Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who acknowledged assisting her boyfriend in killing her violent mother in a case that attracted national notice, was granted parole on Thursday.
In 2016, Blanchard entered a guilty plea to second-degree murder, having previously admitted to persuading her boyfriend to kill her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, by stabbing her while she slept. After lawyers learned of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her mother, prosecutors offered a plea bargain that resulted in a 10-year prison sentence.
Blanchard fell prey to Munchausen syndrome by proxy, an uncommon condition in which a caregiver fabricates, exaggerates, or causes a child’s illness to attract attention. According to reports, Dee Dee misled medical professionals and others by claiming that her daughter had multiple medical conditions, including muscular dystrophy and leukemia. This topic was covered in the HBO Max documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest.”
Gypsy’s Childhood:
By the time Gypsy was three months old, her mother was certain that the child had sleep apnea and started taking her to the hospital, where multiple overnight stays with a sleep monitor and other tests revealed no signs of the condition, according to Rod, who continued to be involved with his daughter at this point. Dee Dee later came to believe that Gypsy suffered from a variety of health problems, all of which she linked to an unidentified chromosomal abnormality. At one point, Gypsy’s mother forced her to use a walker, claiming she had muscular dystrophy.
When Gypsy was seven or eight years old, she told her story, they were in a small collision on her grandfather’s motorcycle, and she got abrasions on her knee. Her mother informed her that she would have to use a wheelchair that the doctors had given her.
Gypsy’s Parents:
Gypsy used the Harry Potter books to help her learn how to read on her own. Dee Dee, her mom went to live with her father and stepmother after Gypsy’s father got married again. They later claimed that Dee Dee poisoned the food with Roundup weed killer while preparing it for her stepmother, which is what caused the stepmother’s chronic illness during this time. Dee Dee was arrested for several infractions during that period, including writing fraudulent checks.
Dee Dee and Gypsy fled their destroyed apartment for a special needs shelter in Covington after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area in August 2005. Gypsy’s birth certificate and other medical records, according to Dee Dee, were lost in the flood. They were airlifted to her native Missouri the following month after a doctor from the Ozarks suggested they move there.
The Weird Behaviour of Gypsy:
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After seeing Gypsy in Springfield, Bernardo Flasterstein, a pediatric neurologist, started to have doubts about the diagnosis of muscular dystrophy. Blood tests and MRIs that he ordered revealed no anomalies. Upon observing Gypsy stand and bear her weight, he informed Dee Dee on a follow-up visit, “I don’t see any reason why she doesn’t walk.” Dee Dee was not a very good historian, according to Flasterstein. He discovered, upon reaching out to Gypsy’s medical professionals in New Orleans, that the initial muscle biopsy had yielded negative results, thereby casting doubt on Dee Dee’s stated diagnosis of muscular dystrophy and her assertion that all of Gypsy’s records had been obliterated by flooding. He thought Munchausen syndrome by proxy might be present. Dee Dee stopped taking Gypsy to see Flasterstein after devising a scheme to obtain his notes.
The Murder:
In June 2015, Godejohn made her way back to Springfield, arriving while Gypsy and her mother were out at a doctor’s appointment. Dee Dee went to the Blanchard house after they got back home and he went to sleep. Gypsy reportedly allowed him inside and gave him gloves, duct tape, and a knife on the condition that he kill Dee Dee with it.
To avoid having to hear her mother scream, Gypsy cowered down in the bathroom and covered her ears. After that, while Dee Dee was asleep, Godejohn stabbed her 17 times in the back. Following their sexual encounter in Gypsy’s room, the two stole $4,000 in cash—mostly from Rod’s child support checks—that Dee Dee had been holding in the house. They ran away and spent several days preparing for their next move in a motel outside of Springfield. During this time, they were captured on security cameras at multiple businesses. At that point, Gypsy said, she thought the two had gotten away with their crime.
To avoid being discovered in possession of the murder weapon, they mailed it back to Godejohn’s Wisconsin residence and then boarded a bus there. Gypsy wore a blonde wig and was able to walk without assistance, according to multiple witnesses who saw the two as they made their way to the Greyhound station.
The Aftermath
Upon perusing unsettling Facebook status updates from Dee Dee’s account, the friends of the Blanchards had suspicions about irregularities. Several friends and neighbors went to the house when calls went unanswered.
Though they were aware that the two frequently went on unannounced medical trips, Dee Dee’s modified car was still in the driveway, so it seemed unlikely that they had gone on an unannounced trip. In the dim light, it was difficult to see inside due to the protective film on the windows. When there was no response at the door, the group of friends dialed 9-1-1.
Once a search warrant was obtained, the police could not enter the house when they arrived, but they did let one of the neighbors through a window, where he observed that Gypsy’s wheelchairs were still there and the interior of the house was mostly intact. Police discovered Dee Dee’s body inside the house after obtaining a warrant. To cover Gypsy’s and her funeral costs, a GoFundMe page was created.
