By Rich McKay
(Reuters) -A Wisconsin woman convicted in the 2014 stabbing of a sixth-grade classmate, purportedly to appease the fictional horror character “Slenderman,” was apprehended on Sunday after fleeing from a group home without authorization, police said.
Morgan Geyser, 22, was taken into custody about 200 miles away in Posen, Illinois. A day earlier she allegedly escaped from the home in Madison, Wisconsin, after cutting off her Department of Corrections monitoring ankle bracelet, police said on social media.
Geyser was found behind a truck stop with a 42-year-old man, whose name was not released by the Posen Police Department. He was also taken into custody, police said.
It was unclear on Monday when an extradition hearing to take her from Illinois to Wisconsin might be held. A Posen Police Department spokesperson did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
A spokesperson for the Madison Police Department was unavailable for further comment on the case.
Geyser pleaded guilty in 2017 to attempted first-degree homicide in an attack on classmate Payton Leutner, who was stabbed 19 times. Geyser claimed she was not responsible due to mental illness. She was sentenced to serve a 40-year term in a state mental institution.
Geyser told investigators that she and a fellow classmate, Anissa Weier, both 12 at the time, lured Leutner into a wooded area during a sleepover in a Milwaukee suburb. They said they tried to kill her to please “Slenderman.”
The fictional supernatural bogeyman originated as an internet meme and is typically depicted as a thin, tall humanoid with a featureless white face and head.
In March a Wisconsin judge ordered Geyser’s release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute and sent her to a group home, ABC News reported.
Weier was also convicted, also arguing mental illness. She was sentenced to 25 years in a mental institution, but was later released.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Richard Chang)
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