The gypsy Rose Blanchard did not know her age. She knew that she was terminally ill, battling leukemia, muscular dystrophy, sleep apnea, epilepsy, and a host of other medical problems. She was not allowed to walk, although she could. She knew that she had a Make-A-Wish Foundation trip to Disney World, and that Habitat for Humanity built a house for her family after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her mother’s property Dee Dee Blanchard . She also knew that she needed to get out.
Dee Dee suffered from Munchausen by proxy (factitious disorder imposed on another), a mental disorder in which a caregiver, often a parent, exaggerates, fabricates, or in some cases even causes illness in another person, usually their child, to pay attention to themselves. The disorder is often considered a form of childhood abuse, and Gypsy was confined to a wheelchair and hospital rooms for much of her life, despite the fact that she was not actually sick.
Feeling trapped, Gypsy met a man online whom she saw as the key to her escape. She and her then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn conspired to kill Dee Dee, who was later found “stabbed to death” in her Springfield, Missouri home in June 2015, according to People . Godejohn and Gypsy were arrested and charged with murder. Even though they’re both behind bars, Gypsy, whose case was dramatized on Hulu’s The Act, and portrayed in the HBO documentary Dead Mommy Dearest (2017), says she’s never felt more free. This is the untold truth of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.
She tried to escape before the murder
In addition to the psychological abuse that Gypsy Rose Blanchard suffered at the hands of her mother’s Munchausen for power syndrome, she claims that Dee Dee Blanchard was also physically abusive. Gypsy Rose told Amy Robach about 20/20 that when she was old enough to yearn for a life outside of her home, she and Dee Dee started arguing (sometimes for days at a time), after which she alleges that Dee Dee would sometimes not feed her for “two days or so” as punishment. In 2011, Dee Dee became physically violent, sometimes “[hitting Gypsy Rose] with a coat rack.”
The abuse was so bad that Gypsy Rose tried to run away. She said that she once ran away from her house, after which she was literally held captive by her mother. “She physically chained me to the bed and put bells on the doors… to anyone she would probably trust that she was going through a phase and tell her if she was doing anything behind her back,” Gypsy Rose recalled.
In February 2011, Gypsy Rose, then 19, met a 35-year-old man at a sci-fi convention, Kim Blanchard (an unrelated neighbor) told Buzzfeed News . The man invited Gypsy Rose to her hotel room. Dee Dee found out and brought documents claiming that Gypsy Rose was underage. When Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose returned home, Dee Dee allegedly took a hammer to her computer.
She got healthier in prison
Despite Dee Dee Blanchard’s claims that Gypsy suffered from diseases such as muscular dystrophy, leukemia, sleep apnea, and asthma, Gypsy has only one occasional physical condition: a lazy eye. Also, according to her reports, Gypsy’s health has improved since her incarceration, no doubt thanks to her no longer taking the many medications her mother was giving her. Gypsy’s attorney, Michael Stanfield, told BuzzFeed News that while most inmates lose weight in jail because the food isn’t exactly fine cooking, the opposite was true for Gypsy, who gained 14 pounds in jail while waiting for a statement in your case.
Family friend Kim Blanchard (no relation) said of Gypsy’s appearance, “It was like she had a costume on all that time and then she took it off.”
Gypsy admitted that she knew she was not as unhealthy as her mother claimed. She explained to ABC News “She knew she didn’t need the feeding tube. She knew that she could eat. She knew that she could walk. But I believed my mother when she said that she had leukemia ». Although the ailments were not real, the surgeries and their effects were. The removal of Gypsy’s salivary glands, a surgery her mother allegedly instigated by using “an anesthetic agent to numb [Gypsy’s] gums, causing her to drool,” was particularly painful. Gypsy claimed that the numbing agent may have also contributed to her tooth loss.
She says her ex was controlling
Nicholas Godejohn has reportedly tried to keep in touch with Gypsy Rose Blanchard since his arrests, but she doesn’t want to communicate with him, family friend Fancy Macelli said. In weekly contact . Godejohn, for his part, has displayed a possibly unhealthy obsession with Gypsy, whom he met on a Christian dating website in 2012. He described her as his “soul mate,” telling ABC News “I loved Gypsy to the point that I’d do anything for her. I have shown it with what I did. Unfortunately, as far as I’ve come, I feel like she’s betrayed me. I feel like she’s abandoned me.”
Dee Dee knew about Godejohn, when Gypsy introduced them in hopes of getting Dee Dee’s approval of her boyfriend. She backfired. “She got jealous because she was paying too much attention to him and had ordered me to stay away from him,” Gypsy said. ABC News . “And needless to say, it was a very long argument that lasted a couple of weeks: yelling, throwing things, calling me names: b***h, s**t, w***e.”
Gypsy also told the outlet that she now believes Godejohn was similar to her mother. “They were both very controlling. I feel like I was trained my whole life to do what I was told, and I feel like he wanted that for a girlfriend.” She also told Dr. Phil that Godejohn had “multiple personalities that were violent and frightening.”
Nicholas Godejohn claims Gypsy Rose manipulated him
In November 2018, the Ozarks first reported that Nicholas Godejohn told local radio station KOLR10 that he now regrets his actions, because he believes Gypsy Rose “rigged” him into the murder. His attorney claims that Godejohn has since been diagnosed with autism. Godejohn’s defense team asked a judge to allow mental health experts to testify that being on the spectrum prejudiced his pre-murder trial.
The Springfield News-Leader reported that defense expert Dr. Kent Franks claimed that Godejohn was at level 2 on the autism spectrum, meaning he was intellectually disabled and needed help making decisions, allegedly operating at the of a 10 or 11 year old. . However, Dr. Robert Denney, a psychologist testifying for the prosecution, claimed that Godejohn was at level 1 on the autism spectrum and showed good judgment on a test.
For his part, Godejohn feels that his own judgment was affected at the time of the murder. “I wish I’d known it was more manipulation than love because if I’d known that, I probably wouldn’t have been in this situation I’m in,” Godejohn said (via The Ozarks First ). “Because of my primary disability, it’s pretty easy for me to be fooled”.
Gypsy told ABC News of her ex, “I don’t hate him. I feel sorry for him…that someone could do something so cruel and not express remorse and not feel like they’re responsible for it.”
Blanchard and Godejohn left much evidence
When Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Nicholas Godejohn killed Dee Dee Blanchard, they did something more experienced criminals wouldn’t do: they left a very, very obvious trail. ABC News (via Women’s Health ) reported that the couple had a plethora of receipts, bus tickets, and surveillance camera footage pinning the crime on them.
“This is like a crime that I call ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ where clues are dropped along the way,” former FBI agent Brad Garrett told the outlet. “They couldn’t have presented it better to the police.” Gypsy’s own lawyer, public defender Mike Stanfield, admitted: “In my ten years of practice, this case was by far the biggest discovery I’ve ever had: close to 100 CDs with papers, photos and digital information.” Still, Gypsy said she didn’t think she’d ever get caught, and even lied about her age to investigators (saying she was 19 despite her health insurance listing her as 23) when she was first questioned in the case.
One such piece of evidence was the Facebook post the couple posted after Dee Dee’s murder. Police were easily able to trace the Facebook post to Godejohn’s home, ABC News reported, though Gypsy admitted she wrote it because she wanted someone to find Dee Dee’s body and give it “a proper burial.”
Some doctors suspected Dee Dee Blanchard’s ruse
Gypsy Rose Blanchard had at least one doctor who didn’t buy Dee Dee’s accusations about her daughter’s illness: neurologist Dr. Bernardo Flasterstein (above). He told ABC Newsthat when she examined Gypsy for the muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy that Dee Dee insisted her daughter had, she had a feeling something was wrong. “There was also nothing to support,” Flasterstein recalled. “That made me very suspicious.” Suspicion of him grew when, after telling Dee Dee that he believed Gypsy’s previous diagnoses were wrong, instead of being relieved, Dee Dee raged and raged, yelling at her nurses that Flasterstein was a charlatan. Flasterstein then wrote a letter to Gypsy’s primary care doctor saying that he suspected Dee Dee had Munchausen by proxy (describing Dee Dee as “not a good historian”), but didn’t think the situation was serious enough. to contact child protective services.
She wasn’t the only doctor who suspected that Dee Dee was the one who was sick. A police report obtained by ABC News states that one of Gypsy’s doctors notified authorities that “he was unable to find any symptoms to support what Dee Dee alleges is wrong with her daughter.” Children’s services visited the Blanchards’ home twice, but said they saw nothing unpleasant.
Her father wants to repair their relationship
Gypsy Rose Blanchard was separated from her father, Rod Blanchard (above), and told ABC News that she never knew her father paid her child support until after her mother’s murder. Rod says the estrangement was by Dee Dee’s design. He told Fox News , “[Dee Dee] spent a lot of time making sure there was distance between us. A lot of times I called Gypsy and she wasn’t available to talk to me, but the next day she was… I called her on her birthday, but Dee Dee was like, ‘Don’t tell her about her. It’s her 18th birthday. I don’t want to tell her how old she is. I just thought some of it was a little weird.”
He added: “He was always afraid that I would get close to Gypsy. She bothered me. But I always hoped that Gypsy would get old enough that one day we could get together. It got tough, she really did. But I did not”. I don’t want to take it too far. Dee Dee had full custody and could completely isolate me from whatever relationship we already had. There was a fine line that I had to walk with her.”
Rod says that even though Gypsy is in prison, their relationship has actually improved since Dee Dee’s death (which he said Dee Dee “asked for”). They email frequently and Gypsy calls him frequently.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard thinks she should be in prison, but not necessarily for a decade. She explained on Dr. Phil , “I firmly believe that, whatever happens, murder is not okay. But at the same time, I don’t think I deserve as many years as I have… I think I do deserve to spend some time in prison for that crime. But also, I understand why it happened, and I don’t think I’m in the right place to get the help I need.”
As of this writing, Blanchard is serving a 10-year sentence as a result of his guilty plea to second-degree murder. Despite being behind bars, Blanchard confessed that she actually feels “freer” in prison than when he lived with his mother, which he said was basically like being in a different kind of prison. “The prison I lived in before, with my mother, is like: I couldn’t walk. I could not eat. I couldn’t have friends. I couldn’t go outside… and play with friends or anything,” he told ABC News . “Here, I feel that I am freer in prison than living with my mother. Because now, she is allowed to me… to live as a normal woman.