The 'Slender Man' stabber made a close new friend — then ran away so they could be together

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

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 that she was worried about being separated from 43-year-old Chad Mecca, who was shaking from the cold and occasionally struggling to speak. The pair evaded questions about their identity as Geyser told officers that she had done “something really wrong.”

Geyser, 23, later “suggested that officers could ‘just Google’ her name” to find out who she is, according to the Posen Police Department incident report.

An internet search would reveal that 11 years prior, 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 their other friend, Anissa Weier, watched. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

The case spent years making national headlines and spawning documentaries as Geyser endured a prolonged court battle. A jury found that Geyser was mentally ill after her attorneys presented expert testimony that the girl was suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time of the stabbing. In an effort to avoid prison, Geyser agreed to a plea deal in 2017 that would have her institutionalized instead.