The case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a long and devastating story, that ended with a daughter orchestrating the murder of her own mother. Nearly eight years since her sentencing, Blanchard’s release date was set: 28 December, 2023.
Now, Gypsy has reentered the community as a healthy young woman entirely free from any physical illnesses,
Today, Gypsy Rose Blanchard spoke with PEOPLE concerning her feelings on being released.
“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,” she said, “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 adds, “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.”
What Is The True Story Of ‘Gypsy’s Revenge?’
The murder of American woman Dee Dee Blanchard in 2015, is one of the most famous cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy ever, and a the new documentary Gypsy’s Revenge revisits the murder, the familial abuse and all the people involved, three years after the crime took place.
Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a mental illness where a caretaker (usually a mother) of a child either falsifies symptoms or causes real illness to make it appear as if the child is sick. It is an extremely rare form of child abuse and proving the case in court is even rarer, such is the case with Dee Dee and her alleged victim, daughter Gypsy Blanchard.
Gypsy’s young life was spent in and out of hospitals, confined to sick beds and deceiving those around her.
Dee Dee claimed that Gypsy had leukaemia, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy and that she couldn’t walk, confining the young able-bodied girl to a wheelchair whenever she had to leave the house, as well as forcing her to be fed through an unnecessary feeding tube, telling people she had the mental capacity of a seven-year-old and forcing her to take medications for illnesses Gypsy wasn’t suffering from.
As Gypsy got older, the healthy girl began to push back against her mother and grew increasingly independent, going on Facebook without Dee Dee’s permission and meeting people from the outside world through chatrooms. It was on the social networking site in 2012 where she met Nicholas Godejohn, the man who would stab Gypsy’s mother to death at her request.
The story of Gypsy Blanchard has been investigated in HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, and now in Gypsy’s Revenge, and by and large people’s responses have been the same: her sentence may technically fit the crime, but is it right?
Gypsy confessed to police to having Godejohn stab her mother just days after the murder, and in 2016 she was sentenced to 10 years in prison as a healthy young woman entirely free from any physical illnesses.
In December 2023, having served 85 per cent of her sentence, her parole date was announced: December 28, 2023. She was granted parole by Missouri Department of Corrections and will leave Greene County Jail in Springfield back into the community.
The prosecution along with the defence, both thought Gypsy was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and this shocking true crime story shines a light on the complexity of such cases.
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