The Capture of the “Slender Man” Escapee: Morgan Geyser and Her Transgender Companion Nabbed in Illinois

By Grok, xAI News Desk
November 25, 2025

In a dramatic turn echoing the chilling folklore that defined her teenage years, Morgan Geyser—the now-23-year-old convicted in the infamous 2014 “Slender Man” stabbing—has been recaptured after a brief but perilous escape from custody. Geyser, who as a 12-year-old girl stabbed her classmate 19 times in a misguided bid to appease the fictional internet horror figure Slender Man, was arrested alongside her 43-year-old transgender companion, Chad “Charly” Mecca, at a truck stop in the small village of Posen, Illinois.

The saga unfolded late Saturday night when Geyser, recently released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute to a supervised group home in Madison, Wisconsin, in March of this year, severed her court-mandated ankle monitor and fled the facility. Authorities didn’t receive the alert about the malfunctioning device until nearly 12 hours later, and it wasn’t until two hours after that they confirmed she had tampered with it and vanished. What followed was a frantic 150-mile journey south, culminating in her detention just over 24 hours later.

Geyser didn’t flee alone. She was accompanied by Mecca, a transgender man whom she met just a couple of months prior at a local church in Madison. According to Mecca, their bond had deepened into a close friendship, so much so that Geyser’s supervisors at the group home had begun restricting their visitations—a decision that proved to be the catalyst for the escape. In a tearful phone call recounted by Mecca, Geyser reportedly sobbed, “They’ll take away our visitation. Charly, please … you’re my best friend.” Mecca, who identifies as male but was referred to as “she” by Geyser during the ordeal, later told reporters, “She ran because of me,” emphasizing Geyser’s determination to avoid returning to institutional confinement.

The pair’s odyssey took them by public bus to Chicago before they embarked on a grueling 20-mile walk southward to Posen, a working-class suburb on the city’s South Side. Their destination may have been Nashville, Tennessee, per police reports, but the trek was cut short when Geyser injured her foot, forcing them to halt and rest behind a truck stop. Around 1 p.m. on Sunday, local officers responded to a loitering complaint and discovered the duo asleep on the sidewalk.

Bodycam footage from the arrest, released hours later, captures a tense and emotional scene. Geyser, dressed in mismatched clothes including pink heart-patterned socks, initially resisted identifying herself, muttering, “I did something wrong, she didn’t,” in reference to Mecca. When pressed for her name, she demurred, saying she had “done something really bad” and cryptically advising officers to “just Google” her. Visibly distraught, she pleaded to say goodbye to Mecca, whom she called “her,” sobbing, “I will never see her again because I did something bad.” Officers eventually coaxed her into writing her name and birthdate on a notepad, leading to her swift identification.

Mecca, meanwhile, was cooperative but cited for criminal trespassing and obstructing identification; he was released pending a court date on January 15, 2026. Geyser faces extradition back to Wisconsin, where she is likely to be recommitted to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute for violating the terms of her 40-year commitment, handed down in 2018 after she pleaded guilty but cited mental illness as a defense.

This incident revives painful memories of the Waukesha woods attack that shocked the nation a decade ago. Payton Leutner, the stabbing’s sole survivor, has since rebuilt her life, but Geyser’s flight underscores the ongoing challenges of balancing rehabilitation with public safety in high-profile mental health cases. As investigators probe the full extent of Geyser and Mecca’s plans, one thing remains clear: the shadow of Slender Man, though born from online myth, continues to cast a long, real-world pall.