Morgan Geyser, ‘Slender Man’ stabber arrested after escaping custody

Illinois police have captured Morgan Geyser, who was convicted of stabbing a classmate in 2014 to appease the internet personality “Slender Man” after she escaped from a group home where she was being held in neighboring Wisconsin.

Gaither, 23, removed his monitoring bracelet and fled his Madison home Saturday night, police said, and remained on the run until his arrest on Sunday.

Police found her at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, where they said Gaither told them to “just Google” her name and said she had “done something really bad.”

Geyser was 12 years old when he stabbed a classmate 19 times. In 2018, she was sentenced to 40 years in prison and was paroled in July.

Police found Gaither with a man at a truck stop outside Chicago, about 170 miles south of Madison, after receiving reports of a man and a woman hanging out.

“When officers arrived, they found two suspects sleeping on the sidewalk,” Posen police said in a statement. “The woman repeatedly refused to provide her real name and initially provided a false name.

“After repeated attempts to confirm her identity, she eventually stated that she did not want to tell police who she was because she had ‘done something really bad’ and suggested that police ‘Google’ her name.”

She and her companion were taken into custody after police determined she was wanted in Wisconsin. BBC America partner CBS News reported that the 42-year-old companion was charged with trespassing and hindering identification and was later released.

The so-called Slender Man stabbing shocked Wisconsin and drew national attention.

Gaither and her friend Anissa Ware, who was also 12 at the time of the attack, lured a classmate to the park after a sleepover, where Gaither stabbed the classmate multiple times while Ware encouraged her to continue.

The victim, 12-year-old Payton Leutner, survived the brutal attack and was discovered by a cyclist.

Geyser and Ware were tried as adults. Gaither pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. In July, a judge allowed her to be released under the supervision of a group home.

Weir was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison and treatment in a mental hospital, but was released in 2021.

Gaither and Weir said they were inspired to attack their classmates after reading “The Slender Man in the Creepy Spaghetti,” an online short story designed to shock or frighten readers.

Slender Man is a scrawny, shadowy figure who appears in photos, drawings and articles on the Internet. Some say he has tentacles growing from his back, and most say he is wearing dark clothes and has a pale face.

The girls said they believed that if they didn’t kill Slender Man to please their friends, Geyser’s lawyers, they would kill their relatives. say in court. Authorities said the girls wanted to live with Slender Man after the attack.

Slender Man first appeared on the Internet in 2009.

The character was created by a Florida resident based on a solicitation from the comedy website SomethingAwful. The character was photographed standing behind a group of people.

After the stabbing, the website published an article urging people not to kill anyone because of Slender Man.