Throughout her childhood, Dee Dee manipulated Gypsy and medical professionals into believing that her daughter had a multitude of disorders. As a way out, the now 32-year-old planned to murder her mom with her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. The plan was carried out in 2015.
Following the murder, experts began investigating Dee Dee Blanchard’s childhood and revealed some chilling details, similar to how Gypsy Rose Blanchard grew up.
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The Infamous 2015 Murder
Instagram | Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Dee Dee Blanchard was murdered on June 14, 2015. Her daughter, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, conspired with her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to kill her.
Gypsy had suffered years of abuse under her mother’s care, as Dee Dee, who worked as a nurse’s aide, had fabricated numerous illnesses and disabilities in her daughter, a condition known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Gypsy and Godejohn planned the murder together, with Godejohn traveling to Dee Dee’s home in Springfield, Missouri. While Gypsy hid in the bathroom, Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee multiple times, ultimately killing her.
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Inside Dee Dee Blanchard’s Childhood
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According to Gypsy’s uncle, Evans Pitre, Dee Dee Blanchard was their mom’s favorite. “She enjoyed being the little princess,” he claimed something that resembles Gypsy’s childhood as she loved Disney and often dressed up as a princess.
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Both Suffered From Medical Disorders At A Young Age
Instagram | Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Another chilling similarity between their childhoods — both were diagnosed with a disorder at a young age. Pite said his sister had a heart murmur, and their mother kept her from “a lot of stuff.”
“She wouldn’t be able to play outside. Maybe that’s where part of Dee Dee got that, because she was the sick kid,” he told producers.
This is similar to how Dee Dee Blanchard treated her daughter, claiming she had sleep apnea when she was a baby, and things snowballed from there.
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Dee Dee Blanchard Used To Take Baths With Her Daughter
Instagram | Gypsy Rose Blanchard
When recalling how close she was with her mom, Gypsy Rose Blanchard claimed they used to do “everything” together.
“We used to take baths together. We used to sleep in the same bed together,” she said in the Lifetime docuseries. “When I hit puberty and I got my first period, I was crying. I was freaking out, and she didn’t tell me about pads or tampons, she told me to use diapers,” Gypsy claimed.
She was 13 years old at the time.
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What Is Munchausen By Proxy?
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After hearing Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s side of the story, investigators believe Dee Dee Blanchard suffered from Munchausen by proxy, a mental health disorder in which a caregiver, typically a parent, fabricates, exaggerates, or induces medical problems in someone under their care, often a child, to gain attention, sympathy, or other benefits. The caregiver presents the victim as ill, injured, or impaired, leading to unnecessary and often harmful medical interventions.
Some of the key characteristics of Munchausen by proxy include deception, attention-seeking, and frequent medical visits, all of which occurred to Gypsy.
For example, the caregiver may deliberately mislead healthcare professionals about the victim’s health status and may actually cause physical harm or illness to the victim to support their claims. In this case, Dee Dee was a nurse’s aide, meaning she had knowledge of medications and their side effects.
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How Did Dee Dee Blanchard Convince Doctors?
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It is believed Dee Dee Blanchard convinced doctors of certain medical disorders so that she could administer medication to create other symptoms, leading to a multitude of disorders.
“I was just as much in the dark as much as everyone else,” Gypsy stated in the 2017 documentary ‘Mommy Dead and Dearest’. “[The] only thing I knew is that I could walk. As for everything else, the leukemia, the epilepsy, I was taking medication that [Dee Dee] said was cancer medicine.”
Another sign that the now 32-year-old was a victim of Munchausen by proxy is the number of doctor visits. Victims usually have a history of numerous hospitalizations, medical tests, and procedures. In this case, over the course of nine years, Dee Dee took Gypsy Rose to the hospital over 100 times, per medical conditions.