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Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison, after orchestrating to kill her mother and serving nearly seven years behind bars.
Early Thursday at 3:30 a.m., Blanchard was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center, according to Karen Pojman, a spokeswoman from the Missouri Department of Corrections.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s story sparked controversy over the world after her mother lied to the world about an illness that she never possessed.
The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Throughout her daughter’s life, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard told her that she was a victim of Munchausen by proxy syndrome.
Blanchard went her whole life believing that she was seriously ill and not like other kids. According to Blanchard, Dee Dee forced her to eat through a feeding tube and shaved her head.
People reported, that her mom restricted, “what [she] could watch and the exposure [she] had to other kids. What [she] knew of the outside world was only in Disney movies and those don’t talk about warning signs of bad parents.”
Blanchard viewed her mother as her hero, sheltering and protecting her from the outside world. However, her perception of Dee Dee quickly changed, after she learned she was never ill.
Living her life believing she was seriously ill, Blanchard endured prescription pills and severe treatments. Because of this, people believed she had the mind of a 7-year-old suffering from muscular dystrophy, leukemia, and other ailments.
When Blanchard became skeptical, she would, “voice concerns, being like, ‘I really don’t feel like I need this,’ and she would get really, really upset with me and start manipulating me.”
Dee Dee told her daughter if she ever escaped, the police would not believe her.
Conspired to Murder her Mother
Blanchard’s whole life was a lie and she associated her mother being the root cause of it. Therefore, she met up with her online boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, and convinced him to murder his mother.
Blanchard told her former boyfriend about everything Dee Dee had done. From the painful treatments to years of deception, which angered him to the point that he agreed. As a result, he stabbed her mother to death in her home in Springfield, Missouri.
Investigators found evidence proving that the couple planned the murder. In 2016, Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
In 2019, Godejohn received life in prison and charged with first-degree murder. Blanchard’s story sparked networks to establish TV series, such as the 2019 Hulu Series “The Act” and “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” a 2017 HBO documentary.
A new outlook on life
After nearly seven years in prison, Blanchard says she’s regretted decisions and learned forgiveness.
“Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did. I regret it every single day… She was a sick woman and unfortunately, I wasn’t educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior.”
Blanchard developed a new perspective on life. Now released from prison, she is freed from the disease she never had.