Gypsy Rose Blanchard Released From Prison After Murder That Spawned Hulu’s ‘The Act’

Patrick Hipes
·2 min read
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Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who made national headlines and became the subject of Hulu’s 2019 limited series The Act for her role in her mother’s murder after suffering years of emotional and physical abuse, was released from prison Thursday.

Blanchard, now 32 years old, had served seven years of a 10-year sentence in a Missouri state prison after pleading guilty to second degree murder in for helping to kill her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who abused her daughter for years by convincing her she was sick when she wasn’t.

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That ruse included Dee Dee telling Gypsy she had everything from leukemia to muscular dystrophy, forcing her to undergo multiple unnecessary surgeries, use a feeding tube and confine her to a wheelchair, all in an effort to keep control over her daughter in a psychological disorder known as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.

Gypsy and her then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee in June 2015. Godejohn is serving a life sentence.

Gypsy told 20/20 in a 2017 jailhouse interview that she felt freer in prison that she did living with her mother.

Joey King portrayed Gypsy in Hulu’s 2019 series The Act, in which Patricia Arquette won an Emmy for portraying Dee Dee. There have been several documentaries on the subject, including an upcoming one set to air in January on Lifetime.

That doc, The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, features Blanchard in prison on the eve of her parole hearing as she recounts her emotional journey of being forced to remain a child, held prisoner by her own mother and the unfathomable choice she made in order to survive. It also follows the road to Gypsy’s prison wedding and reveals Ryan, her fiancé, for the first time.

Gypsy, who had been incarcerated at Chillicothe Correctional Center, was released early this morning, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.

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