By TODD RICHMOND and CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press

A judge has approved a conditional release plan for a Wisconsin woman who nearly killed her classmate years ago to please the fictional horror character Slender Man.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Scott Wagner signed off Thursday on the plan to release Morgan Geyser, now 22, from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital where she has spent the last seven years.

In April, prosecutors objected to Geyser’s original conditional release plan after the mother of the victim, Payton Leutner, expressed concern that Geyser’s group home was located eight miles away from Leutner. The judge then ordered the Department of Health Services to draft a new plan, which was approved Thursday. Details of the plan were not shared in court.

Geyser and her friend, Anissa Weier, lured Leutner to a Waukesha park after a sleepover in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier egged her on. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.

Geyser and Weier fled after the attack but were arrested as they were walking on Interstate 94. They told investigators they attacked Leutner to earn the right to be Slender Man’s servants and feared he would hurt their families if they didn’t follow through. They had planned to walk to Slender Man’s mansion in northern Wisconsin after the attack, they said.

Leutner barely survived the attack. Geyser ultimately pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in 2017 but claimed she wasn’t responsible because she was mentally ill. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren committed her to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years in 2018, but the judge ruled in January she could be released after three experts testified she has made progress battling mental illness.

State health officials argued in March that Geyser couldn’t be trusted after learning that she hadn’t told her therapists that she had read a novel about murder and black market organ sales. They also alleged that she had been communicating with a man who collects murder memorabilia and sent him her own sketch of a decapitated body and a postcard saying she wants to be intimate with him.

Cotton countered that Geyser only read what the facility allowed, and staff knew she had been communicating with the collector. He added that she stopped talking to the man in 2024 after she discovered he was selling things she sent him. Bohren concluded that Geyser wasn’t trying to hide anything and ordered state health officials to continue developing a release plan.

Wagner took over Geyser’s release request after Bohren retired this past April.

Weier pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide with a dangerous weapon in 2017, but like Geyser claimed she was mentally ill and not responsible for her actions. She was committed to 25 years in a mental hospital but was granted release in 2021 after agreeing to live with her father and to wear a GPS monitor.

The case has drawn widespread attention in part because of the girls’ fascination with the Slender Man character. Slender Man was created online by Eric Knudson in 2009 as a mysterious specter photo-edited into everyday images of children at play. He’s typically depicted as a slim, spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face. He has grown into a popular boogeyman and has appeared in video games, online stories and a 2018 movie.