Back in 2014, Morgan Geyser confessed to stabbing her friend 19 times, telling authorities that she sought to appease Slender Man, a fictional character who’s inspired countless memes.
Last week, Geyser removed her ankle monitor and fled the Wisconsin group home where she had been living.
Police were not notified until 12 hours later, and as news of the 23-year-old’s disappearance spread across social media, many began to fear the worst.
Authorities in Madison say they eventually learned of the disappearance, but only after they were contacted by the corrections officers who were in charge of monitoring Geyser’s device.
They were informed that “she was not at the home and that she had removed her GPS bracelet.
Thankfully, authorities located in Illinois Geyser on Sunday night — nearly 200 miles from where she had disappeared.
To their surprise, Geyser had crossed state lines with the help of a friend.
Police responded to a call about a man and woman loitering near a truck stop, but they were initially unaware that they’d found the subject of a multi-state search party.
“After continued attempts to identify her, she finally stated that she didn’t want to tell officers who she was because she had ‘done something really bad,’ and suggested that officers could ‘just Google’ her name,” police said in a press release.
“Once she provided her true identity, officers confirmed she was Morgan Geyser, who was wanted out of Wisconsin for escape after walking away from a group home where she had been placed.”
Many who were close to Geyser publicly urged her to turn herself in to authorities.
One person who attempted to send that message to Geyser was her attorney, Tony Cotton.
“Do not continue to remain on the run like this,” Cotton said in a video posted to Facebook. “It is not in your best interest to handle this matter that way.”
Geyser’s resaons for fleeing the group home remain unclear.
In 2014, she and an accomplice named Anissa E. Weier lured their friend Payton Isabella Leutner into a wooded area of a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin and stabbed her 19 times before leaving her for dead.
Leutner survived after being found by a bicyclist. Geyser and Weier were both found not guilty by mental disease or defect.
We will have further updates on this developing story as new information becomes available.