Late on the night of June 14, 2015, sheriff's deputies in Greene County, Missouri, United States,
found the body of Clauddine "Dee
Dee" Blanchard (née Pitre;
born May 3, 1967, in Chackbay, Louisiana)
face down in the bedroom of her house just outside Springfield, lying on the bed in a pool of blood from stab wounds
inflicted several days earlier. There was no sign of her daughter Gypsy Rose, who, according to
Blanchard, suffered from leukemia, asthma, muscular dystrophy, along with
several other chronic conditions and had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" she
had suffered as a result of her premature birth.
After reading troubling Facebook posts earlier in the
evening, concerned neighbors notified the police, reporting that Dee Dee might
have fallen victim to foul play, and that Gypsy
Rose, whose wheelchair and medications were still in the house, might have
been abducted. The following day, police found Gypsy Rose in Wisconsin,
where she had traveled with her boyfriend Nicholas
Godejohn, whom she had met online. When investigators announced that she
was actually an adult, and suffered from none of the physical and mental health
issues her mother had claimed, public outrage over the possible abduction of a
severely disabled girl gave way to shock and some sympathy for Gypsy Rose.
Further investigation found that some of the doctors who had
examined Gypsy Rose had found no
evidence of the claimed disorders. One physician suspected Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder where a parent or
other caretaker exaggerates, fabricates, or induces illness in a person under
their care to obtain sympathy or attention. Dee Dee had changed her name
slightly after her family, who suspected she had poisoned her stepmother,
confronted her about how she treated Gypsy
Rose. Nonetheless, many people accepted her situation as true, and the two
benefited from the efforts of charities such as Habitat for Humanity, Ronald
McDonald House, and the Make-A-Wish
Foundation.
Dee Dee had been making her daughter pass herself off as
younger and pretend to be disabled and chronically ill, subjecting her to
unnecessary surgery and medication, and controlling her through physical and
psychological abuse. Dr. Marc Feldman,
an international expert in factitious disorders stated that this is the first
case in his experience of an abused child killing the parent. Gypsy
Rose pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a 10-year
sentence; after a brief trial in November 2018 Godejohn was convicted of first-degree
murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Background
Early life and
marriage of Dee Dee Blanchard
Dee Dee Blanchard
was born Clauddine Pitre in Chackbay, Louisiana, near the Gulf Coast in 1967, and grew up with
her family in nearby Golden Meadow. Blanchard was the daughter of Claude Anthony Pitre, Sr. and Emma Lois Gisclair. She had five
siblings, Claude Jr., Claudia, Evans,
Dorla, and Todd.
During her childhood, relatives recalled, she occasionally
engaged in petty theft, often as retaliation when things did not go her
way. At some point early in her adult
life, she worked as a nurse's aide. The
family expressed suspicion that in 1997 she might have killed her own mother by
denying her food.
When she was 24, she became pregnant by Rod Blanchard, then 17. They named their daughter Gypsy Rose because Clauddine liked the
name Gypsy and Rod was a fan of Guns N'
Roses. Shortly before Gypsy Rose's birth in July 1991, the
couple separated when Rod, as he said in 2017, realized he "got married for the wrong reasons". Despite Clauddine's
efforts to get him to return, he did not, and she took her newborn daughter to
live with her family.
Childhood
According to Rod, who remained involved with his daughter at
this point, by the time "Gyp"
(as she was known in her extended family) was three months old, her mother was
convinced the infant suffered from sleep apnea and began taking her to the
hospital where repeated overnight stays with a sleep monitor and other tests
found no sign of the condition. Nevertheless, he recalls, Clauddine became
convinced that Gypsy had a wide range of health issues, which she attributed to
an unspecified chromosomal disorder.
When Gypsy was 7 or 8, she recalls, she was riding on her
grandfather's motorcycle when they were involved in a minor accident. She
suffered an abrasion to her knee, which her mother said was the visible sign of
injuries that would require several surgeries to treat properly. From then on,
Gypsy, who had already been made to use a walker, was confined to a wheelchair,
although she was healthy enough to walk on her own.
Gypsy often went with her parents to Special Olympics events. In 2001, when Dee Dee claimed Gypsy was 8,
(she was actually 10) she was named the honorary
queen of the Krewe of Mid-City,
a child-oriented parade held during Mardi
Gras in New Orleans.
Gypsy seems to have stopped going to school after second
grade, possibly even as early as kindergarten. Her mother homeschooled her after that,
supposedly because her illnesses were so severe. Gypsy managed to learn to read
on her own through the Harry Potter books.
While Gypsy's father Rod had remarried, Clauddine moved in
with her father and stepmother. They would later claim that Clauddine, when
preparing food for her stepmother, poisoned it with Roundup weed killer, leading to her own chronic illness during this
period. During that time, she was
arrested for several minor offenses, including writing bad checks. When the Pitres began to regularly confront
her about her treatment of Gypsy and expressed suspicion about her role in her
stepmother's health, she left with Gypsy for Slidell. Her stepmother's health returned to normal shortly afterward.
In Slidell, she
and Gypsy lived in public housing; they paid their bills with public assistance
Clauddine had been granted due to her daughter's supposed medical conditions
and Rod's child-support payments. They spent most of their time visiting
various specialists, mostly at Tulane
Medical Center and the Children's
Hospital of New Orleans, seeking treatment of the illnesses Clauddine
claimed Gypsy suffered from, which she now said included hearing and vision
problems. While a muscle biopsy found no sign of the muscular dystrophy
Clauddine insisted Gypsy had, she was successful in securing treatment for her
daughter's other purported issues. After she told doctors Gypsy had seizures
every few months, they prescribed anti-seizure medication. Several surgeries
were performed on her during this time and Clauddine regularly took Gypsy to
the emergency room for minor ailments.
After Hurricane
Katrina devastated the area in August 2005, Clauddine and Gypsy left their
ruined apartment for a shelter in Covington
set up for individuals with special needs. Clauddine said Gypsy's medical
records, including her birth certificate, had been destroyed in the flooding. A
doctor there from the Ozarks
suggested they relocate to her native Missouri,
and the next month they were airlifted there.
Move to Missouri
At first, Clauddine and Gypsy lived in a rented home in Aurora, in the southwestern area of the
state. During their time there, Gypsy was honored by the Oley Foundation, which advocates for the rights of feeding-tube
recipients, as its 2007 Child of the Year.
In 2008 Habitat for Humanity built them a small home with a wheelchair ramp
and hot tub as part of a larger project on the north side of Springfield, to the east, and they
moved there. The story of a single mother with a severely disabled daughter
forced to flee Katrina's devastation
received considerable local media attention, and the community often pitched in
to help the woman who now went by Clauddinnea
Blancharde, and whom they knew as Dee
Dee.
The outpouring of support included a great deal of
charitable contributions. In Louisiana,
mother and daughter had at most availed themselves of occasional stays in Ronald McDonald Houses during medical
appointments; in Missouri they
received free flights to see doctors in Kansas
City, free trips to Walt Disney
World, and backstage passes to Miranda
Lambert concerts (where she was frequently photographed with the singer)
via the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in
addition to the house Habitat built
for them. Rod Blanchard also
continued to make monthly child support payments of $1,200, as well as sending
Gypsy gifts and occasionally talking to her on the phone (during one call, on
her 18th birthday, he recalls Dee Dee telling him not to mention her daughter's
real age since "she thinks she's
14").
Rod and his second wife regularly hoped to get to Springfield and visit, but for a
variety of reasons, Dee Dee would change plans. She told her neighbors in Springfield that Gypsy Rose's father
was an abusive drug addict and alcoholic who had never come to terms with his
daughter's health issues and never sent them any money.
Many people who met Gypsy were charmed by her. Her 5-foot
(150 cm) height, nearly toothless mouth, large glasses and high, childlike
voice reinforced the perception that she had all the problems her mother said
she did. She often wore wigs or hats to cover her baldness; her mother
regularly shaved Gypsy's head to mimic the hairless appearance of a
chemotherapy patient, allegedly telling Gypsy that since her medication would
eventually, cause her hair to fall out, it was best to shave it in advance. When
they left the house, Dee Dee often took an oxygen tank and feeding tube with
them; Gypsy was fed the children's liquid nutrition supplement PediaSure well into her 20s.
Dee Dee used physical abuse to control her daughter, always
holding her daughter's hand in the presence of others. Whenever Gypsy said
something that either suggested she was not really sick or seemed above her
purported mental capabilities, Gypsy recalls that her mother would give her a
very tight squeeze. When the two were alone, Dee Dee would strike her with her
open hands or a coat hanger.
Medical interventions continued. Dee Dee had some of Gypsy's
saliva glands treated with Botox,
then extracted altogether, to control her drooling, which Gypsy later claimed
her mother had induced by using a topical anesthetic to numb her gums before
doctor visits. The lack of salivary
glands coupled with side-effects of the anti-seizure medication she was given caused
Gypsy's teeth to decay to the point that the majority of her front teeth were
extracted and replaced by a bridge. Tubes were implanted in her ears to control
her myriad purported ear infections.
Suspicions of
deceptive behavior
Bernardo Flasterstein,
a pediatric neurologist who saw Gypsy in Springfield,
became suspicious of her muscular dystrophy diagnosis. He ordered MRIs and blood tests, which found no
abnormalities. "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. Flasterstein noted that Dee Dee was not a good
historian. After contacting Gypsy's doctors in New Orleans, he learned that Gypsy's original muscle biopsy had
come back negative, undermining Dee Dee's self-reported diagnosis of muscular
dystrophy, as well as her claim that all Gypsy's records had been destroyed by
flooding. He suspected the possibility of Munchausen
syndrome by proxy. Dee Dee contrived to gain access to Flasterstein's notes
and subsequently stopped taking Gypsy to see him.
Flasterstein did not follow up by reporting Dee Dee to
social services. He said he had been told by other doctors to treat the pair
with "golden gloves" and
doubted the authorities would believe him anyway. In 2009, an anonymous caller
told the police about Dee Dee's use of different names and birth dates for
herself and her daughter and suggested Gypsy was in better health than
claimed. Officers who performed the resulting wellness check accepted Dee Dee's
explanation that she used the misinformation to make it harder for her abusive
ex-husband to find her and Gypsy, without talking to Rod, and reported that
Gypsy seemed to genuinely be mentally handicapped. The file was closed.
Growing independence
of Gypsy
Dee Dee seems to have at least once forged a copy of her
daughter's birth certificate, moving her birth date to 1995 to bolster claims
that she was still a teenager; Gypsy said in a later interview that for 15
years she was not sure of her real age. She sometimes also claimed that the original
had been destroyed during the post-Katrina flooding. Dee Dee did keep another copy with Gypsy's
actual birth date. Her daughter recalls seeing it during one of their hospital
visits and becoming confused; Dee Dee told her it was a misprint.
Since 2001, Gypsy had attended science fiction and fantasy
conventions, sometimes in costume, since she could blend in, even in her
wheelchair. At an event in 2011, she made what may have been another escape
attempt that ended when her mother found her in a hotel room with a man she had
met online. Again Dee Dee produced the paperwork giving Gypsy's false, younger
birth date and threatened to inform the police.
Gypsy recalls that afterward, Dee Dee smashed her computer with a hammer
and threatened to do the same to her fingers if she ever tried to escape again;
she also kept Gypsy leashed and handcuffed to her bed for two weeks. Dee Dee
later told Gypsy that she had filed paperwork with the police claiming that
Gypsy was mentally incompetent, leading Gypsy to believe that if she attempted
to go to the police for help, they would not believe her.
Sometime around 2012, Gypsy, who continued to use the
Internet after her mother had gone to bed to avoid her tightened supervision,
made contact online with Nicholas
Godejohn, a man around her age from Big
Bend, Wisconsin (she said they met on a Christian
singles group). Godejohn had some issues
of his own: a criminal record for indecent exposure and a history of mental
illness, stated at times to be either dissociative identity disorder or autism.
In 2014, Gypsy confided to Aleah Woodmansee, a 23-year-old neighbor who, unaware that Gypsy
was close to her own age, considered herself a "big sister", that she and Godejohn had discussed eloping
and had even chosen names for potential children. Gypsy, who had five separate Facebook accounts and Godejohn flirted
online, their exchanges sometimes using BDSM elements, which Gypsy has since
claimed was more what he was interested in. Woodmansee tried to talk her out of
it, still thinking Gypsy was too young and possibly being taken advantage of by
an online sexual predator. She
considered Gypsy's plans just "fantasies
and dreams and nothing like this would ever really take place."
Despite Dee Dee's efforts to prevent her from using the Internet, which went as
far as destroying her daughter's phone and laptop,[ she maintained contact with
Woodmansee, who saved printouts of the posts Gypsy shared, until 2014.
The next year Gypsy arranged and paid for Godejohn to meet
her mother in Springfield. Her plan
was for him to just bump into her while she and Dee Dee were at a movie theater,
both of them in costume, and apparently
strike up a relationship that way, then for her to introduce him to her mother.
As soon as they did meet in person for the first time, Godejohn says, Gypsy led
him to the bathroom, where the two had sex. However, she apparently did not find him as
desirable in person as he had seemed online; she later said he was "creepy". The two continued
their Internet interactions and began developing their plan to kill Dee Dee.
Murder
Godejohn returned to Springfield
in June 2015, arriving while Gypsy and her mother were away at a doctor's
appointment. After they had returned home and Dee Dee had gone to sleep, he
went to the Blanchard house. Gypsy allowed him in and allegedly gave him duct
tape, gloves and a knife with the understanding that he would use it to murder
Dee Dee. Gypsy claimed later that she did not expect him to be able to do it.
Gypsy hid in the bathroom and covered her ears so that she
would not have to hear her mother screaming. Godejohn then stabbed Dee Dee
several times in her back while she was asleep. The two had sex in Gypsy's room and took
$4,000 in cash that Dee Dee had been keeping in the house, mostly from her
ex-husband's child support checks. They fled to a motel outside Springfield where they stayed for a few
days while planning their next move; during that time they were seen on
security cameras at several local stores. Gypsy said at that point she believed
the two had managed to get away with their crime.
They mailed the murder weapon back to Godejohn's home in Wisconsin to avoid being caught with
it, then took a bus there. Several
witnesses saw the pair on their way to the Greyhound
station and noted that Gypsy wore a blonde wig and walked unassisted.
Investigation and
arrest
After seeing a concerning Facebook status posted from Dee Dee's account, the Blanchards'
friends suspected something was not right. When phone calls went unanswered,
several of them went to the house.
While they knew that the two often left on medical trips
unannounced, they saw that Dee Dee's Nissan
Cube, modified to hold Gypsy's wheelchair, was still in the driveway,
making that explanation unlikely. Protective film on the windows made it hard
to see inside in the low light. No one answered the door, so they called 9-1-1.
When the police arrived, they had to wait for a search warrant to be issued
before they could enter, but they allowed one of the neighbors present to climb
through a window, where he saw that the inside of the house was largely
undisturbed, and that all of Gypsy's wheelchairs were still present.
When the warrant was issued, police entered the house and
soon found Dee Dee's body. A GoFundMe
account was set up to pay for her funeral expenses, and possibly Gypsy's. All
who knew the Blanchards feared the worst—even if Gypsy had not been harmed,
they believed she would be helpless without her wheelchair, medications, and
support equipment like the oxygen tanks and feeding tube.
Woodmansee, who was among those gathered on the Blanchards'
lawn told police what she knew about Gypsy and her secret online boyfriend.
She showed them the printouts she had saved, which included his name. Based on
that information, police asked Facebook
to trace the IP address from which
the posts to Dee Dee's account had been made. It turned out to be in Wisconsin; the next day police agencies
in Waukesha County raided the
Godejohns' Big Bend home. Both he
and Gypsy surrendered and were taken into custody on charges of murder and felony
armed criminal action.
The news that Gypsy was safe was greeted with relief back in
Springfield, where she and Godejohn
were soon extradited and held on $1 million bond. But, in announcing the news, Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott warned: "things
are not always what they appear." The media in Springfield soon reported the truth of the Blanchards' lives: that
Gypsy had never been sick, had always been able to walk, and that her mother
had made her pretend otherwise, using physical abuse to control her. Arnott urged people not to donate any money to
the family until investigators learned the extent of the fraud.
Trials
After the disclosure of how Dee Dee had treated Gypsy all
those years, sympathy for her as the victim of a violent murder rapidly shifted
to her daughter as a long-term victim of child abuse. While the charge of
first-degree murder can carry the death penalty under Missouri law or life without parole, county prosecutor Dan Patterson soon announced he would not seek it
for either Gypsy or Godejohn, calling the case "extraordinary and unusual". After her attorney obtained her medical
records from Louisiana, he secured a
plea bargain to second-degree murder for Gypsy. So undernourished was Gypsy
that during the year she was in the county jail, he told BuzzFeed later, she actually gained 14 pounds (6.4 kg), in contrast
to most of his clients who lose weight in that situation. In July 2015, she
accepted the plea bargain agreement and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Godejohn still faced the more severe charge as prosecutors
contended he initiated the murder plot, and both he and Gypsy agreed that he
was the one who actually killed Dee Dee. Her plea bargain agreement did not
require her to testify against him. In
January 2017, his trial was postponed when prosecutors requested a second
psychiatric exam; his lawyers contend that he has an intelligence quotient of
82 and is on the autism spectrum, suggesting diminished capacity. He had initially waived his right to a trial
by jury but changed his mind in June of that year.
In December 2017, the judge set Godejohn's trial for
November 2018. In their opening
statement, prosecutors alleged that Godejohn had deliberated for over a year
before the crime, while his lawyers pointed to his autism and said that Gypsy
had formulated the crime and their love-struck client had just done as she had
asked. The next day, prosecutors showed
jurors the text messages, sometimes sexually explicit, that Gypsy and Godejohn
shared in the week before the murder, often using various personas, as well as
the knife he had used. In some of the texts, he asked her for details about Dee
Dee's room and sleeping habits. These were supplemented by video of his
interview with police after his arrest, where he admitted to having killed her.
Gypsy testified on the trial's third day. She said that
while she had indeed suggested to Godejohn that he kill Dee Dee to end her
mother's abuse, she had also considered getting pregnant by him in the hope
that once she was carrying Godejohn's child, Dee Dee would have to accept him.
Along with the knife she eventually gave to Godejohn, she stole baby clothes
from Walmart during a shopping trip
so she could go ahead with either plan. However, she said, Godejohn never told
her what he thought about the pregnancy plan.
After four days, the case was sent to the jury. Jurors had
the option of finding Godejohn not guilty or guilty for one of three murder
charges; involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder or first-degree murder.
After approximately two hours of deliberation, they returned with the verdict
and Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
In February 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison for the
murder conviction, the only possible option since prosecutors had declined to
seek the death penalty. Godejohn asked Judge
David Jones for leniency on the armed criminal action charge, which carries
a minimum sentence of only three years, saying he had fallen "blindly in love" with Gypsy.
He received a sentence of 25 years on that charge, to run concurrently with the
life sentence.
Jones also denied a motion by Godejohn's lawyer, Dewayne Perry, for a new trial. Perry
argued that the jury should not have been allowed to hear that Godejohn had
considered raping Dee Dee the night of the murder, which the state's
psychologist should not have been allowed to testify while Godejohn's
psychologist should have, to establish that he had diminished capacity. The
judge, in denying the motion, conceded that an appeals court could find the
latter point significant and consider it a reversible error.
Aftermath and
reactions
Community
The neighbors, who had always looked out for the mother and
daughter, engaged in considerable soul searching about how they had been
deceived. Aleah Woodmansee, whose information
about Gypsy's relationship with Godejohn led police to the couple the day after
Dee Dee's body was discovered, said she cried out of disbelief upon hearing
that Gypsy had never been sick or disabled. Her mother recalled how everyone
had accepted Dee Dee's claims without asking for proof, and wondered if the
mother and daughter had been secretly laughing at their neighbors' naïveté. Kim Blanchard (of no relation), who had
called the deputy sheriffs to the house the night before, said, "What have I been believing? How could
I have been so stupid?" Despite
the disclosures, 60 people attended a candlelight vigil Blanchard organized for
Dee Dee in downtown Springfield the
night after the body was discovered.
"[I]n Springfield
... we are a giving community, we surround people with love and finances that
we believe that needs it", Sheriff Arnott said at his news conference
announcing the truth of the Blanchards' story. "However, a lot of times we are deceived, and I think this is now
so true, in this case at hand." Only one of the charities that had helped them
spoke about the case. A spokesman for Habitat for Humanity, whose volunteers
had built the Blanchards' house along with others on their street, said, "We are just really, deeply saddened by
the whole situation." It was, however, too early to tell whether Dee
Dee had too easily deceived the organization.
Family
Dee Dee's family in Louisiana,
who had confronted her about her treatment of Gypsy years before, did not
regret her death. Her father, stepmother, and the nephew who first shared
details of Gypsy's actual health when she was first confined to a wheelchair
all later said that Dee Dee deserved her fate and Gypsy had been punished as
much as she needed to be. None of them would pay for her funeral or even pick
up her ashes; her father and stepmother ultimately flushed them down the
toilet.
Rod Blanchard,
Gypsy's father, is less critical. "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." He was happy the first time that he saw a video of Gypsy
walking under her own power.
Gypsy
“I feel like I'm free
in prison than with living with my mom. Because now, I'm allowed to just live
like a normal woman”— Gypsy Rose
Blanchard, 20/20, January 4, 2018
Gypsy, now serving her sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center, did not talk to the
media until after she had made her plea. When she did, she told BuzzFeed reporter Michelle Dean that she had been able to research Munchausen syndrome by proxy on prison
computers, and her mother had every symptom. "I think she would have been the perfect mom for someone that
actually was sick," she said. She believed Dee Dee's claim that she
had cancer, even though she knew she could walk and eat solid food, leading her
to assent to the regular head shavings. However, she always hoped that doctors
would see through the ruse, and she was frustrated that none besides
Flasterstein did.
When Dean asked her what made her want to escape her
situations, Gypsy recalled the 2011 incident at the science fiction convention,
which made her wonder why she was not allowed to have friends like others of
her age. While she said that Godejohn took their idle discussions of murder into
reality, she accepts that she committed a crime and has to live with the
consequences. Nonetheless, she feels freer in prison than she was before, and
hopes to help other abused victims.
Victims of Munchausen
by proxy abuse often avoid doctors and hospitals in their later lives
because of lingering trust issues, according to expert Marc Feldman. According to
her family, Dean, and Carr, Gypsy also exhibits at times the same sociopathic
manipulative behaviors as her mother, who was for much of her life her only
role model. "She is already psychologically really compromised, and she's
going to need as much family underpinning and support as she can get",
Feldman told Vulture after viewing
Carr's documentary, in which he appears. He also points out that post-traumatic
stress disorder is likely to be an issue in her continuing development. "I hope they find someone wherever she
chooses to settle who is willing to provide supportive psychotherapy."
Medical community
Dr. Flasterstein, the pediatric neurologist who believed
Gypsy was fully capable of walking on her own and wrote in his notes that he
suspected Munchausen by proxy, says
it was only the second such possible case he had ever come across. He learned
of Dee Dee's murder at the hands of Gypsy and her boyfriend later in 2015 when
a former nurse emailed him the news story. "Poor
Gypsy", he said. "She
suffered all those years, and for no reason." He told Dean he wished
he could have done more.
Feldman, in talking about Carr's documentary with Vulture, faults Carr for making
Flasterstein appear to be the hero of the story. "[H]e had a gross misunderstanding of his obligations as a
physician, as well as the legal requirements to report suspected abuse or
neglect", Feldman said. The film accepts Flasterstein's claim that he
was only required to make a report to Child
Protective Services in the latter instance, but according to Feldman once
he had included Munchausen by proxy
in his list of possible diagnoses, he was obligated to make a report. "This conundrum arises in case after
case, where innumerable doctors have evaluated the patient, perhaps had
questions they kept to themselves, and just proceeded to treat or make
referrals and ditch the case that way."
While a formal diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy for Dee Dee is technically impossible since she
is dead, Feldman told the Springfield
News-Leader after Gypsy's guilty plea that he could confidently say Dee Dee
had it based on what he knew about the case. "Gypsy was infantilized and kept away from her peers", he
said. "She was little more than a
tool for Dee Dee to navigate through the world the way she wanted to."
He said it was "unprecedented"
in the 24 years, he had been researching the disorder for an abused child to
have killed the abusive parent as Gypsy did.
In popular culture
Films
HBO produced the
documentary film Mommy Dead and Dearest
directed by Erin Lee Carr about the murder and its relation to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The film
includes interrogation footage and exclusive interviews with Nick Godejohn and incarcerated Gypsy Rose; it premiered on May 15,
2017.
Television
The CBS network
talk show Dr. Phil, episode "Mother Knows Best: A Story of
Munchausen by Proxy and Murder" featuring interviews with Gypsy Rose,
her father and step-mother premiered on November 21, 2017.
The American
Broadcasting Company (ABC) news and information series Good Morning America, segment "Mother
of All Murders" aired an exclusive in prison interview with Gypsy Rose, aired: January 5, 2018,
trailer.
The ABC network
news magazine series 20/20, episode "The Story of Gypsy Blanchard",
held Gypsy Rose's first network interview from prison and also interviewed Nicholas Godejohn.
The Sony Entertainment
Television channel series CID aired
an episode titled "Death on Social
Media" on 13 August 2017, based on the case but with the setting
changed to India; the characters Aria and Aanchal were based on Gypsy
and Dee Dee Blanchard respectively.
The Investigation
Discovery channel series James
Patterson's Murder is Forever
episode "Mother of All
Murders", season 1, episode 2, premiered on January 29, 2018.
Investigation
Discovery also aired a two-hour-long special documentary titled Gypsy's Revenge. Gypsy Rose is interviewed while incarcerated and describes her
relationship with her mother. Gypsy's father, relatives, and friends are
interviewed along with public officials.
Love You to Death aired on Lifetime in January 2019, dramatizing the case as "inspired by true events". Marcia Gay Harden starred as the
fictionalized version of Dee Dee, Emily Skeggs as Gypsy Rose's counterpart, Brennan
Keel Cook as Nick's counterpart,
and Tate Donovan as Rod's counterpart. "[W]hen
I think about it every teenager wants to murder their parents at some point",
Harden told TV Insider. On January 27,
2019, a "special edition"
of the film was aired that featured behind-the-scenes interviews with Harden
and Skeggs. In one of those interviews, Skeggs mentioned that she wore a bald
cap in scenes where her character was hairless.
In 2018, the subscription channel Hulu announced the creation of the true-crime series The Act. The
8-episode miniseries is based on Michelle
Dean's 2016 BuzzFeed article. Dean is an executive producer and writer for
the first season of the series. Joey
King was cast as Gypsy Rose; she
shaved her head for the role. Actress Patricia Arquette was cast as Dee Dee. The Act premiered on March 20, 2019.
In the 2019 Netflix
web television series The Politician,
the characters Infinity Jackson, Ricardo, and Dusty Jackson are respectively based on Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Nicholas
Godejohn and Dee Dee Blanchard.
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