A Missouri woman who planned her mother’s death after she was forced to live as an ill child is set to be released from prison in December, and is speaking out about her crime.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard, whose life and crime have been detailed in two documentaries, will again discuss her upbringing in an upcoming docuseries for Lifetime: “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.” In the docuseries, Gypsy says she is finally able to “share my story,” according to a trailer exclusively shared with People.
“After a lifetime of silence, I finally get to use my voice to share my story and speak my truth,” Gypsy says in the trailer.
“As a survivor of relentless child abuse, this docuseries chronicles my quest for liberation and journey through self-discovery,” Gypsy continues. “I am unapologetically myself and unafraid to expose the hidden parts of my life that have never been revealed until now.”
Gypsy was also the subject of the popular documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” which chronicled the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and her motives for the murder.
Gypsy was raised by her mother, Dee Dee, who forced her daughter to endure numerous medical treatments due to her own Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder that causes a caregiver to fabricate or exaggerate medical conditions in another person. Dee Dee began making claims about her daughter’s health when Gypsy was about three months old, Gypsy’s father, Rod Blanchard, told Buzzfeed in 2016. At that time, Dee Dee was convinced Gypsy suffered from sleep apnea and began taking her to the local hospital. Rod said doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her daughter despite numerous tests and a sleep monitor.
Yet Dee Dee persisted that her daughter was sick, coming up with new problems, including a chromosomal defect and muscular dystrophy. Dee Dee insisted Gypsy had the mind of a 7-year-old and regularly lied about Gypsy’s age to make her seem younger.
After a minor motorcycle accident that resulted in an abrasion to Gypsy’s knee, Dee Dee began claiming that doctors gave her daughter a wheelchair. From then on, Gypsy was largely confined to the chair if she appeared in public. Dee Dee would also bring an oxygen tank and feeding tube to complete the illusion that Gypsy was severely disabled.
Rod left Dee Dee and remarried, so Gypsy and her mother moved in with her grandfather and his wife. These two would later claim that Dee Dee poisoned her stepmother’s food with weed killer, but Dee Dee was never charged with anything relating to this.
Dee Dee and Gypsy eventually left the home, and the stepmother’s ongoing medical issues reportedly vanished. The mother and daughter lived in public housing with Rod’s child-support payments and assistance from the government for Gypsy’s alleged medical conditions.
While many doctors found nothing wrong with Gypsy, Dee Dee was able to convince others to provide treatments her daughter didn’t need, including anti-seizure medication and multiple surgeries. Dee Dee also shaved Gypsy’s head to make her appear as though she was undergoing chemotherapy. If Gypsy ever suggested in public that she was not sick, her mother would squeeze her hand hard, and in private, Gypsy has said her mother physically abused her.
At one point, Dee Dee had some of Gypsy’s saliva glands treated with botox and then removed to control her drooling, which Gypsy said was the result of her mother using a numbing agent on her gums before doctor’s visits. This, along with the anti-seizure medication, caused Gypsy’s teeth to decay to the point that most of her front teeth were extracted and replaced by a bridge.
Rod attempted to visit Gypsy when she and Dee Dee moved to Missouri, but Dee Dee kept changing plans.
There were doctors, such as Bernardo Flasterstein in Springfield, Missouri, who suspected Dee Dee of medical abuse. He learned from Gypsy’s previous doctors that her test results for muscular dystrophy had actually come back negative, yet Dee Dee was claiming her daughter had the condition. Flasterstein didn’t report his suspicions, and said he was told by other doctors to treat them with “golden gloves.” He didn’t think he would be believed.
In 2009, an anonymous caller told police that Dee Dee often changed her and Gypsy’s names and birth dates when seeking treatment and that Gypsy was healthier than her mother claimed. Police conducted a wellness check, but accepted Dee Dee’s explanation that she changed their information to escape her abusive ex-husband. Without talking to Rod about Dee Dee’s claim, police closed the case.
Gypsy would go online to talk to people, since she wasn’t allowed to speak when out of the house with her mother. In 2012, when she was 21 years old, Gypsy met Nicholas Godejohn online in a Christian Singles group. Godejohn was around her age and had a history of mental illness, possibly dissociative identity disorder. He was also on the autism spectrum.
The two became close and, in 2014, Gypsy told a neighbor that she had discussed eloping with Godejohn. In 2015, Gypsy arranged and paid for Godejohn to travel from his home in Wisconsin to meet her and her mother out in public, as if by accident. They then began to plan Dee Dee’s murder.
Godejohn returned to Missouri in June 2015 and waited until Dee Dee was asleep before entering the home, let in by Gypsy. Gypsy also allegedly gave him duct tape, gloves, and a knife to kill her mother. Gypsy hid in the bathroom while Godejohn killed Dee Dee, covering her ears so she couldn’t hear her mother’s scream.
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The couple then fled to a motel outside Springfield and eventually took a bus back to Godejohn’s home in Wisconsin.
When Dee Dee was found dead in her home, friends and family feared that Gypsy had been abducted – still believing the girl was young and sickly. Police traced the IP address that was posting on Dee Dee’s Facebook account to Wisconsin, where they found Godejohn and Gypsy.
The two were taken into custody and charged with Dee Dee’s murder.
Gypsy was sentenced to 10 years in prison and is scheduled to be paroled in December. Godejohn, who actually conducted the killing but was doing so at Gypsy’s behest, received life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 25 years.