On December 28, 2023 Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released from prison after serving 8 years for the second-degree murder of her mother Dee Dee.
As some background, Dee Dee was born Clauddine Pitre in Chackbay, Louisiana, near the Gulf Coast in 1967. Dee Dee was her nickname. She grew up with her family in nearby Golden Meadow.
She was one of five children of Claude Anthony Pitre, Sr. and Emma Lois Gisclair.
Dee Dee’s family have spoken about her habits and said that she often stole from them as retaliation when ‘things didn’t go her way.’
Dee Dee worked at one point as a nurse’s aide. Her family have recently expressed concern that she may have killed her own mother by withholding food from her while ‘caring’ for her.
When Dee Dee was 24, she became pregnant to a man named Rod Blanchard. Rod was 17 at the time. The couple were married briefly but split just before Dee Dee gave birth in July 1991. Rod said the reason for the split was that they had gotten married for the wrong reasons.
On July 27, 1991, Dee Dee gave birth to a daughter. They named her Gypsy Rose because Dee Dee liked the name Gypsy and Rod liked Guns N Roses.
As the couple had split, Dee Dee took Gypsy to live with her family.
Rod has said that by the time Gypsy was three months old, Dee Dee was convinced that the child had sleep apnea. She took her to the hospital frequently. Gypsy underwent testing and sleep monitoring and no sign of sleep apnea was found.
Dee Dee seemed to become convinced that Gypsy had many health issues due to a chromosomal disorder. Dee Dee began to claim that Gypsy had muscular dystrophy and made her use a walker.
Rod said that he asked Dee Dee about Gypsy’s conditions. “And the answer I got from Dee Dee; she had a disease, and it would progressively get worse and that she will be bound to the wheelchair all her life.”
Gypsy has said that when she was around 7 years old, she was involved in a minor motorcycle accident with her grandfather. “I did get into a motorcycle accident with my grandfather,” claims Gypsy who says she skinned her knee in the incident. “She (Dee Dee) took me to the hospital and then told me that the doctor gave her a wheelchair and I had to be in a wheelchair now.”
Rod says Dee Dee told him that Gypsy had “leukemia, paralyzed, muscular dystrophy, Gypsy was also using a wheelchair and now had a feeding tube.”“I told Dee Dee she was the best mother. There’s no way I can do what she [was] doing. You have a sick child. It’s constantly 24/7 taking care of her and everything. I mean, I always praised her and told her, ‘Good job,’” Rod said.
Dee Dee took Gypsy to many Special Olympics events. In 2001 when she was 10, Dee Dee claimed that Gypsy was 8 and she was named the honorary queen of Krewe of Mid City which is a child oriented parade held during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Gypsy seems to have stopped attending school after the second grade. Dee Dee pulled her out and homeschooled her, because her illnesses were so severe.
Gypsy has said that she taught herself to read through Harry Potter books.
Dee Dee and Gypsy were living with Dee Dee’s father and stepmother Laura. It is believed that while preparing food for them, Dee Dee poisoned the meal with Roundup weed killer. Laura ate the food and was bedridden for months. Claude and Laura eventually became suspicious of Dee Dee’s intentions and also questioned her about her treatment of Gypsy. Dee Dee took Gypsy and moved to Slidell in New Orleans.
Not surprisingly, Laura’s health returned to normal after they left.
In Slidell, Gypsy and Dee Dee lived in public housing. They survived off child support from Rod and public assistance that Dee Dee had been given due to Gypsy’s many conditions.
Dee Dee took Gypsy to many specialists and claimed that Gypsy had now been experiencing hearing and vision issues.
Doctors even conducted a muscle biopsy and found no sign of muscular dystrophy in Gypsy.
Despite this, Dee Dee got treatment for Gypsy for all of her other issues. She told medical experts that Gypsy experienced seizures and that meant she was prescribed anti seizure medication.
Gypsy underwent several surgeries and was constantly taken to the ER by Dee Dee for alleged conditions.
Hurricane Katrina hit the area in August 2005. The apartment that Dee Dee and Gypsy had been living in was destroyed. They went to a shelter in Covington, Louisiana that had been set up for people with special needs.
Dee Dee told officials that Gypsy’s medical records and birth certificate had been destroyed in the flooding.
In September 2005, Dee Dee and Gypsy were airlifted to Missouri after they agreed to relocate there.
Dee Dee and Gypsy settled in Aurora in Missouri. In 2007, Gypsy was named Child of the Year by the Oley Foundation. The Oley Foundation advocates for the rights of feeding tube recipients.
In 2008, Habitat for Humanity built Gypsy and Dee Dee a home in Springfield, Missouri with a wheelchair ramp and a hot tub that was to be used for therapy by Gypsy.
The two got lots of media attention because of their sad story – a severely disabled child forced to flee Hurricane Katrina. Dee Dee said that Gypsy was wheelchair bound, being fed through a feeding tube and had to use oxygen.
Dee Dee took advantage of many charities. She and Gypsy would often stay at Ronald McDonald Houses during their many medical appointments. They got free flights to see doctors in other states. They were gifted free trips to Disney World and also got backstage passes to concerts such as Miranda Lambert. These were made available to them through the Make A Wish Foundation.
Rod was paying $1200 per month child support to Dee Dee. Dee Dee told neighbors that Rod was an abusive drug addict and alcoholic who never provided them with any financial support.
Many people believed Dee Dee’s stories because of Gypsy’s appearance. She was 5 foot tall, had lost most of her teeth and spoke in a really high-pitched voice. Her appearance made Dee Dee’s stories seem believable. Dee Dee shaved Gypsy’s head to make the stories about her having chemo seem real.
Dee Dee would tell people that medication made Gypsy’s hair fall out so that she thought it was best to shave her head in advance.
Gypsy was fed PediaSure until she was into her 20’s. She has said that if she ever said anything to Dee Dee about not being genuinely sick, Dee Dee would squeeze her hand very tightly. If they were alone, Dee Dee would hit her with her open hands or a coat hanger.
Dee Dee had Gypsy’s saliva glands treated with botox to control her alleged drooling. She then had some of them extracted altogether. Gypsy would later say that Dee Dee would put a topical anaesthetic on her gums to numb them before doctor visits.
After her glands were removed, that coupled with the side effects of anti seizure medication caused the few teeth that Gypsy had left to decay. She had a bridge implanted to replace the rotten teeth. Gypsy also had tubes inserted in her ears to control her ‘ear infections’.
Some doctors were sceptical about Gypsy’s’ alleged issues. Bernardo Flasterstein, a pediatric neurologist was suss about her muscular dystrophy diagnosis. He ordered that Gypsy undergo MRIs and blood tests and no abnormality was found.
“I don’t see any reason why she doesn’t walk,” he told Dee Dee on a follow-up visit after seeing Gypsy stand and support her own weight.
This doctor consulted Gypsy’s previous doctors in New Orleans and he found out that her muscle biopsy had come back negative.
When he started suspecting that Dee Dee might have Munchausen syndrome by proxy, Dee Dee tried to get access to his notes and stopped taking Gypsy to see him
Dr Flasterstein did not report Dee Dee to social services. He thought that he would not be believed and other doctors told him to treat Dee Dee and Gypsy with ‘golden gloves’.
An anonymous caller made a complaint against Dee Dee in 2009. The caller told police that Dee Dee was using different names and birth dates for her and Gypsy. The caller also said that Gypsy was not in poor health.
Police conducted a wellness check at their home and seemed to accept the explanation that Dee Dee was using different personal details to make it harder for her ‘abusive ex’ Rod to find them. The police also assessed Gypsy and reported that she seemed genuinely mentally disabled.
Dee Dee forged Gypsy’s birth certificate at least once. She changed the birth date to 1995 so that she could claim that Gypsy was still a teen. Gypsy has since said that she found a copy of the birth certificate with her real birthdate and Dee Dee told her it was a misprint. Gypsy has also said that for 14 years she was not aware of her real age.
Gypsy attended many sci fi and fantasy conventions since 2001. Gypsy has said that she enjoyed wearing costumes to attend the events as she could blend into their communities in her wheelchair.
Gypsy attended an event in 2011 in which she attempted to escape from Dee Dee. Dee Dee found her in a hotel room with a man she had met online. Gypsy would have been around 20 years old at this time.
After Dee Dee found Gypsy with the man, she produced paperwork with Gypsy’s false details and told the man that Gypsy was still a teen. Dee Dee threatened to tell police.
After this incident, Dee Dee destroyed Gypsy’s computer and cell phone with a hammer, according to Gypsy. Dee Dee then told her, “If you ever try to do that again, I will smash your fingers with a hammer.” Following that episode, Gypsy says that for two weeks, she was restrained via a dog leash linked to handcuffs that were attached to a bed. Dee Dee tried to declare Gypsy incompetent during this time, according to Gypsy, which led her to think she would never be able to go to the police because they wouldn’t believe anything she told them.
Gypsy continued to use the internet around this time. She would log on after Dee Dee had gone to bed. In 2012, Gypsy made contact online with a man named Nicholas Godejohn. Nicholas was around her age and he lived in Big Bend, Wisconsin. The two met on a Christian singles website. Gypsy had five separate Facebook accounts.
There isn’t too much known about Nicholas’ past.
In 2013, he had pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct for allegedly viewing pornography on his laptop at a McDonald’s and touching himself inappropriately.
The two talked online for many years. In 2014, Gypsy told a neighbor, Aleah Woodmansee, that she and Nicholas had discussed eloping and had also chosen names for their future children. The neighbor believed that Gypsy was younger than she was and tried to talk her out of the relationship with Nicholas.
“She would show interest in like different boys and try to ask me advice on like, you know, ‘How do you approach them? How do you like kiss a boy?’” Aleah said. “Gypsy just wanted to be a regular teen.”
Gypsy arranged and paid for Nicholas to come to Springfield, Missouri to meet her mother. The plan was for her to casually bump into Nicholas while she and Dee Dee were at the movies.
Nicholas would later say that when they met in person for the first time, Gypsy led him to the bathroom where they had sex.
“[Dee Dee] got jealous, because I was spending a little too much attention on him, and she had ordered me to stay away from him,” Gypsy told ABC News. “Needless to say, that was a very long argument that lasted a couple weeks. Yelling, throwing things, calling me names: bitch, slut, whore.”
The two continued their relationship and began developing a plan to kill Dee Dee and free Gypsy.
In June 2015, Nicholas came back to Springfield.
Gypsy has later spoken about the night of the murder. She said that she and Dee Dee fought but made up. They painted their nails together. Before going to bed, Dee Dee said, “I’m starting to feel more relaxed. Don’t hurt me.”
When Dee Dee was asleep, he went into the Blanchard home. Gypsy let him in and gave him duct tape, gloves and a knife.
Gypsy then went and hid in the bathroom and covered her ears so that she would not hear her mother’s screams. Nicholas stabbed Dee Dee 17 times in the back while she was asleep.
“I heard her scream once, and there was more screaming but not like the kind in a horror film. Just like a startled scream, and she asked, ‘Who was it that was in the bedroom?’ And she called out to my name about three or four times,” Gypsy said. “And at that point, I wanted to go help her so bad, but I was so afraid to get up. It’s like my body wouldn’t move. Then everything just went quiet.”
After the murder, Nicholas and Gypsy had sex in Gypsy’s bedroom. They then took $4k in cash from the house and fled to a motel outside Springfield. They stayed there for a few days while planning their next move.
They mailed the murder weapon back to Nicholas’ home in Wisconsin and they then took a bus there. Gypsy was seen at the Greyhound station in a blond wig and she was walking unassisted.
Gypsy has said she was excited about starting a new life. “It would come in times of happiness, little spurts of happiness, but I would have breakdowns or I’d start crying, feeling remorse, guilt, and at the same time, also missing her at the same time, worry about what, what I’d just done. She’s gone,” said Gypsy.
Nicholas has since spoken about the murder. “I felt horrible about it. When me and her were in the hotel room … she kept on telling me, ‘Stop crying, stop crying. There’s no reason, reason to cry. It was my idea, it wasn’t yours,'” he told 20/20. “[Gypsy] comforted me about it. I prayed once I got here. I tried to get her mother’s soul to forgive me.”
He said he went through with the plan because he thought he wanted to protect Gypsy and rescue her from her mother.
“I … did what I did because I loved her. I really wanted a life with her, I really did,” Nicholas said.
Family friends Kim and David Blanchard (no relation) became concerned when they saw a post on the joint FB of Gypsy and Dee Dee.
A second message read “I fucken SLASHED THAT FAT PIG AND RAPED HER SWEET INNOCENT DAUGHTER…HER SCREAM WAS SOOOO FUCKEN LOUD LOL.”
Gypsy would later say that she had told Nicholas to make the FB posts:
“I couldn’t stand the thought of her just there because what happens if it would have taken months to find her, so I wanted her found so she could have a proper burial,” Gypsy told 20/20.
Neighbors and friends started going to the home to try to check on the welfare of Dee Dee and Gypsy. When they got to the house and saw Dee Dee’s car in the driveway, their alarm grew.
The house had protective film on the windows which made it hard to see inside. When nobody answered the door, the friends called 911. Police arrived at the home and had to wait for a search warrant before they could enter. They allowed one of the neighbors to climb through a window while they waited. The neighbor said that the house seemed undisturbed and that Gypsy’s wheelchairs were there.
“Now [that] is about when I panicked,” Kim Blanchard told “20/20.” “We had never, ever, ever seen Gypsy not in a wheelchair.”
Police finally entered the home and found Dee Dee’s body. It was initially thought that Gypsy had possibly been abducted and that she would be helpless without her wheelchairs, medications, oxygen tank and feeding tube.
The neighbor we mentioned earlier, Aleah, told police about Gypsy and her secret boyfriend. Police investigated the IP that made the post to Dee Dee’s Facebook and discovered that it was based in Wisconsin. Police quickly tracked down Nicholas’ details in Big Bend and raided his home.
Nicholas and Gypsy surrendered and were taken into custody on charges of murder and felony armed criminal action.
After the arrests, Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott said “things are not always what they appear” in regards to Gypsy’s health issues. It was quickly established that Gypsy had never been sick and was always able to walk. Law Enforcement urged people to not donate any money to the family while the investigation was ongoing.
Gypsy was so malnourished that she gained 6.4kg or 14 lbs in prison, while most inmates lose weight.
Gypsy also spoke about the only thing that was actually wrong with her. “The only thing I had wrong with me is I have a little bit of a lazy eye. Not all the time, but I have better vision in [my left] eye than I do [in my right] eye,” Gypsy said. “That’s it.”
“I was so young, so me looking up to her so much and just believing she knows best — I didn’t question it,” said Gypsy. “It’s sad because I think about all the times that I could have been walking around like a normal person, skating, riding bikes and stuff, and I’ve never done any of that.”
“There are certain illnesses that I knew I didn’t have. I knew that I didn’t need the feeding tube. I knew that I could eat, and I knew that I could walk, but I did believe my mother when she said that I had leukemia,” Gypsy said. “Because I was taking lots of medications, and mom said that they were for cancer, and she would shave my hair off and said, ‘It’s going to fall out anyway, so let’s keep it nice and neat.’”
“The organization of the medications, that was shocking to me because in every other area of Dee Dee’s life, it appeared that she had no organization or cleanliness, except when it came to these medications,” Mike Stanfield, Gypsy’s public defender told “20/20,” “It let me know from the very beginning that something here was seriously wrong.”
Gypsy spoke later about the medical appointments that she went through. “Mom would say, ‘Don’t talk. Just play with your stuffed animal, and we’ll do something fun after,’” Gypsy recalled.
“The one thing that is absolutely common across every single medical record is that Gypsy never spoke,” Mike Stanfield said. “Every single medical record says, ‘Mother reported.’ ‘Mother states.’ ‘History by mother.’”
As the investigation progressed, county prosecutor Dan Patterson announced that he would not seek the charge of first-degree murder. That charge could have carried the death penalty or life without parole in Missouri. Prosecutor Patterson said the case was ‘extraordinary and unusual.’
After Gypsy’s attorney got her medical records, he secured a plea bargain for her of second-degree murder. Gypsy accepted the plea bargain in July 2015 and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Nicholas still faced more severe charges because the prosecution argued that he thought up the murder plot. Both he and Gypsy agreed that he was the person who actually killed Dee Dee.
His trial was postponed in January 2017 after prosecutors requested a psych exam. Nicholas’ lawyers said at the time he had an IQ of 82 and that he was on the autism spectrum which meant he had diminished capacity. He initially waived his right to a jury trial but changed his mind in June 2017.
His trial date was eventually set for November 2018.
Gypsy testified at the trial. She said that she had been the one to suggest murdering Dee Dee. She also spoke about how she considered getting pregnant in the hope that the baby would force Dee Dee to accept Nicholas.
The jury also heard about how Nicholas had considered sexually abusing Dee Dee’s corpse. Gypsy says that she didn’t want that to happen. “I made a deal with him. I’d let him rape me and then he wouldn’t do that to my mom.” He claimed the sex he had with Gypsy after the murder was consensual, while she says that it stopped being consensual at a certain point.
The case went to the jury after a four day trial. The jury deliberated for two hours before they returned a verdict of Nicholas being guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action. He was sentenced to life in prison in February 2019.
Nicholas asked Judge David Jones for leniency on the armed criminal action charge, which carries a minimum sentence of only three years, saying that he had fallen “blindly in love” with Gypsy. He received a sentence of 25 years on that charge, which is concurrent with the life sentence.
“All the planning she did, every bit of it. She pretty much willed the knife in my hand to commit the deed herself. She is the mastermind behind the entire thing,” Nicholas said.
Gypsy served her sentence at Missouri’s Chillicothe Correctional Center. She spoke to ABC while she was incarcerated:
“There’s a big difference between someone who asks someone to kill someone and someone that actually does it,” Gypsy said. “Because I would never kill somebody. I would never physically go through with killing somebody. I can’t.”
Gypsy also spoke about Nicholas and said, “I don’t hate him. I feel sorry for him, and just that somebody could do something so heartless and not express remorse and not feel like he’s responsible for it.”
“He was very much like my mother in certain ways,” she added. “And I feel like I was trained my whole life to do as I was told.”
“All I could hope is that wherever she is, that she still loves me in some small way,” Gypsy said while in prison. “And I want her to know that I am sorry. I am so sorry.”
In 2020, a man named Ryan Anderson wrote a letter to Gypsy in prison. Ryan is a teacher in Louisiana. He initially wrote to Gypsy after making a bet with his co-worker. The pair started writing back and forth.
“… I had a lot of emotional ups and downs because of COVID,” Gypsy told PEOPLE. “Unfortunately, it put the prison in a position to where it restricted our freedom even more … So Ryan has seen me through some really good times, some really hard times.”
Ryan and Gypsy got married in a ceremony in prison on July 21, 2022. She said at the time that they did have plans to hold a proper wedding upon her release.
Gypsy said she wanted a ceremony with a “dress and the cake and everything” because “we deserve that.”
“Our prison wedding was just something to where we can make our vows to each other,” she told PEOPLE. “It was something that meant something to us. And I think the party is kind of for everybody else and us, but mostly for everybody else.”
Gypsy also spoke about being in prison. ‘I feel like I’m more free in prison than with living with my mom. Because now I’m allowed to just live like a normal woman.’
On December 28, 2023, Gypsy walked free from prison. She had set up her social media, ready for freedom.
She also posted this video:
“Hey everyone this is Gypsy. I’m finally free!” she said with a smile. “I just want to send a quick video to thank everyone for the massive amount of support that I’ve been getting on social media. Everyone has been really really nice and supportive. I really appreciate that.”
Dee Dee’s family have said that they did not mourn her and that she deserved her fate. None of them would pay for her funeral. Her father and stepmother flushed her ashes down the toilet.
Rod, Gypsy’s father, has also spoken about the situation. “I think Dee Dee’s problem was she started a web of lies, and there was no escaping after,” he told BuzzFeed. “[I]t was like a tornado got started.”
Since Gypsy has been free from prison, there has been an article by People released in which allegations of sexual abuse have been made.
The claim is made in Lifetime’s The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, which premieres Jan. 5.
Gypsy reiterated her claim that she was abused by her grandfather Claude Pitre in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, and that the sexual abuse went on for about a year.
“I’ve gotten to a point where I can stand on my own two feet and say, this happened to me and I’m not going to let it affect me anymore,” tells PEOPLE about the alleged abuse. “And that’s why I’m talking about it now. And I think for me, making it known that it happened might prevent him from doing the same thing to another family member or another child or another person because he’s still alive.”
In the documentary, Pitre was directly asked about the allegation, which he denied — while also making a shocking claim of his own.
“She was the one that was trying to touch me, and I’d say no, don’t do that,” Pitre claims in the documentary. “She started doing that when she was about 4 years old.”
Gypsy said that she told Dee Dee about the abuse ten years after it happened.
“I fully told her everything that happened, and she proceeded to let me know that he had done the same thing to her when she was a child as well,” Gypsy says. “It was hard for us to both come to grips with the fact that we had both been abused by the same person. And I think it makes me wonder what else, what other kind of forms of abuse did she suffer that I don’t know about?”
SOURCE LIST –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Dee_Dee_Blanchard
https://people.com/gypsy-rose-blanchard-accuses-grandfather-sexual-abuse-8422002