WAUKESHA, Wis. — A Waukesha County judge on Thursday ordered a new mental health evaluation for Morgan Geyser as she seeks conditional release from a state psychiatric hospital, nearly a year after she fled a group home and was recaptured in Illinois.
Circuit Judge K. Scott Wagner directed that one or more examiners be appointed to assess Geyser, 24, after her attorney filed a petition last month seeking her release from Winnebago Mental Health Institute. Under Wisconsin law, examiners must file reports within 30 days of appointment, after which the court is to hold a hearing on the petition.
Geyser was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in 2017 of attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the May 2014 stabbing of classmate Payton Leutner. Geyser and Anissa Weier, then both 12, lured Leutner into woods near a Waukesha park and stabbed her 19 times. They told investigators they acted to please the fictional internet character Slender Man. Leutner survived. Geyser was committed for 40 years.
Geyser spent most of the intervening years at Winnebago. A previous judge granted her petition for conditional release in early 2025 after mental health experts testified she had made progress and no longer posed a significant risk. Wagner later approved a plan placing her in a Madison-area group home under electronic monitoring.
On Nov. 22, 2025, Geyser cut off her GPS ankle monitor and left the group home. She was last seen that evening with 43-year-old Chad Mecca. Authorities located the pair the next day at a truck stop in Posen, Illinois, about 170 miles south of Madison. Geyser was extradited to Wisconsin.
The state Department of Health Services petitioned to revoke her release, arguing she posed a heightened danger to herself and others. Geyser did not contest the petition. Wagner granted the request in December 2025 and returned her to Winnebago.
Attorney Tony Cotton said last month that Geyser has learned from the incident and that the new petition starts the process of having doctors examine her current mental state. Cotton has said she can petition every six months.
Weier was granted conditional release in 2021.
