Second Slender Man stabbing defendant committed for 40 years

WAUKESHA, Wis. — A 15-year-old girl was ordered committed Thursday to 40 years of mental health treatment and monitoring for the shocking crime she committed as a pre-teen, and for the foreseeable future she will remain at a secure state hospital in Wisconsin.

Morgan Geyser received the maximum commitment term after Circuit Judge Michael Bohren heard from experts who suggested the teen could receive more effective treatment for her schizophrenia somewhere other than the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she is housed solely with adults who have committed crimes.

"We can't forget what actually happened," Bohren said. "It was a premeditated murder," that, but for serendipity, didn't result in death.

Geyser was 12 when she and Anissa Weier plotted to kill their sixth-grade classmate Payton Leutner in 2014 under a delusion they needed to carry out the act to appease the Internet character Slender Man.

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Leutner was stabbed 19 times and left to die in a Waukesha park the morning after all three girls had a sleepover to celebrate Geyser's 12th birthday. She managed to crawl to a path where a passing bicyclist found her. She endured several surgeries but recovered enough from the May 31, 2014, attack to start seventh grade the next fall.

After lengthy but unsuccessful efforts to have their cases transferred to juvenile court, both girls struck plea deals in which they were convicted but found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

Forty years is the maximum prison term for Geyer's underlying offense — attempted first-degree intentional homicide, as party to a crime — and so also the limit of her commitment.

But being committed to the custody of the Department of Health Services does not mean a subject must remain in a secure hospital the entire time. Geyser could petition for conditional release every six months, if treating staff support the move. But Bohren — or a successor judge — would have to approve.

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Geyser has already been at Winnebago for more than a year, after she was committed for mental health treatment by a different judge in a separate civil proceeding. Within several weeks of her arrest, she had been diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia but wasn't able to get treatment at the West Bend juvenile jail where she was being held on $500,000 bail.

Jessica Andrews, the director of forensic services at Winnebago, testified Thursday that if Geyser were there only on what's known as a Chapter 51 commitment, or had been found not guilty by reason of mental disease as a juvenile, she could be housed with other teens at Winnebago. Because she was prosecuted as an adult, she can't.

Andrews said that since fall, after her psychotropic medications were adjusted in the spring, Geyser has not shown any symptoms of psychosis and is open about treatment, never resists taking her medication and has never been violent or aggressive.

Geyser's family supports all treatment, Andrews said, and visits her two or three times a week. Geyser gets educational instruction, can make phone calls and write letters, but has no internet access.

Kenneth Robbins, a psychiatrist who has seen Geyser four times, testified by video from California that she has made dramatic progress in treatment, has become insightful and wants to continue her medications to reduce the risk she might ever become dangerously psychotic again.

He said socializing with peers would be an important part of her treatment now, but said that should occur, at least for now, in some a secured setting.

A psychologist who testified for the state said she could not support conditional release. Brooke Lundbohm said in October that Geyser couldn't complete their interview because she broke down as Lundbohm challenged her assumptions about how she could live outside the hospital. Lundbohm said Geyser thought she could live with her family and trust her mother to recognize any problems.

Lundbohm also said Geyser told her she had heard as recently as a few weeks earlier the voice of Maggie, a hallucinatory voice she had been hearing for years.

September 2016: 2nd girl pleads insanity in Slender Man stabbing case

September 2016: 2nd girl in Slender Man case to plead insanity

In December, Bohren imposed the maximum commitment length of 25 years on Weier, whom a jury had found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. As part of a deal with prosecutors, Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide.

She also agreed that if the jury accepted her defense, she would not seek conditional release from Winnebago for at least three years.

Before Weier's sentencing, Leutner's mother, Stacie, submitted a written statement about the crime's enduring impact on their family. It indicated that Payton wanted the defendants to get help

The case drew immediate worldwide attention and became the subject of an HBO documentary Beware the Slenderman. The Leutner family gave exclusive access to their story to ABC, which aired two episodes of 20/20 about the case and plans a third on Friday night, after Geyser's sentencing.

This time, the defendants' mothers, one of several forensic psychologists involved in the case, a defense attorney and one of the prosecutors will all appear, many interviewed by host David Muir, anchor of ABC World News Tonight.

Follow Bruce Vielmetti on Twitter: @ProofHearsay

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