I'm Worried About Gypsy Rose Blanchard, But Not For the Reason You Might Think
A victim of Munchausen's by proxy escaped abuse through violence and faced the consequences. Some of the sympathy for her, though, may soon prove to be misguided.
Author’s note: The first name of the subject of this article is a slur. I do not use this word in writing or conversation due to its offensive nature towards Romani people. However, there are many individuals who have this word as a name. During this essay, I will use the word only to refer to the woman I’m writing about, but I just wanted to make that acknowledgement before starting. Here’s a good article by Romani writer Naomi P. that provides some background on the g-slur and the impact it has on Romani people.
I often find myself frustrated with the kind of people who follow true crime cases with such fervent conviction that they attach their entire personality to them, collecting serial killers like stickers on a stainless steel water bottle. However, there is one true crime incident for which I am completely hypocritical about that feeling. I admit to you, reader, that I have spent hours learning about and discussing the life of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and the 2015 murder of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. It’s an absolutely fascinating story that speaks to the way our society views abuse victims who retaliate against their abusers. I’d like to note in advance that this piece will contain my own personal feelings, opinions and speculations regarding Gypsy Rose Blanchard, which some readers might find insensitive, since I have never personally met or spoken with her. If you find that kind of thing upsetting, I recommend not reading this essay.
There are a number of articles and documentaries about Gypsy Rose and her mother that explains the case in detail, the best of which (in my opinion) being the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest. There’s also a Hulu series dramatizing the story called The Act, which features big-name stars like Patricia Arquette and Chloë Sevigny. But if that’s too much homework, I’ll summarize as best I can. Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a thirty-two-year-old woman from Louisiana who was raised by a single mother, Clauddine, who also went by the name Dee Dee Blanchard. Gypsy Rose was very sick as a child; she had leukemia, muscular dystrophy and asthma, among other conditions, which required frequent doctor’s visits and even surgeries. She could not walk on her own and used a wheelchair to get around. Gypsy’s mother kept her head shaved to preempt the hair loss that came with her chemotherapy treatments. The mother-daughter duo received donations from people all around the world who wanted Gypsy to have a great life. These gifts included a home in Missouri built by the charity organization Habitat For Humanity that featured a wheelchair ramp for Gypsy to use, as well as free trips to Disney World from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Gypsy Rose sang the Alabama song “Angels Among Us” at a conference for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life; she was named Child of the Year by the Oley Foundation, a supportive organization for families of disabled children, in 2007. Gypsy was known to her community and to the world as a brave girl with the heart of an angel, who suffered against numerous illnesses and whose mother was equal parts her best friend and her savior.
Except the truth was that Gypsy Rose did not have any of the health conditions that Dee Dee claimed she did. Gypsy Rose could walk without assistance and did not require the feeding tubes, teeth fillings, or hearing aids she had been forced to receive. The medications that Dee Dee administered to her daughter, which she had procured through legal, doctor-ordered prescriptions, were actually causing the symptoms of Gypsy’s supposed illnesses. In fact, Gypsy was actually four years older than Dee Dee had stated, which bolstered the image of a helpless, dependent child she wanted to advertise. Gypsy Rose was being abused by her mother, who was poisoning her with surgeries and medications as part of a yearslong financial scam. Dee Dee is suspected to have had Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder in which a person fakes an illness upon a person in their care to receive attention and sympathy; individuals with Munchausen’s by proxy tend to be mothers. Dee Dee manipulated doctors into giving her child unnecessary medical procedures and publicly portrayed herself and Gypsy as a syrupy-sweet family trying to beat impossible odds. In reality, Dee Dee was routinely beating her child, starving her and telling her she couldn’t run away because no one would believe that she was mentally or physically capable of taking care of herself.
In 2011, when Gypsy Rose was nineteen but thought she was fifteen, she tried to flee her mother’s abuse with a man she had met at a science fiction convention. Dee Dee tracked down her daughter and threatened to call the police on the man, having brought paperwork that falsely indicated that Gypsy Rose was a minor. According to Gypsy Rose, after Dee Dee brought her home, her mother smashed her laptop and told Gypsy that if she tried to escape again, she would smash her fingers next. Gypsy Rose began using the family computer after her mother went to sleep and made a profile on a Christian dating site, where she found a man in his mid-twenties named Nick Godejohn. The two began to talk daily and eventually began a long-distance online relationship, as Nick lived six hundred miles away in Wisconsin. After a year of dating, Gypsy disclosed her abusive home life to Nick, who desperately wanted to free Gypsy from her mother’s captivity.
They came up with escape plans. The first was to orchestrate a meet-cute to allow Nick into Gypsy’s life as a boyfriend with her mother’s approval. Nick took a bus to Missouri to see a screening of the live action Cinderella movie that Gypsy was attending with her mother. When Gypsy tried to “bump into” him with Dee Dee at the theater, her mother scornfully shunned the young man, thinking he was a creep who liked to go to kids’ movies by himself. Gypsy sneaked away during the movie and brought Nick to the bathroom, where they had sex. Knowing that Dee Dee would never approve of Nick and Gypsy’s relationship, the two nixed plan A. Plan B, which was to get Gypsy pregnant so Nick would have to be in her and their child’s lives, seemed unfeasible. Gypsy then proposed the final plan: have Nick kill Dee Dee, allowing him and Gypsy to run away together and start a new life.
Nick once again traveled to Springfield in June of 2015. After dosing her mother with sleeping pills, Gypsy gave Nick a pair of gloves and a knife she’d stolen from Walmart. Nick instructed Gypsy to hide in the bathroom while he entered the house’s primary bedroom and stabbed Dee Dee seventeen times. Gypsy alleges that her mother screamed her name and begged for help before the house fell silent. Nick then entered the bathroom where Gypsy hid and the two had sex while Dee Dee lay bleeding out in the other room. They stole $4,000 in cash from Dee Dee’s safe and called a taxi to get to a hotel. The plan was to travel via Greyhound bus from Missouri to Wisconsin to live at Nick’s mother’s house while they planned for their future.
A few days after arriving in Big Bend, Wisconsin, Gypsy made a post to the Facebook page she shared with her mother that read “That Bitch is dead!” Gypsy has since stated that she did it to ensure that Dee Dee’s body was discovered. Indeed, the post prompted a flurry of comments from concerned friends and relatives asking if Dee Dee and Gypsy were okay and if law enforcement had been contacted. An hour later, Gypsy left a comment on the post: “l fucken SLASHED THAT FAT PIG AND RAPED HER SWEET INNOCENT DAUGHTER...HER SCREAM WAS SOOOO FUCKEN LOUD LOL.” When police arrived at the scene, they found Dee Dee’s body. They later traced the IP address of the Facebook post, which led to the arrest of Nick and Gypsy. News of the arrest made waves nationwide; videos of Gypsy Rose walking independently in court with her hair grown out stunned those who believed the lie about her disabilities. The community of Springfield was rocked by the knowledge that their beloved neighbors had been deceiving them the entire time. During the investigation, law enforcement recovered Gypsy's cellphone, which held thousands of text messages with Nick discussing the murder plan. These texts were central to the prosecution of the two, proving that both Nick and Gypsy had involvement in the death of Dee Dee Blanchard. Accepting a plea bargain from prosecutors the next month, Gypsy received a ten-year prison sentence for second-degree murder, with the possibility of parole after serving 85% of her sentence. Nick received a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole for first-degree murder and armed criminal action after his trial in 2019.
That was a lot of info. Hopefully you were able to follow along. That whole absurd saga brings us to the present day. In September of 2023, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was granted parole. She will be walking free on December 28 of this year. Gypsy’s case has received years of extensive media coverage, which is due in part to the preexisting celebrity status that accompanied her mother’s ruse, but her fame grew exponentially after orchestrating the murder. News of her impending release exploded all over social media. Thousands of people around the world are ecstatic for her to be living in society as a free adult, believing that she lived the first twenty-three years of her life in a kind of prison. If you read the comments on any post about her, you’ll find many people who argue that Gypsy Rose should have never faced any legal consequences for her actions. Some say she should have received “mental health help” (details not specified as to what that actually means) rather than going to prison for 10 years. They’ll often theorize that Dee Dee would have murdered Gypsy through the unneeded medical procedures if she had remained in her mother’s care for long enough, implying that by having Dee Dee killed, Gypsy was saving her own life at the cost of her abuser’s.
All of this being said, feelings of pity for Gypsy must be set aside when considering the impact of her decisions. Someone besides Gypsy went to prison for their part in the murder, which is a fact that many choose to simply ignore when discussing this case. Nick Godejohn had no history of violent behavior before meeting Gypsy. He had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in elementary school, and at twenty-seven, Nick still functioned at the intellectual capacity of an adolescent. During his interrogation, Nick claimed that he had some form of multiple personality disorder, though this has never been diagnosed. His relationship with Gypsy appeared to be very passionate, and his feelings for her seem to remain strong even after they stopped communicating. In a 2019 interview with Oxygen, Nick stated that their five short days of freedom were the best of his entire life.
Listening to Nick’s side of the story indicates that his decision to kill Dee Dee was made under intense pressure and manipulation from Gypsy. In the 2018 documentary Gypsy’s Revenge, Nick stated that Gypsy Rose “made it very clear” that the only way for them to be together was if her mother died, despite his shock and apprehension towards the plan. During their online relationship, Gypsy often spoke of running away together and starting a family, thereby creating a narrative of star-crossed lovers with only one obstacle in the path of their happiness. According to Nick, Gypsy even utilized the infamously manipulative line of “if you loved me, you’d do this for me,” which is often associated with abusive or narcissistic partners (hold onto that thought). He describes feeling “stuck in the situation,” and, lacking the intellectual capacity to understand his girlfriend’s exploitation and the consequences of carrying out a murder, he went through with the request because he believed he was in love.
Both Gypsy Rose and Nick have stated publicly since their incarcerations that the murder plot was completely her idea. It appears that Gypsy took advantage of his disability to manipulate Nick into murdering Dee Dee instead of doing it herself. I believe the strongest piece of evidence for this can be found in Gypsy’s videotaped interrogation. There’s a condensed version of the security camera footage on YouTube if you really want to see for yourself what I’m talking about. Her faux-chemo cue ball head has grown out a brunette buzz-cut, and she sits wrapped in a blanket given by investigators and holding a plush toy. When Detective Hancock of Greene County, Missouri enters the room and begins asking Gypsy some questions about her life, her tone is sweet and high-pitched. She speaks with the voice of a child. When Det. Hancock informs Gypsy that her mother is dead, she immediately begins crying and claiming she doesn’t know what happened. Through tears, Gypsy says that she would never hurt her mom, since the two were best friends.
However, by this point, investigators had already obtained her phone records and security camera footage of Nick and Gypsy at bus stops tracing a path from her home to the location of their arrest. Hancock firmly shuts down the deceit, encouraging her to be completely honest for her own good, in the manipulative way that cops do. After this, Gypsy offers a narrative about her mother kicking her out for being in a relationship with Nick. She tries to talk Detective Hancock in circles, but he repeatedly reroutes the conversation to her involvement in her mother’s death. Gypsy claims that Nick was very controlling and that he killed her mom as an act of revenge for bad-mouthing him. She alleges that Nick locked her in the bathroom, completely helpless, while he stabbed Dee Dee to death. Years after her own sentencing, Gypsy Rose testified at Nick’s trial that she provided the murder weapon and, indeed, was an active participant in the killing of Dee Dee Blanchard.
Knowing what we know now about the nature of Nick and Gypsy’s relationship, it’s clear that Gypsy’s intent, at least during the interrogation, was to blame Nick completely for the murder, landing him in prison and her scot-free. Nick has expressed frustration that Gypsy has not taken sincere accountability for her involvement in the murder. He stated in the Oxygen interview that he “did feel that she was not taking responsibility for her actions, but at the same time,” he added, “due to the way I know she was raised, I can't blame her.” It is remarkable to witness the courtesy that Nick offered Gypsy, whose actions played a hand in the permanent limitation of his freedom. He states that he is still in love with Gypsy and wishes he could be with her. In her own interviews, Gypsy has said that she no longer loves Nick and has moved on with her life. During the height of the media frenzy surrounding her case, she called Nick controlling and abusive in a 2017 interview with Dr. Phil; in more recent appearances, Gypsy seems to have walked back those statements to a vague disgust towards her ex.
None of this is to say that Nick was a completely helpless victim who bears no responsibility for his actions. He stabbed a near-stranger seventeen times and believed he could get away with it. Some form of accountability is necessary in that situation. I make these points to call attention to the double standard that manifests in the discourse surrounding this case. Gypsy will be released to society after serving eight years in prison; her fans say she should have never served a day. Nick will likely never see the outside of a prison again; no one really says all that much about him. Gypsy receives the sympathy (read: attention) because, ultimately, her narrative is extremely compelling. Munchausen’s by proxy is not well-known by the general public. Stories about abusive or sadistic mothers make for particularly scandalous headlines, which in turn beget feverish digital rabbit holes. Nick can be written off as a creep, or a criminal, or a victim, or mere collateral damage in a tragic situation. A violent white man who savagely kills a woman is barely even a headline.
It’s impossible to say with complete certainty if Gypsy knew exactly what she was doing when orchestrating her mother’s murder. But given the person who raised her, I’m inclined to say she had a scheme lined up when she signed up for the Christian dating site. Gypsy’s only role model in life was a master manipulator who most likely had anti-social personality disorder, better known in the general lexicon as sociopathy. Gypsy had very little contact with the outside world and no one to teach her right from wrong. Her only tools for interacting with the world were deceit and fabrication. It has been alleged by Gypsy’s family members and by Mommy Dead and Dearest documentarian Erin Lee Carr that Gypsy picked up sociopathic traits and behaviors from her mother. I won’t make any claims about the psychological state of a person I haven’t met myself, but having known multiple people who mimicked the narcissistic behaviors of their own abusive parents, I am willing to believe that this claim about Gypsy is based in truth.
Honestly, I can’t say even I completely blame her for it. Most people tend to pick up their parents’ habits by mere osmosis, and the abuse Gypsy endured was exceptionally insidious and psychologically damaging. Gypsy essentially had no chance to develop into a well-adjusted person, and for that reason I hold a lot of sympathy for her. But the consequences of her warped development have been dire. While Gypsy made the understandable but permanent choice to escape her abuser through violent means, she also made the choice to bring a pawn into her scheme. She was undoubtedly a victim of abuse, but fewer people acknowledge that she was also a perpetrator.
If you are at all familiar with narcissists and their patterns of abusive and manipulative behavior, you will recognize Gypsy Rose in a lot of the classic signs. Gypsy Rose knows how to play with people’s emotions and create different realities to get what she wants from others: she portrayed the willing lover for Nick, who she immediately discarded to save her own interests. She portrayed the innocent child to the police, until confronted with incontrovertible proof of her guilt. To this day, she portrays the desperate victim to the public, who has been eating it up for eight years. The term future-faking refers to a narcissist’s ability to push a romantic partner’s boundaries by making big promises (e.g., getting married, having kids) early into a relationship with no intent of fulfilling them; it is also considered a form of lovebombing. I would argue that Gypsy Rose employed this technique on Nick to make him more pliable to her violent plan. Asking someone you just met to murder your mom is a bit much, but if you supply them with affection and a possibility of living happily-ever-after under the condition that they kill for you, the manipulation is much more likely to work. When confronted with difficult questions about her involvement with the murder, Gypsy Rose cries on cue to evoke pity or blames another party (the drugs she was forced to take, Nick, etc.) for the consequences. The details of her story change drastically depending on what interview you’re watching; trying to unravel the narratives can make a person feel like they’re going crazy. This pattern of behavior has been documented since her arrest and has continued into the present day, and I see no reason to believe that it will stop when she is released from prison.
I am concerned about what is going to happen with Gypsy Rose come December 2023, not because I think she is at risk of being preyed upon by the outside world, but because I think she might use her fame to prey upon others. Despite never being truly free for a single day in her three decades of life, Gypsy is a worldwide celebrity with millions of fans who will unconditionally pity her for the horrors she endured as a child. While she claims her intention behind the murder was merely to escape her abuser and live a normal life, Gypsy Rose has certainly leaned into the infamy she has gained since her incarceration. She’s done multiple TV and documentary interviews and has another TV special, Lifetime’s The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, slated for release in January 2024. She’s also talked about the possibility of a book deal. According to a user on Gypsy Rose Blanchard Support Group, a public Facebook page for those who follow Gypsy’s case, she only responds to letters sent to her correctional facility when they’re accompanied by payments to her commissary. Gypsy got engaged to one of her penpals in 2019, but the two separated; she then married a different pen pal, Ryan Scott Andersen, in 2022. In a letter written to one of the members of her support group, Gypsy Rose stated that she wants to start a family with her husband after she returns to society.
Gypsy has also stated that she intends to devote her life to helping other survivors of Munchausen’s by proxy abuse. In theory, she would be a great educator on the condition, since it was her entire world for most of her life. But being a victim of abuse does not inherently equip someone with the necessary skills to support other people going through the same struggle. Merely having suffered abuse in childhood is not equivalent to an education in social work, or therapy, or any type of qualification to be helping abused children. Of course, a person doesn’t need a collegiate background to be competent at teaching about abuse dynamics, but I believe a larger degree of accountability would be necessary from Gypsy to be in a position of authority over vulnerable youth. It’s crucial to remember that we’re talking about a person who coerced a third party to kill someone for her and has only demonstrated remorse when she can earn money from it. She has contradicted herself multiple times when describing her life and her part in the murder of Dee Dee. I worry that Gypsy Rose may misuse a possible position of power in the victim advocacy community to continue the cycle of abuse onto others.
I write this article because I, like millions of others, am fascinated by Gypsy Rose’s story. As a survivor of familial abuse myself, my heart breaks for the childhood that was stolen from her. Her upbringing was a tragedy, and I’m glad to know that she will be a free adult in just over a month. I am supremely curious about what she will do with her life after she leaves prison. But I think the most profound impact of Gypsy Rose’s story is the way it reveals the extent to which sympathy is offered by our society to excuse violence. While Gypsy is offered infinite forgiveness by the public for getting her abusive mother killed, Nick is barely remembered, or even condemned by, the public for killing his girlfriend’s mother under duress. Gypsy’s status of victimhood, coupled with her capacity for twisting reality to suit her narrative, will follow her as she establishes a life for herself.
Some suspect that, given her underlying sociopathy, Gypsy will end up back in prison for some other fraud scheme, or even for abusing her own children. Others wish, jokingly, that she would appear on reality TV shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race or Dancing with the Stars. Gypsy Rose herself said that she really wants to meet Taylor Swift when she gets out. Ultimately, and for the first time ever, Gypsy Rose will be in charge of what happens with her life at the tail end of 2023. She will walk freely into the world with a life story truly unlike any other. The decisions she makes will be hers alone, and all the world can ask is that she owns every choice. Here’s hoping she actually does.