Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who faked serious illnesses upon her daughter for years, was murdered on June 9, 2015, by Gypsy Rose’s then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn — both of them sentenced and imprisoned for her killing.
“When June 9 comes around every year, I find myself in a very depressive state,” Gypsy Rose Blanchard told E! News in a new interview published on the ninth anniversary of her mother Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard’s death.
Suspected of suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP), Dee Dee subjected Gypsy Rose to years of doctor’s visits, treatments, surgeries and more for a slew of serious diseases it turned out she didn’t have. On June 9, 2015, she was murdered by her daughter’s then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn.
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Both Nicholas and Gypsy Rose were found guilty in her murder, with Nicholas getting life on a first-degree murder charge, and Gypsy Rose ten years for second-degree murder. She was released in December 2023 after eight years, and immediately became a highly-scrutinized public figure.
Her story reached a new level of public awareness with Hulu’s 2019 mini-series The Act, starring Joey King as Gypsy Rose and Patricia Arquette as Dee Dee.
This year marks the first anniversary of Dee Dee’s death Gypsy Rose, now 32, will mark as a free woman. “Some days, what I do is I listen to music, I listen to some of her favorite songs and I allow myself that time to grieve — and I do it privately because I don’t want to be judged,” she told the outlet.
As for how she’s been able to reconcile her childhood and that complicated relationship with her mother, Gypsy Rose said she has “a level of forgiveness” for her mother, now. She also hopes her mother can return that forgiveness to her.
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“I would hope that wherever she is — I am a spiritual person, I am a religious person — so, I hope that she is in Heaven, and I hope that she can look down on me and see me as a woman who has grown from her circumstances,” she said.
“So hopefully that mutual forgiveness has happened,” she added.
Blanchard also spoke fondly of Dee Dee on Mother’s Day last month, posting in a social media video that she chooses to “think the best of her.” She added, “I think about the good times. I think about her as not what she did to me, but I think about her as a person.”
That same positive way of approaching the memories of her mother colors her approach to the anniversary of Dee Dee’s death. She opened up about how her boyfriend Ken Urker, an ex-fiancee with whom she reconnected after filing for divorce from Ryan Anderson shortly after her release, helps her through it.
“Ken has done this with me a lot over the years,” Gypsy Rose shared, saying that her focus again is in “just thinking about the good times, the good things, kind of blocking out all of the negative and just honoring her memory in that way.”
Gypsy Rose’s story continues to unfold on television wit the ongoing Gypsy Rose: Life After Lockup, airing on Lifetime Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.
