Gypsy-Rose Blanchard was born on July 27th, 1991. Her parents are Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard and Rod Blanchard. Gypsy spent almost all of her life being forced by her mother to pretend she was suffering from various chronic illnesses. Her mother told Gypsy’s father that their daughter had a chromosomal disorder that had led to her many health issues. Dee Dee tricked doctors, family, friends, and even Gypsy herself into believing she was suffering from leukemia, asthma, muscular dystrophy, vision and hearing impairment, seizures, and many other illnesses. She was forced to have several unnecessary surgeries, one of them being the removal of her salivary glands behind her neck.
Experts believe Dee Dee’s behavior stemmed from the mental disorder Münchausen Syndrome. Munchausen is a form of abuse typically from a mother to a child who makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick. Dee Dee wanted to be a caretaker. Gypsy’s teeth rotted from the medication she was taking that she did not need and the removal of her salivary glands, so they were pulled out by a dentist and her mother. Her mother forced her to use a wheelchair even though she did not need it and even went as far as having Gypsy use a feeding tube. She also shaved her head because of the “cancer.” Dee Dee would stop seeing any doctors who questioned her daughter’s problems. She was also charming and seemed devoted to her daughter. As Gypsy grew older, Dee Dee began to lie about her age going so far as to alter the dates on Gypsy’s birth certificate to make her daughter seem younger.
In February 2011, Gypsy tried to escape her mother’s home because she started realizing that things were wrong, and after getting caught, Gypsy claims she was severely punished by her mother. “She physically chained me to the bed and put bells on the doors and told anybody that I probably would’ve trusted that I was going through a phase and to tell her if I was doing anything behind her back,” Gypsy told ABC News in 2018. In March of 2015, she had been talking to Nicholas Godejohn through a secret Facebook account, and they had planned to meet for the first time at a movie theater in Springfield, Missouri. The couple hoped that if Dee Dee could meet Godejohn in person, she would give her approval. She did not approve and was angry at Gypsy for going behind her back and talking to Godejohn. It was at this point Gypsy had decided she wanted her mother dead. “It was not because I hated her. It was because I wanted to escape her,” Gypsy says.
June 9th, 2015, Godejohn went to Gypsy and Dee Dee’s house where Gypsy gave him gloves, a knife, and duct tape while she packed a backpack While Gypsy hid in the bathroom, Godejohn went into Dee Dee’s bedroom and stabbed her 17 times. According to Gypsy, the couple then had sex at the house before taking a cab to Godejohn’s motel. They later went to Wisconsin, where Godejohn lived with his parents. On June 14th, 2015 Gypsy posted on their shared Facebook account “that Bitch is dead!” Some Facebook friends alerted authorities, and police went to investigate their house. Dee Dee, age 48, was found later that evening with fatal stab wounds. Gypsy was nowhere to be found with her wheelchair left at the house.
