Gypsy-Rose Blanchard grew up with her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, making claims about her health that resulted in a series of dire diagnoses and medical interventions. However, Gypsy-Rose wasn’t actually unwell—her mother had been lying about her symptoms. Experts believe Dee Dee’s behavior stemmed from the mental disorder Munchausen syndrome by proxy; because Dee Dee wanted to be a caretaker, she feigned and induced illness in her daughter. The truth about Gypsy-Rose and her mother only came out after Gypsy-Rose arranged for an online boyfriend to murder Dee Dee in 2015.
Watch the fictionalized mini-series The Act about Dee Dee and Gypsy-Rose or the documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest. Hear from Gypsy-Rose directly by watching The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose or Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up on Lifetime.
Dee Dee began pretending Gypsy-Rose had different illnesses when Gypsy-Rose was a baby
Gypsy-Rose, who was born in July 1991, was a baby when Dee Dee claimed her daughter had sleep apnea. When Gypsy-Rose was 8 years old, Dee Dee described her as suffering from leukemia and muscular dystrophy and said she required a wheelchair and feeding tube. The list of medical problems that Dee Dee said her daughter had eventually included seizures, asthma, and hearing and visual impairments.
Due to Dee Dee’s actions, Gypsy-Rose was prescribed a litany of medications and had to sleep using a breathing machine. She also went through multiple surgeries, including procedures on her eyes and removal of her salivary glands. When Gypsy-Rose’s teeth rotted—perhaps due to her medications, missing salivary glands, or neglect—they were pulled out.
Yet, the truth was that Gypsy-Rose could walk, didn’t need a feeding tube, and didn’t have cancer. Her head was bald only because her mother shaved off her hair. Experts believe Dee Dee had a mental illness known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (officially called factitious disorder imposed on another), which made her fabricate her daughter’s ill health in order to receive attention and sympathy for taking care of a sick child.
Dee Dee appeared to be a charming, devoted mother, so people believed her
Medical tests often showed inconclusive or contradictory results regarding Gypsy-Rose’s diagnoses, but Dee Dee would stop seeing any doctors who questioned her daughter’s ailments. And many caregivers went along with what Dee Dee wanted. She’d had some nurse’s training, so she could accurately describe symptoms, and she sometimes gave Gypsy-Rose medication to mimic certain conditions. Dee Dee was also charming and seemed devoted to her daughter. When Gypsy-Rose was old enough to talk, Dee Dee instructed her not to volunteer information during their appointments—she was always the one relating Gypsy-Rose’s fake medical history.
Dee Dee told Gypsy-Rose’s father, Rod Blanchard, that their daughter had a chromosomal disorder that had led to her many health issues. He complimented Dee Dee for her devoted care. When some of Dee Dee’s family noticed that Gypsy-Rose didn’t seem to need a wheelchair and asked questions, Dee Dee and Gypsy-Rose moved away.
Dee Dee claimed to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina, so she and Gypsy-Rose received assistance to relocate from Louisiana to Missouri in 2005. There, Dee Dee continued to bring Gypsy-Rose to doctor’s appointments. Hurricane Katrina also provided an excuse for missing medical files.
Dee Dee began to lie about Gypsy-Rose’s age when her daughter was a teenager
In 2008, Gypsy-Rose and Dee Dee moved into a new home in Springfield, Missouri. Built by Habitat for Humanity, it was painted pink and had a wheelchair ramp. The mother and daughter also received benefits that included charity-sponsored visits to concerts and Disney World. All along, Dee Dee continued to bask in the attention she received for being a devoted caretaker.
When Gypsy-Rose was 14, she saw a neurologist in Missouri who came to believe she was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. However, this doctor never reported her case to authorities. In later interviews, he stated his belief that there wasn’t enough evidence to act. In 2009, an anonymous report was made to authorities stating that Dee Dee’s accounts of Gypsy-Rose’s ailments had no medical basis. This resulted in two caseworkers visiting their home, but Dee Dee convinced them there was nothing wrong.
As Gypsy-Rose grew older, Dee Dee began to lie about her age, going so far as to alter the dates on Gypsy-Rose’s birth certificate to make her daughter seem younger. But Gypsy-Rose was still becoming harder for Dee Dee to control.
Gypsy-Rose convinced a man she met online to kill Dee Dee
In 2011, Gypsy-Rose tried to get away from her mother by running away with a man she’d met at a science fiction convention. But Dee Dee soon tracked them down via mutual friends. She convinced the man that Gypsy-Rose was a minor, though she was actually 19 at the time. According to Gypsy-Rose, Dee Dee smashed her computer and physically restrained her to her bed after they returned home. Gypsy-Rose has also stated her mother would sometimes hit her and deny her food.
Gypsy-Rose eventually managed to get back online. She joined a Christian dating site, where she met Nicholas Godejohn. She told him the truth about her mother’s actions and ended up asking him to kill Dee Dee so they could be together. In June 2015, he came to her house and stabbed Dee Dee while Gypsy-Rose waited, ears covered, in the bathroom.
Gypsy-Rose and Godejohn returned to his home in Wisconsin, where they were found by police. Gypsy had twice posted to the Facebook account she shared with her mother, once writing, “That b–– is dead!” She later explained she made the posts because she wanted her mother’s body to be discovered.
Gypsy-Rose was “afraid” and believed she “didn’t have anyone to trust”
After Dee Dee’s murder, many people who’d known Gypsy-Rose wondered why she had gone so far as to kill her. Since she could walk, she simply could’ve exposed Dee Dee’s lies by standing up in public. Yet Gypsy-Rose had been conditioned to think no one would believe her. She explained: “I couldn’t just jump out of the wheelchair, because I was afraid and I didn’t know what my mother would do. I didn’t have anyone to trust.”
The fact was that Gypsy-Rose had spent her entire life being controlled and monitored by her mother. She wasn’t allowed to go to school. Although Gypsy-Rose was of normal intelligence, Dee Dee told everyone her daughter had a mental age of 7. When they were out in public, Dee Dee constantly held Gypsy-Rose’s hand, squeezing it when she wanted her daughter to be quiet.
“The control was total in the same sense that the control of a kidnapped victim sometimes is total,” said Dr. Marc Feldman, an expert in Munchausen syndrome by proxy, about Dee Dee’s actions. “Her daughter was, in essence, a hostage, and I think we can understand the crime that occurred subsequently in terms of a hostage trying to gain escape.”
Now out of prison and a mother herself, Gypsy-Rose is “not happy” that Dee Dee is dead
It was only after Dee Dee’s death that Gypsy-Rose realized the extent of her mother’s deception. While Gypsy-Rose had known she could walk and eat regular food, she had believed she had leukemia. Her medical records documented the abuse she’d be subjected to so Gypsy-Rose’s lawyer was able to arrange a plea deal for the charges she faced in Dee Dee’s death.
In 2016, Gypsy-Rose pled guilty to second-degree murder. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served 85 percent of her sentence before being released December 28, 2023. Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2018 and was sentenced to life in prison.
Gypsy-Rose said she enjoyed more freedom in prison than in the life she shared with Dee Dee. However, when asked by Dr. Phil if she was glad her mother was dead, she stated, “I’m glad that I’m out of that situation, but I’m not happy she’s dead.”
Since her release from prison, she has continued to grapple with her feelings about her mother and her crime. “I go through my own guilt on a daily basis. And so it’s not like I could ever hide from that,” Gypsy-Rose told Good Morning America in 2024. “But I don’t know if people want me to crawl up in a ball and just start crying all the time. I can’t live that way. I have to heal myself.”
Today, Gypsy-Rose is healthy and living in Louisiana. The subject of two Lifetime shows, The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, also recently became a new mom. She and her boyfriend, Ken Urker, welcomed a baby girl named Aurora on the first anniversary of Gypsy-Rose’s prison release: December 28, 2024.
“Regardless of everything that my mother and I went through with each other—what I did to her and what she did to me—I’m now carrying her grandchild,” Gypsy-Rose wrote in her memoir My Time to Stand, released in mid-December 2024. “Later today, when I see my baby on the doctor’s monitor, I will wish that my mom was here for this.”
Sara Kettler is a Connecticut-based freelance writer who has written for Biography.com, History, and the A&E True Crime blog. She’s a member of the Writers Guild of America and also pens mystery novels. Outside of writing, she likes dogs, Broadway shows, and studying foreign languages.
