After serving most of her 10-year prison sentence for her role in the murder of her abusive mother, Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison early, Missouri officials said Thursday.
“I’m ready for freedom,” Blanchard, now 32, told People magazine in an interview before her release. “I’m ready to expand, and I think that goes for every facet of my life.”
The revelation that she had been abused and that her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, had forced phantom medical conditions on her was the subject of intense national interest after the 2015 killing.
The younger Blanchard was using a wheelchair at the time, and her mother had told people that she had brain damage, along with a slate of other medical issues. When police began to investigate the slaying, they realized that Blanchard could walk and that the many illnesses she supposedly suffered from — and was being treated for — had been made up by her mother, who prosecutors said had Munchausen by proxy syndrome.
Blanchard admitted to plotting her mother’s murder with her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Godejohn, who fatally stabbed Dee Dee Blanchard, was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In an interview with ABC News in 2018, Blanchard likened life with her mother to being imprisoned. “The prison that I was living in before, with my mom, it’s, like, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t have friends. I couldn’t go outside, you know, and play with friends or anything,” Gypsy said. “Over here, I feel like I’m freer in prison, than with living with my mom. Because now, I’m allowed to … just live like a normal woman.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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