After serving more than 7 years behind bars, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 32, walked out of a Missouri prison a free woman this morning. In 2015, the then-23-year-old persuaded her boyfriend to kill her mother following years of alleged abuse.
Despite suffering at the hands of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, for most of her life, however, Gypsy Rose Blanchard admits she regrets her mother’s murder.
“If I had another chance to redo everything, I don’t know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I’m not sick and mommy makes me sick,” Gypsy told People.
“Or, if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, ‘You know what, I’m going to go tell the police everything.’ I kind of struggle with that.”
“Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did,” Blanchard added. “I regret it every single day.”
Gypsy Rose Blanchard Was ‘Desperate’ to Escape Abuse
According to Gypsy Rose Blanchard, her mother’s murder was the result of sheer desperation.
At the time of Dee Dee’s murder, Gypsy recalls suffering mental and physical abuse and being forced into an unnecessary surgery in a long line of unneeded medical procedures. “I was desperate to get out of that situation,” she said.
By the age of 7, Dee Dee Blanchard had falsely claimed her daughter suffered from a wide array of illnesses. These included muscular dystrophy, Leukemia, and epilepsy. Gypsy used a wheelchair and feeding tubes, neither of which were medically necessary.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard recalls that the decision to murder her mother came after a failed runaway attempt to escape a needless surgery on her larynx.
“I just wasn’t having it,” Gypsy said. “She found me, brought me back and put in place paperwork saying I was incompetent and she had power of attorney over me.”
Feeling helpless, Gypsy turned to her boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, who would go on to carry out the deadly attack on Dee Dee.
“I was trying really hard to figure out another way,” Blanchard said. “That’s when there was a conversation between me and my co-defendant Nick,” who she’d met on an online dating site. “He said ‘I would do anything to protect you.’ I said, ‘Anything?’ He said ‘Yes.'”
Godejohn received a life sentence for his part in the 2015 murder. He reportedly admitted that he would do it again, if given the choice. Gypsy, however, feels differently.
“[Dee Dee Blanchard] didn’t deserve that,” Gypsy said. “She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn’t educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior.”