Tragic mother-daughter duo.
She forced her daughter to pretend to be handicapped – but the girl couldn’t take it any more and it ended in murder
THEY shared everything – a house, a bedroom and even a Facebook profile. But neighbours didn’t think too much of it. They assumed their tragic circumstances had just led to the close bond between Dee Dee Blanchard and her daughter, Gypsy Rose.
People marvelled at how devoted Dee Dee was to her frail and severely handicapped child. They’d often see her walking around the town of Springfield, Missouri in America, pushing Gypsy in a wheelchair. The pale and skinny teenager would be hooked up to a feeding tube and often Dee Dee would drag an oxygen tank around with them to help her with her breathing.
It seemed so unfair that life could have dealt them so much hardship. In addition to having muscular dystrophy, which had left her unable to walk since early childhood, Gypsy suffered from a litany of ailments. Dee Dee would reel them off to anyone who asked: her daughter had epilepsy, problems with her eyesight and chromosomal defects, which had stunted her mental development and left her totally dependent on her doting mother. And on top of this she was terminally ill with leukaemia.
But on 14 June 2015 outsiders got their first inkling that all wasn’t what it seemed between mother and daughter. Alarm bells started ringing when a post was made on their shared Facebook page that featured just four words, “That bitch is dead.”
When police investigated they found Dee Dee lying face down in a pool of blood on her bed. With Gypsy nowhere to be found investigators feared she’d been abducted.
But in tracing the eerie Facebook post they discovered it had been written from Big Bend, Wisconsin, more than 800 km away. When they got there they were amazed to find Gypsy walking, talking and looking nothing like the helpless disabled child many in Springfield had come to know and love.
She was at the house of her boyfriend, LEFT: Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mom, Dee Dee, seemed close. ABOVE: When Nicholas Godejohn (left) and Gypsy were arrested for her mom’s murder people were stunned to see her healthy, walking and talking. Nicholas Godejohn (26).
And so the web of lies was exposed. Gypsy wasn’t the teenager her mother claimed she was – she was in fact 23 and as healthy as an ox. And while she’d been confined to a wheelchair – forced to pretend she was terminally ill – she’d been plotting with Nicholas, whom she’d met on an online Christian dating site, how to kill the seemingly devoted mother who’d deprived her of a normal life and had forced her to play out the sick charade.
How could a parent do something like this to their child? Fascinated by the case, filmmaker Erin Lee Carr spent months conducting interviews in a bid to unravel Dee Dee and Gypsy’s twisted relationship for a new documentary, Mommy Dead And Dearest, which recently aired in the US.
She says people assume it’s about a girl who fell in love or a girl trapped in a wheelchair for 17 years but it’s way more complicated than that.
“I spent days looking through Gypsy’s medical records,” she says. “All of it was bizarre.”
DEE DEE (48) was a master manipulator who wanted to keep her daughter young forever. Experts believe Gypsy is a victim of Munchausen by proxy, a form of child abuse occurring when a parent exaggerates or induces illness in a child to gain attention and sympathy.
Her mother was so skilled at telling lies she even managed to con Gypsy’s father, Rod. They were married for a short while but separated before their daughter was born.
He says at birth his daughter was healthy but from three months old the problems started. Dee Dee told him Gypsy had sleep apnoea, which was causing breathing problems, and from there it snowballed. Next he heard she had muscular dystrophy, was in a wheelchair and needed a feeding tube because she could no longer chew her food.
After they left Louisiana, where Rod lived, relocating to New Orleans and later Springfield, he rarely saw her. Like everyone else he was stunned to see Gypsy walking into a Wisconsin courtroom after Dee Dee’s murder.
“I was happy she was walking and then . . . Wow, total shock,” he says. “What’s been going on all these years?”
When they arrived in Springfield Dee Dee told doctors all her daughter’s medical records had been lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina. But this was a lie. Carr obtained medical records that show Gypsy was in the hospital more than 100 times between 2005 and 2014, undergoing multiple surgeries to treat symptoms her mother had contrived mainly by consulting the internet.
Alarmingly most doctors seemed to take Dee Dee’s claims about her daughter’s health at face value. Her salivary glands were removed because her mother claimed she drooled too much, and her teeth rotted and had to be removed as a result of the combination of medications she was forced to take.
But still the sympathy this invoked wasn’t enough for Dee Dee. She even went so far as to shave her daughter’s head so she could tell people Gypsy had terminal cancer.
Authorities believe Dee Dee had another reason for forcing Gypsy to pretend to be ill. Because of her daughter’s condition they were given a threebedroom home built by charity group Habitat for Humanity. Dee Dee received welfare support so she didn’t have to work and could be Gypsy’s full-time caregiver.
They were showered with gifts from well-wishers as well as trips to Disney World paid for by nonprofit foundations.
But if Gypsy knew it was all a lie why didn’t she blow the whistle?
The short answer is she was scared. She claims her mom physically abused her and threatened her. This has been borne out by analysis of videos showing their interaction – experts say Dee Dee can be seen using hugs and hand-holding to direct Gypsy in public.
But she couldn’t be in control all the time. When Dee Dee was asleep Gypsy surfed the internet and that’s how she met Nicholas. And when she told him about what her mother was doing he came up with a drastic plan to free her.
He caught a bus to Springfield and while Dee Dee was asleep he slipped into the house and allegedly stabbed her while her daughter hid in the bathroom. He and Gypsy then fled to his parent’s home in Wisconsin.
GYPSY is now an inmate at the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Centre in Missouri. Nicholas is still awaiting trial but she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
While many new prisoners struggle to adapt Gypsy seems to have blossomed. She’s grown her hair long and has reportedly gained 6 kg. Although she’s serving her time she says it was Nicholas who came up with the idea to kill her mother.
She also insists she wasn’t a willing participant in the fraud her mom carried out. “I feel like I was just as used as everybody else,” she said in a recent interview. “She used me as a pawn.”
She still has mixed feelings about Dee Dee. “The doctors thought she was so devoted and caring,” Gypsy says.
“I think she’d have been the perfect mom for someone who actually was sick. But I’m not sick. There’s that big, big difference.”
‘I feel like I was just as used as everybody else’