Hey there, folks. It is Monday, November twenty fourth, and one of the girls convicted in that shocking slender Man attack a decade ago just fled this weekend. She was recaptured a short time later, but that's not the point, and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ Robes. Prosecutors didn't want her to be in a position to be able to flee where she was supposed to be in the first place. This is going to
raise some questions now, because how does she get away? Well, she quite simply just cut off an ankle monitor and walked out right.
This was not a maximum security facility. She was moved into a group home to facilitate ultimate release. That was shocking to me because we are talking about now twenty three year old Morgan Geyser, But she was twelve years old at the time of a very violent and extremely heinous crime where she left a friend and a classmate to die after stabbing her viciously nineteen times while another
twelve year old watched and egged her on. This made international headlines and it is shocking to me that she has the level of freedom she even had to be able to flee when she did.
Well, we have to trust the professionals who've been monitoring her for the past decade. The reason again, if this was just that, that is shocking, if it was just twelve year olds involved and what you described. But then the added part of this or open again it ended up being a movie was why they said they did it. It was just bizarre that twelve year old girls got so caught up in something that they're wont going to the forest looking for a fictional character.
Yes, trying to actually impress a fictional character named Slenderman. And we'll get into all of that because I actually, even though at the time, obviously this was a big story that we all covered, you forget what actually it entailed. And I my jaw drop to find that she was already in a home and you mentioned the prosecutors. This all happened in March, so she was sentenced to up
to forty years in a psychiatric institution. That seems appropriate given her age and given the level of violence in her crime. But this past March, a judge said that Geyser could be released from this mental health facility to a group home because three psychologists testified on her behalf that she was prepared for supervised released. She was supposed to wear this monitoring bracelet. This was supposed to be her kind of in between time when you go to
a group home before you're ultimately released to freedom. She failed to test, but yes she did. But prosecutors, they actually tried to stop this in March because they said that they had evidence that she was having a They called it a violent communication with a man outside of this mental health facility. And they say that within the facility she was reading a book with themes of sexual sadism, and murder. So they felt like she wasn't ready to go to a group home.
Then why I would a judge think otherwise.
Because three psychologists said she was, Well, where was the fourth, fifth, and sixth psychologists?
I'm sure you could find somebody else that would say differently, But if did they work, I didn't see this. Those three were they ones that had worked with her for years at this facility.
I believe that was the case.
Well, I mean he's supposed to listen, right, isn't he supposed to listen to them? I mean, he's making the best judgment he can, but he has to depend on some experts that's why I'm trying. I'm trying to figure this out. They saw something in her over the past decade that thought she was ready to take the next step. She did. She hadn't been in here long and she walked out of the place. Don't get me wrong. She didn't just walk out and go to McDonald's when she
wasn't supposed to. This took effort, intent and cut off her monitoring device.
Yes, and okay, so prosecutors in the spring, we're warning about this man who she was having communications with, violent communications with. Well, turns out we don't know if it's the same man. But she was found last night at a truck stop in Illinois. This is more than one hundred miles away from the group home she was supposed to be in in Wisconsin. She was found just outside of Chicago with a forty two year old man who police interestingly are saying they will not provide his name.
They will not provide a booking photo or any details of his involvement, but we know he was charged with criminal trespassing and obstructing identification.
Wait, a refusal to identify him doesn't make what's the logic there?
We don't know in all of the media reports. Obviously, reporters, journalists are trying to figure out who this guy is, this forty two year old man, and police said, we're not going to tell you why. I don't know.
Oh I'm sorry. I didn't think, like why because of this, because of some privacy, because of something same, what could composing on?
Perhaps they feel like he could.
Be maybe the investigation is to.
The investigation into what was going on between him and Amanda Geyser. I mean, this Morgan Geyser, this might actually have a I mean you would think it would have an impact on whether or not she gets to now stay in this group home, if she has to go back to the mental health facility, if she has to go to prison.
But is this not an automatic she's out of that you lose your group home?
Think that would be the case. She is being charged. We don't know exactly what it is yet, but look this is you could see her attorney, her parents, they were pleading with her, like, we fought so hard to secure your freedom, and look what you've just gone and done. So yeah, she was on her way out and she decided, yeah, to willfully cut off her electronic monitoring device. And take
off with a forty two year old man. And how she I guess, I guess when you're in a group home, I don't know what the rules are, how strict they are, who you can communicate with, where you can go, how long you can be out, But certainly she willfully went against the rules.
Any this was only happening. Was she only talking to this guy while at the group home. No, she got privileges in the psychiatric org to talk to who she wants to.
So all we can go by is what the prosecutors said when they had that hearing in the spring whether or not she would be transferred to this group home, and they said that they had proof that she had violent communications with a man outside the facility. So that's interesting to me. When you're in a mental facility being held there for an attempted murder, I'm surprised that you're allowed to have outside communication with random people.
I mean, maybe she was violating privileges. Maybe she was doing this and she wasn't supposed to be doing this, but I figured.
That, but it didn't hurt her in terms of her next step towards freedom, which is interesting to me, and especially this is a young woman.
Wait, they didn't find out about it, and they knew about it before before she was released. That's right, the prosecutor is making that correct.
And so my point too here is you've got a young woman who has clearly proven that she is easily influenced by the Internet, because that is how this whole thing started. And can you imagine being the victim in this case, Peyton Leitner and her family, she survived this vicious attack on her own by crawling out of the woods. We can get into this crime because I had forgotten
all of the details. But now you're hearing this old ex friend who tried to kill you and left you for dead, just escaped the group home she was in. That had to be a very scary twenty four hours.
Yeah, where's she going? Where's she headed? Does she want to finish in the day? Yeah? Mean you have to be thinking about that, and I don't. I mean, having kept up with this young lady and what she's been doing in the mental institute for the past ten years, the progress she's made, I haven't, I don't.
Know, But how do you go? Because yes, it's actually been less than ten years she was at this mental health facility. How do you go from being convicted to forty years up to forty years at a mental health facility and released into a group home in less than ten That also has to be alarming. I'm imagining being the parents of Peyton Leitner and a family spokesperson actually spoke out while she was on a LAMB and then had a statement when she was recaptured. But it speaks
to where they were. I was thinking, Wow, it seems crazy to all of us. It has to seem like an abomination of justice to them.
Well, the point of the system, right is supposed to be rehabilitation, and with somebody's mental has been deemed that have some mental defect, or they put her there and not in prison. They put her there and not in a child or a juvenile facility. They put her there and instead of they made some determination that something is not right with her mentally, this is where she needs to be for us to give her care. Is the point of the care not to heal, not to get
you to a better place. Or you think, yeah, we just spend your time here until we let you go out into the world while you're still got mental issues. So isn't the point supposed to be. Rehabilitation is supposed to be to get her better.
I thought in this country it was retribution before rehabilitation. I thought that we were first holding people accountable for the crimes they commit. And when you commit an adult crime like that, there needs to be some form of punishment. And yes, of course, we would all want folks to be rehabilitated. We would all want folks to be able to improve and then become actually contributing members of society. But are some people you don't know who is capable
of that and who is not. And it's important to note Morgan Geyser and the other sixth grade classmate, Anissa Weyer, who was egging her on, was watching while the stabbing was going on. They were initially charged as adults. Do you remember that they were initially charged as adults and they pleaded guilty to stabbing Lightner and then they're guilty please were vacated because they were found not guilty by
reason of mental disease or defect. And that's when both of them were sent to mental health facilities instead of to prison.
So that's the point there is, it's not always Yes, rehabilitation has to start first, right, you can't have folks retribution, as you said, if you're deemed not mentally there when you committed the crime. Those rules and those laws are there for a reason. Our system, if we are to trust it, made a determination that something is wrong with these two twelve year olds that went beyond them having full responsibility for their actions because of some mental defect.
Let's get that worked out, okay, I mean I have to trust that that's the way the system is supposed to work. Thank goodness, nobody got injured or heard or killed in this particular one. But there's so much How many others like this are there? How many other times has someone done this and this just happens to be
high profile. Maybe this is an indication of how jack our system is that something like this can happen When you have someone who tried who stab somebody nineteen times and the escape plan was just a pair of scissors, that's uh, probably should be disturbing.
And the Lightner family after she was apprehended, well, first of all, while she was on the run, she was saying they were working closely with police to make sure that they were safe. So they obviously were given some sort of protection while Geyser was on the lamb, And then they said the family would like to thank all of the law enforcement entities involved in the efforts to
apprehend Morgan. The Lightner family also wishes to think the outpouring of support from family, friends, and well wishers who have contacted them during this difficult time. That was interesting to me.
Yeah, I don't know how she's I mean, how is she doing at twenty three? But you don't it's scary. I mean, there was an attempted murderer on the loose. And if you're the family of the person she attempted to murder, yeah, that's a I don't know where the family is. This all happened in Wisconsin, the original crime, and this young lady had gone over to Illinois. But what was she doing? Where was she going? What was the point? I haven't seen anything about that yet. What
was the motive it could have been? Could it have been innocent? Right? If she's not all there or not right? Maybe she's influenced. The guy wants to take her and go get married somewhere, take her to a nice restaurant. Who knows, I just know. But is it always do we have to assume the faarious attempt. Yeah, because she's attempted murder.
Yes, And I just have to go back to the prosecutor's original concern that she was having violent communications with a man and was reading books with themes of sexual sadism and murder. So that that is concerning, Like, no matter what. So when we come back, we're going to talk about the crime. I just a refresher because this is worth remembering, just in terms of what the crime actually entailed, and whose Slenderman actually is and where the other girl in all of this, the other twelve year
old where is she? What happened to her? And continuing our conversation on this story that got a lot of folks attention over the weekend. Now twenty three year old Morgan Geyser, who was a part of that vicious, heinous Slenderman attack on her at the time she was twelve. She viciously stabbed her twelve year old friend and classmate nineteen times, alongside another young twelve year old girl who
was standing by and egging them on. She escaped from a group home, and you could say escaped, but she was on her way to securing her freedom. She was placed from a mental institution where she had been for the past decade, and then released to a group home where she eventually was on her way to being released
fully into society. But she cut off her ankle bracelet and took off with a forty two year old man, and prosecutors had a lot of concerns about where her head was, where her focus was, given a book she was reading in communication she was having with a man while she was inside the facility, and so here we are. She has been apprehended. But it's important to go back and actually remember this crime in twenty fourteen. This was sadistic and to see it happen among twelve year olds is just more than.
Appalling, it's inexplicable. I have a twelve year old got to this point to twelve year old girls, and it's almost to a point you have to wonder, are they well? I say, okay, I ain't saying what's wrong with them, but something is off, something is not right, and that's maybe why they ended up where they ended up in mental facilities. But the details of this, I know girls and young girls and young teenagers and young kids. These are tweens, right, I know they can be easily influenced.
You have a twelve year old.
This is other level stuff. The links they went through to do this for a fictional character.
These are sixth graders, and you know what, they were friends too, That's what's so scary. So this was Morgan Geyser who we've been talking about, Anissa Wire and then the victim, Peyton Lightner. But they were all at a slumber party and it was I believe Morgan's birthday, and so they told her they wanted to play a game of hide and seek in the woods. But they planned
this out, they said. Initially Geyser said they were going to stab her while she was sleeping, but they waited until the next morning, went out into the woods and they well they well, Geyser stabbed her and Wire watched nineteen times, left her for dead, walked back home and went about their business. Meantime, Lightner literally crawled to safety and went to the hospital with life threatening injuries, and remarkably she survived. But it's all about it.
That was incredible to me that that young lady, how she again nineteen stab wounds. I mean they're not all deep penetrating, but still you got Staff nineteen with a kitchen knife. It seemed impossible when you hear nineteen like how she survived that?
And so yes, they all claimed that they were trying to impress and prove that this slender Man was real. And look, you go online and try to figure out who slender Man is. These are there are stories that have taken over for quite some time, but right around I think just two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, they started to to come up everywhere and there was a web series Marble Hornets.
Have you heard of that, Marble Hornets.
Yeah, So it established the idea that there were humans who could fall under slender Man's influence. And so they talk about slender Man. If you don't know who he is. He's this tall, thin, fictional character who wears a suit, has tentacle like arms. He wears a dark suit and
a tie, and he targets children and young adults. And this is just supposed to I don't know if it was meant to scare kids, some sort of urban legend sort of thing that these kids fell under this belief, and there was some sort of a website where you could prove that he was real. And so by doing this they were trying to prove that he was real, that he was going to somehow acknowledge this sacrifice they had made in his honor. It was just bizarre.
Boy. So they tell you got to know what your kids are doing online? Right? That's wild? And it was influenced. Were they impressionable enough? I don't know, but to take these extremes, even if you went out into the forest on your own to look for the guys. One thing. But it's just I never got real answers to this story. I don't.
It's like, look, you can I think think about Sabine and sweet Sabine, Like could she be easily influenced to think something real that wasn't? Maybe not, but say even she was, don't you have to have something in you then to be able to do that to your friend. That's the scary thing. That's the scary thing. And I mentioned the other young woman a Nissa Wire again, she was the one who watched and goaded on Morgan Geyser
to continue the stabbing. She was sentenced up to twenty five years at a psychiatric institute, but in twenty twenty one she was granted supervised release. So she was nineteen, so she got off sooner and quicker, and we haven't heard from her at all. And look, I don't know if that punishment fits that crime either. It's just this is they did not spend the time that they were sentenced to. I guess it's up to so it's discretionary.
But certainly these young women, it's a little scary to think about them being out in the world given what they were convicted of doing.
She's back, took twenty four hours. Wonderful. We'll get more answers about this, and certainly wonder if we will hear who this guy is that she was with.
Yes, I think that most folks aren't going to let this go, at least journalists and certainly in the local area. You think people are going to be in media outlets are going to be asking for answers in terms of who this man is, what his role was, and what is now going to happen to Morgan Geyser. But we will make sure to keep you updated on all of what's going on in this case, in this slender Man escape. But thank you so much for listening to us, everybody.
I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ. Holmes, and we'll talk to you soon.