Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who served eight years in prison for her role in the murder of her abusive mother, has said she wants her story “to be a cautionary tale”, in her first TV interview since she was released.
Blanchard, 32, was convicted of second-degree murder after her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, was stabbed to death in 2015. It emerged that Blanchard had been forced by her mother to pretend to be seriously ill and to endure unnecessary medical procedures.
Experts have said Dee Dee Blanchard had the psychological disorder Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where a parent or guardian exaggerates or invents their child’s medical conditions. Blanchard was forced to use a wheelchair and feeding tube, which she did not need, and was beaten and chained to a bed.
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, aired on Friday, Blanchard said she was sharing her story “so that the next person that might be in a situation like mine, they don’t take the route that I did”.
“I don’t believe my mother was a monster. She had a lot of demons herself that she was struggling with,” Blanchard said.
“I didn’t want her dead. I just wanted out of my situation and I thought that was the only way out.”
Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in her home in Springfield, Missouri, in June 2015. Gypsy Rose Blanchard supplied her then boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, with a knife and hid in a bathroom while he killed her mother.
Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and the case gained national attention after details of the abuse she was subjected to emerged. Dee Dee Blanchard told family members her daughter had muscular dystrophy and needed a wheelchair. She also lied about Gypsy’s age and other medical conditions.
Godejohn, who Blanchard met online, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In the ABC interview, Blanchard was asked: “Is it fair that he is incarcerated for life for killing your mum and you’re out?”
Blanchard said: “Well, I’m sure that we both have a lot of regrets. All I can really say is that I did my time, [and] he’s doing his time for his part. And I wish him well on his journey.”
Blanchard said she was addicted to painkillers and was high when she and Godejohn planned and carried out her mother’s murder.
She added: “I don’t blame drugs. I don’t blame anything. I don’t make excuses.”
Blanchard, who said she is now sober, has gained a new level of fame since she was released from the Chillicothe correctional center, in Missouri on 28 December.
