Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard

Dee Dee Blanchard was born Clauddine Pitre in Chackbay, Louisiana, near the Gulf Coast in 1967, and grew up with her family in nearby Golden Meadow.[6] Blanchard was one of five children of Claude Anthony Pitre, Sr. and Emma Lois Gisclair.[7]

Relatives recalled that she had a habit of stealing from her family, which they speculated was a form of retaliation when "things didn't go her way".[8] At some point early in her adult life, she worked as a nurse's aide.[3] The family expressed suspicion that in 1997 she might have killed her own mother by denying her food.[8]

When she was 24, she became pregnant by Rod Blanchard, then 17. They named their daughter Gypsy Rose because Clauddine liked the name Gypsy and Rod was a fan of Guns N' Roses.[lower-alpha 1] Shortly before Gypsy Rose's birth in July 1991, the couple separated when Rod realized he "got married for the wrong reasons". He resisted Clauddine's efforts to get him to return, and she took her newborn daughter to live with her family.[3]

According to Rod, who remained involved with his daughter at this point, by the time Gypsy was three months old, her mother was convinced that the infant suffered from sleep apnea and began taking her to the hospital where repeated overnight stays with a sleep monitor and other tests found no sign of the condition. Clauddine subsequently became convinced that Gypsy had a wide range of health issues, which she attributed to an unspecified chromosomal disorder.[3] At some point, her mother claimed that Gypsy had muscular dystrophy, and made her use a walker.[9]

Gypsy stated that when she was 7 or 8, she was riding on her grandfather's motorcycle when they were involved in a minor accident. She suffered an abrasion to her knee. Her mother stated that doctors had given her a wheelchair which she would need to use.[9]

Gypsy often went with her parents to Special Olympics events. In 2001, when Dee Dee claimed Gypsy was 8, (she was actually 10) she was named the honorary queen of the Krewe of Mid-City, a child-oriented parade held during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.[10]

Gypsy seems to have stopped going to school after second grade,[1] possibly even as early as kindergarten.[2] Her mother homeschooled her after that, supposedly because her illnesses were so severe. Gypsy managed to learn to read on her own through the Harry Potter books.[1]

While Gypsy's father Rod had remarried,[3] Clauddine moved in with her father and stepmother. They would later claim that Clauddine, when preparing food for her stepmother, poisoned it with Roundup weed killer, leading to her own chronic illness during this period.[11] During that time, she was arrested for several minor offenses, including writing bad checks.[3] When the Pitres began to regularly confront her about her treatment of Gypsy and expressed suspicion about her role in her stepmother's health, she left with Gypsy for Slidell. Her stepmother's health returned to normal shortly afterwards.[11]

In Slidell, she and Gypsy lived in public housing; they paid their bills with Rod's child-support payments and public assistance Clauddine had been granted due to her daughter's supposed medical conditions. They spent most of their time visiting various specialists, mostly at Tulane Medical Center and the Children's Hospital of New Orleans, seeking treatment of the illnesses Clauddine claimed Gypsy suffered from, which she now said included hearing and vision problems. While a muscle biopsy found no sign of the muscular dystrophy Clauddine insisted Gypsy had, she was successful in securing treatment for her daughter's other purported issues. After she told doctors Gypsy had seizures every few months, they prescribed anti-seizure medication. Several surgeries were performed on her during this time and Clauddine regularly took Gypsy to the emergency room for minor ailments.[3]

After Hurricane Katrina devastated the area in August 2005, Clauddine and Gypsy left their ruined apartment for a shelter in Covington set up for individuals with special needs. Clauddine said Gypsy's medical records, including her birth certificate, had been destroyed in the flooding. A doctor there from the Ozarks suggested they relocate to her native Missouri, and the next month they were airlifted there.[3]

At first Clauddine and Gypsy lived in a rented home in Aurora, in the southwestern area of the state. During their time there, Gypsy was honored by the Oley Foundation, which advocates for the rights of feeding-tube recipients, as its 2007 Child of the Year.[12] In 2008 Habitat for Humanity built them a small home with a wheelchair ramp and hot tub as part of a larger project on the north side of Springfield, to the east, and they moved there. The story of a single mother with a severely disabled daughter forced to flee Katrina's devastation received considerable local media attention, and the community often pitched in to help the woman who now went by Clauddinnea Blancharde, and whom they knew as Dee Dee.[3]

The outpouring of support included a great deal of charitable contributions. In Louisiana, mother and daughter had at most availed themselves of occasional stays in Ronald McDonald Houses during medical appointments; in Missouri they received free flights to see doctors at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, free trips to Walt Disney World, and backstage passes to Miranda Lambert concerts (where she was frequently photographed with the singer) via the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in addition to the house Habitat built for them. Rod Blanchard also continued to make monthly child support payments of $1,200, as well as sending Gypsy gifts and occasionally talking to her on the phone (during one call, on her 18th birthday, he recalls Dee Dee telling him not to mention her daughter's real age since "she thinks she's 14").[3]

Rod and his second wife regularly hoped to get to Springfield and visit, but for a variety of reasons Dee Dee would change plans. She told her neighbors in Springfield that Gypsy Rose's father was an abusive drug addict and alcoholic who had never come to terms with his daughter's health issues and never sent them any money.[3]

Gypsy (unknown date)

Many people who met Gypsy were charmed by her. Her 5-foot (150 cm) height,[lower-alpha 2] nearly toothless mouth, large glasses and high, childlike voice reinforced the perception that she had all the problems her mother said she did. She often wore wigs or hats to cover her baldness; her mother regularly shaved Gypsy's head to mimic the hairless appearance of a chemotherapy patient, allegedly telling Gypsy that since her medication would eventually cause her hair to fall out, it was best to shave it in advance. When they left the house, Dee Dee often took an oxygen tank and feeding tube with them; Gypsy was fed the children's liquid nutrition supplement PediaSure well into her 20s.[3]

Dee Dee used physical abuse to control her daughter, always holding her daughter's hand in the presence of others. Whenever Gypsy said something that either suggested she was not really sick or seemed above her purported mental capabilities, Gypsy recalls that her mother would give her a very tight squeeze. When the two were alone, Dee Dee would strike her with her open hands or a coat hanger.[8]

Medical interventions continued. Dee Dee had some of Gypsy's saliva glands treated with Botox, then extracted altogether, to control her drooling, which Gypsy later claimed her mother had induced by using a topical anesthetic to numb her gums before doctor visits.[14] The lack of salivary glands coupled with side-effects of the anti-seizure medication she was given caused Gypsy's teeth to decay to the point that the majority of her front teeth were extracted and replaced by a bridge. Tubes were implanted in her ears to control her myriad purported ear infections.[3]

Bernardo Flasterstein, a pediatric neurologist who saw Gypsy in Springfield, became suspicious of her muscular dystrophy diagnosis. He ordered MRIs and blood tests, which found no abnormalities. "I don't see any reason why she doesn't walk", he told Dee Dee on a follow up visit after seeing Gypsy stand and support her own weight.[3] Flasterstein noted that Dee Dee was not a good historian. After contacting Gypsy's doctors in New Orleans, he learned that Gypsy's original muscle biopsy had come back negative, undermining Dee Dee's self-reported diagnosis of muscular dystrophy, as well as her claim that all Gypsy's records had been destroyed by flooding. He suspected the possibility of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Dee Dee contrived to gain access to Flasterstein's notes and subsequently stopped taking Gypsy to see him.[3]

Flasterstein did not follow up by reporting Dee Dee to social services. He said he had been told by other doctors to treat the pair with "golden gloves" and doubted the authorities would believe him anyway. In 2009, an anonymous caller[lower-alpha 3] told the police about Dee Dee's use of different names and birth dates for herself and her daughter, and suggested Gypsy was in better health than claimed. Officers who performed the resulting wellness check accepted Dee Dee's explanation that she used the misinformation to make it harder for her abusive ex-husband to find her and Gypsy, without talking to Rod, and reported that Gypsy seemed to genuinely be mentally handicapped. The file was closed.[3]

Dee Dee seems to have at least once forged a copy of her daughter's birth certificate, moving her birth date to 1995 to bolster claims that she was still a teenager; Gypsy said in a later interview that for 15 years she was not sure of her real age.[14] She sometimes also claimed that the original had been destroyed during the post-Katrina flooding.[15] Dee Dee did keep another copy with Gypsy's actual birth date. Her daughter recalls seeing it during one of their hospital visits and becoming confused; Dee Dee told her it was a misprint.[16]

Since 2001, Gypsy had attended science fiction and fantasy conventions,[10] sometimes in costume, since she could blend in, even in her wheelchair. At an event in 2011, she made what may have been another escape attempt that ended when her mother found her in a hotel room with a man she had met online. Again Dee Dee produced the paperwork giving Gypsy's false, younger birth date and threatened to inform the police.[3] Gypsy recalls that afterwards, Dee Dee smashed her computer with a hammer and threatened to do the same to her fingers if she ever tried to escape again; she also kept Gypsy leashed and handcuffed to her bed for two weeks. Dee Dee later told Gypsy that she had filed paperwork with the police claiming that Gypsy was mentally incompetent, leading Gypsy to believe that if she attempted to go to the police for help, they would not believe her.[1]

Sometime around 2012, Gypsy, who continued to use the Internet after her mother had gone to bed to avoid her tightened supervision, made contact online with Nicholas Godejohn, a man around her age from Big Bend, Wisconsin (she said they met on a Christian singles group).[3] Godejohn had some issues of his own: a criminal record for indecent exposure and a history of mental illness, stated at times to be either dissociative identity disorder or autism.[8]

In 2014, Gypsy confided to Aleah Woodmansee, a 23-year-old neighbor who, unaware that Gypsy was close to her own age, considered herself a "big sister", that she and Godejohn had discussed eloping and had even chosen names for potential children. Gypsy, who had five separate Facebook accounts,[1] and Godejohn flirted online, their exchanges sometimes using BDSM elements, which Gypsy has since claimed was more what he was interested in. Woodmansee tried to talk her out of it, still thinking Gypsy was too young and possibly being taken advantage of by an online sexual predator.[3] She considered Gypsy's plans just "fantasies and dreams and nothing like this would ever really take place." Despite Dee Dee's efforts to prevent her from using the Internet, which went as far as destroying her daughter's phone and laptop,[14] she maintained contact with Godejohn, who saved printouts of the posts Gypsy shared, until 2014.[3]

The next year Gypsy arranged and paid for Godejohn to meet her mother in Springfield. Her plan was for him to just bump into her while she and Dee Dee were at a movie theater, both of them in costume,[14] and apparently strike up a relationship that way, then for her to introduce him to her mother. As soon as they did meet in person for the first time, Godejohn says, Gypsy led him to the bathroom, where the two had sex.[8] The two continued their Internet interactions and began developing their plan to kill Dee Dee.[3]

The Blanchards' neighbors were shocked to learn that Gypsy's illnesses were fabricated. Aleah Woodmansee, whose information about Gypsy's relationship with Godejohn led police to the couple the day after Dee Dee's body was discovered, said she cried out of disbelief upon hearing that Gypsy had never been sick or disabled. Her mother recalled how everyone had accepted Dee Dee's claims without asking for proof, and wondered if the mother and daughter had been secretly laughing at their neighbors' naïveté. Kim Blanchard (no relation), who had called the deputy sheriffs to the house the night before, said, "What have I been believing? How could I have been so stupid?"[3] Despite the controversy, over 60 people attended a candlelight vigil for Dee Dee in downtown Springfield the night after the body was discovered.[19]

In a news conference, Sheriff Arnott said of the case "[Springfield is] a giving community, we surround people with love and finances that we believe that needs it. However, a lot of times we are deceived, and I think this is now so true, in this case at hand."[19] Only one of the charities that had helped the Blanchards spoke after the revelations.[3] A spokesman for Habitat for Humanity, whose volunteers had built the Blanchards' house along with others on their street, said, "We are just really, deeply saddened by the whole situation."[19]

Dee Dee's family in Louisiana, who had confronted her about her treatment of Gypsy years before, did not regret her death. Her father, stepmother, and the nephew who first shared details of Gypsy's actual health when she was first confined to a wheelchair all later said that Dee Dee deserved her fate and Gypsy had been punished as much as she needed to be. None of them would pay for her funeral or even pick up her ashes;[8] her father and stepmother ultimately flushed them down the toilet.[1]

Rod Blanchard, Gypsy's father, is less critical. "I think Dee Dee's problem was she started a web of lies, and there was no escaping after", he told BuzzFeed. "[I]t was like a tornado got started." He was happy the first time that he saw video of Gypsy walking under her own power.[3]

I feel like I'm more free in prison, than with living with my mom. Because now, I'm allowed to just live like a normal woman[14]

— Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 20/20, January 4, 2018

Gypsy, now serving her sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center,[13] did not talk to the media until after she had made her plea. When she did, she told BuzzFeed reporter Michelle Dean that she had been able to research Munchausen syndrome by proxy on prison computers, and her mother had every symptom. "I think she would have been the perfect mom for someone that actually was sick," she said. She believed Dee Dee's claim that she had cancer, even though she knew she could walk and eat solid food, leading her to assent to the regular head shavings. However, she always hoped that doctors would see through the ruse, and she was frustrated that none besides Flasterstein did.[3]

When Dean asked her what made her want to escape her situations, Gypsy recalled the 2011 incident at the science fiction convention, which made her wonder why she was not allowed to have friends like others of her age. While she said that Godejohn took their idle discussions of murder into reality,[lower-alpha 4] she accepts that she committed a crime and has to live with the consequences. Nonetheless, she feels freer in prison than she was before, and hopes to help other abused victims.[3]

Victims of Munchausen by proxy abuse often avoid doctors and hospitals in their later lives because of lingering trust issues, according to expert Marc Feldman.[4] According to her family, Dean, and Carr, Gypsy also exhibits at times the same sociopathic manipulative behaviors as her mother, who was for much of her life her only role model.[3] "She is already psychologically really compromised, and she's going to need as much family underpinning and support as she can get", Feldman told Vulture after viewing Carr's documentary, in which he appears. He also points out that post-traumatic stress disorder is likely to be an issue in her continuing development. "I hope they find someone wherever she chooses to settle who is willing to provide supportive psychotherapy."[29]

Dr. Flasterstein, the pediatric neurologist who believed Gypsy was fully capable of walking on her own and wrote in his notes that he suspected Munchausen by proxy, says it was only the second such possible case he had ever come across. He learned of Dee Dee's murder at the hands of Gypsy and her boyfriend later in 2015 when a former nurse emailed him the news story. "Poor Gypsy", he said. "She suffered all those years, and for no reason." He told Dean he wished he could have done more.[3]

Feldman, in talking about Carr's documentary with Vulture, faults Carr for making Flasterstein appear to be the hero of the story. "[H]e had a gross misunderstanding of his obligations as a physician, as well as the legal requirements to report suspected abuse or neglect", Feldman said. The film accepts Flasterstein's claim that he was only required to make a report to Child Protective Services in the latter instance, but according to Feldman once he had included Munchausen by proxy in his list of possible diagnoses, he was obligated to make a report. "This conundrum arises in case after case, where innumerable doctors have evaluated the patient, perhaps had questions they kept to themselves, and just proceeded to treat or make referrals and ditch the case that way."[29]

While a formal diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy for Dee Dee is technically impossible since she is dead, Feldman told the Springfield News-Leader after Gypsy's guilty plea that he could confidently say Dee Dee had it based on what he knew about the case. "Gypsy was infantilized and kept away from her peers", he said. "She was little more than a tool for Dee Dee to navigate through the world the way she wanted to." He said it was "unprecedented" in the 24 years he had been researching the disorder for an abused child to have killed the abusive parent as Gypsy did.[4]

HBO produced the documentary film Mommy Dead and Dearest directed by Erin Lee Carr about the murder and its relationship to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The film includes interrogation footage and exclusive interviews with Nick Godejohn and incarcerated Gypsy Rose; it premiered on May 15, 2017.[30][31]

The CBS network talk show Dr. Phil, episode "Mother Knows Best: A Story of Munchausen by Proxy and Murder" featuring interviews with Gypsy Rose, her father and step-mother, premiered on November 21, 2017.[32][33][34]

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) news and information series Good Morning America, segment "Mother of All Murders" aired an exclusive in-prison interview with Gypsy Rose, aired: January 5, 2018, trailer.[35]

The ABC network news magazine series 20/20, episode "The Story of Gypsy Blanchard", consisted of Gypsy Rose's first network interview from prison and it also consisted of an interview that was conducted with Nicholas Godejohn.[36][37]

The Sony Entertainment Television channel series CID aired an episode titled "Death on Social Media" on 13 August 2017, based on the case but the setting for the episode was changed to India; the characters Aria and Aanchal were based on Gypsy and Dee Dee Blanchard respectively.[38]

The Investigation Discovery channel series James Patterson's Murder is Forever episode "Mother of All Murders", season 1, episode 2, premiered on January 29, 2018.[39][40]

Investigation Discovery also aired a two-hour long special documentary titled Gypsy's Revenge. Gypsy Rose is interviewed while she is still incarcerated and during the interview, she describes her relationship with her mother. Gypsy's father, relatives, and friends are all interviewed along with public officials and Nicholas Godejohn.[41]

Love You to Death aired on Lifetime in January 2019, dramatizing the case as "inspired by true events". Marcia Gay Harden starred as the fictionalized version of Dee Dee, Emily Skeggs starred as Gypsy Rose's counterpart, Brennan Keel Cook starred as Nick's counterpart, and Tate Donovan starred as Rod's counterpart.[42] "[W]hen I think about it every teenager wants to murder their parents at some point", Harden told TV Insider.[43] On January 27, 2019, a "special edition" of the film was aired that featured behind-the-scenes interviews with Harden and Skeggs. In one of those interviews, Skeggs mentioned that she wore a bald cap in scenes where her character was hairless.

In 2019 the streaming service Hulu announced the creation of the true crime series The Act. The 8-episode miniseries is based on Michelle Dean's 2016 BuzzFeed article.[44] Dean is an executive producer and writer for the first season of the series. Joey King was cast as Gypsy Rose, and received an Emmy nomination for her performance; she shaved her head for the role.[45] Actress Patricia Arquette was cast as Dee Dee, and won an Emmy for her performance.[46] The Act premiered on March 20, 2019.[47]

In the 2019 Netflix web television series The Politician, the characters Infinity Jackson, Ricardo, and Dusty Jackson are respectively based on Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Nicholas Godejohn and Dee Dee Blanchard.[48]