Pure chaos erupts as the ‘Slender Man’ knife attacker escapes, and officials admit they had no idea she was gone for 10 hours

The woman convicted in the infamous “Slender Man” stabbing was caught in Illinois after a bizarre encounter with police, ending her brief escape from a Wisconsin group home, as reported by NBC News. Morgan Geyser, 22, was apprehended in the town of Posen after officers were called to a truck stop regarding two people loitering behind the building, the Madison Police Department confirmed.

When officers arrived at Thornton’s Truck Stop, they found Geyser and an unidentified male sleeping on the sidewalk. According to the Posen Police Department, Geyser repeatedly refused to give her real name, offering a false one instead.

After continued questioning, she finally admitted that she didn’t want to tell the officers who she was because she had “done something really bad,” suggesting they could “just Google” her name. This eerily reminds me of one recent case where a jury reviewed Google search history to pin a perpetrator.

Officials admitted they had no idea Geyser was missing for nearly 10 hours

Once her identity was confirmed, police realized they had apprehended the woman who had cut off her Department of Corrections monitoring bracelet and vanished from her group home Saturday night. What makes this situation truly shocking isn’t just the escape, but the massive failure in communication that allowed her to be gone for so long.

The Madison Police Department confirmed that the first time they were made aware of Geyser’s status was at 7:58 AM Sunday, when officers were dispatched to the group home based on a 911 call reporting a missing person.

Geyser was last seen at the group home around 8:15 PM Saturday. Just over an hour later, around 9:30 PM, the Department of Corrections (DOC) was alerted that her location tracker had malfunctioned. It took the DOC two hours, until 11:30 PM, to reach out to the group home. Staff members at the home told corrections officials at 11:35 PM that Geyser was definitely not there and had removed her tracking device.

The DOC distributed a request to other agencies that she should be apprehended if spotted around midnight. However, the Madison Police Department said they never received that request for law enforcement apprehension. You can only imagine the anxiety this must have caused for the community, especially since the police weren’t even brought into the loop until Sunday morning. It’s arguably better than jurisdictional overreach, but still something we won’t like to see repeated.

Geyser’s escape brings back memories of the brutal 2014 attack that shocked the nation. Geyser and another girl lured their classmate, Payton Leutner, to a suburban Milwaukee park where Geyser stabbed the victim. All three girls were 12 years old at the time, and Leutner barely survived the attack. Defense lawyers explained that Geyser and her accomplice believed they had to attack the victim or risk having the fictional boogeyman, Slender Man, come after their families.

Geyser appeared in court on Monday and was ordered to be detained at Cook County Jail. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office confirmed that an out-of-state warrant from Wisconsin was executed, and she is scheduled for her next court date on Tuesday in Chicago.

It’s a relief that she’s back in custody, but the massive gaps in communication between the DOC and local police are something we absolutely need to look at moving forward.