Three years prior to her original release date, Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison. In 2016, after a devastating experience as a child, Gypsy Rose was sentenced to 10 years in prison for orchestrating the murder of her own mother: Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, now 32, was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 28 in Missouri.
Since then, Gypsy has taken to Instagram to share glimpses of her newfound freedom with her more than 5 million followers. Speaking for the first time since her release, Gypsy told followers, “Hey everyone, this is Gypsy. I’m finally free.”
She continued, “I just wanted to send a quick video to thank everyone for the massive amount of support that I’ve been getting on social media, everyone has been really, really nice and supportive and I really appreciate that.”
Gypsy’s long and devastating story is of the most famous cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy ever, documentaries such as Gypsy’s Revenge revisit 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.
In 2015, Gypsy Rose Blanchard her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn conspired to kill Dee Dee after years of her forcing her daughter to fake serious illnesses due to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Nicholas Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee 17 times.
Earlier this week, Gypsy 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.”
By the age of seven, Gypsy had been told she suffered from a number of debilitating illnesses, including Leukemia, seizures from epilepsy, and muscular dystrophy, which confined her to a wheelchair she didn’t need. She had feeding tubes and her head was shaved. For years, friends, family, and doctors alike were manipulated and tricked into believing these illnesses were real.
“Obviously I knew that I could walk and didn’t need a feeding tube, but everything else was a really big confusion for me,” Blanchard explained. “Whenever I’d question it my mother would say I’d had a seizure the night before and didn’t remember. There was always an excuse.”Now, having served 85 per cent of her sentence, Gypsy will re-enter the community as a healthy young woman entirely free from any physical illnesses.
