Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a child abuse victim who was convicted in 2016 of helping kill her mother, has been released from prison.
She announced her freedom in a selfie posted to Instagram on Friday.
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Later that said day, she was photographed shopping with her husband, Ryan Scott Anderson, whom she met while locked up.
According to NBC News, when she was asked whether she has plans for her future, she replied, “Lots of ’em.”
gypsy rose doing shopping with her husband #GypsyRose #gypsy #GypsyRoseBlanchard pic.twitter.com/d3ItI6gZUf
— its.am1nee (@its_am1nee) December 28, 2023
Gypsy Rose spotted out shoe shopping today with her husband.❤️ pic.twitter.com/MJTbKxMF97
— isis (@usernineeleven) December 28, 2023
Later still Friday night, she reportedly visited a Burger King in DeQueen, Arkansas, as reported by TMZ.
So who exactly is this woman?
“Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2016 after confessing that she convinced her boyfriend to stab her mother Dee Dee Blanchard to death as she slept,” according to CNN.
But she received a paltry sentence of only 10 years after her attorneys proved that she’d suffered abuse at the hands of her mother, who suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition in which a caretaker claims a child is ill in order to reap attention.
“Dee Dee was found to have convinced those around her, including doctors, that her daughter was afflicted with leukemia and muscular dystrophy among other ailments,” CNN notes.
During her trial, Blanchard described how her mother had forced her to see doctors all her life for conditions she didn’t have. Her mother even forced her to needlessly use a wheelchair and an oxygen tank.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard Celebrates Release With Family pic.twitter.com/GChvKV4osG
— sumit (@sumityou40) December 30, 2023
But during the trial, she also admitted to having been in her mother’s home and orchestrated her murder the day of her death.
“Now 32 … she clearly recalls when she and then boyfriend Nicholas ‘Nick’ Godejohn conspired to kill her mom Dee Dee, who for years had subjected Gypsy to painful medical procedures she never needed,” People magazine reported earlier in the week.
“I was desperate to get out of that situation,” she recalled to the magazine.
This desperation prompted her to convince Godejohn to kill her mother, which he eventually did as she reportedly waited quietly in the bathroom of her mother’s Springfield, Missouri home.
Looking back, she does at least harbor regrets.
“If I had another chance to redo everything, I don’t know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I’m not sick and mommy makes me sick, or if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, ‘You know what, I’m going to go tell the police everything,'” she told People magazine. “I kind of struggle with that.”
“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 added.
As to why she didn’t speak up before the murder, she said she tried but to no avail.
“I would voice concerns, being like, ‘I really don’t feel like I need this,’ and she [her mother] would get really, really upset with me and start manipulating me,” Blanchard said. “She’d say, ‘If you do well at the hospital, then we’re going to Toys ‘R’ Us to buy a new Barbie.'”
Making matters worse, she, Blanchard, was “Very sheltered.”
“I was limited in what I could watch and the exposure I had to other kids,” she explained. “What I knew of the outside world was only in Disney movies and those don’t talk about warning signs of bad parents.”
At times her mother reportedly became violent.
“I tried my best to be respectful but sometimes it was hard. She’d call me things like b–tch, wh-re, sl-t,” she said, adding that her mom also started “hitting, punching, slapping” her to get her way.
“It was very similar to a domestic violence type of relationship,” she said. “As long as you’re complacent everything’s fine. Put your foot down, then it’s bad.”
The murder reportedly occurred after Blanchard ran away to avoid another unnecessary procedure.
“I just wasn’t having it, [but] she found me, brought me back and put in place paperwork saying I was incompetent and she had power of attorney over me,” she recalled, adding that she felt at that point that she was out of options.
“I was trying really hard to figure out another way. That’s when there was a conversation between me and my co-defendant Nick. He said, ‘I would do anything to protect you.’ I said, ‘Anything?’ He said, ‘Yes,'” she recalled.
Going forward, Blanchard is expected to remain on “parole supervision” until June of 2025. Her former boyfriend meanwhile is serving life in prison for committing the actual murder of her mother.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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