By TODD RICHMOND and CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press

A Wisconsin woman will be released from a mental hospital more than a decade after she nearly stabbed a classmate to death to please the horror character Slender Man, a judge decided Thursday.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Scott Wagner signed off on the conditional plan to release Morgan Geyser, now 22, from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital where she has spent the last seven years. Another judge had ruled in January she could be released after three experts testified she has made progress battling mental illness.

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.

Related Articles

Puerto Rico bans hormone therapy and gender surgery for transgender youth

Wall Street hangs near its record as PepsiCo and United Airlines offset drops for health care stocks

1.4M of the nation’s poorest renters risk losing their homes with Trump’s proposed HUD time limit

Fewer Americans file for jobless benefits last week as layoffs remain at historically healthy levels

Retail sales up a surprising 0.6% in June after a May pullback by consumers

Details of the plan and the timing of her release were not shared in court, and Geyser’s attorney did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.

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. 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. The following year, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren had committed her to a psychiatric hospital for 40 years.

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 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.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s governor has signed a bill that prohibits hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from activists in the largely conservative U.S. territory.

The law approved late Wednesday applies to those younger than 21 and calls for 15 years in prison for any violators, as well as a $50,000 penalty and the revocation of all licenses and permits of medical staff.

Related Articles

1.4M of the nation’s poorest renters risk losing their homes with Trump’s proposed HUD time limit

Fewer Americans file for jobless benefits last week as layoffs remain at historically healthy levels

Retail sales up a surprising 0.6% in June after a May pullback by consumers

Army veteran and US citizen arrested in California immigration raid warns it could happen to anyone

Today in History: July 17, Disneyland’s opening day

“Minors, having not yet reached the necessary emotional, cognitive, and physical maturity, are particularly vulnerable to making decisions that can have irreversible consequences,” the law reads. “Therefore, it is the State’s duty to ensure their comprehensive well-being.”

It also states that public funds cannot be used for such purposes.

Puerto Rico’s LGBTQ+ Federation criticized the law in a statement Thursday.

“Let there be no doubt: We will go to court to challenge the constitutionality of the governor’s cruel and inhumane signing of a law that criminalizes health professionals for caring for trans minors,” said Justin Jesús Santiago, the federation’s director.

Puerto Rico associations that represent physicians, surgeons, psychologists, social workers, lawyers and other professionals had urged the governor to veto the bill.

Roughly two dozen U.S. states have similar laws.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Two days of heavy downpours in South Korea have killed at least four people and forced more than 1,300 others to evacuate, officials said Thursday.

One person was killed when their car was buried by soil and concrete after a retaining wall of an overpass collapsed in Osan, just south of Seoul, during heavy rain on Wednesday, the Interior and Safety Ministry said.

A village area is flooded due to heavy rain in Yesan, South Korea, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (Yoo Hyung-seok/Yonhap via AP)

Three other people were separately found dead Thursday in a submerged car, a stream, and a flooded basement in southern regions. Ministry officials said they were still investigating whether those deaths were directly caused by heavy rain.

The heavy rain has forced the evacuation of 1,382 people from their homes, the ministry said in a statement, adding 46 flights have been cancelled.

Parts of southern South Chungcheong province have received up to 16.5 inches of rain since Wednesday, according to the ministry.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is hanging near its records on Thursday following some better-than-expected updates on the economy and a mixed set of profit reports from big U.S. companies.

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in early trading and just a bit below its all-time high set a week before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 105 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was adding 0.1% to its record set the day before.

Related Articles

1.4M of the nation’s poorest renters risk losing their homes with Trump’s proposed HUD time limit

Fewer Americans file for jobless benefits last week as layoffs remain at historically healthy levels

Retail sales up a surprising 0.6% in June after a May pullback by consumers

Army veteran and US citizen arrested in California immigration raid warns it could happen to anyone

Today in History: July 17, Disneyland’s opening day

Trading was calmer than Wednesday’s, when President Donald Trump jolted financial markets by saying he had discussed the “concept” of firing the chair of the Federal Reserve but was unlikely to do so. Such a move could help Wall Street get the lower interest rates it loves but would also risk a weakened Fed unable to make the unpopular moves needed to keep inflation under control.

PepsiCo jumped 6.6% after delivering revenue and profit that topped Wall Street’s expectations. The drink and snack giant stood by its financial forecasts given in April, which projected lower full-year profit than previous forecasts due to increased costs from tariffs and a pullback in consumer spending.

United Airlines flew 6.4% higher after reporting a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said it’s seen an acceleration in demand from customers that began in early July, and it’s expecting less uncertainty about the economy to hurt its business in the second half of this year.

Lucid Group’s stock surged 25.3% after it said Uber is aiming to use 20,000 or more of its vehicles over six years in a robotaxi program. Using an autonomy system by Nuro, it expects to launch “later next year in a major US city.”

Uber, which plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Lucid and Nuro, saw its stock edge down by 0.1%.

A strong profit report from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. helped tech stocks, and its net income soared nearly 61% in the last quarter from a year earlier. The chip maker said it’s seeing strong demand from artificial-intelligence and other customers, and its stock that trades in the United States rose 2.2%.

On the losing side of Wall Street was Abbott, which fell 6.1% despite delivering results for the latest quarter that edged past analysts’ expectations. The health care company cut the top end of its forecasted range for revenue growth over 2025.

Elevance Health dropped 9.2% after reporting a weaker profit than analysts expected. It cut its forecast for profit in 2025 because of rising medical cost trends in its Affordable Care Act business, along with other factors.

In the bond market, Treasury yields were mixed following several better-than-expected reports on the economy.

One said that shoppers upped their spending at U.S. retailers by more last month than economists expected. Such spending, along with a relatively solid jobs market, has helped keep the U.S. economy out of a recession.

A separate report said that fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, which could be a signal of limited layoffs. A third suggested unexpectedly strong growth in manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region.

Such solid data could keep the Federal Reserve on pause when it comes to interest rates. The Fed has been keeping rates steady this year, after cutting them at the end of last year. The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, has been insisting that he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move.

That’s because while lower interest rates could goose the economy and prices for investments, they would also give inflation more fuel when prices may already be starting to feel the upward effects of tariffs.

Thursday’s strong economic helped push the two-year Treasury yield, which closely tracks expectations for the Fed, up to 3.89% from 3.88% late Wednesday.

Longer-term Treasury yields, though, eased a bit, and the 10-year yield edged down to 4.44% from 4.46%. The Fed has less influence over these yields, where investors in the bond market carry more sway.

Bond investors had briefly driven longer-term yields higher on Wednesday, when fears were high that Trump may fire Powell. The president has been angrily calling for Powell to cut interest rates, and a less independent Fed may end up keeping short-term rates low in the near term and allowing inflation to run higher in future years. Longer-term yields then relaxed after Trump said he was unlikely to fire Powell.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.