A Missouri Corrections official confirmed that Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who plead guilty to helping her boyfriend kill her abusive mother, was released from prison on parole on Thursday. Missouri Department of Corrections spokesperson Karen Pojmann said of the conditions of Blanchard’s release that “her original 10-year sentence started in June 2015, so, barring parole violations and other extenuating circumstances, it’s expected that she’ll be on parole supervision and reporting to a parole officer until June 2025.”
Blanchard was the victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy at the hands of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a rare syndrome in which a caregiver fakes, exaggerates or induces illness in a child to gain 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.
In 2016, Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after confessing that she convinced her boyfriend to stab her mother to death as she slept. In the days after Dee Dee’s killing, details started to emerge that revealed the unusual situation, with Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott saying at a June 2015 press conference that “things are not always as they appear.” In a plea deal, prosecutors sentenced Gypsy Rose to 10 years in prison, after attorneys uncovered the abuse she had experienced at the hands of her mother. Blanchard, who admitted to being in the house at the time of the murder, said that she knew her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, was going to stab Dee Dee and she did nothing to stop it. Godejohn was convicted of murder and sentenced in 2019 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Court filings show he admitted to stabbing Dee Dee and said he only killed her because Gypsy asked him to.
The case of Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee gained national attention, after the release of the HBO Max documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” as well as the 2019 Hulu miniseries “The Act,” starring Patricia Arquette as Dee Dee Blanchard. In an interview with People magazine shortly before her release, the now 32-year-old Blanchard said she regretted her role in the killing “every single day … She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn’t educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior.”
Blanchard will release the upcoming book “Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom” on January 9, 2024, which tells her story through her own perspective, with the help of writers Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani. In addition, a six-hour Lifetime special “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” is set to premiere on January 5, 2024, featuring interviews with Blanchard from prison.
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