(NewsNation) — Police in Wisconsin said more than eight hours passed before they were notified a former student convicted of stabbing a classmate in the infamous “Slender Man” case had cut off an electronic monitoring bracelet and fled a group home Saturday.
Local authorities did not alert the public until Sunday morning that Morgan Geyser, 23, was missing. Police in Posen, Illinois, captured Geyser around 10:30 p.m. local time Sunday, almost 24 hours after the escape.
The Madison Police Department later offered a timeline to explain the gap. They said:
- Department of Corrections officials received an alert around 9:30 p.m. Saturday that Geyser’s GPS monitor was malfunctioning. This was about an hour after Geyser was last seen with an adult acquaintance.
- DOC officials made contact with the facility around 11:30 p.m., and shortly after, staff said Geyser was not present and had removed the monitoring device. Although the DOC issued an “apprehension request” for Geyser around midnight, Madison police were not notified.
- Madison police learned about Geyser’s disappearance around 8 a.m. Sunday, shortly after someone from the group home called 9-1-1.
“Sometimes there can be these communication breakdowns, and there was a huge communication breakdown between the DOC and the police,” Jennifer Coffindaffer, a former FBI special agent, told “NewsNation Prime” on Sunday. “That shouldn’t happen, but I can tell you it happens, especially when they get information in the night.”
The hours lost after Geyser’s escape could have been “crucial” in tracking down the escapee, added Coffindaffer, a law and justice contributor for NewsNation.
Geyser and an accomplice, Anissa Weier, were 12 years old when they lured classmate Payton Leutner to a wooded area in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times as Weier egged her on. The girls later told police their actions sprang from their fixation on Slender Man, an internet horror character.
Geyser was placed in a group home this year after being granted conditional release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, then sent to a psychiatric institute in 2018 after pleading guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in a deal with prosecutors to avoid prison.
Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide. She was sent to a psychiatric center and granted release in 2021.
Leutner survived the attack. On Sunday, her family released a statement saying she was safe and in contact with authorities.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.