It was a crime that made headlines all around the world and the answer to the question how did Gypsy Rose kill her mom, Dee Dee, is rather complicated. Born in 1991, Gypsy Rose was said to have suffered from a range of health issues since childhood.
Her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, claimed her daughter was chronically ill with conditions including leukemia and muscular dystrophy, leading to her being confined to a wheelchair and requiring constant medical attention.
In 2015, it was revealed that Gypsy Rose was not as sick as her mother had claimed. Gypsy Rose orchestrated the murder of her mother with the help of her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. The motive behind the murder was Gypsy Rose’s desire for freedom and to escape the abuse and manipulation she experienced at the hands of her mother.
The case gained widespread media coverage and sparked discussions about Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, a rare form of abuse in which a caregiver exaggerates or induces illness in a person under their care to gain sympathy and attention. Gypsy Rose Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served a 10-year prison sentence; released on December 28, 2023. Godejohn, however, received a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
How did Gypsy Rose kill her mom?
How did Gypsy Rose kill her mom? Gypsy Rose actually didn’t kill her mom; she convinced her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to do it. In June 2015, he traveled to the Blanchards’ home near Springfield, where he stabbed Dee Dee Blanchard 17 times while Gypsy Rose hid in the bathroom and covered her ears.
Friends of Dee Dee notified the police to do a wellness check after a troubling message appeared on her Facebook page reading: “That Bitch is dead!”, which is still on her page to this day. “What is going on?” one comment read as another wrote, “WHAT?!!! Did your FB get hacked? I have never heard you talk like that.” One user asked, “Should someone notify the local police??? This sounds scary.”
The next day, police found Gypsy Rose in Wisconsin with Godejohn and took them both into custody for questioning. It’s there that authorities realized Gypsy Rose did not have any of the physical and mental health issues her mother claimed she had, most notably during the moment Gypsy Rose stood up and walked around the interrogation room.
Initially, Gypsy Rose denied knowing anything about her mother’s death, let alone her gruesome murder, but Godejohn confessed during his police interrogation. “OK, I’ll admit it, I actually did stab her. The only reason I did it was for me and her, that’s the real reason. I would never have done it if it was not for me and her.”
Ahead of her release on December 28, 2023, Gypsy Rose told People that the day she decided her mom had to die was ahead of another meaningless procedure. “I just wasn’t having it,” said Gypsy, who said she tried to run away. “She found me, brought me back and put in place paperwork saying I was incompetent and she had power of attorney over me… I was trying really hard to figure out another way [other than killing her]. That’s when there was a conversation between me and my co-defendant Nick,” who she’d met on an online dating site. “He said ‘I would do anything to protect you.’ I said, ‘Anything?’ He said ‘Yes.’
“I was desperate to get out of that situation,” she continued. “If I had another chance to redo everything, I don’t know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I’m not sick and mommy makes me sick, or if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, ‘You know what, I’m going to go tell the police everything.’ I kind of struggle with that.” But, she added, “Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did. I regret it every single day.”
She echoed these sentiments in an interview with The View. “She had a lot of demons herself that she was struggling with,” Gypsy Rose said of her mom. “I didn’t want her dead. I just wanted out of my situation. And I thought that was the only way out.”
Gypsy Rose Blanchard is the subject of a new Lifetime documentary, The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, which premiers on January 5, 2024. The three-night documentary event, The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, provides Blanchard the platform to share her story, her way.
“I’ve been documenting Gypsy’s ‘coming of age’ in prison for the past seven years and over the course of this time, I watched her transform into a woman who holds responsibility for her past and now has the courage to face an unknown new free world for the first time,” said executive producer, Melissa Moore.
“After a lifetime of silence, I finally get to use my voice to share my story and speak my truth. As a survivor of relentless child abuse, this docuseries chronicles my quest for liberation and journey through self-discovery,” said Gypsy Rose Blanchard. “I am unapologetically myself and unafraid to expose the hidden parts of my life that have never been revealed until now.”
Gypsy-Rose Blanchard discovered that her whole life was a lie. After eight-and-a-half years of incarceration, she can finally tell you the truth—with this exclusive collection of interview transcripts and journal entries, plus her own illustrations and photos. Release: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom
by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is available on Amazon.
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