Gypsy-Rose Blanchard

• 1. Introduction

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  Gypsy Rose Blanchard was, for most of her life, the daughter a whole Missouri town believed to be gravely ill. When she disappeared from her home in Springfield, neighbors feared for a young woman who relied on a wheelchair, oxygen tanks and a feeding tube. They set up a fundraiser and worried about how she would manage without her medications. Relief swept through the city when she was found safe. Then Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott gave a warning that sounded oddly out of place: "things are not always what they appear". What had people really been looking at all those years? Who was the mother who controlled the story, and what did the daughter do about it? And how did a case that began with sympathy turn into one of the most discussed crime stories in America?

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• 2. A Girl Everyone Helped

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  Gypsy Rose Blanchard was born on the 27th of July 1991. Her mother, Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard, was 24, and her father, Rod Blanchard, was 18. A Slidell Sentry-News article from the 20th of February 2003 gives the last contemporaneous Louisiana portrait of the family. It reported that relatives had abandoned the pair after the death of Dee Dee's mother. They had moved around looking for affordable housing and had twice lived in their car before landing in public housing in Slidell. Dee Dee thanked a church family at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, social workers for Gypsy, and the Children's Wish Endowment, which sent them to Disney World. The charity also covered medical and travel costs, and the trip produced 21 rolls of film. Gypsy told the paper, "I'm a Brownie in Troop 23." Hurricane Katrina later destroyed their Louisiana home, and the two rented a house in Aurora, in southwestern Missouri. In 2007 the Oley Foundation, which advocates for people who use feeding tubes, named Gypsy its Child of the Year. Habitat for Humanity then built them a small house in 2008 on the north side of Springfield, with a wheelchair ramp and a hot tub. Local media told the story of a single mother and her severely disabled daughter who had fled a hurricane, and the community kept pitching in for the woman who now called herself Clauddinnea Blancharde. That Springfield house would later become a crime scene.

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• 3. Managing the Illness

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  Dee Dee regularly shaved her daughter's head. She allegedly explained that medication would eventually make Gypsy's hair fall out, so it was better to cut it first. Gypsy often wore wigs or hats to cover the baldness. When the two left home, Dee Dee frequently brought an oxygen tank and a feeding tube, and Gypsy was given the children's nutrition drink PediaSure well into her 20s. The paperwork was also unreliable. Dee Dee likely forged a copy of Gypsy's birth certificate at least once, changing the birth year to 1995 so that Gypsy could still pass as a teenager. Gypsy said in a later interview that for 14 years she did not know her real age. Rod Blanchard recalled that Dee Dee had told him their daughter had a "chromosomal defect" that explained her many health problems. Some medical facts were real. Her former pediatrician, Dr. Rob Steel, confirmed that she had strabismus as an infant, and that surgery was needed to prevent blindness. In 2011 she was also diagnosed with 1q21.1 deletion syndrome, which can raise the risk of developmental delay, intellectual disability and psychiatric problems. That same year, her frustration with her situation began to break into the open.

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• 4. Attempts to Get Away

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  Since 2001, Gypsy had attended science fiction and fantasy conventions, sometimes in costume. Those crowds were diverse and welcoming, and she could blend in there while using her wheelchair. At a 2011 event, she made what may have been an escape attempt. Her mother found her in a hotel room with a man she had met online. Dee Dee produced the paperwork with the false, younger birthdate and threatened to tell the police. In June 2011, Gypsy tried again by shooting her mother ten times with a BB gun, which she at first believed was a real firearm. Dee Dee told other people the wounds came from a robbery attempt at a nearby Walmart. Neither attempt freed Gypsy, but around 2012 she found a different route out, and it ran through the Internet.

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• 5. The Boyfriend and the Plans

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  Around 2012, Gypsy, who kept using the Internet and phone freely, made contact with Nicholas Godejohn, a man close to her age from Big Bend, Wisconsin. She said they met on a Christian singles website. The two exchanged more than 100 videos. In 2014 she confided in Aleah Woodmansee, a 23-year-old neighbor who thought of herself as a big sister and did not realize Gypsy was nearer her own age. Gypsy told her that she and Godejohn had discussed eloping and had even picked names for future children. Law-enforcement reports and media coverage indicate that Gypsy kept several Facebook accounts under different names. She claimed her mother refused her internet access and even destroyed her phone and laptop, yet she stayed in touch with Woodmansee online until 2014. Woodmansee saved printouts of those posts. In 2015, Gypsy arranged and paid for Godejohn to travel to Springfield, using money stolen from her mother. Her idea was to stage a first meeting at a movie theater with her mother present, then seem to start a relationship by chance. At trial she testified that she had "plans A, B, and C" to be with him. Plan A, the staged meeting, "didn't go well at all". She also testified that the two had talked about killing Dee Dee for about a year, and that she had thought of other methods earlier. Less than a month before the killing, she sent Godejohn a video of herself walking into her mother's room, pointing at Dee Dee's pillow and making a stabbing motion.

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• 6. The Night of the Killing

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  On the 10th of June 2015, Godejohn arrived back in Springfield while Gypsy and her mother were out at a doctor's appointment. Once they were home and Dee Dee had gone to sleep, he went to the Blanchard house. Gypsy let him in and handed him duct tape, gloves and a knife, understanding that he would use them to kill her mother. By her own account, she hid in the bathroom and covered her ears so she would not hear Dee Dee screaming. Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee 17 times in the back as she slept. The pair took more than $4,400 in cash that Dee Dee had kept in the house, called a taxi and fled to a motel outside Springfield. They stayed for a few days, and security cameras at several stores recorded them. Gypsy said she believed at that point that they had gotten away with it. They mailed the knife back to Godejohn's home in Wisconsin so they would not be caught carrying it, then took a bus there. Witnesses on the way to the Greyhound station noticed that Gypsy wore a blonde wig and walked without help. Back in Springfield, meanwhile, Dee Dee's Facebook account kept posting.

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• 7. Unraveling

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  Friends of the Blanchards grew uneasy about strange Facebook statuses on Dee Dee's account. When phone calls went unanswered, several friends and neighbors went to the house. They knew the two often left for medical trips without notice, but Dee Dee's modified car sat in the driveway. Protective film on the windows made it hard to see inside, and nobody answered the door, so they called 9-1-1. Police had to wait for a search warrant, but let one neighbor climb through a window. He found the house largely undisturbed, with Gypsy's wheelchairs inside. After the warrant arrived, officers found Dee Dee's body. Woodmansee, standing on the lawn with the others, told police about Gypsy's secret boyfriend and showed them her printouts, which included his name. Police asked Facebook to trace the IP address behind the posts on Dee Dee's account. It led to Wisconsin, and the next day agencies in Waukesha County raided the Godejohn family home in Big Bend. Godejohn and Gypsy surrendered on charges of murder and felony armed criminal action. They were extradited to Springfield and held on $1 million bond. Springfield media soon reported that Gypsy had never been sick and had always been able to walk, and that her mother had allegedly used physical abuse to keep up the pretense. Sheriff Arnott urged people not to donate to the family until investigators understood the fraud. Gypsy was first charged with first-degree murder, but she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a ten-year sentence. Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus 25 years for armed criminal action.

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• 8. Life After Prison

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  On the 28th of December 2023, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released on parole after serving about eight and a half years of her ten-year sentence. Her story had already reached screens while she was still behind bars. The documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, released in 2017, used a prison interview with her and archive footage. She also gave prison interviews to Dr. Phil and, in 2018, to ABC News Nightline. In 2019, Hulu released The Act, an eight-part mini-series in which Joey King played Gypsy and Patricia Arquette played Dee Dee. That same year Lifetime aired Love You to Death, a crime drama inspired by the case, starring Marcia Gay Harden and Emily Skeggs, with the characters' names changed. After her release she appeared on Good Morning America, CNN and The View. In 2024 Lifetime premiered the reality show Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, which featured her and her then-husband Ryan Anderson. According to People magazine, the couple separated and divorced in April of that year. In March 2026, Blanchard drew outrage with a TikTok video made with the influencer Natalie Reynolds, in which she joked about her part in her mother's murder.

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