The prison romance of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard and her husband, and why they almost separated

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is now free from the confines of a Missouri prison and finding her voice and a sizeable audience on social media. Starting Friday, she’ll experience a new kind of release: revealing in her own words the depths of the medical, emotional, and physical abuse she experienced at the hands of her mother, Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard, and why Gypsy-Rose felt murder was her only way out.

“The best memory that I have in my entire life is the day that I got to prison, and I got to go out to the picnic tables, and I’m like, ‘I’m free. I’m free to have friends. I’m free to do what I want,’“ she says in Lifetime’s new six-episode docuseries, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” (Friday through Sunday, 8 EST/PST). “It might be in a controlled environment, but this is nice.”

The unimaginable saga included Dee Dee continuously shaving Gypsy-Rose’s head to reinforce a fabricated leukemia diagnosis, forcing her daughter to use a wheelchair and making her undergo unnecessary medical procedures. Those developments, and Dee Dee’s eventual murder, were covered in HBO’s 2017 documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and Hulu’s 2019 limited drama series “The Act,” starring Joey King and Patricia Arquette.

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard is free from prison. Now she's everywhere.

Urged on by Gypsy-Rose, her boyfriend Nick Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee to death on June 9, 2015, at the family’s Springfield, Missouri, home. Godejohn was sentenced to life without parole and Gypsy-Rose was released Dec. 28 after serving 8½ years of a 10-year-sentence.

For Lifetime’s docuseries, filmmakers spent 18 months capturing Gypsy-Rose’s life and backstory while she was an inmate at Chillicothe (Missouri) Correctional Center. “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” features revelatory interviews with Gypsy-Rose’s dad Rod Blanchard; her stepmother Kristy Blanchard; Dee Dee’s dad Claude Pitre; her brother Evans Pitre; and Gypsy-Rose’s pediatrician, Dr. Robert Steele.

Here are the biggest revelations from the docuseries.

Where to find it: How to watch and stream 'The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard' Lifetime special

How Dee Dee faked Gypsy-Rose’s health issues

Kristy Blanchard says when Gypsy-Rose was about 8 years old, Dee Dee told her Gypsy-Rose had been diagnosed with leukemia, which Kristy didn’t question. Rod and Dee Dee married when Rod was still a teen and Dee Dee was in her early 20s after she became pregnant. They welcomed Gypsy-Rose in 1991. Their marriage quickly dissolved, and Rod saw Gypsy-Rose only a few times a year.

When Dee Dee moved with Gypsy-Rose to Missouri after Hurricane Katrina ravaged their native Louisiana in 2005, Gypsy-Rose began seeing Steele, the pediatrician. He says Dee Dee never provided Gypsy-Rose’s medical records, claiming they weren’t available after Katrina.

Steele says Dee Dee told him Gypsy-Rose suffered from a seizure disorder, muscular dystrophy, and had a history of cancer, but he never saw evidence of the illnesses. Gypsy-Rose also had a surgery to remove her salivary glands to treat excess drooling, which Gypsy-Rose attributes to Dee Dee's rubbing Orajel on her mouth. After the surgery, Gypsy-Rose lost several teeth.

Gypsy-Rose says she didn’t tell anyone what Dee Dee was doing because she feared her mother and craved her attention. The relationship “was either very affectionate because I was very submissive and obedient, or I was either rebellious and I would be punished for it,” Gypsy-Rose says in the docuseries. “After I would do something that my mom wanted me to do, we would go to Toys ‘R’ Us, or she would buy me a new dress, and then the next best thing was her love and affection.”

Gypsy-Rose accuses her grandfather of molesting her

After Dee Dee was badly injured in a car wreck in 2000, Gypsy-Rose went to stay with her grandfather, Claude Pitre, while her mom recovered in the hospital. Gypsy-Rose says during that time she was molested by her grandpa.

“He would perform sexual acts on me,” she says. “He would make me touch him. He would touch me.”

When asked about the alleged abuse, Pitre denies it on camera and claims Gypsy-Rose inappropriately touched her. “She started that when she was about 4 years old,” he says. “I said, ‘Don’t do that.’” Pitre’s son, Evans Pitre, suspects the alleged abuse might’ve been an idea planted in Gypsy-Rose’s mind by her mom, but Gypsy-Rose insists it “100% happened.”

Gypsy-Rose tried to run away before her mom's death

Gypsy-Rose made a plan to escape her mother’s house in 2011, shortly after meeting a man named Dan, then 36, at a sci-fi convention. Gypsy-Rose had also recently learned by discovering her Medicaid card that she was 19 and not 15, as her mother claimed.

She decided to flee to Dan’s Arkansas farm. So one night she packed a few costumes (she didn’t have real clothes) and money stolen from her mom. When she arrived at Dan’s friend’s house, where Dan was staying, Gypsy-Rose learned he was on parole and couldn’t actually leave Missouri.

Dee Dee tracked Gypsy-Rose down at Dan’s friend’s house and said that if she returned home with her, Dee Dee would allow Gypsy-Rose to see him. But it was a lie, just to lure Gypsy-Rose home. Instead, she says her mother handcuffed her to the bed for two weeks, starved her and destroyed her laptop and cellphone. Gypsy-Rose says her mother remained physically abusive after the incident and would hit her.

“She kept a knife by her bedside table and she’d threaten me that if I was to attempt to run away, I would be punished for it,” Gypsy-Rose says.

Gypsy-Rose’s first attempt to kill Dee Dee 

Gypsy Rose thought she would try to flee her home again in 2011 and packed a bag. When Dee Dee found it, she confronted Gypsy-Rose about her plans to run away. Gypsy-Rose then grabbed a gun her mother had purchased. “And before I knew it, I pulled the trigger as many times as I could,” Gypsy-Rose says. She realized seeing her mother’s superficial wounds that the gun was actually a BB gun, which made her feel relieved “because I did not intend to kill her.” Gypsy-Rose says she surprised herself by even pulling the trigger.

Meeting Nick Godejohn and formulating the murder plot

In 2012, Gypsy Rose virtually met Nick Godejohn on the website Christian Dating For Free, and two weeks later they began a relationship. Gypsy-Rose says an ex of Godejohn’s cautioned that he could be verbally abusive, violent and controlling, but she ignored the warning. Gypsy-Rose says she and Godejohn chatted for almost three years before meeting in person for the first time in 2015.

When Dee Dee filed for power of attorney, Gypsy-Rose says she felt trapped. If she ran away again, authorities would just return her to Dee Dee. Gypsy-Rose presented the idea of killing her mother to Godejohn, who enthusiastically agreed, explaining his alter ego – a 500-year-old vampire – loved killing. The pair contemplated poison, arson or a gun as murder weapons but settled on a knife, which Gypsy-Rose says she stole from Walmart.

“I look at myself (then) as a scared little girl trapped and desperate to get out of a bad situation,” she says. “I wish that I knew that there were people that I could go to for help. I wish that I would’ve known that I didn’t have to commit this crime.”

The night of Dee Dee’s death

Gypsy-Rose purchased a bus ticket for Godejohn, who lived in Big Bend, Wisconsin. She’d previously sent him a video of Dee Dee’s bedroom where she’d be sleeping so Godejohn could familiarize himself with the scene of the crime. Gypsy-Rose also showed Godejohn how he should stab her. “I made the stabbing motion because I was high all of the time on pain pills,” she says. “The side effects of those create this disconnection to reality.”

That night, Gypsy-Rose and her mom settled in to watch a movie and Gypsy-Rose says she gave her a big hug. “I remember her telling me, ‘What’s that for? I’m not dead yet,’” she says. “It was so ironic.”

Gypsy-Rose says she felt torn about the murder, but texted Godejohn once her mom fell asleep. Godejohn arrived at their house and directed Gypsy-Rose to go to the bathroom and cover her ears. She says she heard screaming and her mother calling out for help.

“To this day, I can’t get that out of my head,” she says through tears. “And I want to help her, but I don’t. I just sit there. I don’t do anything. I just sit there and then I hear her screaming again, and then there was one sharp scream, and then it was over.”

‘A roller coaster of emotion between happiness and grief’ followed

Gypsy-Rose says that, after the murder, Godejohn insisted on raping her because she didn’t let him rape Dee Dee. Gypsy-Rose says she passed out because Godejohn was choking her, and when she came to they went back to Godejohn’s hotel.

They had plans to take a bus to Wisconsin the following day, but there weren’t seats available. The couple would need to wait two days, which they spent at the hotel. “I was very high on pain pills, but I enjoyed being with Nick,” she says. “We ordered pizza and thought it would be funny to make a porn video.” She describes the time as “a roller coaster of emotions between happiness and grief.”

How Gypsy-Rose and Ryan Anderson got together

Ryan Anderson, a teacher, heard about Gypsy-Rose’s story and decided to write to her in prison in 2020, as he thought she was “very cute.” He says they wrote each other for 14 months before their first meeting, for which Anderson was “very nervous.” Upon seeing her, he thought she looked gorgeous. She remarked their connection “seemed so seamless, so easy.” She also gushes over his sense of humor and ability to calm “almost like a storm that’s inside my soul.”

On their third visit, Anderson proposed with an engagement ring that he smuggled into the prison by putting it on a chain. Gypsy-Rose accepted, and they wed in July 2022 in a prison ceremony.

A rift disturbs wedded bliss

Anderson says the two experienced a honeymoon phase for about two months and then had an argument about Gypsy-Rose being in contact with another ex.She wondered if she was ready to be married and her stepmom Kristy Blanchard advised her to get an annulment.

After Gypsy-Rose said she wanted to separate, Anderson went to visit her in prison, and the two decided to work on their marriage. They enrolled in individual therapy, which Gypsy-Rose says has quelled their arguments.

Looking forward, she envisions “a simple life” in which she can drive, eat with friends and get a job. “I want to look in that mirror and see everything that my mother said that I wouldn’t be,” she says. “I don’t expect it to be easy, but I think that’s part of the fun, too, and I’m just ready. I’m ready to take it on.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gypsy-Rose Blanchard new documentary: 'Prison Confessions' bombshells