Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup - Who was Gypsy Rose and what did she do? Details of her crime, explored

Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup is a docuseries that follows Gypsey Rose Blanchard's life while she was in prison and after her release. It premiered on Lifetime in June 2024 and has had two seasons so far. While Gypsy is now a celebrity with her own show, Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup, her life was much more tragic, the kind that made her kill her own mother.

Gypsy Blanchard is an American woman, known for being sentenced to prison for ten years for second degree murder of her mother, Claudine Dede Blanchard, who had mentally, physically and emotionally absued her all her life.

Blanchard's life before Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup

Gypsy Rose Blanchard's story is alarming on multiple levels. Way before Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup, Gypsy's life was reportedly a living hell. Born in 1991, she was made to believe by her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, that she was seriously ill for most of her life. Dee Dee told others that Gypsy had many diseases, including muscular dystrophy and leukemia, though none of it was true.

In the documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, Rod Blanchard, Gypsy’s father recalled how Gypsy was merely three months old when Dede told him that their baby needed a breathing machine. Dede even told him that she believed, Gypsy “was not going to live to see eighteen.”

To the public, they seemed like a sweet mother-daughter pair. But the reality was quite different. Dee Dee forced Gypsy to use a wheelchair, shaved her head to mimic cancer, and gave her medicine she didn’t need. Gypsy lived in fear and couldn’t escape her mother’s control.

After moving to Missouri, the community supported them, even helping build them a home. People donated money, offered help, and saw Gypsy as a brave, disabled child. But it was revealed later that in reality, she could walk and wasn’t sick at all. Dee Dee made her pretend being sick, even changing Gypsy’s age and keeping her isolated from the outside world.

As Gypsy grew older, she started to explore the internet. In 2012, she met Nicholas Godejohn online, who became her secret boyfriend. They met once in 2015, and later in June of the same year, they together formed a plan to put an end to Dee Dee’s life and thus, to the abuse she had been inflicting on Gypsy as well. When Godejohn came to their house, Gypsy opened him the door while Dee Dee was asleep, and he stabbed Dede repeatedly to death. Gypsy was in the next room.

After the murder, the couple ran away but were soon caught. When the truth came out, the public was shocked. Gypsy, who they thought was an extremely sick child, was a perfectly healthy adult and had never been sick. Her entire childhood had been a lie created by her mother.

Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Godejohn received a life sentence with no parole, and for armed criminal action, he was sentenced to twenty-five more years. After serving eight years, Gypsy was released on parole in December 2023.

Following her release, she stepped into the public eye with Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup. The Lifetime docuseries shares her journey of rebuilding her life, navigating marriage, divorce, and motherhood. Gypsy married Ryan Anderson while she was still in prison, but the couple divorced in 2024. She has just given birth to her daughter with partner, Ken Urker.

She also published a book and gave interviews on major TV shows. In 2019, her story was conveyed to the whole world through the Hulu miniseries titled The Act. Her story continues to be in the limelight, not just because of the crime, but because of the years of abuse she survived and her talking about her new life publicly. Through Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup, she has reclaimed her identity in the way she never could under her mother’s supervision.

You can watch Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup on the Lifetime app, Hulu, and Peacock.

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