‘I COULDN’T JUST JUMP OUT OF THE WHEELCHAIR – I WAS AFRAID’
he’d seen her was when she was
11 and wheelchair bound.
“I was so happy she was walking and then . . . wow, total shock,” he says. “What had been going on all these years?”
Dee Dee had been carefully constructing an elaborate web of lies.
When they arrived in Springfield, Missouri, Dee Dee told doctors her daughter’s medical records had been lost in Hurricane Katrina when they’d lived in New Orleans.
Gypsy was ordered by her mother not to speak when they saw doctors.
“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,” Gypsy says.
“There are certain illnesses I knew I didn’t have. I knew I didn’t need the feeding tube. I knew I could eat and I knew I could walk.”
Prosecutors obtained medical records showing Gypsy was in hospital more than 100 times between 2005 and 2014, undergoing multiple surgeries to treat symptoms her mother had contrived mainly from internet searches.
Because of her daughter’s supposed condition they were given a three-bedroom 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.
Gypsy didn’t speak out because her mother threatened her and physically abused her – but she couldn’t control her 24/7.
When Gypsy was 23 she signed up to a Christian dating site when her mom was asleep and met Nick, who was then 26.
They hit it off and when she told him what her mother was doing they came up with a drastic plan.
They met in person in early 2015 at a screening of Cinderella at a Missouri cinema. Gypsy went with her mother but sneaked out to consummate her relationship with Nick in the bathroom.
Later, while Dee Dee was asleep, Nick slipped into the house and stabbed her to death while Gypsy hid in the bathroom. Alarm bells started ringing when Nick made a post on the Facebook page shared by Gypsy and Dee Dee, bragging about how he’d “slashed that fat pig”.
Police found Dee Dee face down in a pool of blood. Gypsy was nowhere to be found.
Investigators feared she’d been abducted, but they soon traced the Facebook post to Big Bend, Wisconsin, more than 800km away.
They found Gypsy and Nick at his parents’ home and were amazed to see Gypsy walking, talking and looking nothing like the helpless disabled child many in Springfield knew.
Gypsy admitted she’d convinced her boyfriend to kill her mother.
“I didn’t reach out to my dad because I grew up with my mom saying all these horrible things about him,” she says. “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have reached out to anybody for help.”
GYPSY and Nick ended their five-day relationship after their arrest but during her years in prison she “dated” several men and even married one, Ryan Scott Anderson. She met Ryan through a pen-pal programme and they were wed in prison in June 2022.
In 2021, a family friend, Fancy Marcelli, gave a magazine interview in which she spoke about the men Gypsy had met in jail.
“These are guys from the Gypsy support groups,” she said. “They attached themselves to Gypsy and a lot of them just want fame. One of the guys was 20 years older. Some of the guys have even gone to the prison to meet Gypsy.”
Friends are hoping Ryan is the real deal and that Gypsy’s release from prison will mean a fresh start.
“She got very little mental help in prison,” one friend, Tiania Gisclair, says.
“I believe she will, with the help of a lot of people, thrive and become a better person.”