Down Angle Symbol A symbol in the form of an angle pointing downwards. Gypsy Rose Blanchard in prison. Courtesy of the Blanchard family
- Gypsy Rose Blanchard was picked up by her husband after her release from prison on Thursday.
- Blanchard's husband is a middle school special education teacher from Louisiana.
- The couple met after Anderson wrote Blanchard a letter in prison.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the woman who conspired with her then-boyfriend to have her mother killed, was released early from prison Thursday and picked up by her recently married husband.
Blanchard, 32, married Ryan Scott Anderson last year while serving a 10-year sentence at Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri.
She was paroled after eight years in prison for her role in the death of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who prosecutors said was also abusive.
According to a photo published by People, Anderson picked up Blanchard in a silver Cadillac. The vanity plates on the car read “HITMAN,” which, coincidentally or not, commemorates the events that put Blanchard behind bars in the first place.
Who is Gypsy Rose's husband Ryan Scott Anderson?
Accordingly PeopleAnderson is a middle school special education teacher from Saint Charles, Louisiana.
According to the Springfield News-Leader, the couple married in August 2022 in Chillicothe, Missouri, while Blanchard was still in prison. At the time, she was 30 years old and Anderson was 36 years old.
Anderson also appears to be a wrestling fan. The vanity plate on the car in which Anderson picked up Blanchard was designed after WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart, who often performed under the stage name “The Hitman.”
Blachard told People in an interview before her release that Anderson has been a crucial source of support since they met in 2020. She and Anderson told People that they planned to consummate their marriage upon their release from prison and expressed a desire to have children.
Blanchard told People that she knew it would be difficult to explain her mother's absence to her future children. However, she is confident that she will not treat her children the way her mother treated her.
Dee Dee Blanchard and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Gypsy Rose Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 after being found guilty of conspiring to murder her mother, who was found dead in 2015. Courtesy of the Blanchard family
“Whenever someone says, 'Do you think you're going to do this to your children because of what you've been through?' I say, 'You know what? Absolutely not.'” Blanchard told People. “I learned what not to do. I have no concerns about my upbringing in this regard.”
How did Gypsy Rose and her husband meet?
Blanchard and Anderson first met after Anderson wrote her a letter in prison in 2020, the teacher told People.
According to Anderson, he decided to write to her after his colleague said he wanted to write to Joseph Maldonado, the protagonist of the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King,” better known as “Joe Exotic.”
“Tiger King was really popular back then,” Anderson says of the hit Netflix show about wildlife entrepreneur and convicted felon Joseph “Joe Exotic” Maldonado.
“I said, 'I'll tell you what, if you write him, I'll write Gypsy Rose Blanchard,” Anderson told People. “I never thought she would be my wife.”
Anderson told the publication that in his letter to Blanchard, he wrote about the influence she had on him, as well as plenty of information about himself.
“She told me the main reason was probably because I was from Louisiana,” Anderson told People. “That’s why I think that’s the most important thing.”
The couple's relationship grew as they corresponded, both Blanchard and Anderson told People. Anderson said he was “flattered” when they emailed each other, but hearing her voice for the first time was a turning point.
“Ryan has been with me through some really good times and some really hard times. I would say he's probably the most compassionate soul I've ever met and the most patient,” Blanchard told People.
Murder was followed by years of abuse
Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 after she was convicted of conspiring to murder her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who was found dead in 2015.
Her story gained national attention due to the strange and extraordinary circumstances of the situation: Blanchard has said in interviews that her mother subjected her to years of medical treatment she never needed, including forcing her to use a wheelchair, feed through a feeding tube and undergo multiple surgeries.
A pediatric neurologist told Buzzfeed News in 2016 that after numerous tests on Blanchard, he “didn't see any reason why she couldn't walk.”
Dee Dee was widely believed to be suffering from Munchausen by Proxy, a rare behavioral disorder in which a caregiver, such as a mother, imposes a physical or mental illness on someone who is otherwise healthy.
Blanchard said she desperately wanted to get out of the situation, which led her to ask her then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to kill her mother.
Godejohn continues to serve a life sentence for first-degree murder at the Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri.
While Godejohn has said in interviews that he would kill again for Blanchard's sake, Blanchard told People that she regrets what she did.
“No one will ever hear me say that I’m glad she’s dead or that I’m proud of what I did,” she said. “I regret it every day.”
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