Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her younger half-sister Mia Blanchard, shortly after her Dec. 28 release.
@gypsyrose_a_blanchard on Instagram
On Dec. 28, 32-year old Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released from a Missouri prison after serving seven out of her ten-year sentence for the 2015 murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard.
Blanchard did not commit the murder herself, but concocted the plan with her then-boyfriend, Wisconsin native Nicholas Godejohn. Godejohn was responsible for stabbing Clauddine Blanchard to death on the evening of June 9, 2015, while Gypsy hid in the bathroom.
Blanchard received a ten-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in 2016, while Godejohn received a life sentence for first-degree murder in 2019.
Blanchard’s father was only 18 when Gypsy was born, and her parents split shortly before her birth, but according to an article published by People Magazine, Rod and Gypsy maintained a close relationship during Gypsy’s early years.
However, as Gypsy grew older, their relationship grew increasingly distant from what it had been before. This especially became true when Dee Dee and Gypsy’s home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005; Gypsy and Dee Dee were forced to move outside of the area. In 2008, Habitat For Humanity, a nonprofit organization, provided the two with a home at no cost in Springfield, Missouri.
Gypsy believed that the reason for her strained relationship with her father was due to false statements Dee Dee fed her naive daughter regarding her father. Gypsy believed for years that her father didn’t care about her, and that is why the two rarely spoke. However, this was not the foulest lie that Dee Dee Blanchard ever told.
Dee Dee had many people across the country, including those who knew the Blanchard family personally, convinced that Gypsy suffered from a multitude of illnesses, ranging from leukemia to seizure disorder to muscular dystrophy.
Dee Dee forced her daughter to remain in a wheelchair at any given moment, as well as to act as though she could not walk even in the privacy of their own home, even though she was more than able to.
Gypsy was forced to take medicines for the vast range of medical conditions she had convinced the world Gypsy had, including Gypsy herself, which resulted in Gypsy’s teeth falling out.
There seemed to be no length great enough for Dee Dee; she would shave her daughter’s head to give the appearance she actually had cancer, and even went as far as having her daughter’s salivary glands removed, claiming Gypsy was “excessively drooling.”
Another one of Dee Dee’s lies was that her daughter had a sugar allergy, claiming that consuming it would send Gypsy into anaphylactic shock.
Due to all of these restrictions placed onto her, Gypsy lived a lonesome and miserable life while she was under her mother’s care. If she wanted sugar or to walk on her own, she had to do it in secret while her mother was asleep. She never understood why she had to live this lie; nonetheless, she obeyed her mother and never let anybody know that she could walk.
That is, until she met Nicholas Godejohn.
Another activity Gypsy enjoyed that she had to do in secret was using the Internet. While surfing the web in secret, she stumbled upon a Christian dating website, where she met Nicholas Godejohn, the man who would become her first boyfriend.
The two secretly video-chatted for years, and as Gypsy grew older, she grew increasingly desperate to get out from under her mother’s control.
After multiple failed attempts to escape and unsuccessfully introducing Godejohn to Dee Dee, Gypsy proposed the idea of killing Dee Dee, the only thing she felt was left to do in order to save her from the misery she had suffered all her life.
On June 9, 2015, Godejohn traveled from his hometown of Big Bend, Wisconsin, to Springfield, Missouri via Greyhound bus. Gypsy waited until her mother was asleep before letting Godejohn in to stab Dee Dee to death in her bed late that evening.
The two fled back to Godejohn’s hometown before shortly being taken into custody by police from Godejohn’s family home. The two made a post on Dee Dee’s Facebook page from Godejohn’s home that read: “That ***** is dead!” The post was tracked back to the home in which Gypsy and Nicholas were staying, and both were taken into custody.
After serving seven years in Chillicothe Correctional Center, Blanchard was granted parole in September 2023, and was released in the early morning hours of Dec. 28.
Since her release, Blanchard has amassed over 8 million followers on Instagram, receiving an overwhelming amount of support from those who have seen her sensationalized case. Many pity Blanchard and see her as a symbol of strength and hope for those who have suffered under unspeakable abuse.
On the other hand, many criticize Blanchard for the way she handled the situation with her mother, believing she should not have been released from prison or should have served a life sentence, as her accomplice, Nicholas Godejohn, is.