A woman who stabbed her sixth-grade classmate to win favor with a fictional internet character named "Slender Man" more than a decade ago left a group home where she'd been living after cutting off her monitoring bracelet, police said.
Morgan Geyser, 23, was last seen in a residential neighborhood in the west side of Madison, Wisconsin, around 8 p.m. Saturday with an adult acquaintance, and it is not known where she is, police saidin a statement.
In a crime that stunned the nation, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier, both 12 at the time of the crime, lured their classmate into a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2014, where they stabbed her 19 times to impressSlender Man, a boogeyman for the internet age.
The victim, Peyton Leutner, was also 12 at the time and survived, crawling out of the woods to safety where she was discovered by a passing bicyclist.
The trio spent a lot of time together, Leutnerpreviouslytold ABC. Geyser constantly talked about Slender Man, a character that terrified Leutner, she said.
The night of the stabbing, Leutner had gone to Geyser's home for a slumber party to celebrate her birthday.
At age 15, Geyser pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted first-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors to beplaced in a mental institutioninstead of serving jail time.
At her sentencing in 2018, Geyser apologized to Leutner and her family.
"I never meant this to happen," a tearful Geyser said. "I hope that she is doing well."
In January, a judge ordered she could be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she spent nearly seven years, The Associated Pressreported.
Geyser's attorney, Tony Cotton, urged her to turn herself in immediately in a statement Sunday. "We worked too hard to secure her freedom for her to continue on this path," Cotton added.
It is unclear how Geyser broke out of the group home or who helped her, Cotton said in a videopostedto social media.
In August, a facility in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, declined to take her due to negative publicity they were receiving about the potential move, according to CNN affiliateWMTV, but Madison policeconfirmedwith the news station Geyser is currently living at a group home in Madison, on the same street where she was last seen.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree homicide due to mental illness or defect in the stabbing as part of a plea agreement. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital, the AP reported, but was released in 2021 on condition she live with her father and wear a GPS monitor.
CNN's Dakin Andone contributed to this report.
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