" Hey, Gypsy, this is Stan." " Hi, Gypsy." " I'll let you guys talk." " Hi, I'm Det." "Hancock." "I'm with Greene County Sheriff's Office." " How are you today?" " I'm doing good." "Good." "You need to be honest with me." "And if you're involved in anything that I'm about ready to tell you, then you need to tell me, okay?" " Absolutely." " Um, your mom's dead, okay?" "Now, what I want to ask you..." " Wait, what, what?" " Your mom's passed away, okay?" "She's deceased, all right?" "Now, what I want to ask you..." "Did you have involvement in this?" " Okay." " No, no..." "Hang on, listen to me for just a second, okay?" " Uh-huh." " What happened with your mom that night?" "Um..." "I don't know what happened with my mom at all." " Help me." "Please help me." " Okay, you..." "Just listen to me, okay, sweetheart?" "You know what happened to your mom, okay?" "And I know that you know." "You think that it's me?" "Why would you think that it's me?" "I have always loved my mom." "My mom and I are best friends." "Listen to me." "Please don't dig yourself in this hole, and that's what you're doing." "I really love my mom." " I know you do." " Please." "I know you... sweetheart, I know you love your mom." "I have no doubt that you love your mom." "Now's the time to be truthful, sweetheart." "No more lies." " Did you kill your mom?" " No." "No, sir." "Did you help Nicholas kill your mom?" "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome a cancer survivor and passionate young lady, Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mother Dee Dee Blanchard from Springfield, Missouri, to the stage." "♪ I believe ♪" "♪ There are angels among us ♪" "♪ Sent down to us ♪" "♪ From somewhere up above ♪" "♪ They come to you and me ♪" "♪ In our darkest hours ♪" "Thank you, my sweetie." "I've always said you're the reason I was born to be your mama." "Breaking news this morning." "48-year-old Dee Dee Blanchard was found dead inside her home." "Her 19-year-old daughter Gypsy is still considered missing." "It all started receiving a call on June 14th to check the well-being of a family." "Gypsy and Dee Dee were Hurricane Katrina survivors." "Everybody believed that they were coming here to the Ozarks to make a better life." "There was a Facebook post that was quite alarming." "We were actually thinking that it was somebody that hacked into the Facebook and it wasn't actually a threat." "Gypsy was in a wheelchair." "She had leukemia and she was having seizures and she had to be tube fed." "As the sheriff, my primary responsibility at that time was really to ensure that her well-being was okay." "Whatever they were going through was incredibly hard for them, especially with the medical conditions." "And so, everybody gathered around them and would try to help them out as much as possible." "It just proves that happy endings are not just in fairy tales, they're real." "The Facebook post was quote..." ""The bitch is dead."" "And another post stating," ""I fucking slashed that fat pig and raped her sweet, innocent daughter." "Her scream was so fucking loud, LOL."" "Okay, good morning." "I want to specify at the beginning of this press conference that this is an ongoing investigation." "And I want to start off with saying things are not always as they appear." "The truth is... okay, I'll admit it." "I did actually... stab her." " I will admit it." " I know, okay." "The only reason I did it is 'cause I did it for me and her." " I would've never did it if it was not for me and her." " Okay." "I know that he loves me, and... he would do anything for me and... to be with me." "Did Gypsy know that you were going to kill her mother?" "Um... honestly, she asked me to." "Okay." "Both Facebook postings were authored by Gypsy." "The prosecutor has filed charges this morning for first-degree murder." "This is a tragic, tragic event surrounded by mystery and public deception." "Gypsy can walk without assistance or a wheelchair... and she can do that very well." "Okay." "This individual has alleged to conspire with Nicholas Godejohn to stab her mother to death so that they could be together." "The penalty is life imprisonment or death." "Seeing Gypsy Blanchard walk on her own two feet in a Wisconsin courtroom was a shock to friends and neighbors." "Is she sick?" "I don't know yet." "We're trying to figure that out." "Can she walk?" "Um, yes." "Oh, son of a bitch." "To see her walk... was really upsetting." "Obviously, if that's a lie, then who knows what all was a lie." "We really don't know the true background of this family, as we have unearthed the appearance of a long financial fraud scheme." "The family got medical airlifts," "Disney travel, and free housing over the years because of Gypsy's supposed disabilities." "It was a facade that translated online, donations pouring in for Gypsy's reported muscular dystrophy and leukemia." "We have not confirmed the age of Gypsy." "It appears that there is several date of births that have been used over a period of time." "I almost want to say, "Man, I can't believe she..."" "I even wanted to associate with..." "why did I even help them?"" "I just never would see that that little girl really wasn't who she was supposed to be." "Case exhibit 53." "Can I ask you if you'll tell me what that is?" "Miss Blanchard is charged with murder in the first degree." "When you commit a first-degree murder, you knowingly cause the death of another person after deliberation." "Analysis of cell phones provided evidence of numerous text messages between Gypsy Blanchard and Nicholas Godejohn." "Nicholas Godejohn was someone that Gypsy Blanchard met online." "They began a online dating relationship." "During the attacks, the two discussed." "Nicholas killing Clauddine." "At the beginning, it looks like a tabloid case." "It looks like, "Here's some people in some weird outfits", and they're pretending to be disabled and they're scamming everybody." "And then there's this, like, sort of horrible murder, and the Facebook status, 'That bitch is dead.'" "Like, all of it is very tabloid." "And then, gradually, that story just sort of fell apart." "Still, it feels to me like it's developing into something else." "I still ask the question," ""How do you kill your own mother?"" "I mean, there's got to be a reason." "There's got to be some abuse there." "You don't just... "I'm gonna kill my mother because I wanna be with a boyfriend."" "Like I told my mom when I called my mom and talked to her about it." "I said, "Mama, I've been... you know, I was mad at you before, but I've never, ever in a million years thought about killing you."" "I said, "For me to think about killing you, you'd have had to done some pretty bad stuff to me."" "Nobody wants to believe that something like this can happen." "I think the initial reaction is..." "Is that, you know, Gypsy's been lying to everybody." "But when you look at the backstory, when you look at how we got here, this all started long before Gypsy would've ever had any type of say in what was happening." "Right from birth, three months old." "Dee Dee was telling me that she had sleep apnea and she needed a breathing machine or breathing monitor machine, which, I mean, I... to this day," "I don't know if that was real or not, you know?" "It escalated from then." "Problems with her eyes, her hearing, her digestive system." "After that, Gypsy couldn't walk anymore." "She had a muscular disorder." "And Dee Dee told me she would need a wheelchair." "You know, I asked her." "I said, "Man, she's got a lot of issues."" ""What's going on?" You know, and, um..." "They had done some tests and found out she had a chromosome disorder that was causing all of her functions from developing..." "Her digestive system and her muscular system." "Dee Dee told me she's not going to live to be, you know, 18 years old." "She may be an old teenager, that's about it." "You know, I was like, "Really?"" "You know, it was shocking, it was disturbing." "And to see her at 23 years old now, perfectly healthy..." "It pisses me off, you know?" "This picture here..." "I don't know if this was the surgery where she thought her stomach lining wrapped around her esophagus." "No, she would've had that earlier." "She had that feeding tube way before then." "You know?" "She was 10 here." "This was probably close to the first year or two when she was in a wheelchair." "Yep." "Breaks my heart... knowing she got put through all of this when she didn't need it." "Fourteen years." "To be confined." "The last 14 years in a wheelchair." "I couldn't imagine." "I've never encountered anything that is even close to what Gypsy has gone through." "Her mother appeared to have taken great steps to keep Gypsy in a very juvenile role, making her act several years younger than her actual age." "It appears that Gypsy was not even aware of what her actual age was." "I called her for her 18th birthday, and Dee Dee said, "Don't tell her she's 18, you know?"" "I'm like, "What you mean don't tell her she's 18?" "She knows she's 18." "It's her 18th birthday."" ""Yeah, but she don't know she's 18." "She's... you know..."" "I thought it was weird, you know?" "I... she..." "I mean, I always did know that she..." "She told me her mental capacity was, you know, like, five years behind." "When she was, like, 15, she was like," ""Oh, yeah, her learning is coming along, but she's like, mentally, at a 9 or 10-year-old."" "She looks like she would be 10 and 11, and she was probably like, 21, 22." "I wonder what she was thinking." "Hello, everybody!" "This is Gypsy Rose reporting from Aurora, Missouri." "I'm about to dive off our porch into the pile of snow." "You ready?" "That was so grand!" "Whoo!" "All right!" "Yooh!" "Yeah!" "That's so cool." "Let's do it again." "It's hard to answer a lot questions about who Gypsy is, right?" "Because she was somebody else for such a long time." "And now we know her as almost a completely different person." " I'm Erin, as you remember." " I remember." "I would be curious if anybody Gypsy has talked to feels they're getting the full story." "This is actually kind of the first time I've been honest besides being honest, you know, with my attorneys." "Even then, I haven't been completely honest with them, so..." "How would you describe your mom?" "Um... unique." "Um..." "I mean, I used to always think that maybe she was a little overprotective." "So, if I had to say one word about her, it would be overprotective." "How old are you?" "You're one." "And where's your cranial?" "Very good." "And where's your phalanges?" "Yes." "Very, very good." "I really didn't think any abuse was going on." "Um... it's like when you're abused, but you've lived that way your whole life." "You don't really know that you're being abused." "You don't know any different." "Looking at the open ocean now." "And it's beautiful!" "I knew that I was different or my life was different from other kids'." "But people thought of us, as, you know, the sweetest mother-daughter family ever." "The best two people in the world." "What illnesses did your mom say that you had?" "Um... asthma, epilepsy, hearing impaired, vision impaired, fed with a feeding tube, paralyzed from the waist down." "Um... slow, so retardation." "And... among other things," "I just can't remember them." "I was on breathing medication." "Medication for seizures." "Medication to help go to the bathroom." "Pain medication, anxiety medication." "Just everything." "I would have to put on the breathing machine every night." "I hated it, though, because it seemed to make my breathing worse, not better." "And then another machine was for the feeding tube." "It was controlling what I'd eat." "My medications would be put through there." "I really wouldn't even have to be awake." "So, she could put whatever in my body, and I wouldn't even know." "Hey, you make me wanna yawn." "So, where are you going today?" "I'm going to Children's Mercy Hospital to see my dentist." "For my teeth." "And we'll be back." "And we'll be back soon." "Not yet." "If we'd be going to the doctor, she would do all the talking." "I'd always have a stuffed animal or a Barbie doll." "She'd just tell me just play with my Barbie doll." "And if the doctor would come to examine me..." ""Just stay in the wheelchair,"" "be calm, play with your doll, and don't move your legs."" "I was just as much in the dark as everybody else." "The only thing I knew is that I could walk." "As for everything else, you had the leukemia and the epilepsy." "I was taking medication that she said was cancer medicine." "She would shave my head and say," ""Well, it's going to fall out anyway, so let's just keep it nice and neat."" "I just went on blind faith that a mother knows best." "You're supposed to love and protect your children." "How could you do this to your child?" "Gypsy Rose Blanchard was as consistently." "And viciously subjected to, in my opinion, Munchausen by proxy as anyone I've come across." "Munchausen by proxy involves a caregiver who either feigns or actually induces illness in her children." "And her goal is some kind of emotional gratification..." "Looking for sympathy, attention, care, concern that she feels unable to get in any other way." "It is a form of child abuse, first and foremost." "The earliest surgery that I can remember probably would be having my feeding tube put in." "You have to have it constantly changed, like every six months." "And that would be pretty painful, because they don't put you under anesthesia, they just take you in the emergency room, rip the old one out, and put a new one in." "I don't know why these procedures were done or how her mother was able to convince the doctors." ""Mindboggling" is the only way" "I can put her ability to manipulate people." "Basically, each one of these paperclips is some medical record where Dee Dee essentially lied to the doctor about something." "Mentally, Gypsy is behind." "She's at the level of a seven-year-old on mother's information." "And this is something that you see almost across all of the records, is "Upon mother's information," "Upon history by mother."" "So she's talking to the doctor here and she's talking about how she has mental and developmental delays, needs assistance." "Apparently, "while holding her hands over Gypsy's ears, so as not offend, history of mental retardation... seven-year-old level, per mom."" "And so, this was the one time where a doctor actually put in the record that Dee Dee's got her hands over Gypsy's ears, so Gypsy can't even hear what Mom is telling the doctor." "Then we get into the family history." "The family history changed depending on what doctor she was at." "You'll notice here, we don't get a whole lot of..." " She's at the cardiologist." " Right, she's at the cardiologist, and so they all died of a heart attack." "Now, this was the first one that jumped out at me." "She ends up going to the neurologist," "Dr. Flasterstein, and so... the very first thing right off the bat..." ""Mother is not a good historian,"" "which is interesting, because he puts that in bold and underlines it." "One of the things that was a big discrepancy was that for a person that has not walked for nine years, for years, she should have, technically, almost no muscles in her lower extremities." "But she did have muscles that looked quite normal." "And she was able to support her body weight." "I remember her standing." "So, I had a big doubt about the whole thing, from the beginning." "He says, "Since last seen," "I managed to talk to one of her previous providers." "She specifically remembers Gypsy Rose and mentioned that her previous neurologist clearly reported the fact that Gypsy does not have muscular dystrophy." "Analyzing all the facts, and after talking to her previous pediatrician," " there's a strong possibility of Munchausen by proxy..." " What?" "...with maybe some underlying, unknown ideology to explain her symptoms."" "Once in a while, we report patients to Social Services." "We do that when we feel that there's a neglect." "But a neglect is different from what this mom was doing." "She wasn't really neglecting her, she was overtreating her." "We have a system, which is a big integrated system, that decided to adopt her and bring her, support her." "So many people looking at her, knowing the history, knowing what she was going through, knowing what she went through," "I would have been rejected on the spot." "So all that I could do was put that in my notes." "Nobody in the system ever said anything about it, and I didn't see it right to keep going in convincing other people that something is not right here." " Now..." " Un-freakin'-believable." "...here's the interesting thing." "This is the last record from Mercy, here in Springfield, until 2015." "So, this is 2007." "Eight years." "What I couldn't figure out was how Dee Dee figured out that Dr. Flasterstein was on to her." "But if you look at a lot these social work notes," "Dee Dee's requesting medical records." "She would have gotten a copy of this letter." "But I still don't understand why you put your child through this." "I don't know." "I mean, the thing is..." " Good question." " ..." "It just keeps going." "And it would have kept going 'cause her mama was an insane, compulsive liar." "Dee Dee and I met at the bowling alley one night." "Met up again a couple of weeks later." "And then we started dating then." "She got pregnant." "She got pregnant and... being from the South, I guess, it was..." "I was raised where you got a girl pregnant, then you got married." "There was no other question about what you did." "I was 17." "I woke up on my 18th birthday and I'm like, "What am I doing here?"" "She was kind of into some dark..." "Darkness... dark things." "Uh... she started talking a little bit about witchcrafts and just different weird, dark stuff like that." "It was kind of weird." "She had a pet tarantula." "Dee Dee was my aunt." "Um, real... weird girl." "I would think she's bipolar, no doubt." "Multiple personalities, perhaps." "Definitely... an evil person, I would say, you know?" "To shave your kid's head and say that she's got leukemia?" "You're a sick individual." "At this time, we'd like to present to you." "South Lafourche ROTC Military Queen," "Ms. Clauddinea Pitre." "Her escort..." "Sergeant Earl Longden." "Clauddine "Dee Dee" Pitre..." "What was Dee Dee like as a child?" "What, baby?" "What was Dee Dee like as a child?" " What was Dee Dee like as a child?" " Dee Dee?" "She was okay." "We were pretty close, me and her." "Yeah, I would give her everything that she wanted anyway." "Whatever she wanted." "Except a dog in the house." "I didn't want that." "Now we wind up... we got two dogs in the house." "Ahem, but this..." "She was something else." "She was a very filthy person." "If it didn't go her way, she'd see to it that you would pay." "And did we pay." "Paid a lot." "She opened credit cards in my dad's name, my grandpa's name, ran up crazy bills." "Supposedly, America's Most Wanted was looking for this girl." "Slidell... she was wanted." "Bad checks in New Orleans." "No matter where she went, she was doing all kind of stuff." "She was poisoning my stepmother." "Supposedly, she was giving her some..." "Roundup in her food and stuff." "She was putting some poison in my food." "The same thing she had put in the plant." "And she wind up... she stayed nine months in bed after that." "She couldn't get up." "I didn't think she was going to make it." "There was nothing she couldn't get away with." "Her mama was a little bit like her." "Yeah, her mama, too." "Her mama was a shoplifter and all kind of stuff." "I don't know how many times she had to go to court for shoplifting and other things." "She had stolen how much money from your daddy?" "Before he got married, she had stolen" "I think it's $3,000 or $4,000 from my daddy." "I think ever since my grandmother died," "Dee Dee kind of went off the deep end." "The day that her mom died," "Dee Dee was in the house somewhere, and Dee Dee was starving her." "Like, she wasn't..." "Dee Dee wasn't giving her anything to eat." "I asked her sister..." "You know, I was like, "I hate to ask this, but you think Dee Dee had anything to do with her mom's death?"" "And she, you know, said," ""Now I wonder."" "That's how evil she was." "To leave your mama dirty and asking for food and not want to feed her..." " Yeah." " ..." "That's evil." "Were you sad at all when you heard she was dead?" "Me?" "I didn't believe it." " It didn't..." " It just didn't sink." "It took a few days before... you know?" "I didn't believe that she was dead." "I thought it was another one of her tricks." "I said, "Who did Dee Dee piss off now?"" "You know, what kind of shit did Dee Dee get into?"" "I wasn't thinking, "Oh, God, my aunt's dead."" "Because I figured that one day she'd piss off somebody to that point, you know?" "And I actually did think that it would probably be Gypsy, you know?" "And whenever..." "We later got the word that Gypsy was fine and she was by her boyfriend's house, we were like, "She killed her mama." "She finally did it." "She couldn't take it anymore." "She finally just said, "Fuck it all."" "I'm killing this bitch."" "Do you think she got what she deserved?" " According to Gypsy, yes." " Yes." "Yeah, she got what she deserved." "I know all the brothers and sisters don't care about Dee Dee no more." "Gypsy... she got cremated." "She said, "What you want me to do with the ashes?"" "Everybody said, "I don't want her." "I don't want her."" " Darla said, "Flush 'em."" " I told her, "Flush that in the toilet."" "I didn't want it." "Her sister said, "Flush that in the toilet."" "She said, "We're going to bring that in Mama's room, make her a mass and everything."" ""You going to pay for it?" "I'm not paying for it." "We can't afford it." "Flush it in the toilet."" "Prosecutors have decided not to seek the death penalty against a Springfield woman and her boyfriend, both of whom are accused of murdering the woman's mother." "The announcement comes after several conversations between the defense and prosecution, both agreeing this was the best decision." "Being a prosecutor, the standard is to do what's right and what's just." "When you look at the mitigators as well as the background of these individuals as we know it, as well as the facts of the case, this case was not an appropriate first-degree murder case in which to seek the death penalty." "This is a case that we haven't dealt with, and it's because it's so unusual." "I mean, it really is an unusual case." "What we thought initially may be a victim turns out to be a suspect, and in the middle of a story that is twisted." "We think we know who Gypsy is, but once this trial starts, we'll be able to see her life unfold and find out exactly what she was all about." "Hi, everybody." "Right now, I'm in Cinderella's castle eating some real mashed potatoes." "Mm!" "That is good." "Gypsy loved Disney because they were stories that resolved in happy ways." "And ultimately, her story was not resolving in a happy way." "I liked the Disney movie "Tangled."" "It's about Rapunzel." "She's a princess in this kingdom and she's kidnapped by Mother Gothel from her real family." "And Mother Gothel keeps her in this tower for all of her life and tells her, "Don't leave this tower."" "And so, that is all she knows." "I think that Gypsy just wanted her life to be like any fairy tale princess and have the perfect ending." "You know, all the bad villains get what they deserve." "At the end, Mother Gothel died." "She got thrown out a window, um, because Rapunzel tried to stand up for herself and leave her tower." "But in Disney movies, everything's a fantasy." "It's a fairy tale, and life is not a fairy tale." "I learned all that the hard way." "I don't think calling Gypsy's life sheltered would do it justice." "I've kind of come to describe it as a fairy tale nightmare." "Her mother controlled almost every aspect of her life." "The control was total in the same sense that the control of a kidnapped victim sometimes is total." "Her daughter was, in essence, a hostage, and I think we can understand the crime that occurred subsequently in terms of a hostage trying to gain escape." "Any time Gypsy and I were together, her mom was always present." "She was immediately like a filter for us, you know." "Like, Gypsy wouldn't talk about anything personal while we were together." "That's like, really, the big red flag, thinking back on it all now." "Dee Dee would always hold Gypsy's hand, you know?" "It was like, I don't know... it was almost like, you know, just," ""If I squeeze it, you'll know what to say."" "I mean, that was just so strange to me." "Just to feel it now, I think that was really strange." "Even in videos I've seen since then," "I'm like, "Yep, it's just the same thing."" "It's like she's holding her hand." "I mean, now I'm..." "It was maybe a control thing." "The hand-holding and the tight hugs is a way of asserting mastery over another person and saying, "You're not free."" "You are under my control at all times, even in relatively benign situations like our being photographed getting the Habitat for Humanity home." "You know, those are innocuously happy occasions, but they were also occasions where Dee Dee reasserted her mastery over Gypsy." "My mom had cake..." "If we were in a group of friends, you know, if I said something that I wasn't supposed to, she'd squeeze my hand, and I'd know, "Zip it."" "I was just afraid, just too afraid." "I have a strong feeling that the extent of the control over her, heavily psychological as it was, would've involved physical punishment as well." "She'd hit me with a coat hanger... or her... or her palm." "And I'd have to take so many slaps for... depending on what, how severe it was, I did." " Did you ever try to hit back?" " Never." "Never." "It's like if you have a baby and you, like, get in its face and the baby starts to struggle and get away from you." "Now picture that happening for your whole life, right?" "Your mother is just in your face and will not get away." "That's basically what Gypsy's whole life was like." "It's snowing." "I'm not joking." "They said it's snowing, so I'm staying under my heating blankie." "And I'm not getting out, mm-mm." "She wants to get out." "Ain't gonna happen." "Let her doll take care of her." "Oh!" "Her mother was so suffocating, so powerful, so manipulative that Gypsy may have felt any efforts to escape were bound to fail." "The first time I ran away from home," "I had met a friend." "We both went to this sci-fi fantasy convention called Visioncon." "I told him vaguely about what was going on at home." "And he told me, you know, "You just pack your stuff and you can come live with me in Arkansas."" "And I said, "Okay."" "I stepped out, got a ride from a stranger, and went over to his place." "And then within, like, four hours, my mom found me at his place because we had mutual friends in common." "So she was threatening to call the cops on him." "And she took me back home and smashed my computer with a hammer, smashed my cell phone with a hammer and said," ""If you ever try to do that again," "I'm going to smash your fingers with a hammer."" "It was a rough year." "I call that "the bad times."" "She had taken this dog leash and clipped it to a pair of handcuffs, and clipped the handcuffs to the bed and kept... it was like that for about two weeks." "My mom had actually convinced a lawyer to draw up some papers saying that I was incompetent." "So I thought if I had tried to go to the police, they'd look at these papers and say, "She's retarded." "She doesn't know what she's talking about."" "Gypsy has essentially fallen through every crack there is in the system." "The Greene County sheriff's deputies came out to the house on an anonymous report that Gypsy was potentially being abused." "And they came to the house, they spoke with Dee Dee, and Dee Dee did exactly what she does all the time..." "She manipulated the police officers, showed them a few things, and they left." "And at that point," "Gypsy has absolutely nowhere else to turn." "Literally everyone failed her." "Literally." "The doctors who were positioned as there to help her didn't help her." "Her father, who I think was in a very difficult position, couldn't help her." "How was she supposed to think anybody could?" "I was just kind of at that point where you're like," ""I'm angry at the world and this is unfair."" "Why couldn't anybody figure this out before it got this bad?" "Gypsy." "Over here, baby." "We all kind of did see how Gypsy was being treated by Dee Dee, not that it was like horrible, beating the shit out of her in the back room with a freaking cable, you know?" "She would just... she put her in a wheelchair and told her," ""Your leg's messed up." "You can't walk."" "Her sister told me once, "Rod, you know," "Gypsy can walk."" "And I asked Dee Dee about it." "She's like, "Yeah, well, with her muscular dystrophy or with her disease, her muscles hurt sometimes." "So sometimes she can walk when she's feeling okay, but it's progressive." "It's going to get worse."" "And it wasn't long after that that they were..." "They started moving further and further away." "And there was nobody there to question..." "Question that anymore, you know?" "After all of the doors had been closed..." "Family, friends, the police..." "I think that Gypsy felt she had no other..." "No other avenue." "I met Nick through a Christian dating website." "He was one of the profiles that I had saw." "Thought he was cute, so I checked him out, sent him a wink." "He sent me one back." "Once you met on there, what happened?" "We got closer on there, and we connected more and more." "The way that we clicked, we somehow just knew we were right for each other." "Four days later, we started a relationship together." "Gypsy had no template for romance that wasn't this sort of heightened Prince Charming narrative." "And Nick just happened to be there." "His background equipped him with a bad narrative in different ways." "So, it was like two bad narratives collided with each other." "What kind of person..." "If somebody never met him, what kind of person is Nick?" "He's pretty quiet, kept to himself, you know." "We always tell him he's got to get out and mingle, you know." " Sure." " But he's like, "I'm afraid of getting backstabbed, because everybody backstabs you," and all that stuff." "He has autism, you know, Asperger's." "Has he been diagnosed with autism and Asperger's?" " Yes." " Okay." "Last doctor he talked to, they said his mind is probably always going to be 15, 16, right around there." "At first, it was all lighthearted, you know." ""If you got married, where would you like to have your honeymoon?"" "You know, "Where would you like to get married?"" "Where are all the places you want to travel?"" "Different things like that, normal stuff." "And as it progressed, things got weird." "He started talking about something called BDSM." "And at first, I didn't know what it was, so I looked it up." "And once I looked it up, I was like, "I don't want to do this."" "And then he kind of just talked me into it and was like, "It'll be fine," you know?" ""Try this with me."" "And so, I agreed to it." "I was taught that a woman's role is to be submissive and the man is dominant, so I didn't think it was that outlandish." "Then his ex had messaged me." "She told me, you know, he's a really bad guy." "He thinks he's a vampire and he's into all this dominant/submissive stuff." "And I was thinking, it's just an ex." "You know, she's just badmouthing him." "She doesn't know anything." "She's jealous, blah, blah, blah." "She was right." "Godejohn also has a criminal past." "In 2013 he was arrested after investigators say he was watching pornography and fondling himself in a McDonald's restaurant for nine hours, police finding a large knife during the arrest." "I really don't know what's wrong with him, but, I mean, it's not like I ever had a boyfriend before, so I really didn't know what was a normal relationship." "How don't know how much she told you about me, but..." "Have you been diagnosed with that?" "I probably should be diagnosed with it because it... it happens..." "The thing is, I used to take a medication." "I used to hear voices in my head." "Then it went away." "And then somehow it's a part of myself." "Okay." "Does Gypsy know that?" " Yes." "She does know that." " Okay." "His multiple personalities would come out, and he had talked to me one day and he was just like, "You know, I would like my other personalities to have a girlfriend."" "So I made up some individual personalities to match his other personalities." "One side of her is named Kitty." "It's like a little girl inside of her." "We had another one called Candy." "She has an evil side of herself as well." "She used to call her Ruby." "It was deaf, dumb, blind love." "And sometimes, it's a big crazy love." "One of the most interesting things about this case is that no matter how much control you have over an individual, you can't stop adolescent sexuality from blossoming." "Her whole life, this had been a subject that was forbidden to her, and, ultimately, that turned into a really destructive force." "Probably about a year into our relationship," "I just couldn't lie to him anymore." "And I just told him everything." "Why did nobody know she could walk?" "Her mom wanted everyone to think that she was, like, 16 the entire time." "So, yeah, she felt kind of trapped on a wheelchair when I actually was trying to encourage her to be able to walk more and more and more." "It really didn't come up, like, "I want you to kill her."" "But he had said, "I'll protect you from anybody."" "And I said, "Anybody?"" "And he said, "Yeah."" "And I said, "Even my mom?"" "And he said, "Yeah."" "And that's where it kind of developed from there on." "We'd call it "plan B."" "But we always pushed it back." "You know, it was just a thought." "It was never reality." "We'll consider other options." "We had planned a meeting at a movie theater." "I and my mom was going to go see "Cinderella,"" "the live-action version of "Cinderella,"" "and I was like, "This is a perfect time for us to meet." "I'll buy your ticket, and you come to the movie theater." "We'll meet like we're just meeting as new friends, and it's going to be perfect."" "She wanted to have sex with me, so I did." "Okay, she wanted to have sex with you?" " Yes." " Wow, did her mom know?" "Um, we kept it from her mom." "Okay." "Where did you have sex at in the theater?" " It was in the bathroom." " Okay." "In the girls' bathroom or boys' bathroom?" "She just took me in the boys' bathroom." "I didn't have any choice." "We went right into the boys' bathroom." "She was okay with it." "Okay, okay." "And then what happened after you guys had sex in the theater?" "We went to our movie and watched it." "They're all looking at you." "Believe me, they are all looking at you." "I don't know what it was, but, apparently, the night got ruined in some way." "I couldn't..." "I was trying to understand what was going on with her mom." "She despised him." "She was like, "He's creepy." "He's weird."" "He's coming to see a kids' movie alone by himself."" "And now looking back on it, yeah, it is weird." "We were the only people at the movies, and he didn't have a kid with him or a girlfriend or nothing." "He's just this guy going to see this chick movie." "Couldn't you have said that you have a friend and you want to introduce them?" "I wouldn't have had no way to meet him, you know?" "I can't say I met him online or..." "She's... she was all the time with me, so there would be no other time to meet him." "Once all of those plans seemed to fall apart," "I just got desperate." "He took a Greyhound bus." "I managed to scrape up enough money to pay for him a ticket." "And the next day, we went to the grocery store, came back home." "She went to sleep very, very late, and I was up texting Nick." "We painted each other's nails." "And I acted like everything was fine." "We had just recently got into an argument, and we had made up." "And I said I was going to be a good girl." "And then she went to sleep because I hurt her feelings or something." "She said, "I'm starting to feel more relaxed." "Don't hurt me."" "The last words she said to me was "don't hurt me."" "I went into the bathroom." "I got kind of in a fetal position and I covered my ears." "And I heard my mom wake up." "And then she sounded startled." "And there was some noises that I can't make out, and I heard her say my name a couple times." "And she said, "Help me."" "And then there was just silence." "Did she scream?" "Yeah." "This is about as clear a premeditated murder as I've ever seen." "It's brutal." "And I think it would be very hard for anybody to not have a moment of being taken aback." "Did you have sex with Dee Dee?" " No." " You didn't stick your penis anywhere on her?" " Nope." " Are you sure?" " Yep." " Positive?" " I'm 100% positive." " Okay." "Did you stick your penis in her mouth?" " Nope." " Okay." "Did your penis touch anywhere on Dee Dee's body?" " Nope." " Okay." "Did your mouth touch anywhere on Dee Dee's body?" " My mouth?" "No." " Okay." " You didn't kiss her or..." " Nope." " ..." "lick her or anything like that?" " Nope." "Okay." "What do you think about people that have sex with dead bodies?" "I mean, it's quite disturbing, honestly." "Okay, that's..." "That would bother you?" "Yeah." "I don't like necrophilia." "Okay, because I think one of the things that she might have said was that you had mentioned that you'd like to rape her mom." " Yeah, at one point, I was thinking about it." " Okay." "He had wanted to rape my mother." "That's what he wanted to do." "He was like, "I'm going to kill her, but I'm going to do it my way, and I'm going to rape her."" "So what I did was I made a deal with him." "I'd let him rape me, and..." "And then he wouldn't..." "He wouldn't do that to my mom." " So you guys have sex." " Yes." "And what kind of sex?" "What is sex like to you?" "Well, to me, the kind of sex that it was was pretty much kind of con... consensual?" "Is that the word I'm looking for?" " Like, are you biting her?" " Are you punching her?" "No, no, I would never lay my hands on her." "I didn't even bite her at all, actually." "Not for a long time, that is." "The very first time, she whispered in my ear that that was a turn-on of hers is biting." " I bit her twice." " Okay." "The first time I can't remember." "The second time I remember, because I bit her a lot harder." "However, she seemed to still enjoy it even though it was really hard." "Technically, once we got to that point," "I screamed for him to stop, and he didn't." "So I don't consider it to be consensual." "Okay, all right." "Is there a reason you didn't feel pleasure?" "I don't know." "It's really hard to say." "I did make her have an orgasm once." " Okay." " And then after that, I... she might've blew me a bit." "And then after that, I think we stopped because we realized there was a lot of packing and stuff to do." "Okay, so you guys get everything packed." "She wipes down the fingerprints." "And then what do you guys do?" "We get in a taxi and we get to the hotel." "Hi, honey." "I'm filming." "He's eating a brownie!" "But later, he will be eating me!" "I loved Nick very much at that time, and being with him felt exciting because I was with someone I loved and someone I thought cared for me." "We took a Greyhound bus back to Wisconsin." "My mind wasn't thinking back to what was at my house." "I just kept thinking, "I'm free, I'm free,"" "and that excitement of being free and walking." "I always reference myself to this little bluebird that was trapped in an invisible cage, and I felt like this bluebird was set free." "Did you guys talk about your future?" "What was your plans for your future?" "We wanted to have a family together, and we wanted to build a life together and stuff." "We thought we really had a chance to do it, so we were happy about that." "Does your mom and stepdad know what you did?" "No, they don't." "And this is the first time they ever met Gypsy?" "Yeah." "In person, yes." "Okay, and they agreed to let her live there?" " Yep." " Okay." "What did you do think about Gypsy?" "You know, it was weird because when I picked them up from the bus station, I even asked her," ""How's your mom doing?" "How is your..."" "'Cause I was told she was in a homeless shelter." "Her mom kicked her out." "So I asked her how her mom was doing." "This might have been the first thing I asked her." "No big deal, They acted like nothing." "What was your impression?" "Did you feel like there was anything wrong?" " Did you feel like everything was good?" " Everything seemed normal." "The only thing that freaked me out is she was wearing a wig." "Okay." "Did you remember getting in the mail an envelope or anything addressed to Nick or Gypsy or anything like that?" "There was one that just came in..." "hmm..." "Saturday?" "I have no idea what was in it." "That was my next question." "I don't go through mail." " Okay." "Maybe I should have." " That was the night that he had stabbed her to death." " What?" "They mailed it from their house there to your house." " Are you serious?" " Yes, ma'am." " Oh, my God." " And that was located in your house." "My God." "I think there was a little..." "Around $4,000-5,000 of cash that they had stolen from her mom." "My God." "Did you see the Facebook post where it says..." " No." " Okay, that's right." "On Dee and Gypsy's Facebook post that they share, there are some horrible messages that were posted on there that said, like..." "I believe, like, they slashed her..." "Like, "I slashed her." "I killed her." "And then I raped the girl, and the girl's dead, too."" "Well, those all were actually posted by Gypsy." "Startlingly with Gypsy, who went online to announce, you know," ""That bitch is dead," and to go even further and describe a scenario where she was raped is just perverse." "It implies a fair degree of sociopathy." "Just the way the girl acted..." "I mean, how can you do something to your mother and lose your mother, and just act like that?" "I was like..." "I'm just trying to wrap my head around it." "I mean, they acted like two normal people." " Yeah." " That's what's really freaky." "Yeah." "How can you do that?" "Gypsy might have been the mastermind herself." "I think it's most anybody's instinct to," ""Oh, shit, you murdered your mother," you know?" "Watch that girl." "Don't turn your back." "You she might stab you." "I do think Gypsy is potentially dangerous." "Dee Dee was a master manipulator, and it's impossible that Gypsy would not have picked this up and used it." " Yeah." " You know?" "I know." "I mean, that's the way it works, though, when you have what he has." "Your mind focuses on one thing." "Do you know what I mean?" "Yes, ma'am." "Do you think that if Gypsy hadn't asked you to kill her mom, you'd have ever killed her mom?" "I know I wouldn't have done it." "Okay." "You just did it because you loved Gypsy and Gypsy asked you to do it." "Is that what I'm thinking?" " Yes." " Okay." "For him to ruin his life over that," "I'm sorry, but she's a beast." "Yeah." "She now doesn't have a language beyond manipulation and retaliation." "I mean, is she taking any sort of..." "You know, is she like, "Well, okay, it was me, too,"" "or is she to trying to put it all on Nick?" "She... takes some responsibility, but not much." "Not much at all." " Did you kill your mom?" " No." "No, sir." " Did you help?" " No, sir." " No one else killed your mom?" " No, sir." "No, sir." "Did you have knowledge that Nicholas was going to kill your mom before he did it?" "No, sir." "Okay." "Sit tight for me, okay?" "It's okay." "I wonder if people feel that Gypsy is telling them the truth now." "Hello, you have a call from..." "Gypsy Rose." "She was still in Wisconsin when she called me." "Hey, my sweetie." "Hi!" "Is this Kristy?" "Yes, baby." "Hi!" "Oh, my God." "It's so good to hear your voice." "At that time, she still wasn't trusting, really, anyone." "She was still not telling Mike everything." "I'm innocent." "It's a complicated situation, but what they say on the news is not true." "Then we went in the courtroom, and that's when they showed all the text messaging." "And when they said they were presenting that, she turned around and looked at us with fear in her eyes." "I guess she didn't think that they were going to pull all of those messages up." "Yeah, I did." "They didn't get caught red-handed, but they got caught red-handed." "You know, they have a lot of evidence." "They have the murder weapon, texts, videos." "I mean, no doubt they did it or planned it and everything, so it was just a matter of why they did it, you know, and is that reasonable?" "Are you happy that your mom is not here to abuse you anymore?" "Yeah." "But at the same time, I'm not happy that she's dead." "You know, I didn't want that." "I know it sounds strange to plan something and go through the steps to make it happen, and then... but at the same time not want it to happen." "One of the problems with the legal system is that it demands that people have this one intention and this one moment in time and be certain about it, and I'm not sure that that really happens." "And especially in this case, I'm not sure that it happens." "It's possible that Gypsy had ultimately ambivalent feelings about killing her mother." "I wonder what she was thinking in the other room listening to her mother screaming sometimes." "I didn't think anything." "I was scared." "I was shaking." "I just..." "I didn't have a thought in my brain." "It was like it was all not real." "I was on a bunch of medications, and I know that's no excuse, but on Xanax, I felt like I had no emotion and I wasn't thinking right." "Munchausen by proxy victims can lose contact with reality at times, and that may be part of the defense in Gypsy's case." "She may have trouble distinguishing what's real and what isn't." "Is sickness real or is it fake?" "Is death real, or is it exaggerated or fake?" "So, I think she had limited capacity for reality testing, which just means seeing what's normal behavior and what's really strange behavior." "Gypsy grew up in essentially an alternate reality to what the rest of us live." "By her mother isolating her from the outside world, she doesn't know or understand what normal really is." "Hi." "In so many ways," "I don't know what's right, what's wrong, but to say that, yes, I did this." "I'm sorry for it." "I feel bad for it." "It just feels good to be honest." "The only thing that I could've done differently that I know better now is reach out to my dad, told my dad." "And he could have came and got me, and I would've went and lived with him." "There's a McDonald's right here where I'd visit with Gypsy." "At that time, she was real young." "I remember one visit... she was so scared of me, man." "She was shaking." "I don't know what Dee Dee told her about me, but I probably was the big bad wolf or something, you know?" "Gypsy must have been so confused, you know?" "She was probably telling her the day before that, you know, I don't love her and all this stuff, and then here she is visiting with me and telling her," ""Look, that's your daddy." "Give him a hug," you know?" "That's old history now, so we're just going to try to build a real father-daughter intimate relationship, you know, like we should have." "It's hard." "Thinking what she had to go through and that she didn't have to go through all that." " See this?" " Look at that." "She would probably have been a perfectly fine kid had it not been her mom was Dee Dee." "Okay, y'all want to get the table ready or what?" " Yes." " We're going to eat off the trays?" "She could've had a normal life." "I hope she gets out, and I don't know what..." "What she's going to do when she gets out." "She was punished enough to where they should let her go free." "That's the way I feel." "'Cause that child's..." "She's been through a lot." "Look at her." " Is that Gypsy?" " Yeah, when she was normal." "I blame myself now for not doing more." "I mean, it is what it is." "I'm not a "blame yourself" type of guy, but who else is there to look at, you know?" "Okay." "This is... sorry." "I didn't realize they were going to bring you out immediately." "This is the new charge..." "Class-A felony of murder in the second degree, and then acting in concert with another who knowingly caused the death of your mother by stabbing her, okay?" "This is in the case of State of Missouri v. Gypsy Rose Blanchard." "Please raise your right hand." "Do you swear and affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "Yes, sir." "Would you state your name for the record, please?" " Gypsy Blanchard." " And how old are you?" "I'm going to be 25 years old, but 24." "Okay." "And how far did you go in school?" "About the second grade." "How do you plead to the class-A felony of murder in the second degree?" " Guilty." " The court finds that there is a factual basis for a plea of guilty." "The court accepts defendant's plea of guilty and finds the defendant guilty thereof beyond a reasonable doubt." "She's to be sentenced to 10 years in the Missouri Department of Corrections." "She'll have to do 85% of her sentence before she's eligible for parole." "Let's go off the record." "There you are." "This case is unusual and extraordinary." "Gypsy Blanchard endured nearly two decades of systematic, purposeful abuse at the hands of her mother for the purpose of fraud." "And so, by amending to murder in the second degree, we were able to both hold Gypsy Blanchard accountable for the murder, which was not justified nor excusable, but yet account for those mitigating circumstances." "All of us involved are..." "It's a relief." "You know, at the very beginning of this, there was the question of the death penalty on the table." "Ultimately, it's the best outcome for her." "It's the best outcome for the State of Missouri and ultimately the right thing to do for everybody." "That one's in this pocket." "Ooh." "I mean, it's a murder." "There's nothing we can do about that, so, you know, that has to be dealt with." "But ultimately, when you look at the fact that at the end of that 8 1/2 years, when she's already done a year of that, she'll be 32 years old." "She'll be three years younger than I am right now." "So, I mean, she will actually be able to enjoy just the world." "Do you think 10 years in jail is better than 10 years of living the way that you had to live?" "Yes, it is." "I need to start over like I'm newly born." " Honey?" " Yeah." " Green?" " Yeah." "White or green?" "No, no, no, no, no." "It's my favorite hat." "No, other hat." "I'm holding on to that girl." "You know, it's going to be very emotional." "Yeah, you're a big crybaby." "You're probably gonna cry, too." "And then when you're gonna cry," "I'm going to cry because you're crying, because it's hard to see grown men cry." "I don't cry." "Bullshit." "You cry." " Hello." " Daddy." "Oh..." "I've missed you." " You're so big." " I know!" "I'm almost as tall as you." "So how's everything going with you health-wise?" " You good?" "You feel good?" " It's going good, yeah." "You've been exercising and everything?" "I've been going to the rec yard, been exercising." "That's good." "My tube site is finally all healed." "It's gone?" "That's good." "Looks great." "Looks good." "All healed up, so..." "Every once in a while, I get a little pain, but I think it's just phantom pain or something." "Yeah." "So, are you glad that it's..." "I'm happy that it's over." "Yeah." "We was... honestly, we was hoping for less." "I mean, I know it was your decision and everything." " That's a gamble you take." "I mean..." " Yeah." "I look at it like you could've got 30 years." "I look at it that I could've got life in prison, you know?" "I was hitting a really down point, and it was before..." "Before the plea agreement, before I knew anything about it." "I was thinking if I get life in prison and that is what I get," "I'm committing suicide right now, you know?" "I was seriously considering it." " Well, baby..." " 'Cause I'm like, it could just be over." "I just want to make sure you know that if I had done anything wrong, I'm sorry, baby." "No, I don't think you did anything wrong." "I think it's just Mom was very good at what she was doing, and I think you just was completely in the dark." "And I don't..." "I want you to know" "I don't blame you for any of it, either of you." " Thank you." " I take blame on myself." "And I blame other people, but I never once blamed y'all." "Don't blame yourself, sweetie." "We blame..." "I hold enough for myself, you know?" "Accountability, it's..." "But, I mean, we're not gonna dwell on that." " No." " No." "We're gonna go forward, and when you get out.." " We'll heal together." " ...you're still gonna be young." "We can have a great relationship." "Look, God pulled you through it." " Yeah." " You know?" "The devil don't got you, baby." "God got you." " Yeah." " And we got you." "Give me a hug." "Hang in there, baby." "You need anything, call any time, okay?" "Oh, she knows." "We'll come see you again over there, wherever." "Just hang tight." "Stay strong." " We love you." " I love you, too." "I don't want to go." "I don't want to go." "I don't want to go." "It's okay, baby." "You can do it, okay?" "Just stay strong." "You got this far, okay?" "The rest is gonna be easier." " Okay." "Okay." " Okay?" "You guys have a safe trip back." " Don't get in no trouble." " I won't." " Be good." " I'll be a good girl." " Follow the rules." " I will." "Bye." " Set a good example." " I will." "♪ We were very happy ♪" "♪ Well, at least I thought we were ♪" "♪ Can't somebody tell me ♪ ♪ what's got into her?" "♪" "♪ A house, a home, a family ♪" "♪ And a man that loves her so ♪" "♪ Oh, say, has anybody seen ♪" "♪ My sweet Gypsy Rose?" "♪" "♪ Here's her picture when ♪ ♪ she was my sweet Mary Jo ♪" "♪ Now she's got rings on her fingers ♪" "♪ And bells on her toes ♪" "♪ Say, has anybody seen ♪ ♪ my sweet Gypsy Rose?" "♪" "♪ Oh, I got wind my Jo's been dancin' ♪" "♪ Here in New Orleans ♪" "♪ In this smoke-filled honky-tonk ♪" "♪ They call the Land of Dreams ♪" "♪ Whoa, here she comes a-struttin' ♪" "♪ In her birthday clothes ♪" "♪ Say, has anybody seen ♪ ♪ my sweet Gypsy Rose?" "♪" "♪ Sweet Gypsy Rose ♪" "♪ Sweet Gypsy Rose ♪" "♪ So take those rings off your fingers ♪" "♪ And bells off your toes ♪" "♪ Say, has anybody seen my ♪" "♪ Now you know just what I mean by ♪" "♪ Has anybody seen my Gypsy Rose?" "♪"