CHILLICOTHE, Mo. (Court TV) — A woman who pleaded guilty to murdering her mother after alleging years of abuse in a case that inspired TV series and movies.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the killing of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. (Missouri Dept. of Corrections)
Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 32, pleaded guilty in 2016 to murdering her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to court records.
In response to an inquiry from Court TV, the Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed Blanchard is scheduled to be paroled on Dec. 28, 2023. At that date, she would have served 8.5 years in prison since her arrest in 2015 after her mother’s murder.
Prosecutors said Blanchard conspired with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to stab her mother to death. At his trial, Blanchard testified that she had asked Godejohn to come from his home in Wisconsin to Missouri to murder her mother because she saw no other way out, KSDK reported.
Blanchard spent most of her life hospitalized and in a wheelchair after being victimized by what was then called Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, and has since been renamed Factitious Disorder, according to the Cleveland Clinic. In a story dramatized in movies like HBO’s ‘Mommy Dead and Dearest’ and TV series like Hulu’s ‘The Act,’ Blanchard said she was treated for a number of conditions, including epilepsy, muscular dystrophy and leukemia, and was made to act as if she had the brain development of a child.
Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, KMBC reported.
