Giada Amendolara '25
Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released from prison on parole on December 28, 2023 from the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri.
Gypsy Rose has been the subject of media coverage after being found guilty in 2016 of conspiring to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. Gypsy Rose served a little over seven years of her ten-year sentence for the murder of her mother, and now has become the most famous case of Munchausen by proxy and has generated national discussion and interest since the story's 2015 release.
The media gave Blanchard's complicated and bizarre story a lot of coverage. The 2019 Hulu miniseries The Act, the newly released Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confession of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, and the 2017 HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest all focused on Blanchard's story, which received a lot of public interest.
According to Blanchard’s attorney, Micheal Stanford, Gypsy Blanchard's mother was able to fool doctors by telling them her daughter's medical records had been lost in Hurricane Katrina. If the doctors asked too many questions, Dee Dee just found a new physician, shaving the girl's head to back up her story. Gypsy Blanchard was forced to use a wheelchair, have a feeding tube and had her salivary glands surgically removed.
It was argued in court that Gypsy was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a type of child abuse in which a caregiver creates or exaggerates a disease in order to create sympathy and attention. According to Stanfield, the abuse became more physical and Gypsy testified that her mother beat her and chained her to a bed.
"I wanted to be free of her hold on me," Gypsy testified at the 2018 trial of her former boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn of Big Bend, Wisconsin, who is serving a life sentence for the killing. She went on to add: "I talked him into it."
The probable cause statement claims that Gypsy Blanchard provided the knife and hid herself in the bathroom as Godejohn repeatedly attacked her mother. In the end, the two traveled to Wisconsin by bus, where they were eventually arrested. Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson described the trial as "one of the most extraordinary and unusual cases we have seen." (https://www.npr.org)
Due to the abuse Gypsy Rose had suffered, the prosecutors made a deal with her. Blanchard received a 10-year prison sentence in 2016 for entering a guilty plea to second-degree murder. Her original charge of first-degree murder carried a potential life sentence.
Gypsy's case proved controversial, with some people believing she didn't deserve jail time in the first place. Some people think Gypsy Rose ought to be imprisoned for life since she convinced Nicholas Godejohn to kill her mother. Godejohn is currently serving a life sentence while Gypsy got released on parole.
While serving her sentence in a Missouri prison for the second-degree murder of her mother, Gypsy Rose married Ryan Anderson in 2022. The now 32-year-old Blanchard spoke about her release, "I'm finally free," Blanchard shared in a TikTok video Dec. 31. "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."
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