Who is Gypsy Rose Blanchard?
Gypsy Rose Blanchard has tried to set the record straight after being released from prison.
Blanchard has been the focus of media attention since she was released from jail, having served eight years of a 10-year sentence for the second-degree murder of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, in 2015.
Dee Dee was killed by Blanchard’s boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn. He is serving a life sentence after being convicted of first-degree murder.
Gyspy Rose was released in December.
From a young age, Dee Dee told her daughter that she had an array of conditions, including muscular dystrophy, leukaemia and asthma, and that she had the “mental capacity of a seven-year-old child due to brain damage” supposedly resulting from being born prematurely.
It was later found that Blanchard had none of these conditions and that they had all been fabricated by her mother.
Following Dee Dee’s murder, the investigation suggested Blanchard was the victim of what they called Munchausen by proxy syndrome.
Blanchard told ABC that she felt like she was “in a black and white world” in prison and that being freed has allowed her to step “into technicolour.”
Elsewhere, she opened up about her previous addiction to painkillers but said she didn’t blame this for her role in her mother’s murder.
“This is really hard to talk about because it took me down a dark path,” she said. “I don’t blame drugs, I don’t blame anything, I don’t make excuses.”
Shown a picture of her younger self with her mother, Blanchard said that she couldn’t “associate with that little girl”, adding: “I know it’s me, but at the same time, that isn’t me any more.”
Blanchard disagreed with media portrayals of Dee Dee as a “monster”, despite the abuse she endured at the hands of her mother.
“She had a lot of demons herself that she was struggling with. I didn’t want her dead. I just wanted out of my situation and I thought that was the only way out.”
Since her release, Blanchard has garnered more than six million followers on Instagram and often shares loved-up photos with her husband, Ryan Scott Anderson. They met after he wrote to her in prison and married in 2022.
She says she isn’t looking for fame, but some people are uncomfortable with the way she’s been pushed into the spotlight, with one commentator writing online: “Why is this lady getting so much praise? She murdered her mom.”
