Morgan Geyser Won’t Be Free from Mental Hospital Just Yet: Why Judge Stayed Slenderman Stabber’s Release

A Wisconsin judge has temporarily halted the release of attempted murderer Morgan Geyser from a mental hospital pending an upcoming hearing.

While Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael O. Bohren initially ordered the 22-year-old’s conditional release from a psychiatric facility in January, per the Associated Press, he now believes there is probable cause to delay Geyser’s release after staff raised concerns about her, according to Court TV, The Waukesha Freeman and WISN. 

The Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh, Wisc. — where Geyser has been housed since her 2017 conviction in the attempted murder of her classmate Payton Leutner — has asked the court to keep Geyser in custody over concerns about a book that she admitted to reading and contact with a man outside the facility, WISN reports.

“The reading material that she’s so focused on, has themes of sexual sadism and murder and the sale of human organs on the black market,” Deputy District Attorney Abbey Nickolie said in court, per WISN. “All of these things that the treatment team at Winnebago had no idea that she was so interested in.”

Geyser’s defense attorney, Tony Cotton, said in court that his client doesn’t have internet access and “is not reading anything that she isn’t permitted to have access to in the institution. There’s no secret reading of anything,” WISN reports.

Also addressing the facility’s concerns, Cotton added that the facility has knowledge of visitors and the ability to monitor meetings, Court TV reports.

A hearing is scheduled for March 6 to discuss the status of Geyser’s release.

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Geyser, along with her co-defendant Anissa Weier, admitted to luring Leutner into the woods during a sleepover in 2014 to play hide-and-seek. Geyser then stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on. Both Geyser and Weier told prosecutors they did it to appease the fictional online character “Slenderman.”

All three were 12 at the time. Leutner survived the attack and was rescued by a passerby after she crawled her way into a nearby bike path.

As for Weier, she was released in 2021 after being housed for nearly four years at the same facility as Geyser.