Last week, Morgan Geyser appeared via video in a Waukesha County courtroom and admitted that she cannot safely exist outside of a secure mental health facility. The judge presiding over the “Slender Man Stabber” case agreed with Geyser’s assessment of her own situation and revoked the conditional release that she had been granted after just eight years of a 40-year commitment. This represented a lone moment of sanity (pun intended) in Geyser’s entire case.
The tone, tenor, and decision coming from last week’s hearing was a far cry from what transpired just 11-months earlier when that same judge–acting on the advice of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, Geyser’s defense attorney, and even the Waukesha County Deputy District Attorney handling the case–allowed the now 23-year old to be released to a group home and return to society at large. It also came about a month after Geyser escaped from that group home, cut off her electronic monitoring bracelet, and ran off with a man–only to be found sleeping on the ground behind a gas station in Illinois a few days later.
For those new to Wisconsin true crime, Geyser was 12-years old in May of 2014 when she lured a classmate into a secluded wooded area and stabbed her 19-times, leaving her to die. The incident gained national attention, not so much because of the gruesome nature of the crime or the ages of those involved, but rather because Geyser and her accomplice–Anissa Weier–claimed to have done it to please an on-line fictional “creepypasta” character known as “Slender Man”. Both Geyser and Weier would be charged as adults, and both would claim defenses of insanity.
Prior to the trial, Geyser claimed to see fictional characters in real life, heard voices telling her to do things, and had imaginary friends. Her mother claimed that she considered her daughter to be “floridly psychotic”–but never sought treatment for her. Her father was already on disability for schizophrenia, and also did not seek treatment for his daughter. As the case progressed, Geyser started making accusations that she was molested by her parents repeatedly–claims that were never substantiated. She eventually accepted a plea deal, where she would avoid going to trial, would be found guilty of Attempted First Degree Intentional Homicide, but not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and then committed for forty years.
After that commitment, Geyser started making claims in 2022 that she had actually “faked” her descriptions of hearing voices and seeing ghosts–and that she may not be schizophrenic after all. That led to a motion for conditional release in April of 2024–which was denied, in part, because doctors were concerned about the validity those claims.
But just nine short months later, those same experts were back in the same court testifying that Geyser had stopped her faking claims, and that they were no longer concerned about such behavior. They all assured the judge that with proper medicine, continued therapy, and limited supervision that it would be no problem for Geyser to be out in society. They even noted that she had been going to Starbucks in Oshkosh (with an escort) and did not act in an unnatural way.
When her attorney informed the court that Geyser was now identifying as transgender and would be transitioning to being a man, that was not acknowledged by the doctors as any reason to question her mental condition. Nor were they concerned about reports provided by Winnebago Mental Health Institute staff that Geyser was having correspondence with a man outside the facility that was “violent” in wording–or that she was reading other materials described as featuring “sexual sadism and murder”. The judge still trusted that evaluation by the experts and ordered Geyser to be released to a group home setting.
Geyser would have been on the streets as early as May or June, but finding a suitable residence for her was a challenge. A facility she wanted to go to in the Milwaukee area was too close to where the stabbing victim lives, so that was thrown out. A group home in Manitowoc rejected her placement because they don’t deal with such violent offenders, and those living around it found out about it and got very upset. Eventually, a Madison facility welcomed Geyser with open arms.
By the accounts of those involved, it didn’t take long for Geyser to show that she was not going to live under the restrictions placed upon her as a condition of her release. She started attending Good Shepherd Church–a parish that features more rainbows on its website than crosses, and heralds its progressivism more than its liturgical basis for being. It was there, that she met Chad Mecca–another identified transgender person, is 20-years older than her, and has a restraining order against him with domestic violence charges–and formed a tight bond. A bond so tight that she allowed Mecca to sneak into her room at night through her window when she was not allowed to have visitors. They also hatched a plan to have Geyser cut off her monitoring bracelet and escape with him with the goal of making it to Nashville, Tennessee. They managed to make it just south of Chicago when they ran out of money to get bus or train tickets and slept outside the gas station.
At this point I need to state that I am a long-time, strong supporter of involuntary commitment of the mentally ill. It’s a policy that was practiced for a long time in this country. A time when there were fewer people wandering around our streets talking to themselves and yelling at others. School shootings weren’t even a thing, and you didn’t hear a lot of stories about people getting pushed into oncoming subway trains or being set on fire while using public transport.
That all changed in the 1970’s when the book and subsequent movie One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest were released. Based on that one account, Americans became convinced that mental institutions were torture chambers where perfectly healthy people were being held against their wills. After that, we saw the rise of psychotropic drug development. Medicines that doctors believed could control the way the brain operates, moderate emotions or moods, and even combat homicidal urges. In recent years, we have seen the rise of “therapy culture”, where people are encouraged to “talk about their feelings”, self-diagnose mental health issues, demand special accommodation in society, and to ask their doctor if even more medicines are “right for them”.
But there is one major problem with this approach, it almost always depends on the mentally ill subject to maintain the prescribed treatments when left to their own devices. The drugs prescribed for mental issues often come with side effects that deter their regular use–like a decline in sexual desire or enjoyment–so the patients just stop taking them. Others prefer “self-medication”, believing that the high of marijuana or other illicit drug use is “curing” their condition, rather than just covering it up. And there are some that just plain don’t care what they do, how they act, and what consequences it has on others.
Having just been to Nashville this fall, Geyser and Mecca would have had no problem “fitting in” with that city’s homeless population. There were plenty of wanderers on the downtown sidewalks, people yelling at each other outside our hotel early every morning, and encampments set up under all of the interstate overpasses. I’m just not sure how many attempted murderers thinking that fictional characters are encouraging them to kill others to please him.
One of those doctors testifying at Geyser’s successful release hearing last January stated there was “nothing more that Winnebago Mental Health can do for her”. But after she proved, again, to be a danger to society, my hope is that those experts realize there likely if there is nothing more they can do for Morgan Geyser, then she should still stay there, rather than wandering around amongst the rest of us.
