Judge OKs release plan for woman who stabbed a classmate to please Slender Man

By TODD RICHMOND and CHRISTINE FERNANDO Associated Press A Wisconsin woman will be distributed from a mental hospital more than a decade after she nearly stabbed a classmate to death to please the horror character Slender Man a judge decided Thursday Waukesha County Circuit Judge Scott Wagner signed off on the conditional plan to release Morgan Geyser now from the Winnebago Mental Robustness Institute a psychiatric hospital where she has spent the last seven years Another judge had ruled in January she could be distributed after three experts testified she has made progress battling mental illness In April prosecutors objected to Geyser s original conditional release plan after the mother of the victim Payton Leutner expressed concern that Geyser s group home was located eight miles away from Leutner The judge then ordered the Department of Soundness Services to draft a new plan which was approved Thursday Related Articles Puerto Rico bans hormone therapy and gender surgery for transgender youth Wall Street hangs near its record as PepsiCo and United Airlines offset drops for soundness care stocks M of the nation s poorest renters vulnerability losing their homes with Trump s proposed HUD time limit Fewer Americans file for jobless benefits last week as layoffs remain at historically healthy levels Retail sales up a surprising in June after a May pullback by consumers Details of the plan and the timing of her release were not shared in court and Geyser s attorney did not right away respond to phone messages seeking comment Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier lured Leutner to a Waukesha park after a sleepover in Geyser stabbed Leutner times while Weier egged her on All three girls were years old at the time Geyser and Weier fled after the attack but were arrested as they were walking on Interstate They reported investigators they attacked Leutner to earn the right to be Slender Man s servants and feared he would hurt their families if they didn t follow through They had planned to walk to Slender Man s mansion in northern Wisconsin after the attack they mentioned Leutner barely survived Geyser ultimately pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in but claimed she wasn t responsible because she was mentally ill The following year Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren had committed her to a psychiatric hospital for years State robustness personnel argued in March that Geyser couldn t be trusted after learning that she hadn t advised her therapists that she had read a novel about murder and black territory organ sales They also alleged she had been communicating with a man who collects murder memorabilia and sent him her own sketch of a decapitated body and a postcard saying she wants to be intimate with him Cotton countered that Geyser only read what the facility allowed and staff knew she had been communicating with the collector He added that she stopped talking to the man in after she discovered he was selling things she sent him Bohren concluded that Geyser wasn t trying to hide anything and ordered state healthcare functionaries to continue advancing a release plan Wagner took over Geyser s release request after Bohren retired this past April Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in but like Geyser claimed she was mentally ill and not responsible for her actions She was committed to years in a mental hospital but was granted release in after agreeing to live with her father and to wear a GPS monitor The event has drawn widespread attention in part because of the girls fascination with the Slender Man character Slender Man was created online by Eric Knudson in as a mysterious specter photo-edited into everyday images of children at play He s typically depicted as a slim spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face He has grown into a popular boogeyman and has appeared in video games online stories and a movie