Gypsy Rose Blanchard released from prison
Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison after serving seven years for her role in her mother's murder. She was released from Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri.
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Now freed from Missouri prisons, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is finding her voice and a large audience on social media. Starting Friday, she will experience a new kind of release: She will reveal, in her own words, the depths of the medical, emotional and physical abuse she experienced at the hands of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, and why Gypsy-Rose felt that Murder was their only way out.
“The best memory I have in my entire life is the day I went to prison, was allowed to go to the picnic tables and thought, 'I'm free.' I am free to have friends. “I can do whatever I want,” she says in Lifetime’s new six-part documentary, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” (Friday-Sunday, 8 EST/PST). “It may be in a controlled environment, but that’s nice.”
The unimaginable saga included Dee Dee Gypsy-Rose constantly shaving her head to support a fabricated leukemia diagnosis, forcing her daughter to use a wheelchair and undergoing unnecessary medical procedures. These developments and Dee Dee's eventual murder were chronicled in the 2017 HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest and the 2019 Hulu limited drama series The Act, starring Joey King and Patricia Arquette.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard is free from prison. Now she's everywhere.
At Gypsy-Rose's urging, her boyfriend Nick Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee to death on June 9, 2015, at the family home in Springfield, Missouri. Godejohn was sentenced to life in prison without parole and Gypsy-Rose was released on Dec. 28 after serving 8 1/2 years of a 10-year sentence.
For the Lifetime docuseries, filmmakers spent 18 months capturing Gypsy-Rose's life and backstory while she was incarcerated at the Chillicothe, Missouri, Correctional Center. “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” features insightful interviews with Gypsy-Rose's father, Rod Blanchard; her stepmother, Kristy Blanchard; Dee Dee's father, Claude Pitre; her brother, Evans Pitre; and Gypsy-Rose's pediatrician, Dr. Robert Steele.
Here are Night One's biggest reveals. (This story will be updated with the next two nights' revelations.)
Where to find it: Here's how to watch and stream the Lifetime special The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard
How Dee Dee faked Gypsy-Rose's health problems
Kristy says when Gypsy-Rose was about 8 years old, Dee Dee told her that Gypsy-Rose had been diagnosed with leukemia, which Kristy didn't question. Rod and Dee Dee married when Rod was still a teenager and Dee Dee was in her early 20s after she became pregnant. They welcomed Gypsy-Rose in 1991. Their marriage quickly dissolved and Rod only saw Gypsy-Rose a few times a year.
When Dee Dee moved to Missouri with Gypsy-Rose after Hurricane Katrina devastated their native Louisiana in 2005, Gypsy-Rose began seeing Steele, the pediatrician. He says Dee Dee never provided Gypsy-Rose's medical records and claims they were no longer available after Katrina.
Steele says Dee Dee told him that Gypsy-Rose suffered from a seizure disorder and muscular dystrophy and had suffered from cancer in the past, but he never saw any signs of those illnesses. Gypsy-Rose also had to undergo surgery to have her salivary glands removed to treat excessive drooling, which Gypsy-Rose attributes to Dee Dee rubbing Orajel on her mouth. After the operation, Gypsy-Rose lost several teeth.
Gypsy-Rose says she didn't tell anyone what Dee Dee did because she was afraid of her mother and wanted her attention. The relationship “was either very loving because I was very submissive and obedient, or I was either rebellious and punished for it,” Gypsy-Rose says in the docuseries. “After I did something my mother wanted me to do, we would go to Toys 'R' Us, or she would buy me a new dress, and then the next best thing was her love and affection.”
Gypsy-Rose accuses her grandfather of abusing her
After Dee Dee was seriously injured in a car accident in 2000, Gypsy-Rose went to live with her grandfather Claude Pitre while her mother recovered in the hospital. Gypsy-Rose says that she was molested by her grandfather during this time.
“He would perform sexual acts on me,” she says. “He would make me touch him. He would touch me.”
When asked about the alleged abuse, Pitre denied it on camera and claimed that Gypsy-Rose touched her inappropriately. “She started when she was about four years old,” he says. “I said, 'Don't do that.'” Pitre's son, Evans Pitre, suspects that the alleged abuse may have been an idea implanted in Gypsy-Rose's head by her mother, but Gypsy-Rose insists that it “100% happened.” ”
Gypsy-Rose tried to escape her mother's death
Gypsy-Rose made the plan to escape her mother's house in 2011, shortly after meeting a man named Dan, then 36, at a science fiction convention. Gypsy-Rose had also recently learned through the discovery of her Medicaid card that she was 19, not 15 as her mother claimed.
She decided to run away to Dan's farm in Arkansas. So one evening she packed some costumes (she didn't have any real clothes) and money that she had stolen from her mother. When she arrived at Dan's friend's house where Dan was staying, Gypsy-Rose learned that he was on parole and actually couldn't leave Missouri.