(AP) — Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the Missouri woman who persuaded an online boyfriend to kill her mother after she had forced her to pretend for years that she was suffering from leukemia, muscular dystrophy and other serious illnesses, was released Thursday from prison on parole.
Blanchard was released early in the day from the Chillicothe Correctional Center, said Karen Pojmann, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Corrections. Blanchard was granted parole after serving 85% of her original sentence, Pojmann said.
Blanchard’s case sparked national tabloid interest after reports emerged that her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who was slain in 2015, had essentially kept her daughter prisoner, forcing her to use a wheelchair and feeding tube.
It turned out that Gypsy Blanchard, now 32, was perfectly healthy, not developmentally delayed as her friends had always believed. Her mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder in which parents or caregivers seek sympathy through the exaggerated or made-up illnesses of their children, said her trial attorney, Michael Stanfield.
Stanfield said Gypsy Blanchard’s mother was able to dupe doctors by telling them her daughter’s medical records had been lost in Hurricane Katrina. If they asked too many questions, she just found a new physician, shaving the girl’s head to back up her story. Among the unnecessary procedures Gypsy Blanchard underwent was the removal of her salivary glands. Her mother convinced doctors it was necessary by using topical anesthetic to cause drooling.
GYPSY Blanchard also was misled, especially when she was younger, Stanfield said.
“The doctors seem to confirm everything that you’re being told. The outside world is telling you that your mother is a wonderful, loving, caring person. What other idea can you have?” Stanfield said.
But then the abuse became more physical, Stanfield said. Slowly, Gypsy also was beginning to understand that she wasn’t as sick as her mom said.
“I wanted to be free of her hold on me,” Gypsy testified at the 2018 trial of her former boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn of Big Bend, Wisconsin, who is serving a life sentence in the killing. She went on to add: “I talked him into it.”
In exchange for pleading guilty in 2016 to second-degree murder, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The first-degree murder charge she initially faced would have meant a life term.
According to the probable cause statement, Gypsy Blanchard supplied the knife and hid in a bathroom while Godejohn repeatedly stabbed her mother. The two ultimately made their way by bus to Wisconsin, where they were arrested.
EVEN GYPSY’S age was a lie. Her mother had said she was younger to make it easier to perpetuate the fraud, and got away with it because Gypsy was so small: just 4 feet, 11 inches tall.
Law enforcement was initially so confused that the original court documents listed three different ages for her, with the youngest being 19. She was 23.
Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson described it as “one of the most extraordinary and unusual cases we have seen.”
“I can honestly say I’ve rarely had a client who looks exceedingly better after doing a fairly long prison sentence,” Stanfield said. “Prison is generally not a place where you become happy and healthy. And I say that because, to me, that’s kind of the evidence to the rest of the world as to just how bad what Gypsy was going through really was.”
Gypsy Blanchard later said it wasn’t until her arrest that she realized how healthy she was.
