it will be up to Department of Health Services, whether they file a petition to revoke her conditional release. We are certainly hopeful that they do proceed with that. We fully support it. We support that she should be in custody, not only should she have been in custody from 2014 forward, but also Attorney Niklai argued vehemently for her not to be released to conditional release in, I believe it was January of this year, and therefore we will be fully supporting a petition if one is filed. Our office will not get involved again in this case until a motion

to revoke her conditional release is filed. We will then go back to court, we will fully support that motion and that petition to revoke her conditional release, and we will then go before a judge to make a decision on whether or not she will be returned to conditional release or whether she would be returned to institutionalized care, which is where she came from. It'll be up to the Department of Corrections in Wisconsin and also the Dane County District Attorney's Office to determine whether or not Morgan Geiser will be prosecuted for her escape. So to discuss all of this, I want to bring in somebody who has a great background to talk about all of it. He is Mark Weaver. He works as a prosecutor in the state of Ohio, sometimes a judge,

and also started his career working kind of in the juvenile justice field. So Mark, thanks for coming on. Your reaction, first of all, to the late breaking news we have about this is that Morgan Geiser was captured overnight at an Illinois truck stop. And she was found there with a man sleeping. So your reaction to that. So many things happen at truck stops. Is that just me? As you mentioned, I started, worked on my master's thesis in juvenile probation. I worked as a juvenile probation intern, even before I was a lawyer. So I dealt up close and personal with a lot of troubled teens with a criminal past. And so reading the facts of this case brought back, memories of some of the kids on the caseload that I shared with a juvenile probation officer

during my internship there. Here's what I learned is troubled kids take a long time before they get back to being on the right track. And this particularly young woman, she's really troubled. She's got sociopathic tendencies. She clearly has mental illness. The judge shed 40 years, and I'd like to talk to those people who thought she should get out sooner and give her an opportunity to escape, which is exactly what she did. Yeah, I mean, she's not even been at this group home for six months. I mean, she's been there less than three months. And she cuts off her GPS ankle monitoring bracelet. I mean, that's something criminals do.

And whether she was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect or not, she's a criminal. she tried to kill her friend. Yes, she was found to be suffering from severe mental illness or whatever. But I mean, this is something that, you know, this is something that hardened criminals do. They cut off their GPS bracelet so they can get away. Yeah, given that she tried to kill her friend at a sleepover with a sharp object, I'm not sure why she should have any access to any sharp object to be able to cut off a monitor. We saw this, America watch this. with the history of John Hinkley, the man who tried to kill President Reagan back in 1981. He was found insane and sentenced to a mental institution and eventually took a few decades, got out. And it's important to remember that when we say somebody is so insane that they can't be tried and they get sent off for a mental institution, in this case it was supposed to be 40 years, that if all of a sudden they're well again, then maybe they ought to be

brought back for a trial or at the very least held on to for the amount of time that the judge said so that whatever problem they have can be fully resolved and more importantly the public can be protected from the dangerous impulses of these people and and that's the thing here this was something where these girls anisa and morgan say they convinced themselves or they believed they're 12 years old at the time that slender man was basically going to maybe kill them if they didn't kill somebody else judge didn't really seem to buy that um but they were doing this in the name of this slender man character they nearly kill their friend i mean this poor woman peyton loutner who is still i'm sure i'm sure when she got word that morgan geyser

was on the loose was completely freaked out and scared to death um i'm just i'm stunned i'm really stunned that a group of doctors evaluated her and went to a judge and said, yeah, she should be released early judge. I mean, I'm confounded by that. It makes me wonder whether Morgan Geiser just was really good and played these physicians. She may well have, and I understand the defense attorneys have a job to do, but when you read the history in the timeline of this case, her attorneys filed motion after motion after appeal after appeal trying to have her brought back into juvenile court and if you wonder why that was happening it's because if it had been resolved in juvenile court she would have been released at age 18. Now luckily the court system kept her in the adult system

but these doctors who wanted to let her in a much less secure system like a group home I think as you mentioned they were either fooled or they just don't have enough of an of how serious a danger this young woman is to society. Let's talk now about what happened back in March. I mean, because back in March, the Department of Health Services in Wisconsin filed a petition because they wanted to stop her conditional release. They were like, whoa, we see some red flags here. We don't think maybe she should be let go.

And the red flags were that she was reading some books. book called Rent Boy, and it contained information about a fictional young man who gets caught up in the black market sale of human organs, and the book has themes of horror and sexual sadism. They were kind of like, whoa, why, what? You're reading what? And then there was some guy, and she disclosed all of this information to her mental health team, but there was some guy sending her letters telling her that he was sexually aroused by the Sunderman stabbing. That's terrifying. Yes, she disclosed all this information to her team,

but it was, these were red flags. These were, um, enough, these things caused enough concern for this team to go to the court and say, I don't think so. I don't think she's ready for this. And, you know, the judge didn't agree. And her attorney called it a hit job. I think we're seeing right now. Her attorney called her a rule follower. I'm seeing right now, this looks like she doesn't know how to follow rules. Yeah, no, she's not a rule follower. She's a rule breaker. She shouldn't had sharp objects since the sharp object was the attempted murder weapon. She shouldn't have controversial and troubling fiction since she was triggered into believing there was a slender man by controversial and troubling online fiction. And I don't think she ought to be

communicating with anybody outside without some screening of her mail. This notion that when somebody's being held to protect the rest of us, that they can do whatever they want and have access to whatever they want is very troubling. If she wants to read, that's good, but not reading that sort of stuff. She should, the books available to the criminally insane should be limited to things that don't have such triggering instances, either works of nonfiction or maybe fiction written before 1960 when some of the works of fiction started coming out featured some of the sicker aspects of human society. So she's now been captured. She'll likely be, I'm assuming, charged with some type of escape crime out of Wisconsin. They're not going to be happy about this. I mean, the court took a

risk on her. Her own lawyer took a big risk on her. He encouraged her to turn herself in. I'm assuming I mean, he's going to probably try to say, oh, she was coerced into doing this or something. No, I don't think the judge is going to buy that. I could be wrong about that because the fact that she was released in the first place was a shock to me. So what do you see happening here, Mark? Do you see a criminal charge coming out of this in the state of Wisconsin and then them possibly either sending her back to a mental institution or maybe she just goes straight to jail since she'll be charged with a crime? The prosecutors should charge her with an adult felony for the escape and if there's any tampering with evidence or other criminal charges, they should be brought. Ironically, the experts who recommended, the experts who recommended that she should be released can now be called to the stand to say that she's no longer insane, which means she can stand for trial on the adult felony charges for the escape and any tampering with evidence or obstruction of justice that happened.

So she's going to be in a weird position of having to either argue she's still insane, which means she should be put back into a more secure housing unit, or that she's not insane, which would allow her to stand trial and, as you mentioned, go to prison on this new charge. You know, what is your kind of overall, obviously you have not met Morgan Geiser, you're just reading the news reports, but you do have a lot of experience in prosecuting crimes. I mean, what is your read on this? Just generally speaking, do you think that maybe these doctors were bamboozled by her? Or did she just make some really bad mistake? Well, both can be true. She's made a lot of mistakes. Parents should remember that this started with her being obsessed with dark internet fiction. And you and I've talked about this before in other segments. The internet doesn't cause crime, but accessed information. on the internet by children often is the breeding ground for lots of crimes. And so she probably would not have found the slender man thing at her local library, although there's lots of troubling books at a library, but the internet is full of the darkest tales and the darkest sides of society.

So it started with her obsession fueled by the internet. And now the internet helps some man find out about her and start writing to her and telling her he was sexually aroused by this whole slender man nonsense. With kids, we need to keep track of what they're consuming, and parents should be involved in their life. And then on the criminal justice side, protecting society has to come before the notion that she deserves to be in a less restrictive setting.

Well, we will see how it all plays out. It certainly is really disturbing and was a shock to see that she had escaped. maybe it's really not much of a shock. But, you know, I kept thinking to myself, they're going to catch her pretty fast. She's not going to get very far, even if she is with somebody. They're going to figure it out. They're going to find out where she is. And they most certainly did.

Yeah, I'm glad she's in custody. I hope not to hear about this case for a very long time. I really do hope that she gets better. I don't want people to be locked away in a dark room forever. There is hope for redemption and for healing. Sure. But it's way too soon. and she needs to be there a lot longer.

Yeah, it's just a really horrible case. Mark Weaver, thank you so much. Thank you. Morgan Geiser is expected in court for an extradition hearing on Tuesday and we'll have that covered for you. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.