A Daughter’s Deadly Revenge

EXCLUSIVE

Holding each other’s hand tightly, Dee Dee Blancharde and her sweet, sick little girl, Gypsy, couldn’t stop smiling. They were thanking Habitat for Humanity for their new handicap-accessible home. “We have an awesome Jacuzzi tub for my muscles,” the wheelchairbound teen proudly told a local TV station in 2008. “And we have a wonderful ramp!” It was such a heartwarming moment. “Here was this poor, sick child who was being taken care of by a wonderful, patient mother,” recalls neighbor Kim Blanchard (no relation to Dee Dee and Gypsy). “They were just perfect.” But on June 14, 2015, it all came to a horrific end. That afternoon, an alarming status was posted on Gypsy and Dee Dee’s shared Facebook page: “That b---- is dead!” When police arrived to their Springfield, Mo., home, they found Dee Dee, 48, had been stabbed to death in her bedroom — and there was no sign of Gypsy. Those close to the pair feared Gypsy had been taken and killed, too. But when police took a closer look, they uncovered a jaw-dropping bombshell about the loving mother and daughter everyone thought they knew: Their lives were one big lie. Gypsy, now 25, was perfectly healthy. She had written the horrific Facebook post — and had orchestrated her mother’s grisly murder. “Poor Gypsy had been a prisoner all her life,” Dee Dee’s stepmom, Laura Pitre, 77, tells In Touch, explaining that Dee Dee fooled the world and many major charity organizations into believing that her daughter was dying of natural causes. “It was a total scam. There was nothing wrong with her,” adds Gypsy’s cousin Bobby Pitre, 40. “Dee Dee was slowly killing her daughter this whole time. Gypsy finally wised up and beat her to the punch.”

Dee Dee’s lie began when Gypsy was just a toddler. “Dee Dee was telling me that Gypsy had sleep apnea and needed a breathing machine,” recalls Gypsy’s father, Rod Blanchard, who split from Dee Dee before Gypsy was born. “It escalated into problems with her digestive system. After that [Dee Dee said] Gypsy couldn’t walk anymore and had muscular dystrophy.” Dee Dee also lied to doctors. She claimed her daughter was suffering from seizures, so they put her on antiseizure medications. She insisted Gypsy had problems with her eyes and hearing, so her eyes were repeatedly operated on and tubes were put in her ears. She began shaving Gypsy’s head to make her appear ill. She even had Gypsy placed on a feeding tube, surviving only on cans of Pediasure. “She put my medication through the tube,” reveals Gypsy in the new HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest. “She would put whatever [she wanted] into my body and I wouldn’t know.” Over the years her teeth rotted out.

Poor Gypsy was just a pawn. Strapped for cash, Dee Dee got Gypsy involved in charities for children with disabilities. They stayed at Ronald Mcdonald houses and lodges for cancer patients. (Dee Dee claimed Gypsy had leukemia as a toddler.) They accepted free trips to Disney World and even met Miranda Lambert through the Make-a-wish Foundation. “No one ever questioned Gypsy’s illness,”

Gypsy’s friend Aleah Woodmansee, 24, tells In Touch.

But Dee Dee was the sick one. In 2007, she brought Gypsy to Springfield, Mo.–based pediatric neurologist Dr. Bernardo Flasterstein for an MRI and blood work. His findings were alarming: Gypsy’s tests came back normal. He concluded that she was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a term used when a parent or caregiver fabricates a child’s symptoms with the primary motive of gaining attention or sympathy from others. Dr. Flasterstein says that he made note of the diagnosis on Gypsy’s file — and that Dee Dee never came back to his office again. “I didn’t even realize that [this] was going on because I had lived this way my entire life,” says Gypsy. “When you’re abused, you don’t know any different.”

But then everything changed seven years later when Gypsy met Nick Godejohn on a Christian dating site. “About a year into our relationship, I told him everything [about my mom],” says Gypsy. “He had said, ‘I’ll protect you from anybody.’’’ As part of Gypsy’s guilty plea, she admitted in court that in June 2015, Godejohn traveled from Wisconsin to her and Dee Dee’s home just north of Springfield. As Dee Dee slept in bed, Nick — with a knife in one hand — made his way to her bedroom. “I heard my mom wake up and then she sounded startled,” says Gypsy, who was hiding in the bathroom. “I heard her say my name a couple of times, and she said, ‘ Help me’… and then there was just silence.” Dee Dee was dead.

Gypsy and Nick were arrested and charged with Dee Dee’s murder. Last July, Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the minimum sentence. Nick, now 27, was charged with first-degree murder. His pretrial hearing was scheduled for May 12. “There are

certain things about the murder that are sick and twisted,” Gypsy’s cousin Bobby tells In Touch. “But at the same time, Dee Dee put Gypsy through a living hell. In my eyes, she didn’t really do a crime.”

As she sits behind bars at Missouri’s Chillicothe Correctional Center, Gypsy is thriving for the first time in her life. “She told me she feels like she’s in college because she has friends, she’s getting an education and finally has her own space,” says Bobby. “She has freedom in there.” ◼

PICTURE-PERFECT “People thought of us as the sweetest mother-daughter family ever — the best two people in the world,” says Gypsy.

LIVING WITH REGRET “When I think about it now, what I did was wrong,” says Gypsy, who alleged she had her then-boyfriend Nick (right) kill her mother. “The line between right and wrong was kinda blurred because that’s the way I was taught.”