The woman who brutally stabbed her sixth-grade classmate more than a decade ago is returning to institutionalized care on Tuesday after running away from a group home last month.
Morgan Geyser, 23, was found in Illinois on Nov. 23 after cutting off her ankle monitoring bracelet and leaving her group home in Wisconsin, where she was released after serving seven years in a mental institution. Geyser told police officers that she fled the group home because she feared being separated from her friend, who crossed the state line with her.
She appeared via video on Tuesday for a hearing to revoke the conditional release granted to her earlier this year. Geyser's defense did not contest the petition from Wisconsin's Department of Health Services to return her to institutionalized care.
Tony Cotton, Geyser's attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
In a case that drew national headlines, Geyser was charged in 2014 after she lured her classmate Payton Leutner to a suburban Milwaukee park and stabbed her more than a dozen times with a kitchen knife. Geyser was just 12-years-old at the time and said that she was trying to appease the fictional horror character “Slender Man."
Their friend, Anissa Weier, watched and helped hold Leutner down as Geyser stabbed her, according to prosecutors. Leutner barely survived the attack, crawling out of the wooded area and finding a bicyclist on the sidewalk.
Geyser's defense told the court that the girl had schizophrenia during her trial, which is why she thought that "Slender Man" would hurt her family if she didn't attack Leutner.
A jury found that Geyser was mentally ill after expert testimony regarding her previously undiagnosed schizophrenia, a disorder that can cause hallucinations and delusions. Geyser agreed to a deal where she would serve a maximum of 40 years in a mental institution.
Geyser was 15 when she was sentenced to decades in a mental institution and spent nearly seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. A judge ruled in January that she should be released to a group home.
It took months to find a group home that would take Geyser, according to her attorney. Cotton wrote a letter to the court in August saying that a home in Sun Prairie declined to take Geyser due to the “publicity surrounding the placement.”
The court sealed details on her release, but Geyser was eventually placed in a group home in the Madison area.
Wisconsin officials said that Geyser cut off her ankle monitor on the night of Nov. 22 and was found roughly 24 hours later at a truck stop, more than 165 miles away in Illinois. She was huddled together with her friend, 43-year-old Chad Mecca, on the cold night when Posen Police Department officers found them.
Geyser told officers that she met Mecca at a Wisconsin church a couple of months ago and that she was upset Mecca was unable to visit her at the group home, according to a police report.
Mecca told ABC affiliate WKOW that they prefer to go by the name "Charly" and that Geyser ran away because of the visitation restrictions. The two had developed a strong friendship after meeting at church months ago, Mecca told the news station.
