Girl who stabbed friend to please ‘Slender Man’ released early from prison

A teenage girl who stabbed her childhood friend to ‘honour Slenderman’ has been released from prison early.

Morgan Geyser, then 12, and Anissa Weier stabbed their friend Payton Leutner 19 times in 2014.

The three had a sleepover together when they went to the park to play what Leutner was told was hide-and-seek.

Weier told Leutner to lie down and cover herself with leaves so she would be disguised then Geyser stabbed her multiple times with a kitchen knife in her chest, arms and legs and left her bleeding in the woods.

Leutner underwent emergency surgery lasting six hours to save her. One stab wound had cut through her diaphragm, while another narrowly missed her heart by less than a millimetre.

Geyser, now 22, was sentenced to 40 years in a mental health facility in Wisconsin after she was found not guilty of the murder by reason of mental disease.

But a judge has now determined she has maximised her treatment options at the facility, and she can now be housed in a group home.

Dr. Brooke Lundbohm has worked with Geyser throughout her treatment, and told the hearing: ‘There is nothing in the record to suggest continued symptoms that once plagued her, like crying spells, anxiety attacks, periods of dissociation.

‘In 2021, there were some ongoing issues related to her report of auditory disturbances that she specifically described as being demons, but there has been nothing of that sort for the last…three years.’

Leutner became friends with Geyser in fourth grade as she struggled to make friends herself.

It was in sixth grade that she also met Weier and she was first told about Slenderman, a faceless, fictional creature in a suit that could grow tendrils from his back.

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