After serving eight years for her role in the 2015 murder of her abusive mother, Gypsy Rose Blanchard is out of prison. Now 32 and married, Blanchard is ready for this new chapter in her life, which she hopes includes building a family of her own with her new husband.
“We’re in love,” Blanchard told People in an interview after her prison release on Dec. 28, 2023. In July 2022, Blanchard married Louisiana teacher Ryan Scott Anderson in a prison ceremony. The two met after Anderson started writing letters to Blanchard while she was incarcerated and he was there to greet his wife on Thursday when she was released from Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri.
Blanchard told People she’s looking forward to having kids with Anderson, but know she’ll have to have “a really hard conversation” with her own children about the killing of her mother, Dee Dee.
“It’s hard because I’m going into a new life and I’m newly married, and I’m going to have kids one day, and I’m going to have to explain to my kids why their grandmother on mommy’s side isn’t around,” she told the magazine. “And that’s going to be a really hard conversation.”
Blanchard’s mom Dee Dee is believed to have a suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness in which a person, mostly commonly a mother, makes up fake medical symptoms or causes an illness in their child for sympathy or attention. The National Library of Medicine describes it as a form of child abuse.
For years, Blanchard’s mother forced her to believe that she was suffering from serious illnesses as a child, including leukemia, muscular dystrophy, and would say her daughter had the “mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage.” Blanchard, whose story has been told in the documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest and Hulu’s 2019 mini series The Act, was also told she couldn’t walk. Her mother made her use an oxygen tank and forced her to use a feeding tube, none of which were ever necessary. Dee Dee would also shave her daughter’s head.
As Blanchard got older, the abuse continued and, in 2015, she conspired a plan with her online boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to kill Dee Dee. In June 2015, Godejohn went to their Missouri home and stabbed Dee Dee 17 times in her bed while Blanchard hid in the bathroom. Godejohn and Blanchard fled the scene and Dee Dee’s body was discovered by authorities several days later.
Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for her role in the killing and was sentenced to 10 years in prison as part of a plea deal; she was granted parole in September and was released years earlier than anticipated this week.
On Dec. 29, a day after her release, Blanchard posted her “first selfie of freedom” on Instagram.
Before her release, Blanchard told People that she regrets what happened to her mother. “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 said. “She didn’t deserve that. 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 is set to share more about the abuse she suffered and her experience in prison in a new six-hour special on Lifetime. The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard premieres on Fri.day, Jan. 5 at 8 p.m. ET.
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