The stranger than strange saga of the famous, or infamous, diminutive Gypsy Rose Blanchard, victim of her mother’s cruel deception and manipulation or just possibly a manipulator herself of her mother’s violent death. She served her time and now basks and basks in her celebrity.
By MARY FRANCES DAVIDSON
SINCE HER RELEASE from prison late last year, Gypsy Rose Blanchard has enjoyed a continual VIP whirlwind ride afforded by her celebrity — or notoriety, depending on your point of view.
Having grown up in front of cameras as a public spectacle for fraudulent gain at her mother’s behest, makes her a natural for ongoing exploitation of her tragedy.
And although many feel Gypsy deserves the attention and success, others are asking, “Did the Missouri DA get it right?”
Was sentencing leniency for Blanchard, 32, undoubtedly a victim of her mother’s cruel deception and manipulation, appropriate, or was the plea deal politically motivated to ensure Greene County (MO) Prosecutor Dan Patterson’s reelection?
And do details perused years later point to a more nefarious role for Gypsy in her mother’s death?
Her story is complex and explosive. Most know it, but, in short, Gypsy commanded world-wide attention in 2015, when she plotted to run away with then boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, 26, who eventually solely stabbed Gypsy’s mom, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, to death while Gypsy said she hid in the bathroom with her hands over her ears. Gypsy told Nick, who suffers from autism and has an IQ of 82, that her mother was holding her captive and had to die in order for them to be together.
As the incendiary facts of the case quickly unfolded, it was clear that things were not as they seemed. Gypsy, who was well-known to be wheelchair bound with muscular dystrophy, and hairless from cancer treatments, could actually walk like anyone else and had been shaving her head, forced to participate in the deceptions by Dee Dee.
Enter Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (now known as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another), a little-known mental health disorder in which a caregiver, usually a parent, creates the appearance of health problems in a child. Most people had never heard of it. But as the story made its way around the globe, everyone learned that Dee Dee had humiliated Gypsy for financial gain with a multitude of such medical ruses since Gypsy’s early childhood. Included along with the false muscular dystrophy and fake cancer were the indignities of an unnecessary feeding tube as well as possible unneeded medications.
With these lies, the mother-daughter duo gained free trips with VIP treatment to theme parks, restaurants, meetings with celebrities, gofundme funds, and, ultimately, a small home in Missouri from Habitat for Humanity, where they had gone from their base in Louisiana in order to fraudulently claim they were victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Public opinion immediately galvanized for Gypsy.
If the case were being played out in a coliseum, viewers would have done the wave in favor of the 4-foot, 11-inch young woman with crooked eyes, bad teeth, a huge smile and the high voice of a child.
After the pair confessed, Gypsy received sentencing leniency, a charge of second-degree murder and 10 years. The public approved.
And Nick, who was characterized by prosecutors as a killer at heart motivated by bloodlust, received life without parole to as much public approval.
Movies and documentaries were made. A biography was written.
Further scrutiny of the case was swept into the past to the dismay of investigators, Nick’s family, and others.
After serving eight years of her sentence, Gypsy got out early.
Many of her activities and antics since have raised eyebrows and ire.
She hastily made the rounds of talk shows and podcasts with then husband, Ryan Anderson, 38, whom she wed in 2022 while still incarcerated.
In March 2024, one was given pause when the couple separated.
Giving one further pause, this month Gypsy announced via her titular YouTube channel that she was pregnant with her previous paramour, Ken Urker, to whom she’d been engaged while in prison in 2019. In the video, she emphasizes over and over to her viewers the limitations of her relationship with her own mother, and that she “wants her child to have the voice she never had, and that’s all she ever wanted”, seeming to manipulate the circumstance of her fame for any and all possible current or future financial gain.
In a Q and A video, also on her channel, she lists companies she would like to have as sponsors, seemingly oblivious to the parameters such beauty companies would require for representatives, usually excluding ex-convicts on parole. One would assume her public relations team, if she has one, would have informed her of such parameters, but more likely they possibly supplied said list of questions with the intent of creating further controversy around their client.
And since Gypsy was raised as a spectacle, so it goes in the feeding frenzy of fame and public influence.
But further disconcerting is a close examination of electronic communications from police records between Gypsy and Nick from the weeks leading up to the murder of Dee Dee, which show Gypsy’s clearly dominant role over Nick. In a bdsm/cosplay Facebook group, where Gypsy is known to have regularly interacted with older men, Gypsy lures Nick, with the promise of sex and companionship only to withdraw the possibility if Nick won’t follow her bidding. She moves them to another Facebook group – created deceptively by Gypsy just for the two of them — where they discuss, Nick not quite understanding, more specific details of the plot without scrutiny, unaware that authorities may soon have full access to all such information.
Gypsy guides the conversation back and forth between the two pages, building the tension until the pair agree to the plot, where Nick will journey south to Missouri from Michigan and undertake Gypsy’s heinous plan.
Also, let it be clear that Gypsy was 24 years old at the time of her mother’s death, not 19, as is commonly understood, participating in and benefiting from the medical schemes as an adult for years. Usually, the public sees her as a child, albeit thought to be 19, at the time of arrest and under the whim of her immoral mother.
But at what point does Gypsy move from victim to accomplice with her mother? Two things can be true at the same time, according to authorities — You can be a victim who becomes a perpetrator.
Also, many speculate Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson offered Gypsy the plea deal under pressure from the maelstrom of public opinion.
“When you look at this case, it’s a murder. And it’s a first-degree murder,” Patterson told the Springfield News-Leader at the time. “But it’s also one of the most extraordinary and unusual cases we have seen.”
Under Missouri law, a charge of first-degree murder can carry the death penalty, but Patterson announced he would not seek the death penalty for either Gypsy or Godejohn, due to her mother’s Munchausen Syndrome.
But Dee Dee was only diagnosed with the disorder by the media, some say, and they question Gypsy’s current lack of transparency regarding her childhood medical records, which she says were lost in Katrina.
Did Dee Dee suffer from Munchausen or was she involved in a decades-long medical fraud scheme with her daughter benefitting and being well aware?
Dee Dee is unable to answer, and Gypsy is evasive about the details.
Meanwhile, Godejohn has appealed his case, citing ineffective assistance of counsel, and hoping for a more favorable outcome.
No matter what happens, Gypsy will likely remain in the public eye as a polarizing presence as the vicissitudes of the case continue.
MARY FRANCES DAVIDSON is a writer-at-large for LAMonthly.org. She is a graduate of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and
Journalism.
