Gypsy Rose Blanchard Released From Prison

She plotted to have abusive mother killed in 2015
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 27, 2023 3:00 PM CST
Updated Dec 28, 2023 8:09 AM CST
Gypsy Rose Blanchard Is Getting Out of Prison
Gypsy Rose Blanchard speaks with her attorneys Mike Stanfield, right, and Clate Baker before her court appearance, July 5, 2016, in Springfield, Missouri.   (Andrew Jansen/The Springfield News-Leader via AP, File)
UPDATE Dec 28, 2023 8:09 AM CST

Gypsy Rose Blanchard is out of prison. The 32-year-old, who has been imprisoned since 2016 for her role in the murder of her mother, was released Thursday morning, reports CBS News. Blanchard's case out of Missouri made national headlines (and a TV miniseries) because her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, was accused of deliberately making her daughter weak and ill in a bid for sympathy.

Dec 27, 2023 3:00 PM CST

A Missouri woman sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016 for her role in the murder of her mother has been granted parole and will be released Thursday. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 32, admitted conspiring with then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to kill her mother, Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard. In what is believed to have been a case of Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, now known as "factitious disorder imposed on another," Dee Dee Blanchard had long falsely claimed her daughter had health issues including leukemia, asthma, and muscular dystrophy, NBC News reports. Blanchard testified that her mother forced her to use a wheelchair and oxygen tank that she didn't need—and even forced her to eat through a tube.

Dee Dee Blanchard also falsely claimed that her daughter had a mental age of seven. The mother received financial donations from the community and a new house from Habitat for Humanity. She was stabbed to death in 2015 by Godejohn, a man Blanchard had secretly communicated with on a dating site. Blanchard, who testified that she had been physically and psychologically abused by her mother and forced to undergo painful unnecessary surgeries, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Her case inspired the Emmy-winning 2019 miniseries The Act, CBS News reports. Godejohn, who is serving a life sentence without parole for first-degree murder, is seeking a new trial, reports the Springfield News-Leader.

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Blanchard tells People that the murder happened because she was desperate to escape her situation, and she regrets it every day. "She didn't deserve that," she says of her mother. "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." She says she is looking forward to reuniting with her father and stepmother—and living with Ryan Anderson, a 37-year-old teacher she married last year. She says she hopes an upcoming Lifetime docuseries about her will help persuade people in abusive relationships that murder is not the only way out of their situation. (More Missouri stories.)

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