The day after Morgan Geyser cut off her ankle monitor and fled her group home, Illinois police unknowingly found her crouched against a wall at a truck stop two hours away Sunday night.
Huddled next to her friend, Geyser told officers she was worried about being separated from Chad Mecca, 43, who shivered from the cold and occasionally had difficulty speaking. The couple evaded questions about their identity as Geyser told officers he had done “something really bad.”
Geyser, 23, then “suggested that officers could ‘just Google’ his name” to find out who he is, according to the Posen Police Department incident report.
An Internet search would reveal that 11 years earlier, Geyser stabbed her sixth-grade classmate, Payton Leutner, more than a dozen times with a kitchen knife to appease the fictional horror character “Slender Man” while her other friend, Anissa Weier, watched. The three girls were 12 years old at the time.
The case spent years making national headlines and spawning documentaries as Geyser endured a protracted court battle. A jury determined that Geyser was mentally ill after her attorneys presented expert testimony that the girl suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time of the stabbing. In an effort to avoid prison, Geyser accepted a plea deal in 2017 that would have her institutionalized.
Although she had been sentenced to a maximum of 40 years in a mental institution, Geyser had been granted parole in January after spending seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Wisconsin. She fled the group home where she had been placed for fear of being separated from her friend, Mecca, according to body camera footage and police reports.
Carrying a backpack and a pink journal with the words “homeless couples guide” written on it, police allege, the two took a Greyhound bus from Wisconsin on Saturday night. They were eventually found more than 165 miles away in Illinois and arrested Sunday night.
Mecca was later released following a summons and is due in court on January 15. NBC News was unable to reach Mecca; It is unclear whether Mecca has retained a lawyer.
At her extradition hearing on Tuesday, Geyser appeared dressed in a blue jumpsuit and dark glasses. She waived extradition and will remain detained in Cook County without bail.
Wisconsin has one month to bring Geyser back to the state. Waukesha County District Attorney Lesli Boese told reporters Monday that the state would have to decide whether to file a petition to revoke Geyser’s parole, a move they would support, she said.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said Monday that they had not received a referral regarding Geyser’s case, but could receive one from the Madison Police Department “at some point.”
A lawyer for Geyser did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An attack ordered by ‘Slender Man’
The May 31, 2014, attack on Leutner began as a game of hide-and-seek Saturday morning in the woods of a suburban Milwaukee park.
Then, prosecutors say, Geyser and Weier restrained Leutner before Geyser stabbed her 19 times. The knife barely missed an artery near his heart, coming “within a millimeter of certain death,” according to the criminal complaint.
After the attack, Geyser and Weier fled the scene, leaving Leutner to die. The high school student managed to get out of the woods and find a cyclist on the sidewalk. Geyser and Weier were arrested five hours after the attack, still armed with the knife.
During the trial, Geyser’s lawyers told the court that the girl had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, so she believed the fictional horror character “Slender Man” was speaking to her. Geyser believed the boogeyman would harm their families if Leutner was not stabbed.
Weier, who did not stab Leutner but was accused of “inciting” Geyser, pleaded guilty in 2017 to being a party to attempted second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in a psychiatric hospital. She was released in 2021.
Geyser was 15 when she was sentenced to decades in a mental institution and spent nearly seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. In January, a judge ruled that she should be placed in a group home.
Three experts testified at the time that Geyser no longer posed a threat to the public and had made considerable progress in his treatment.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren confirmed the probation plan in March after some objections from the district attorney’s office, which had concerns that Geyser had sent violent artwork to a man. It appeared that Geyser had cut off contact with that individual, Bohren said in his decision.
“I don’t find that in itself to be a reason to consider that she is at risk to herself or at risk of harm to the community in a parole plan,” he said, adding that just because she participated in the contact “doesn’t mean she encouraged it.”
Bohren also said the group home would be, in some ways, “stricter” than being institutionalized, given the “substantial supervision” Geyser would be under.
Details of Geyser’s parole are sealed, but his lawyer, Tony Cotton, had previously told the court there were difficulties in finding Geyser a place to land. A letter submitted by Cotton in August said a home in Sun Prairie refused to accept Geyser because of “publicity surrounding the placement.”
Disappearance of the group home
Police say Geyser was last seen on Kroncke Drive at 8 pm on November 22 with another adult. A little more than an hour later, the Department of Corrections realized Geyser had tampered with his tracking bracelet. At 11:30 p.m., authorities learned that Geyser had removed his ankle bracelet and was not at the group home.
Around 9 pm the next day, she was found at the truck stop more than 165 miles away in Illinois with Mecca, who was also arrested and charged with criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, according to the Posen Police Department.
Geyser told officers that she met Mecca at a Wisconsin church a couple of months ago and was upset that Mecca couldn’t visit her at the group home, according to the Posen police incident report. Geyser alleged that she was treated poorly at the home and that Mecca visited her there on multiple occasions by “climbing through the window and sneaking in.”
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said it could not comment on Geyser, who is being treated at one of its facilities, due to patient privacy protections. The Department of Corrections is similarly limited when it has been contracted by health services to carry out supervision and monitoring activities, he added.
Geyser said Saturday that she and Mecca had taken the Greyhound bus from Wisconsin to Illinois and had discussed going to Nashville, Tennessee, according to the incident report. It’s not immediately clear what specifically motivated the two to leave Saturday.
Body camera footage from Sunday night showed Geyser pleading with officers not to separate her from Mecca and asking if they would at least promise to let her say goodbye to Mecca “no matter what she did.”
Geyser told officers in the footage that Mecca is transgender and repeatedly refers to Mecca using the pronouns “she” and “her.”
During the search, the agents found the pink notebook in the backpack, according to the images. An officer flipped through the newspaper and read the words “guide for homeless couples.”
Mecca told ABC affiliate WKOW that they prefer to be called “Charly” and that Geyser ran away because of visitation restrictions. The two had developed a strong friendship after meeting at church months ago, Mecca told the news station.
After their arrest at a truck stop on Sunday, body camera footage showed Geyser and Mecca being transported via the interior cameras of separate patrol cars. Geyser remained silent throughout the trip and quietly looked out the window.
An officer spoke to Mecca during the trip and told him that his colleagues would get them food. Mecca thanked the officer and seemed dejected.
“We really just want to move on, we’re sorry we caused any trouble,” Mecca said.
The officer then told Mecca that they would send the couple on their way once they found out who they were. Mecca simply responded, “That’s not going to happen.”
