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Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard.(A stupid mother)
On June 14, 2015, sheriff's deputies in Greene County, Missouri, United States, found the body of Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard , born May 3, 1967, in Chackbay, Louisiana) facedown in the bedroom of her house just
outside Springfield,lying on the bed in a pool of blood from stab wounds inflicted several days earlier. There was no sign of her daughter, Gypsy Rose, who, according to Blanchard, suffered from chronic conditions
including leukemia, asthma, and muscular dystrophy, and had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" she had suffered as a result of her premature birth.
Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard.
After reading troubling Facebook posts earlier in the evening, concerned neighbors notified the police, reporting that Dee Dee might have fallen victim to foul play and that Gypsy Rose,
whose wheelchair and medications were still in the house, might have been abducted.
The following day, police found Gypsy Rose in Wisconsin, where she had traveled with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, whom she had met online.
When investigators announced that she was actually an adult, and was not suffering from any of the physical and mental health issues which her mother claimed she had,
public outrage over the possible abduction of a severely disabled girl gave way to shock and some sympathy for Gypsy Rose.
Further investigations found that some of the doctors who had examined Gypsy Rose had found no evidence of the claimed disorders.
One physician suspected that Dee Dee suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder that causes a parent or other caretaker to exaggerate, fabricate,
or induce illness in a person under their care to obtain sympathy or attention.
Dee Dee had slightly changed her name after her family, who suspected she had poisoned her stepmother, confronted her about how she treated Gypsy Rose.
Nonetheless, many people accepted her situation as true, and the two benefited from the efforts of charities such as Children's Mercy Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, Ronald McDonald House, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Dee Dee had been making her daughter pass herself off as younger and pretend to be disabled and chronically ill,
subjecting her to unnecessary surgery and medication, and controlling her through physical and psychological abuse. Dr. Marc Feldman,
an international expert on factitious disorders, stated that this was the first case he had experienced in which an abused child killed an abusive parent.
Gypsy Rose pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a 10-year sentence; after a brief trial in November 2018 Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Dee Dee's background.
Early life and marriage 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.
Blanchard was one of five children of Claude Anthony Pitre, Sr. and Emma Lois Gisclair.
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".
At some point early in her adult life, she worked as a nurse's aide.
The family expressed suspicion that in 1997 she might have killed her own mother by denying her food.
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.
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.
Childhood of Gypsy.
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.
At some point, her mother claimed that Gypsy had muscular dystrophy, and made her use a walker.
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.
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.
Gypsy seems to have stopped going to school after second grade,[1] possibly even as early as kindergarten.
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.
While Gypsy's father Rod had remarried, 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.
During that time, she was arrested for several minor offenses, including writing bad checks.
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 afterward.
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.
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.
Growing independence of Gypsy.
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.
She sometimes also claimed that the original had been destroyed during the post-Katrina flooding.
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.
Since 2001, Gypsy had attended science fiction and fantasy conventions,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.
Gypsy recalls that afterward, 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.
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).
Godejohn had some issues of his own: a criminal record for indecent exposure and a history of mental illness, sometimes reported as dissociative identity disorder. He also had Asperger syndrome.
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,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.
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, Gypsy maintained contact with Godejohn, who saved printouts of her posts, until 2014.
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,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.
The two continued their Internet interactions and began developing their plan to kill Dee Dee.
Murder.
Godejohn returned to Springfield in June 2015, arriving while Gypsy and her mother were away at a doctor's appointment.
After they had returned home and Dee Dee had gone to sleep, he went to the Blanchard house. Gypsy allowed him in and allegedly gave him duct tape,
gloves and a knife with the understanding that he would use it to murder Dee Dee.
Gypsy hid in the bathroom and covered her ears so that she would not have to hear her mother screaming.
Godejohn then stabbed Dee Dee 17 times in her back while she was asleep.
The two had sex in Gypsy's room,and took $4,000 in cash that Dee Dee had been keeping in the house, mostly from her ex-husband's child support checks.
They fled to a motel outside Springfield where they stayed for a few days while planning their next move;
during that time, they were seen on security cameras at several local stores. Gypsy said at that point she believed the two had managed to get away with their crime.
They mailed the murder weapon back to Godejohn's home in Wisconsin to avoid being caught with it,
then took a bus there. Several witnesses saw the pair on their way to the Greyhound station and noted that Gypsy wore a blonde wig and walked unassisted.
Trials.
After the disclosure of how Dee Dee had treated Gypsy all those years, sympathy for her as the victim of a violent murder rapidly shifted to her daughter as a long-term victim of child abuse. While the charge of first-degree murder can carry the death penalty under Missouri law or life without parole,
county prosecutor Dan Patterson soon announced he would not seek it for either Gypsy or Godejohn, calling the case "extraordinary and unusual".
After her attorney obtained her medical records from Louisiana, he secured a plea bargain to second-degree murder for Gypsy. So undernourished was Gypsy that during the year she was in the county jail,
he told BuzzFeed later, she gained 14 pounds (6.4 kg), in contrast to most of his clients who lose weight in that situation.
In July 2015, she accepted the plea bargain agreement and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Godejohn still faced the more severe charge because prosecutors contended that he initiated the murder plot, and both he and Gypsy agreed that he was the one who actually killed Dee Dee.
Her plea bargain agreement did not require her to testify against him. In January 2017, his trial was postponed when prosecutors requested a second psychiatric exam;
his lawyers contend that he has an intelligence quotient of 82 and is on the autism spectrum, suggesting that he has diminished capacity.
He had initially waived his right to a trial by jury, but changed his mind in June of that year.
In December 2017, the judge set Godejohn's trial for November 2018.
In their opening statement, prosecutors alleged that Godejohn had deliberated for over a year before the crime,
while his lawyers pointed to his autism and said that Gypsy had formulated the crime and their love-struck client had just done as she had asked.
The next day, prosecutors showed jurors the text messages, sometimes sexually explicit, that Gypsy and Godejohn shared in the week before the murder, often using various personas,
as well as the knife which he had used to commit the murder. In some of the texts, he asked her for details about Dee Dee's room and sleeping habits.
These were supplemented by video of his interview with police after his arrest, where he admitted to having killed her.
Gypsy testified on the trial's third day. She said that while she had indeed suggested to Godejohn that he kill Dee Dee to end her mother's abuse,
she had also considered getting pregnant by him in the hope that once she was carrying Godejohn's child, Dee Dee would have to accept him.
Along with the knife that she eventually gave to Godejohn,
she stole baby clothes from Walmart during a shopping trip so she could go ahead with either plan. However, she said, Godejohn never told her what he thought about the pregnancy plan.
After four days, the case was sent to the jury. Jurors had the option of finding Godejohn not guilty or guilty of one of three murder charges;
involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder or first-degree murder.
After approximately two hours of deliberation, they returned with the verdict and Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
In February 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder conviction, the only possible option since prosecutors had declined to seek the death penalty.
Godejohn asked Judge David Jones for leniency on the armed criminal action charge, which carries a minimum sentence of only three years, saying that he had fallen "blindly in love" with Gypsy.
He received a sentence of 25 years on that charge, which is concurrent with the life sentence.
Jones also denied a motion by Godejohn's lawyer, Dewayne Perry, for a new trial.
Perry argued that the jury should not have been allowed to hear that Godejohn had considered raping Dee Dee on the night of the murder,
and he also argued that the state's psychologist should not have been allowed to testify while Godejohn's psychologist should have, to establish that he had diminished capacity.
The judge, in denying the motion, conceded that an appeals court could find the latter point significant and consider it a reversible error.
Gypsy Rose.❣
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
— Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 20/20, January 4, 2018
Gypsy, now serving her sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center,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.
When Dean asked her what made her want to escape her situation, 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,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.
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.
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.
"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."
Medical community.
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.
Feldman, in talking about Carr's documentary with Vulture, faults Carr for making Flasterstein appear to be the hero of the story.
"He 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."
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.
May this woman be forgiven(Gypsy Rose.)
........✍💔.......
Kikiadri.
© kikiadri
outside Springfield,lying on the bed in a pool of blood from stab wounds inflicted several days earlier. There was no sign of her daughter, Gypsy Rose, who, according to Blanchard, suffered from chronic conditions
including leukemia, asthma, and muscular dystrophy, and had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" she had suffered as a result of her premature birth.
Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard.
After reading troubling Facebook posts earlier in the evening, concerned neighbors notified the police, reporting that Dee Dee might have fallen victim to foul play and that Gypsy Rose,
whose wheelchair and medications were still in the house, might have been abducted.
The following day, police found Gypsy Rose in Wisconsin, where she had traveled with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, whom she had met online.
When investigators announced that she was actually an adult, and was not suffering from any of the physical and mental health issues which her mother claimed she had,
public outrage over the possible abduction of a severely disabled girl gave way to shock and some sympathy for Gypsy Rose.
Further investigations found that some of the doctors who had examined Gypsy Rose had found no evidence of the claimed disorders.
One physician suspected that Dee Dee suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder that causes a parent or other caretaker to exaggerate, fabricate,
or induce illness in a person under their care to obtain sympathy or attention.
Dee Dee had slightly changed her name after her family, who suspected she had poisoned her stepmother, confronted her about how she treated Gypsy Rose.
Nonetheless, many people accepted her situation as true, and the two benefited from the efforts of charities such as Children's Mercy Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, Ronald McDonald House, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Dee Dee had been making her daughter pass herself off as younger and pretend to be disabled and chronically ill,
subjecting her to unnecessary surgery and medication, and controlling her through physical and psychological abuse. Dr. Marc Feldman,
an international expert on factitious disorders, stated that this was the first case he had experienced in which an abused child killed an abusive parent.
Gypsy Rose pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a 10-year sentence; after a brief trial in November 2018 Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Dee Dee's background.
Early life and marriage 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.
Blanchard was one of five children of Claude Anthony Pitre, Sr. and Emma Lois Gisclair.
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".
At some point early in her adult life, she worked as a nurse's aide.
The family expressed suspicion that in 1997 she might have killed her own mother by denying her food.
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.
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.
Childhood of Gypsy.
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.
At some point, her mother claimed that Gypsy had muscular dystrophy, and made her use a walker.
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.
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.
Gypsy seems to have stopped going to school after second grade,[1] possibly even as early as kindergarten.
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.
While Gypsy's father Rod had remarried, 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.
During that time, she was arrested for several minor offenses, including writing bad checks.
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 afterward.
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.
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.
Growing independence of Gypsy.
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.
She sometimes also claimed that the original had been destroyed during the post-Katrina flooding.
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.
Since 2001, Gypsy had attended science fiction and fantasy conventions,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.
Gypsy recalls that afterward, 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.
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).
Godejohn had some issues of his own: a criminal record for indecent exposure and a history of mental illness, sometimes reported as dissociative identity disorder. He also had Asperger syndrome.
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,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.
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, Gypsy maintained contact with Godejohn, who saved printouts of her posts, until 2014.
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,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.
The two continued their Internet interactions and began developing their plan to kill Dee Dee.
Murder.
Godejohn returned to Springfield in June 2015, arriving while Gypsy and her mother were away at a doctor's appointment.
After they had returned home and Dee Dee had gone to sleep, he went to the Blanchard house. Gypsy allowed him in and allegedly gave him duct tape,
gloves and a knife with the understanding that he would use it to murder Dee Dee.
Gypsy hid in the bathroom and covered her ears so that she would not have to hear her mother screaming.
Godejohn then stabbed Dee Dee 17 times in her back while she was asleep.
The two had sex in Gypsy's room,and took $4,000 in cash that Dee Dee had been keeping in the house, mostly from her ex-husband's child support checks.
They fled to a motel outside Springfield where they stayed for a few days while planning their next move;
during that time, they were seen on security cameras at several local stores. Gypsy said at that point she believed the two had managed to get away with their crime.
They mailed the murder weapon back to Godejohn's home in Wisconsin to avoid being caught with it,
then took a bus there. Several witnesses saw the pair on their way to the Greyhound station and noted that Gypsy wore a blonde wig and walked unassisted.
Trials.
After the disclosure of how Dee Dee had treated Gypsy all those years, sympathy for her as the victim of a violent murder rapidly shifted to her daughter as a long-term victim of child abuse. While the charge of first-degree murder can carry the death penalty under Missouri law or life without parole,
county prosecutor Dan Patterson soon announced he would not seek it for either Gypsy or Godejohn, calling the case "extraordinary and unusual".
After her attorney obtained her medical records from Louisiana, he secured a plea bargain to second-degree murder for Gypsy. So undernourished was Gypsy that during the year she was in the county jail,
he told BuzzFeed later, she gained 14 pounds (6.4 kg), in contrast to most of his clients who lose weight in that situation.
In July 2015, she accepted the plea bargain agreement and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Godejohn still faced the more severe charge because prosecutors contended that he initiated the murder plot, and both he and Gypsy agreed that he was the one who actually killed Dee Dee.
Her plea bargain agreement did not require her to testify against him. In January 2017, his trial was postponed when prosecutors requested a second psychiatric exam;
his lawyers contend that he has an intelligence quotient of 82 and is on the autism spectrum, suggesting that he has diminished capacity.
He had initially waived his right to a trial by jury, but changed his mind in June of that year.
In December 2017, the judge set Godejohn's trial for November 2018.
In their opening statement, prosecutors alleged that Godejohn had deliberated for over a year before the crime,
while his lawyers pointed to his autism and said that Gypsy had formulated the crime and their love-struck client had just done as she had asked.
The next day, prosecutors showed jurors the text messages, sometimes sexually explicit, that Gypsy and Godejohn shared in the week before the murder, often using various personas,
as well as the knife which he had used to commit the murder. In some of the texts, he asked her for details about Dee Dee's room and sleeping habits.
These were supplemented by video of his interview with police after his arrest, where he admitted to having killed her.
Gypsy testified on the trial's third day. She said that while she had indeed suggested to Godejohn that he kill Dee Dee to end her mother's abuse,
she had also considered getting pregnant by him in the hope that once she was carrying Godejohn's child, Dee Dee would have to accept him.
Along with the knife that she eventually gave to Godejohn,
she stole baby clothes from Walmart during a shopping trip so she could go ahead with either plan. However, she said, Godejohn never told her what he thought about the pregnancy plan.
After four days, the case was sent to the jury. Jurors had the option of finding Godejohn not guilty or guilty of one of three murder charges;
involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder or first-degree murder.
After approximately two hours of deliberation, they returned with the verdict and Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder and armed criminal action.
In February 2019, he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder conviction, the only possible option since prosecutors had declined to seek the death penalty.
Godejohn asked Judge David Jones for leniency on the armed criminal action charge, which carries a minimum sentence of only three years, saying that he had fallen "blindly in love" with Gypsy.
He received a sentence of 25 years on that charge, which is concurrent with the life sentence.
Jones also denied a motion by Godejohn's lawyer, Dewayne Perry, for a new trial.
Perry argued that the jury should not have been allowed to hear that Godejohn had considered raping Dee Dee on the night of the murder,
and he also argued that the state's psychologist should not have been allowed to testify while Godejohn's psychologist should have, to establish that he had diminished capacity.
The judge, in denying the motion, conceded that an appeals court could find the latter point significant and consider it a reversible error.
Gypsy Rose.❣
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
— Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 20/20, January 4, 2018
Gypsy, now serving her sentence in Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center,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.
When Dean asked her what made her want to escape her situation, 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,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.
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.
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.
"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."
Medical community.
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.
Feldman, in talking about Carr's documentary with Vulture, faults Carr for making Flasterstein appear to be the hero of the story.
"He 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."
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.
May this woman be forgiven(Gypsy Rose.)
........✍💔.......
Kikiadri.
© kikiadri
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