Gypsy Rose Blanchard: From 'Forced Sick' Child To Murder Mystery

Gypsy Rose Blanchard was born in 1991 to Dee Dee Blanchard and her ex-husband, Rod. Shortly after her birth, her parents split up as Rod claimed he wasn’t ready for a long-term commitment. 

It didn’t take long before Dee Dee began fabricating medical issues and assigning them to her daughter. When Gypsy fell off of her bicycle, she was rushed to hospital where her mother claimed that Gypsy’s superficial wound needed several corrective surgeries. Once they returned home, the young girl was placed in a wheelchair.

Dee Dee’s treatment of gypsy began to raise suspicion with the extended Blanchard family. Fearing that her rouse was soon going to be exposed, she left for the town of Slidell, Louisiana.

It was once Dee Dee arrived in Lousiana that her fabrications got seriously out of control. Gypsy’s phantom medical conditions seemed to get more and more extreme by the day and the mother even claimed to have lost her home, along with her daughter’s medical files, in Hurricane Katrina.

Muscle atrophy was the latest ailment added to Gypsy’s laundry list of health problems and a visit to the local hospital culminated in her mother stating that Gypsy also began suffering seizures. The medication was prescribed to treat the convulsions and Dee Dee began forcing her daughter to take them.

After Hurricane Katrina, the Blanchard women were airlifted to Missouri as Gypsy was considered too vulnerable to travel by car. They settled in the town of Aurora where Gypsy quickly became a cherished local celebrity. The local community was touched by Dee Dee’s struggles as a single mother whose life looking after her ailing daughter had been made even more difficult by a natural disaster. The Blanchards were often recipients of free flights and hotel rooms and backstage passes to Gypsy’s favorite singers.

Whilst the local community was doing everything they could to help, one doctor was looking on with suspicion in the background. Bernardo Flasterstein was a pediatric neurologist who had previously met Gypsy at his practice.

Flasesterstien began to grow skeptical of Gypsy’s ever-growing list of ailments. Upon reviewing her records, he noticed that she had been diagnosed with muscular atrophy despite biopsies and CT scans showing that her muscles were in healthy condition. He began to suspect the Dee Dee was fabricating her daughter’s problems in a textbook case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Dee Dee began to feel the heat from Dr. Flasterstein and noticed that he was fast approaching her web of lies. She swiftly severed contact from him and an anonymous phone call to the police regarding Gypsy’s staged illnesses went unnoticed.

As the years went by, Dee Dee found it more and more difficult to control her daughter. A science-fiction convention in 2011 crescendoed in Gypsy staying in a hotel room with a man she had met online. Dee De found the pair and threatened to report the man to the police, claiming that Gypsy was a minor and the man would be charged with statutory rape.

Gypsy’s punishment was much more severe. Not only was her Internet access taken away, but she was also handcuffed to her bed for two weeks and regularly denied food. Knowing that her daughter was only a few years away from being able to overpower her, Dee Dee resorted to the most brutal discipline tactics she knew. 

Gypsy slowly resurrected her Internet presence whilst her mother was sleeping at night. In a Christian singles chat room, she met Nicholas Godejon. He learned that Gypsy’s mother was abusing her and had scammed the public into believing that she had serious medical issues for years. The two quickly became infatuated with each other and began a plot to have Dee Dee removed.

By 2015, Gypsy had reached the boiling point with her mother’s actions and asked Godejon if he could kill Dee Dee. Godejon, who had a variety of mental health issues, gladly agreed. 

Whilst Dee Dee was asleep one summer’s evening, Godejon entered the house with a knife and some duct tape. Gypsy retired to the bathroom and covered her ears as she didn’t want to hear her mother’s screaming. Godejon then emerged from the master bedroom where Dee Dee had been fatally stabbed.

The two then escaped to Wisconsin and were apprehended shortly afterward. The pair were found guilty of murder and housed in separate prisons. 

Dee Dee was not mourned by her family. They felt that, based on her abuse, she deserved her fate and her ashes were ultimately flushed down the toilet. Whilst Gypsy says that she feels freer in prison than she ever did in civilian life, she stated that she did not want her mother to die and that the murder was merely a means to an end for escaping her regime. 

Whilst Godjeon received a life sentence, Gypsy will be eligible for parole in 2024.