In 2015, Gypsy Rose Blanchard made international headlines for the brutal stabbing death of her mother, Dee Dee. The aftermath of the stabbing revealed the tragic, lie-filled reality of Gypsy's childhood that resulted in hours of news coverage and an extremely popular HBO documentary. Currently serving a 10-year prison sentence, 25-year-old Gypsy is sharing chilling details of the abuse that she says drove her to murder her own mother.
On June 14, 2015, 48-year-old Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in her home by police officers in Springfield, Missouri. They had been alerted by concerned friends who noticed a troubling post on Blanchard's Facebook page that read: "That b*tch is dead!" Authorities became troubled when they noticed Dee Dee's 23-year-old daughter was also missing. Their concern intensified once neighbors informed authorities that Gypsy had leukemia and muscular dystrophy, the latter of which kept her wheelchair bound.
Gypsy was found safe a few days later in Big Bend, Wisconsin, with her boyfriend, 26-year-old Nicholas Paul Godejohn. Police were also shocked to discover that Gypsy could walk. Gypsy would go on to be arrested, charged, and sentenced for the murder of her mother. Godejohn was also charged with first-degree murder, though he is still awaiting trial.
With time doctors determined that Gypsy was a victim of Munchausen by proxy — a type of abuse wherein a parent or guardian exaggerates or causes illness or injury to a person in order to gain attention or sympathy. Dee Dee had been abusing her daughter for years, receiving free trips to Disney World, thousands in monetary donations, and even a custom home built by Habitat for Humanity. All of it, based on lies.
Ultimately, Gypsy would go on to be sentenced to 10 years in prison for her mother's murder — a punishment that she maintains is too harsh, given the abuse she faced.
In a new interview on ABC's 20/20, Blanchard gives chilling details of the abuse Dee Dee forced her to endure. "Do you think she protected you?" asked interviewer Amy Robach. "No, not in — in certain ways, yes, in other ways, no," answered Blanchard. "I think that she was very sick in her mind. For a long time I believed, like, we were best friends, and when I was younger she was my best friend .… other than my stuffed animals. And so I thought that she was a great mother. No complaints, we got along so perfect. I saw her as an angel that can do no wrong."
The young woman shared that her relationship with her mother devolved as she grew older. Blanchard claimed that they would get "into an argument that would last a couple of days. Or it could be something where she wouldn't feed [Gypsy] for two days or so."
Blanchard said that many of the arguments she had with her mother would turn violent. She claimed that she ran away once, but her mother found her only a few hours later and punished her harshly. "She physically chained me to the bed, and put bells on the doors," claimed Blanchard, "and told anybody that I probably would have trusted that I was going through a phase, and to tell her if I was doing anything behind her back.”
Toward the end of the interview, Robach asked her if — once she realized she wasn't really sick — she ever considered standing up out of her wheelchair in public to expose her mother's secret. "I honestly didn’t think about that," Blanchard replied. "I was always so afraid of her — afraid of the consequences after."
