Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a Missouri teen convicted of orchestrating her medically abusive mom’s murder in 2015, is set to be freed from prison tomorrow after serving eight years behind bars.
Blanchard, now 32, was the subject of a bizarre media frenzy that spawned numerous documentaries and a Hulu series, after she ordered her online boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to stab her mother Claudine ‘Dee Dee’ Blanchard, 48, to death.
The teen is believed to have suffered one of the highest profile cases of Munchausen syndrome, where her mom’s insistence that she suffered various made-up illnesses led her to undergo painful surgeries and take medications with adverse side effects.
It was also claimed her mother kept her imprisoned and malnourished, and after meeting Godejohn online in 2012, she confided in him about her mother’s coercive and sadistic control over her, and they began to form a plan to kill.
Claudine ‘Dee Dee’ Blanchard (right) convinced her daughter Gypsy Rose (left) and others that she was suffering a variety of illnesses including leukemia and muscular dystrophy. The abuse continued for years, until Gypsy Rose ordered her mother’s murder to ‘escape’
Gypsy Rose (pictured in recent years behind bars) endured years of torment as her mother kept her confined to a wheelchair and forced her to undergo painful surgeries and take medications with adverse side effects
Gypsy Rose (left) was handed a ten-year sentence for plotting to kill her mother, while her online boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn (right) was given a life sentence
Dee Dee was found on the morning of June 14, 2015, after being stabbed 17 times in her sleep by Godejohn, who is currently serving life in prison without parole.
She had built a public persona as a doting caregiver for her chronically sick daughter, making a number of local media appearances while enjoying perks like charity-funded trips to concerts and Disney World.
Her death was only discovered after a Facebook account she shared with Gypsy Rose posted a chilling statement: ‘That b**** is dead!’
The brutal murder shocked the local community and led to a wave of speculation over what led to it, with Green County Sheriff Jim Arnott telling reporters shortly after investigations began that ‘things are not always as they appear.’
But the twisted saga that led to the slaying began two decades prior, when Gypsy was only three months old, and her mother told doctors the infant was having trouble breathing.
She was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given breathing apparatus, the first of many instances where Dee Dee falsified her daughter’s ailments.
Because of her mother’s unyielding focus on Gypsy’s non-existent illnesses, she was forced to use a wheelchair from a young age, and Dee Dee told her family the child was suffering a chromosomal disorder that limited her movement.
In the subsequent years, the list of diseases and illnesses that Dee Dee told people her daughter suffered from included leukemia and muscular dystrophy, as she insisted to anyone speaking to her to remember she had the ‘mind of a seven-year-old.’
She would shave Gypsy Rose’s head to mimic the effects of leukemia, force her to use a wheelchair 24/7, sleep with a breathing machine, and even ordered the removal of her salivary glands.
Dee Dee once conned doctors into removing Gypsy Rose’s salivary glands, and was accused of a number of depraved lies including shaving her head to make it seem she was suffering from leukemia
Dee Dee is believed to have suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, as she led people to believe that her daughter was terminally ill to enjoy praise as a doting mother along with perks such as charity-funded tickets to concerts and Disney World
The twisted story was told in Hulu series ‘The Act’, with Dee Dee portrayed by Patricia Arquette (left) and Gypsy Rose played by Joey King (right)
It was believed Dee Dee thrived on control over her daughter, and she had previously been ostracized from her family due to suspicions she killer her mother by withholding food.
While many of Gypsy Rose’s disorders were entirely fictitious, Gypsy Rose’s frequent hospital visits saw her take an array of medications that severely hampered her health. In one instance, she was diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed Tegretol, which caused her teeth to fall out.
This also saw Dee Dee fit a feeding tube to her wheelchair, despite Gypsy Rose’s ability to eat and drink normally.
As a former nurse, Dee Dee was able to convince some doctors of her young daughter’s symptoms, and would cease all contact with any that would question her or offer contradictory medical results.
She was also accused of plying her daughter with certain medications to mimic symptoms, such as using a topical anesthetic to numb her gums to make her drool.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy typically centers on caregivers coercing and repressing individuals for attention, however it is also suspected that Dee Dee’s motivation for her daughter’s ordeal was financial.
She had enlisted funding and services from a number of charities, including the Make-a-Wish Foundation and Ronald McDonald House, and after Hurricane Katrina devastated their home in Louisiana, they received a slew of support.
This included Habitat for Humanity building them a bright-pink home equipped for Gypsy Rose’s various fictitious problems, including a wheelchair ramp, while soliciting donations from well-wishers who thought she was a struggling mom taking care of her sick child in a crisis.
Hurricane Katrina also offered Dee Dee an opportunity to bolster the lies around her daughter as she claimed medical records, such as her birth certificate, were destroyed in the floods.
When Gypsy Rose entered adolescence, she was kept under even tighter control by her mother, who convinced her that she essentially could not move around or function without her.
Amid questions over why she didn’t expose her mother’s lies, Gypsy Rose said she lived in a haze of confusion and deceit, saying she ‘couldn’t just jump out of the wheelchair, because I was afraid and I didn’t know what my mother would do. I didn’t have anyone to trust.’
Dee Dee was able to keep up the charade of her daughter’s illness throughout her childhood, and would cease all contact with any doctors who questioned her health or offered contradictory medical results
Because Gypsy Rose’s mom would shave her head to mimic the effects of leukemia, she was frequently seen wearing wigs, including her ‘favorite’ blonde princess wig
On one occasion when she was 14, a Missouri neurologist determined Gypsy Rose was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and later expressed regret at never telling authorities of his suspicions.
A separate report also made similar claims and led caseworkers to visit their home, however Dee Dee convinced them the allegations were baseless smears.
Dee Dee also began to lie about her daughter’s age during her teenage years, helped by her birth certificate ostensibly being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
In a moment that may have spurred her hopes of freedom from her mother’s control, Gypsy Rose attempted to flee when she attended a science fiction convention in 2011, taking off with a man she had met online.
She was quickly tracked down to a hotel room by her mother, and although Gypsy Rose was 19 at the time, Dee Dee produced fictitious paperwork claiming she was a minor.
Gypsy would later say that when they returned home, Dee Dee smashed her computer with a hammer and left her restrained and handcuffed to her bed for two weeks.
The year after her attempted escape, Gypsy had managed to worm her way back online, mostly using the internet after her mom had fallen asleep to avoid detection.
Despite being unsure on her true age and believing many of the lies about her health, she joined a Christian dating site to try and meet other people in her sheltered life, which is where she encountered Nicholas Godejohn.
The two reportedly bonded over an interest in BDSM kinks, and would frequently talk about violent sexual fantasies, including about Godejohn’s ‘evil side.’
He had been diagnosed autistic, and also had a criminal record for indecent exposure after being caught watching pornography in a McDonalds with his hands down his pants for almost nine hours, according to a local report from Patch.com.
Questions remain over Gypsy Rose’s culpability in her mother’s murder, amid claims she funded her killer boyfriend’s travel and provided him with the knife used in the 2015 slaying
In 2015, three years after they first met online, the couple met in person, and Gypsy Rose was said to be so keen for her mother’s approval she arranged for Godejohn to pretend to meet them spontaneously at a cinema screening of Cinderella.
She then snuck away for a bathroom break, and reportedly had sex with Godejohn in the stalls.
Shortly after their first encounter, the couple began to plan Dee Dee’s murder, fueled by Gypsy Rose’s confessions of the abuse she had suffered throughout her life.
She later told a Discovery ID documentary that the moment the plan formed came as the couple ‘were talking one night, and he said that he would do anything to protect me, and I asked him, ‘Anything?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’
‘From anybody?’ [I asked], he said ‘Yeah.’ ‘Even my mom?’ [I asked], he said ‘Yes.’ And that’s when this kind of plan started to develop [into] a murder plot.’
According to Fox4, she sent Godejohn money to help him travel from Wisconsin to her home in Missouri, and stole a knife from Walmart for him to use in the attack.
Godejohn then arrived at the family home in Springfield in June 2015, however it is not clear the exact date of the attack as Dee Dee lay in a pool of her own blood for several days.
He was let into the home by Gypsy Rose after her mom had gone to sleep, and hid in the bathroom with her hands over her ears to mask the noise of the savage stabbing.
She told ABC News that she wanted her mom to die ‘not because I hated her… it was because I wanted to escape her.’
In an HBO documentary, Gypsy Rose later alleged that Godejohn raped her directly after the murder, which he said in a police interview that he believed to be ‘pretty much kind of consensual.’
‘I don’t consider it to be consensual,’ she said.
Amid questions over why she didn’t expose her mother’s lies, Gypsy Rose said she lived in a haze of confusion and deceit, saying she ‘couldn’t just jump out of the wheelchair, because I was afraid and I didn’t know what my mother would do. I didn’t have anyone to trust’
Despite her claims that Godejohn sexually assaulted her, the duo then appeared to spend around five days together, carrying out regular errands including shopping at Walmart.
Godejohn would go on to describe those on the run days as ‘the happiest’ of his life, feeling that he got to enjoy a brief period of time with his ‘soulmate.’
‘That was, man, probably the best days of my life, that’s the only way I can describe it,’ he told Oxygen in 2019 from behind bars, where he will spend the rest of his days without the possibility of parole.
‘I enjoyed every second of it,’ he continued.
‘From the very beginning, I just knew we were soulmates. Those five days when I was actually with her, physically with her, those five days were the most intense, and magical, and awe-inspiring days I’ve ever had.’
Police were initially baffled by Gypsy Rose’s disappearance after her mother’s murder and believed she may have been abducted, however investigators quickly realized her home life may not have been as it first seemed.
‘Once we started peeling the layers back in, we started getting information based on our Facebook posts, we were able to put everything together and that’s when we were able to figure out that she was, in fact, alive,’ said Sheriff Arnott at the time.
‘And then in talking with the detectives immediately up there, she was walking, which we all thought was impossible.’
Cops launched an urgent manhunt for the couple after Dee Dee was found on June 14, and they were tracked via the chilling Facebook posts from Dee Dee’s shared Facebook account.
Alongside the post announcing her death, another, more disturbing post, read: ‘I – SLASHED THAT **** AND RAPED HER SWEET INNOCENT DAUGHTER… HER SCREAM WAS SOOOO LOUD LOL.’
The Facebook posts were traced to Godejohn’s house in Big Bend, Wisconsin, and the duo were promptly charged.
Gypsy Rose has talked of her depseration to ‘escape’ her mother, claiming she was the victim of a years-long medical abuse campaign that saw her mother rub numbing agents on her gums to make her drool convincingly
Gypsy was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2015 after accepting a plea deal admitting her role in her mother’s slaying. She is now set to be freed after serving 85 percent of her sentence
Although they were quickly snared, they had at one stage thought they’d got away with the crime successfully, and Godejohn said they were already planning their fantasy life together.
‘I was gonna get a job and start looking for an apartment. After a little ways down the road, I’d probably end up marrying her and end up having children with her,’ he said.
‘That’s something I’ve never had with someone else. To this day, she’s the only one I’ve ever had that with.’
He pinned the blame for the idea to kill Dee Dee on Gypsy Rose, saying that she masterminded the plot after the coercive mom tried to keep them apart – despite Gypsy Rose being 23 at that time.
Referring to his frenzied stab attack, he said: ‘Somehow I just knew, deep within my heart, some way me and her would end up being together in the end. There’s no other option, we gotta do it.
‘I wanted to make sure her mom was not going to harm her anymore. I made sure of that.’
At his trial, Godejohn’s lawyers described the killer as a ‘low-functioning person with autism’, who was ‘so in love with (Gypsy Rose) and so obsessed with her that he would do anything… and Gypsy knew that.’
He pleaded not-guilty, and a number of psychologists testified to his mental state, however it was successfully argued by prosecutors that Godejohn understood the weight of his plan, not least having discussed it with Gypsy Rose for at least a year.
After her own trial for her mother’s murder, Gypsy Rose shocked the world after she walked into her first court hearing without any assistance.
Gypsy Rose shocked the world after she walked into her first court hearing without assistance
At his trial, Godejohn’s lawyers described the killer as a ‘low-functioning person with autism’, who was ‘so in love with (Gypsy Rose) and so obsessed with her that he would do anything… and Gypsy knew that’
In the years since their murderous plot, Gypsy Rose and Godejohn have parted ways, with family members saying they see her twisted relationship with him as an act of ‘desperation.’
Godejohn told ABC News in 2018 that he felt ‘betrayed’ by Gypsy, saying: ‘I loved Gypsy to the point where I would … do anything for her. I’ve proven that with what I did.
‘Unfortunately, because of how far I went, I feel as if she’s betrayed me. I feel that she’s abandoned me… there is a part of me that will probably always love her, but she’s hurt me so badly.’
In 2019, the same year Godejohn gushed over his final days of freedom, family friend Fancy Macelli told People that Gypsy Rose had gotten engaged in prison to a pen pal.
‘They are very happy,’ Macelli said at the time. ‘You can hear the excitement in her voice.’
She said Gypsy Rose’s fiancé, who she didn’t name, contacted her after watching HBO documentary ‘Mommy Dead and Dearest’. It is unclear if the couple are still together, with Macelli saying the family approved of the relationship, but warned they weren’t in for an easy time together.
‘Whether it ends up being (a good thing) in the end who knows, but for her right now it’s a very positive and happy time.’
‘She’s 27 years old, she deserves to be in love and she deserves to have somebody who cares about her,’ Macelli concluded. ‘He’s just there for her.’
Now, after serving eight years of her 10-year prison sentence, Gypsy Rose can look forward to freedom, as her parole was granted in Missouri in September.
The strange and depraved saga that landed her in prison for 10 years still sparks questions to this day, with Sheriff Arnott recently telling Ozarks First that he still has doubts about the case to this day.
‘From my perspective, she was the mastermind behind the murder of her mother,’ he said, feeling that the 10-year sentence she received, in response to a guilty plea, was too lenient for her role in her mother’s murder.
‘If she served the 85%, then it is what it is. She did her time,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of victims in this deal. And that’s not just Deedee and it’s not Gypsy. It’s the entire community.’