Warning: This article mentions a number of potentially triggering topics, including parental abuse, relationship abuse, and sexual assault, as well as a description of a violent murder. Reader discretion is advised.
According to a new report by TMZ, Gypsy Rose Blanchard is set to be released from prison by the end of this year. In July 2015, Blanchard was sentenced to ten years in prison, pleading guilty to second-degree murder of her mother, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. According to the Missouri Department of Corrections, the now 32-year-old is due to be released on parole on Dec. 28, 2023.
Gypsy Rose’s boyfriend at the time of the murder, Nicholas Godejohn, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On trial in 2015, Godejohn pled guilty to stabbing DeeDee to death, under the motivation of helping his girlfriend escape from her mother’s abuse.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard (born 1991) was primarily raised by her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard (née Pitre), having separated from her father, Rod Blanchard, prior to her birth. Although seemingly healthy at birth, Dee Dee claimed that her daughter suffered from several different medical conditions, starting with infant sleep apnea at three months old.
Later, these conditions would vary in their claims to family members, friends, and medical professionals. According to those who came into contact with Blanchard, Dee Dee suffered from various conditions, including muscular dystrophy, cancer, brain damage, and more. Investigations collected after Dee Dee’s death, Gypsy Rose was subject to a number of likely unnecessary surgical procedures due to her mother misleading doctors about her condition. Typically, Gypsy Rose had little to no hair, was unusually thin, and was transported in a wheelchair by her mother.
Posthumously, it is widely believed by both peers and psychologists that Dee Dee suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP), sometimes referred to as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA). The psychological condition is when a caregiver, usually a parent, makes a number of false claims regarding the health of those they are caring for, to the point of abusive behavior. Those with the condition are commonly found to impose harm on the person they are caring for, such as poisoning or injuring the other party, in order to give the impression of the claimed medical condition.
In addition, Dee Dee Blanchard’s family claims that she committed a number of crimes consistent with factitious behavior, including writing bad checks and being deliberately unclear about the state of her daughter’s health, resulting in the family, Gypsy Rose’s father in particular, seldom spending time with her. The family also claims that Dee Dee routinely poisoned her stepmother’s food with weed killer, causing health problems that seemingly cleared up after her stepdaughter no longer cared for her.
Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose were well-known in their community of Springfield, Missouri, and were regularly featured on local news reports. Many fundraisers were held to pay for Gypsy Rose’s care, as well as benefitting from major charities such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Those close to the duo reported various different accounts of what Dee Dee had told them about Gypsy Rose, including her age, health conditions, and relationship with her father, often said to have physically abused Gypsy Rose.
As Gypsy Rose later revealed in her interview in the documentary Mommie Dead and Dearest, she was subject to physical and emotional abuse by her mother. When Gypsy Rose said something to another party not consistent with her mother’s claims surrounding her health, Dee Dee would squeeze her daughter to the point of pain. Dee Dee would often isolate her from others as a punishment for bad behavior, including physically tying her to her bed.
In 2012, then-21-year-old Gypsy Rose began an online relationship with Nicholas Godejohn, a relationship that quickly became both romantic and sexual. Gypsy Rose confided in Godejohn, who had a criminal record and a recorded history of mental health conditions, about her mother’s abuse. When Dee Dee found out about the relationship, she forbade her daughter from contacting him again, destroying her computer in the process. Nonetheless, the pair found alternative methods of contacting one another, eventually planning her mother’s murder.
In June 2015, as arranged by the two, Nicholas Godejohn entered the Blanchard family home after Dee Dee had fallen asleep, given access by Gypsy Rose. According to a later investigation, Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee 17 times in the back before he and Gypsy Rose left town with $4,000 of Dee Dee’s money. In the process, Godejohn wrote a status on Dee Dee’s Facebook, declaring that the “bitch is dead” and he had also raped her daughter. Alarmed, Dee Dee’s friends alerted the police to check on the home, where Dee Dee’s body was discovered and Gypsy Rose was missing. With the information presented about Gypsy Rose’s health throughout her life, the community assumed Gypsy Rose had also been killed in the act.
Using an IP address on Dee Dee’s Facebook status, Gypsy Rose and Godejohn were quickly found in Godejohn’s hometown of Big Bend, Wisconsin, and were soon arrested and charged with Dee Dee’s murder. After a lengthy trial and investigation of Gypsy Rose’s mental and physical capabilities, Blanchard and Godejohn were sentenced to ten years and a life sentence in prison, respectively.
Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee’s relationship, as well as Dee Dee’s murder, have been subject to significant public interest. The murder is one of few known instances of a caregiver being murdered by the person in their care. The family’s years of goodwill within the local community, as well as Dee Dee’s ability to commit fraud over false perceptions of her daughter’s condition, was met with shock from those who knew them, as well as a number of investigations, particularly in journalism and the medical field. The story became more prominent through the Emmy Award-winning dramatization, The Act.