Slender Man attacker denied probation and sent back to psychiatric ward as judge calls her crime ‘brutal, bloody, gory’

A woman who has spent a decade in a mental health institution for the attempted murder of her friend in Wisconsin, to please the fictional character “Slender Man”, had her petition for early release denied on Thursday.

Following a two-day hearing, Judge Michael O. Bohren ruled that the 21-year-old still poses a “significant risk” to herself and others, despite claims that she has made improvements while at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute.

“This isn’t just a case where somebody drove a car into another car and drove off. This is a personal, brutal attack on another person. This is hands-on, if you will. It is bloody, it’s gory,” the judge said as he wrapped up the hearing.

“That kind of dangerous conduct is what the risk is. Do we know if someone will repeat it? We don’t know. But what this court’s responsibility is, is to ensure that the risk is lessened.”

Geyser, who was 12 when she stabbed fellow sixth grader Payton Leutner 19 times on 21 May 2014, was asking for conditional release, meaning she would have faced supervision and have been subject to an ongoing treatment plan.

At the time of the attack, Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier believed they needed to kill Ms Leutner to protect themselves and their families from the fictional character.

Weier was let out on conditional release in 2021, with her GPS tracker removed in September 2023.

Over the past two days, doctors who have treated and worked with Geyser spoke of their interactions with her over the best part of a decade.

Two of those witnesses, Dr Deborah Collins and Dr Brooke Laudbohm, explained that in recent years, Geyser had declared she had faked her psychotic symptoms, something the doctor and others said could not be true.

“She’s observed 24 hours a day, so it’s questionable that she would have been able to malinger and pull the wool over the eyes of so many mental health professionals,” Dr Collins told the court on Wednesday.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.