Released:
Conversations on the
Eve of Freedom

Released:
Conversations on the
Eve of Freedom

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard

with Melissa Moore

and Michele Matrisciani

BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, TX

DISCLAIMER. This book is based on the notes and recollections of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. Some names and other identifying details have been changed or omitted to protect the privacy of individuals. Any resemblance between a fictionalized name and a real person is strictly coincidental. In passages containing dialogue, quotation marks are used when the author is reasonably sure that the speaker’s words are close to verbatim and/or that the speaker’s intended meaning was accurately reflected.

Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom copyright © 2024 by Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, Melissa Moore, and Michele Matrisciani

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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First eBook Edition: January 2024

eISBN 9781637745878

Editing by Rick Chillot

Copyediting by Michael Fedison

Cover design by Sarah Avinger

Cover image © Adobe Stock / Grave passenger (grunge) and david_franklin (polaroids)

For anyone who has ever lost hope. This book is for you.

Preface

The life of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard and the murder of her mother, forty-eight-year-old Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, is one of the most compelling true-crime cases the public has ever witnessed. It’s also a story more bizarre than fiction and more layered than an onion. The more investigators dug, the more surprises they uncovered. And the staggering truth revealed that all parties involved in the murder, including the victim herself, were guilty of heinous crimes.

On June 14, 2015, an ominous status update on Dee Dee and Gypsy’s shared Facebook page, “That bitch is dead,” baffled their friends. They panicked and called 911. Dee Dee’s body was found in her bedroom by sheriff’s deputies in Springfield, Missouri. The single mother of one had been stabbed several days earlier. Her daughter, nineteen-year-old Gypsy-Rose, well known to all as a child confined to a wheelchair for most of her life due to multiple chronic illnesses and conditions (including leukemia, muscular dystrophy, asthma, and brain damage), had gone missing. Families and neighbors worked with police, deeply concerned for Gypsy’s safety and well-being. The entire community was well aware that Dee Dee was Gypsy’s sole caregiver and administrant of lifesaving medications and other health protocols.

The following day, investigators found Gypsy was alive and well with her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, in Wisconsin.

When Gypsy, who thought she was nineteen but was really about to turn twenty-four, walked into a courtroom, it was the first time many people had seen her out of a wheelchair. Had she ever really been sick at all? Why had Dee Dee pretended her daughter was years younger than she actually was? Investigators slowly pieced together a horrifying tale of Munchausen syndrome by proxy—a mental health disorder in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in another person, typically their child. It became evident that Gypsy-Rose didn’t actually suffer from any of the illnesses her mother had claimed, even though she was subjected to multiple surgeries over the years, received all her nutrition through a feeding tube, and was relegated to a wheelchair.

Dee Dee had abused and controlled her daughter as part of a fraud that garnered them hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts—from free trips to medical treatments to their Habitat for Humanity home on Volunteer Way.

In 2012, Gypsy undermined her mother’s strict supervision of internet usage by creating several secret social media accounts. Gypsy, who at nineteen had been told she was years younger, met Godejohn on a free Christian dating site. Their toxic relationship would lead them down a road of no return.

Hailing from Big Bend, Wisconsin, Godejohn had a criminal record for indecent exposure and a history of mental illness. He soon turned the pair’s virtual relationship into one steeped in BDSM.

Believing she and Nick would be together forever, Gypsy wanted Dee Dee to meet her boyfriend. She hoped to ease her mother into the idea that Gypsy would have a normal adulthood and dating life. But her mother’s blessing would never come. Nick and Gypsy’s plot to “run into each other” at the IMAX theater during a showing of Cinderella ended with Dee Dee storming out of the movie theater, ordering Gypsy to never see the boy again.

Gypsy and Nick began to fantasize about Gypsy escaping her mother’s grip so the two of them could get married. They planned the unspeakable. On June 14, 2015, Nick arrived from Wisconsin and waited for Gypsy to text him that Dee Dee had fallen asleep. Gypsy let Godejohn into the home and provided him with a knife. Gypsy hid in the bathroom and covered her ears. Godejohn then stabbed Dee Dee seventeen times.

After she pled guilty to second-degree murder, Gypsy was sentenced to ten years at Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri. Her ex-boyfriend Nick Godejohn is serving life without parole for first-degree murder. Gypsy-Rose was granted early release and paroled in December 2023, almost six months before her thirty-third birthday.

Gypsy’s story has been told over and over again, a majority of times without her input, based on recycled second- and thirdhand material. Her life has been discussed, dramatized, and documented on television and on streaming platforms (Hulu’s The Act, Lifetime’s Love You to Death, HBO’s Mommy Dead and Dearest) and in genre books (the novel Darling Rose Gold).

Dr. Phil devoted a full season of his podcast to Gypsy’s story, calling it “The Killer Thorn of Gypsy-Rose.” And the case has been featured on dozens of other popular podcasts, including Martinis & Murder, My Favorite Murder, Crime Writers On . . . , Seeing Red, Inhuman, and Not Today. Almost every media outlet—from CNN to Fox News, from the New York Times to USA Today—has extensively covered Gypsy’s story.

Advocate, journalist, and producer Melissa Moore set out to investigate for herself the truth behind the story by talking to Gypsy-Rose herself. Their five years of weekly one-on-one discussions, forging a special friendship, reached through the protective barriers Gypsy had built all her life. Beginning the day Gypsy answered Melissa’s request for an interview, continuing to the day Gypsy is released from jail, now a grown-up who is married and walking on her own two feet, their conversations illuminate, in real time, a woman reckoning with her old life as she creates a new one on her own terms.

This unique ebook acts as a time capsule, sampling those conversations to capture the three months leading up to the day of Gypsy’s release from prison. From the time the news of Gypsy’s parole broke on September 29, 2023, to the eve of her release in December, Gypsy and Melissa worked with writer Michele Matrisciani to explore Gypsy’s perspective during this pensive period in her life. As she compiles her full memoir (coming in 2024), this document is Gypsy’s first public account of how she managed to release herself from the abuse and lies of her past, while laying the foundation for her future truth.

Introduction

Mother,

I am now twenty-eight years old and in prison for my part in your murder, and although I can never justify my crime, nor can any letter or apology give back the life that was taken, I am writing this as if you were physically in front of me to express all that I have held in for the whole of my life.

I am writing this letter having had nearly five years to feel the emotions felt when expressing the words written. Every day since your death, I have had nothing but time to reflect on the choices that have led me to where I am today, moreover of how your own actions formed the circumstances around mine. The woman writing this letter to you is far different than the girl who was once broken and desperate to live what I would later come to understand as just an average life for a young woman. Living twenty-three years of my life with you as my only guardian, the one person who had the responsibility of shaping who I would grow up to become, unfortunately my upbringing was a far cry from that which it should have been.

Starting from my birth going into my young adulthood, being isolated from having any other human interaction other than with you was lonely, and has affected my ability to have appropriate social skills necessary to make healthy social interaction with others.

The many unnecessary medical surgical procedures and medications that were forced on me, to “treat” illnesses that I did not have, left my body marked with scars both physical and emotional.

Your choice to not have me educated growing up has made it difficult to gain the appropriate level of education needed for a woman of my age, and has caused a depleted self-esteem in my ability to make achievements in society.

When mentioning the overall lack of life experience that was withheld from me by your choice as my mother, you not only took away the normal experiences that shape an individual to be who they are, or could be, but you made the choice to keep me from the best things in life that make life worth living as a youth. The innocent joy of having a first day of school. The fun of going to the mall with friends and buying a dress that would surely never pass your approval. The excitement of being asked to prom. The comfort of your embrace when getting my heart broken for the first time. The nerves of awaiting that college acceptance letter.

These are all things that I was not able to experience.

It would be many years before I was able to fully understand the reasons why I grew up being isolated from others, being taken to hospital after hospital, doctor after doctor, without anything being medically wrong with me. Waiting for the next time your hand was to strike me for simply trying to make a friend. Fear, manipulation, and isolation were all I knew of your kind of “love,” and the lingering question of why I was unable to be allowed the one thing that everyone else seemed to have—the ability of free will.

Mom, after all that has happened, I have been searching for answers and spending my time trying to learn about myself as a person, trying to make sense of why all these events unfolded with this amount of tragedy. I want you to know that I now understand that you were mentally and emotionally unstable when raising me, and that your actions were the result of a disorder called “Munchausen by proxy” that creates abuse inflicted on a child due to mental illness of the parent.

With now having the answers I sought to find, I am able to finally let go of the resentment I held against you and forgive you, and moreover I want to let you know that I’m so sorry for having a part in your death—murder was never the answer or solution. There is not a single day that you go unremembered, and I will carry this regret and remorse for the rest of my life. I will always love you for bringing me into this world, and will remember you with love for the woman I know was a good person behind the mental disorder.

Going forward, I will take my past and turn it from pain to perseverance, advocating for children who have suffered abuse at the hands of a parent, sharing my story with others to spread awareness of what Munchausen by proxy is and the ways people can recognize the warning signs, in the hopes that I can educate and make the next child who wonders “why is Mommy doing this to me?” that much braver to reach out for help, telling a listening ear before he or she is behind bars for thinking murder is a way out.

I can never undo the hurt that was caused by my actions, but I hope by doing this, I am remembering you well, and making a positive difference with your memory.

I love you, Mom.

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard

2018, Chillicothe Correctional Center, Missouri

I wrote that letter back in 2018, while taking a mandatory class in prison. The class was called Impact of Crime on Victims Class, or ICVC for short. The purpose of the class is to raise awareness of the far-reaching consequences of your crime and how your actions impacted the victims. The class was extremely powerful because it was an environment where I could begin to learn to process my past, take accountability for my crime, and to understand that my mother was not the only victim of my horrible decision. One of our very first assignments was to write a letter to the person we committed a crime against. While writing it, I remembered all the people in our lives—my mother’s siblings, our neighbors who loved and cared for us, and Nick. All people who were either by blood or by choice taken in by my mother’s disease and the con act that hurt so many. I hadn’t thought of Nick as a victim before taking this class. While he made the conscious choice to kill my mother, and do so violently, he did lose his freedom and therefore his life because I was a catalyst.

The letter to my mom was only one example of the processing, deep thinking, and taking accountability that I did for the last eight-and-a-half years in prison. I also did a lot of crying my eyes out, waking from nightmares, detoxing from all the meds I was taking, and calling out for my mom because, even though it doesn’t make sense, I miss her terribly. Oh, and I succumbed to and overcame, and then succumbed to again and overcame again (Finally! Yay, for good!) an opioid addiction. With my new clean and clear brain, I tried to better my reading skills and started to write on a tablet that I received as a privilege earned for good behavior. As I write this now, it’s been a few weeks since the news broke in In Touch Weekly magazine of my early parole, which came one-and-a-half years earlier than I expected. My ten-year sentence is now reduced to eight-and-a-half, and for the first time I will be living as a free person in my own home with my husband, Ryan, beginning the morning of December 28, 2023. This life I am about to lead is light-years from where I was when I was arrested and put in county jail, where I stayed for a year, still pining over Nick, who was in the same jail at the time.

I decided that the first thing I want to do with my freedom is write my story. Okay, well, it’s not the first thing; I actually plan to embrace my family and then celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Chiefs v. Bengals game. Priorities, right? Y’all, I did live in Missouri, after all! But I swear, after Mahomes finishes the job, I will be focused on finding my words, so I can share with you my story, the real story, the whole story. Writing a memoir wasn’t my idea; it was y’alls.

So many of you have written to me over the years. I’ve read every letter, even the ones that were not so nice. There were questions and concerns and curiosities about holes in the public story—and many of the letters were little confessions of their own. Young girls reaching out after The Act on Hulu aired, sharing stories of their struggles and abuse of their own. My memoir is going to happen because of people like you who have wondered about the truth, and who know that there is so much more to understand. So, thank you for that.

At first, becoming a public figure overnight after The Act aired brought unwelcome attention that was profoundly confusing and crazy-making. I had no frame of reference or context for what led the general viewing public to form their opinions. I was not consulted or compensated in any way for the series or other various shows, articles, or podcasts about my life. It’s been fairly quiet for a while now, as my release date approaches, so I have gotten a head start on thinking about what I’d like to say and the best way to say it.

Writing a book is damn hard. A massive production, really. I needed help. Melissa Moore, who has become such a close friend to me over the years, spent hours on the phone talking with me about so many elements of my life. I mean, it was therapy and girls’ night and creative flow all at the same time. I have transcripts galore of our phone calls over the years, unpacking how I grew up and basically “came of age” while in prison. These transcripts are what I am leaning on heavily to write my memoir.

I don’t know if any of you keep a diary. But if you do, and you’ve ever read back entries from a while ago, you’ll know that sometimes reading back your thoughts, especially from a younger age, can be cringey. But it’s that cringe that gets you to the good. I feel like if you recognize it as cringe, it’s a pretty strong indication you are healing or growing or both. Let’s just say, I’ve cringed as hard as a summer rain in the Deep South.

I wish I had my memoir ready for you to read now, as I prepare to walk out of Chillicothe Correctional Center, but the book is like a year away. I told you writing a book is hard; I’m running out of time to finish it (but I will!). I’m still figuring out how to explain how I’ve come to understand my own life in order to share it with you. I’ve had to cram thirty-two years of experiences, heartache, love, regret, friendship, and general mind-bending into the last seven.

My world was so small that prison seemed big. That’s a pretty small life. I didn’t know how complex growing up is and how varied and nuanced life can be at the same time. I’ve had to think about the different themes in my life, how they come together and shape a person, how they can go wrong or be misunderstood, and ruin you if you’re not careful. The themes in this book are the most complex and important to me, and coming to grips with them has made me the woman I am today.

I figure maybe I’ll continue to get letters from strangers welcoming me home, wondering how I’m doing, and asking what I think about my time in prison and how I have reconciled with my past. So maybe I can at least have something short and sweet for y’all. So consider this ebook to be partly a cheat until the memoir is published, and part inside scoop on my private conversations with Melissa and then Michele (well, private-ish, since Chillicothe Correctional Center had the right to listen in and record them). The transcripts included here will give you a glimpse of the making of a memoir. Other times, I’ll let my private photographs speak a thousand words. And to give you a taste of prison life, I will share prison paraphernalia and doodling I’ve done over the years as I’ve processed what life had once been like for me, and what I hope to do with my life moving forward.

I’d like to think of this endeavor as a rewrite of a misinformed story you’ve been told, like the Taylor’s Version rerecordings. I’m no Taylor Swift, but if this ebook were an album, I’d title it Gypsy’s Version—the only version that should be told—raw, revealing, and in rhythm with the real me.

Love,

Gypsy

October 2, 2023

One of our assignments in ICVC was to illustrate what our crime looked like and the impact it had on the victims. This is a picture of my Habitat for Humanity house, in a frame; the frame is cracked. In the shards of glass are all the people who were affected by my crime—who found out that the people they loved and cared for were all a façade. And it was me using a hammer to break the picture they had in their minds. On the hammer I have Nick’s name, seeing him as a tool for doing this. Taking accountability, not hiding excuses, this is what I did—why I did it didn’t matter.

1. On Trust and Betrayal

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER AND MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED. TO ACCEPT THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 1. TO REFUSE—

THANK YOU FOR USING SECURUS. YOU MAY START THE CONVERSATION.

Gypsy: Hi, Melissa, so I got my answer today and it’s really good news. I am leaving prison and going home on my earliest possible out day of December 28, 2023! AAAAAHHH!¹

Melissa: I knew it! I knew it! Are you crying?

Gypsy: I’m so overwhelmed; I’m excited and so emotional. It’s all hitting me. The last seven years are playing out in my mind. Remembering all the good things I’ve been through in prison and all the bad things I’ve been through in prison. And what it’s going to be like when I get home. All these things are zooming in my mind like HARD. And I’m crying happy tears. And it’s just . . . wow! [giggling]

Melissa: This was a lot faster than I thought you’d get the news.

Gypsy: It took them all of two days to make their decision. Two days!

Melissa: Have you ever heard of hearing back from the board so fast?

Gypsy: I have not. Usually, it takes three to four weeks to decide. And for them to come back with the date of my earliest possible release . . . I’m still trying to process it.

Melissa: I’m so excited for you! Can you believe you are getting out next year? So, what’s your plan? How are you going to last from now until December 28 of next year? Are you going to tell any inmates? Sorry, sorry, I just have so many questions for you!

Gypsy: My heart is literally beating out of my chest. I’m over the moon. I don’t even know how to process this news myself. Just a few days ago, remember how scared I was for this hearing? I don’t want to tell anyone. I’m trying to keep it private and just share with close family. I don’t want people to know because, A, I don’t want anyone to think I got off with no time. People in here are doing considerable amounts of time for murder. They’d call my sentence “Baby Life.” And B, I don’t want to make people jealous and risk anyone sabotaging my date. So, yeah, just close family.

Melissa: I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be to hide your excitement and be stone cold, just continuing your day without saying anything.

Gypsy: Yeah, I know. I can’t stop smiling. People will be like “why is she walking around all happy?” [giggling] It’s just been a really, really good day.

My mom and I dressed alike for most of my life. Even in my adulthood she’d order me muumuus that matched hers.

Botched Trust

My main human interaction throughout my early childhood was with my mother. So much of her grooming happened when my brain was still developing, when you have nothing but an unconditional trust of your parents. Grabbing the hand of her mother to cross a busy intersection, a child does not ever think she might be flung in front of a bus. Trust is necessary for survival, and for most of my childhood I was told that my mother was the only thing keeping me alive. “Stay close to me,” she’d say. “I know how to protect you. I have your best interest.”

She convinced the doctors of the same.

Growing up with only one person in my life meant I had very little practice with trust, and did not learn how to discern people. Having no friends took away the experiences—both good and bad—that make up an ordinary friendship. Maybe you can look back on that bestie from middle school, the time she flirted with the boy you were crushing on, and remember learning that feeling of betrayal. Or maybe it was a pickup basketball game you were left out of that helped you form an idea of who you wanted in your inner circle, and who would stab you in the back. When it came to relationships of any kind—with my dad, my stepmom, my attorney, fellow inmates—I was operating without a functional compass to guide my judgment.

When I was first arrested and in county jail for about a year, I had to let it sink in that the one person I did know how to trust had betrayed my trust for my whole life. This is why I didn’t trust my first public defender. If my own mother could hurt me and not have my back, why would this guy be any different? I didn’t believe he was trying to help me, especially when he was questioning me about things I just couldn’t understand or was hearing for the first time, like that I didn’t have leukemia or anemia or any of the illnesses that had defined me and confined me.

One of the other inmates at the county jail saw how much I was struggling with the truth, with my guilt, with my loneliness, and she told me I could trust her with my feelings. It felt so damn good to just let every emotion pour out of me. At the time, waiting for trial, I was still desperately holding onto my love for Nick, missing my mother, and scared to be alone with so many strangers. The shame and guilt were like two lumps in my throat, making it so hard to talk through what I had done. And this inmate was sharing so much of her story with me, telling me she understood what I was going through. Her being vulnerable with me helped me see she was a trustworthy friend. So the ease with which I cried it out to this inmate was a lesson in why we need other people in our lives. You just can’t struggle or succeed alone. We are wired not to. My wiring had been haywire for so long, so I decided she was bonding with me and it was safe to form a trust.

And then that inmate went to her public defender and told him everything I had told her in confidence.

I remember my attorney coming to see me and telling me that the inmate I’d opened up to was trying to trade my “secrets,” which didn’t even have much to do with the crime, for a plea deal. She had used me for her own benefit. I had made myself a target of manipulation. Again.

So when the parole board shared the news that they were granting me early parole, I didn’t tell anyone at Chillicothe, or outside my immediate family and Melissa. I had learned that people out there—especially when they have nothing to lose—can screw with you just out of spite or jealousy or for their own self-interest. So, in a way, my first lessons in trust and betrayal happened in jail. I had a lot of growing up to do. For a long time I kept to myself. I wasn’t about to touch a hot stove twice.

As I took a look at my life during these years of incarceration, I realized that trust and its flip side—betrayal—were ever present in my family’s dynamic. My mother had been betrayed growing up, she had betrayed me as I grew up, and then I betrayed my mother in the ultimate way.

Three generations of botched trust.

Melissa: What were your grandparents, Dee Dee’s parents, like? Were you close with them?

Gypsy: Well, my mother told me my grandfather [Claude] had a wandering eye. My grandmother died in 1997, when I was young, around six years old, I think. My mom was pretty devastated. Soon after her death, like really soon, my grandfather dated a woman named Laura and married her. According to Laura, my mother put Roundup [a toxic chemical fertilizer] in her food. And what’s really interesting is that my mother and Laura, and my stepmother, Kristy,² all were nurse’s aides at the same hospital and actually all worked together.

Melissa: So, from a young age, with your parents’ divorce and what your mom told you about Claude, do you feel like you didn’t have good models of what a trusting relationship looked like?

Gypsy: I didn’t realize there were things in my life that weren’t normal until I got to prison and worked through it all. Like the baths I used to take with my mother, up until right before the murder.

Melissa: Wait, wait, wait, what? You bathed with your mother as a grown woman?

—THIS CALL IS FROM A CORRECTIONAL FACILITY AND MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED

Melissa: Gypsy?

Gypsy: I’m still here. Well, it wasn’t all the time, but I would hop in the tub with her and I never thought this is not normal.

Melissa: Nope, that’s not normal, Gypsy.

Gypsy: Well, it was when my mother would shave my vagina.

Melissa: Oh my God.

Gypsy: When I was at real-age nineteen,³ my mother told me that her father had molested her. And I did have a memory from when I was five that I knew was odd. My grandfather drew a bath and made my mom and me bathe with him. My mother told me that when we lived with my grandfather and his wife for a little bit after she had the car accident⁴ waiting for her leg to heal that he would take her into other rooms and continue the molesting.

Melissa: As an adult and after she had already become a mother? She said her father was still doing this?

I took this photo of my mom with my digital camera, about a month after the car accident in 2001. She was in the hospital for two months. Her tibia and fibula were broken and she needed to have plates and rods and screws put in, which never resulted in the bone fusion her doctors had hoped for. Afterward, she experienced chronic pain, which led her to be prescribed with pain meds, which led to my addiction to her opioids.

Gypsy: Yes, and I believed her because I had good reason to, especially while we had lived with him and Laura. He denies it, but he did those things to me too.

Pulling Away

When my mother would shave me, she’d call it making me “clean.” I think that the childhood sexual abuse she endured, and the hints of Munchausen syndrome by proxy my maternal grandmother exhibited, resulted in my mother needing her little girl to be clean. Please do not mistake this as me trying to play Freud; I’ve just examined, very deeply, how all this might have seemed from my mother’s perspective. My mother’s first betrayal by her own father was exacerbated by her husband, my father, asking for a divorce. And here I was, the third person, closer than close to her, that would betray her too. First by trying to run away, and then just pulling away because I wanted to grow up. And then when the murder happened.

Melissa: Tell me about when you and your dad learned that your mother had lied to you about him being a deadbeat all those years.

Gypsy: My first public defender, Clate Baker, was the one who first told me that my father had been sending money and letters and gifts for me all those years. I didn’t believe him. I thought who is this guy who is pretending he knows about my parents and how MIA my dad was? I didn’t know that Clate was in touch with my father, who claimed he was blindsided by the news that I was a healthy twenty-three-year-old. Why would I believe Clate that my father called me on every birthday and sent Christmas presents? My mother had told me all about the real Rod, like how this one time he came home drunk to me crying as an infant. He supposedly lifted me by the neck and said, “Shut her up, or I will.” How he had wished for a baby boy instead. She told me once that if I had come out a boy, my dad would’ve stayed. I heard all the time, of course, how my dad left my mother for another woman, her coworker Kristy at the hospital.

Melissa: And that woman is now your stepmom, Kristy, right?

Gypsy: Kristy is my mother now. I don’t know where I’d be without her. My mother had told me my father never sent money, had started a new family that he was probably abusing, and didn’t come to see me in the hospital when she supposedly called him relentlessly to tell him I was in the hospital. Clate told me a very different scenario about my father. That he had records of my father’s child support payments, money sent to help pay for endless medical bills, and stuff like that.

Lies

The discovery process necessary in preparation for trial was the first time I heard the term “Munchausen by proxy,” and the first time I understood that my mother was as sick as, or sicker than, she ever made me out to be. Listening to Clate explain what he thought he saw jumping off the medical records and transcripts of interviews, I felt like I was listening to a story about someone else, another girl somewhere. And I felt sorry for her.

I was a lie to myself. I was a healthy woman, not a sick girl. I had a father who loved me instead of the deadbeat one I thought I had. Nothing made sense, and I couldn’t figure out how to trust the truth or wipe away years of brainwashing about my father. How could I trust him or Kristy moving forward?

Melissa: How was it, handling all of that during discovery? I mean they call it discovery for purposes of the crime, but in your case it was literal, discovering your medical abuse for the first time. I think people will wonder, since you were always treated by doctors and your mother, how have you learned to take care of yourself? And will you trust the medical field moving forward?

Gypsy: It was ironic because I had been to doctors all my life, but never to a gynecologist. My mom never wanted me to see an OBGYN because she was afraid that it would take my virginity, and she felt like because I wasn’t sexually active, it wasn’t necessary. So, upon arriving to prison, they asked if I wanted a Pap smear done. And I refused because I was nervous. I talked to Kristy about it about two years into my prison sentence. She said she thought I should get one to make sure everything’s okay, for cervical cancer. I don’t like going to Medical or going to the doctor here if it isn’t absolutely necessary. It’s a lack of trust, but also, I know I’m healthy, so unless something is super wrong where I’m in pain or I’m bleeding from somewhere, I don’t feel it’s necessary.

Melissa: You are lucky you have Kristy to talk about all these things with.

Gypsy: It took a long time for me, learning to trust Kristy and my dad. My mom talked so much about her. Kristy is the embodiment of a mom I wished I had growing up.

My dad and Kristy celebrating Easter Sunday in 1994.They were dating for about two years by this time. Kristy was twenty-two and my dad was twenty-one.

Melissa: Do you think they needed to learn to trust you too? There are people out there who wonder if you are just conditioned to be a liar and a master manipulator. How do you feel about that?

Gypsy: I really only care about what the people who love me think and believe. With them, I try to earn trust through action. I mean, I have definitely lied and I have broken trust and had to practice breaking out of the habit of deception. There are times I omit things to benefit me or make me out to be better than I am. Knowing this and finding the pattern is what makes it possible to undo bad habits. About four or five years ago, I was addicted to Suboxone [a medication to treat opioid addiction]. I had lied to Kristy and asked her for fifty dollars because I told her I broke this girl’s CD player and needed cash to reimburse the girl. She trusted me and I hurt that trust. I only admitted it last year. I told her it wasn’t for my CD player, and I used the money to buy drugs. I told her how sorry I was, that it wasn’t right I hurt that trust. She said, “I forgive you. I love you all the same.”

Melissa: Wow, that’s amazing.

Gypsy: I was scared all those years of not telling her and that I would lose her forever. But she had been so good to me and I didn’t want to have one secret between us.

Trust Is a Two-Way Street

I know I told Melissa that when it comes to being perceived as trustworthy, I am mostly focused on securing trust with my closest loved ones, but it’s still hard when you see people on TV question your character. I mean, I get it, though. Even I, after really breaking down my daily existence with my mother, am quite stunned as to how integrated I had been in daily deception. The wheelchair is an obvious example, but my mother also taught me at a very young age how to shoplift. When my mother pressed the wheelchair-accessible button at the entrance of our local Walmart, it was as if a stage curtain lifted. Personas entered through the automatic doors. Out in the world, Dee Dee, the caretaker, and Gypsy, the special needs child, were public figures. We were a familiar pair in our small southern community of Springfield, Missouri; my mother handled the chair determinedly, with the ease that comes with long practice. Nobody suspected us.

Sitting in a wheelchair helps to more easily knock items into your lap and shove them under your princess dress. And for items that couldn’t be sat on, or hidden underneath my beanie cap, my mother taught me the barcode swap: remove the barcode sticker from a cheaper item and place it on the more expensive one; then use the self-checkout lane. I’d be able to fit fourteen or fifteen CDs on me at Sam’s Club, since the store didn’t have metal detectors. We’d steal random stuff at Hobby Lobby, screwing Hobby Lobby for crap that she’d bring home just to hoard. She had a whole extra bedroom full of stuff. Our bedroom had so much piled in it, I needed to carve a pathway for myself from the door to the bed.

So, yes, secrets and lies was my normal. Each secret and lie represented a huge facet of my life. My Habitat for Humanity⁵ house was a scam.

The food my mother blended and fed into my feeding tube was a ruse. The Make-A-Wish trips were as fraudulent as the medical records and birth certificates that my mother doctored. Sitting in prison, I found that my recollections of what my life comprised were erased one by one. It was as if the entire backdrop of my life had been a giant green screen, just the projected images of a home, a mother, a community. All of which, with just one flick of a button, a light turned off, were revealed to be never actually there.

The life I’m creating now is not a façade. I know this because none of it is easy. Trust is hard work and I keep effing up, learning how to not project my fears onto those closest to me, and to continually prove that the Gypsy whose default was to recite a script, “My mom is my best friend,” disappeared from the green screen along with everything else when she flicked the light off.

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER AND MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED. TO ACCEPT THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 1. TO REFUSE—

THANK YOU FOR USING SECURUS. YOU MAY START THE CONVERSATION.

Gypsy: Hi. I don’t have that much money in my account for a long call.

Melissa: No problem. I wanted to talk about the first person you trusted with the truth about what Dee Dee was doing.

Gypsy: Sure. Well, I have a habit of either I trust too much or I don’t trust enough. The people I should trust the most are the ones I am skeptical about. With that person, I just saw a way out, you know? It was more poor judgment. He was in his thirties . . . I thought he could save me. He was the first person I told I could walk, and how my mother kept me trapped. It was a relief to confide in someone, especially because he kind of knew her from all the conventions we went to.⁶ He showed me attention and let me speak. I thought it was possible for him to take me out of my existence. He told me that he had a farm in Arkansas and that we could run away there, and he’d hide me. That, of course, didn’t happen. People always ask me, “Why didn’t I tell?” and then I’m like, look, with him, I tried to tell. Well, I did tell. But my mother had an arsenal of ways to keep me attached to her.

Melissa: After she came to get you, that’s when she tied you to the bed for two weeks?

Gypsy: Yes, she used a dog leash to do it after she beat me. The actual worst part is that she used my trust of her to get me to come home with her. She told me that if I came home with her, she would let me continue to date him. I believed her, so I agreed. And that turned out to be a lie.

Melissa: And it wasn’t too long after that when you met Nick online?

Gypsy: Yes, I met him on a Christian dating site, and like I said before, my trust muscle was really weak, so I just thought if I was honestly sharing about myself and my hopes and dreams, I’d find someone, especially on a religious site, to call my boyfriend. And the thing is I trusted him when I told him how my mom was, and he used that trust to get me to do all those things he made me do and that whole BDSM thing.

—THANK YOU FOR USING SECURUS. GOODBYE.

Trusting Love

I’ve had three significant men in my life: Nick, Ken, and Ryan. I don’t count Nick as love; however, at the time, with the vantage point of a pinhole, that’s what I thought romantic love was, what it looked like, what it required, the dynamics, and how I got it all wrong. (To see how I got it right, keep reading to chapter six!)

Love is patient and kind, not submissive or controlling. I don’t recall the Bible saying love is deviant and humiliating, but at the time, I mistook these behaviors as attention, and any attention at all made me feel seen and beautiful. When we confessed to the murder, the inevitable finger-pointing began, and Nick and I betrayed one another by deviating from the story and letting the truth out. I felt guilty for him being in prison because if he hadn’t met me, he wouldn’t have done what he did. Responsible. I couldn’t get out of my head that he was looking at going to prison for the rest of his life. I didn’t even realize I was faced with the same possible fate; it didn’t dawn on me that I was as deep in trouble as he was.

In County, we did try to hang on to what I thought was a bond of forever love and deep intimacy. We’d leave secret letters to each other in the recreation room, sometimes even writing on the walls “NPG luvs GB.” My first letter was an apology for him getting into this mess. I was still thinking he loved me enough to save me from what was going on at home, and I wanted him to know that I know what he sacrificed for me.

Nick sent me a letter in 2019, about four years after he got sentenced. I had entered a relationship with a man named Ken, who had become my fiancé for a brief time, which angered Nick. He found out about my engagement and even Ken’s full name through the access he had to my depositions.

I wish I had saved the letter to share, but basically Nick said I was committing adultery. That he had taken my virginity (which he didn’t) and by God’s law, we were married. The letter was reminiscent of his dominant role that he was obsessed with playing out when we had our internet relationship. His attempt to control me and humiliate me as his submissive for his own deviant sexual pleasure had gotten old. Only because I was in a healthy relationship with Ken, who was my best friend who made me feel special and appreciated, was I finally able to see how pathological Nick and I were when we were together.

I wrote him one letter back, which acted as a closure letter. Codefendants in the state of Missouri can communicate and even be housed together, but becoming pen pals (no pun intended) was never my intention. In the letter to Nick, I told him I didn’t want to get back into a relationship with him. That I’d moved on. I covered everything I wanted him to know, from A to Z, from getting arrested all the way to the present, about how I felt. How we were basically children, adults with mindsets of children, going through this ordeal. I told him I realized he didn’t have much outside experience and I understood that, and I felt a sense of guilt, which is why I testified on his behalf at his trial. I felt that taking accountability for my role was the right thing to do. I didn’t do it out of love, but out of a sense of obligation and due diligence to justice.

I needed to make sure I was clear on that, because I didn’t want Nick to misconstrue this for wanting to be with him.

This was the kind of action I wanted to take in order to rebuild my character, so I could be the type of person who is trustworthy, an invaluable friend and family member. I also wanted to be the same type of person I hoped to attract in my own life.

Drawing a diagram of my scars for Ryan was my way of being vulnerable and intimate with him in the best way I could, through my artistic expression. I am very self-conscious about my scars.

¹ I was called to the Institutional Parole Office and got the news of my parole on December 13, 2021.

² Kristy Matherne married my father on March 26, 1999.

³ My mother told me I was five years younger than what I actually was, so when she shared this with me, I thought I was really fourteen. I wouldn’t learn the truth about my age until 2015.

⁴ In 2001, my mother was in a devastating car crash, which left her with injuries that required her to recuperate at her father’s house, where we lived for ten months.

⁵ Habitat for Humanity is an international nonprofit organization that helps people in need of affordable housing. Among other amazing things, Habitat builds and repairs homes for families in need. I bonded with Melissa when she told me she also grew up in a Habitat for Humanity house with her mom.

⁶ He once told me he first met me briefly at a convention. I didn’t recall that; however, I accepted his Facebook friend request even though he was over thirty. I think he was under the impression that I was around fifteen.

2. On Family and Friendship

TO REFUSE THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 2. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PERMANENTLY BLOCK YOUR NUMBER FROM RECEIVING CALLS FROM THIS FACILITY, PRESS 6. YOU MAY START THE CONVERSATION.

Note: As you’ll see, this call took place before my parole hearing.

Melissa: Let’s talk about your mom’s side of the family, the Pitres. Do you have contact with any of your family? Has your grandfather ever tried to contact you during all these years?

Gypsy: No, I don’t have any communication with him. And I don’t want it. My two aunts and I have spoken—we do so about once a year. None of my uncles have reached out; my cousin Tiffany and my cousin Bobby have. And that’s it. Everyone has lives and busy work schedules.

Melissa: Do they call just randomly or for certain reasons?

Gypsy: I always initiate the calls.

Melissa: I think Bobby has been the only family member to be public with his support of you, in the HBO documentary and also in the press. How did Bobby come to be your supporter?

Gypsy: Bobby’s always been supportive of me from day one. I was in Greene County Jail and Bobby had done an interview with the local news saying that although he didn’t approve of my crime, he did understand my reasons. I sent an email to Kristy last week asking if she would ask Bobby to write a support letter for my upcoming parole hearing, and she said he actually wants to go there in person.¹

Melissa: What did you feel when you heard that news?

Gypsy: It felt wonderful. My aunts were not wanting to come to my hearing—they’re neutral—so to have someone on my mother’s side to come on my behalf because they genuinely support me looks good to the parole board . . . because, you know, it’s the family of my victim in support of my parole. He’s just been really sympathetic.

Melissa: What do you hope Bobby shares with the parole board?

Gypsy: He can tell them how my mom was, confirm that he noticed oddities, just offer his point of view. How me getting paroled will allow me to live with family and rebuild bridges that I burned with my mom’s family. I hope he’ll say that me coming home to the family is not going to hurt their healing process. The Pitre side of the family will hopefully see that I can come out and rebuild broken bonds and mend and heal as a family.

Gypsy: When the crime first happened, Bobby let me know how he thought my mom was always different in the family. That made me feel validated. He said he always felt sad when he saw me with her, and felt like he should’ve done or said something to help me out of that situation. Like my dad, he carries guilt around. Neither of them should feel that burden. Bobby confirmed she was always different even before I was born. He once told me “she made her path and you were just a part of it.”

Melissa: What would you want to say to Bobby if you could speak to him right now?

YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE LEFT.

Gypsy: Oh gosh. [Sigh] I am just so grateful to Bobby for not abandoning me. So many family members on my mother’s side took a silent role, and Bobby was the only person to come out in support of me. I have all the appreciation in the world for that. It’s one thing for my dad and stepmom—the Blanchard side—to speak on my behalf, but to have anyone from the victim’s side to support and not let me walk this path alone goes against the grain of the family. Bobby taught me the real role of family when he did that.

THANK YOU FOR USING SECURUS. GOODBYE.

My mom and dad met at the bar in a local bowling alley. She was really into him. Later I would understand that my dad was young and the feelings were not mutual.

December 1990: Dee Dee and Rod tied the knot. I would come seven months later.

During a visit, Kristy snapped this photo of my dad, mom, and me in the apartment I lived in with my mom in Louisiana. Kristy was always gracious in sharing my dad and taking part in preserving moments for me to have later in life.

My dad and me. Honestly, I don’t have a recollection taking this photo or even where we were when we took this picture. For me, these few-and-far between visits were a time of awkwardness and walking on eggshells. My mother warned me not to question my dad on anything about his new family or why he didn’t live with us anymore.

Two Is Enough

My mother came from a big family, three times the size of the family she’d create for herself. She was the youngest of six children, three brothers and three sisters. My mom and dad met at a bowling alley when my dad was just seventeen, and mom, twenty-four. The tale is as old as time—young, southern from Cajun Louisiana, and broke, Rod Blanchard married former beauty queen Clauddine “Dee Dee” Pitre on December 27, 1990, after he knocked her up. Soon afterwards, they were both trapped in lives neither was wise enough to navigate. I know now that my father just wasn’t in love with my mother, and she was bitter about him and men in general until the end. “Men might be nice to look at,” she’d say, “but they’ll betray you in a heartbeat. Better to just stay away from them all.”

My mother might have learned Munchausen by proxy from her own mother, Emma. My grandmother died of a heart attack when I was six or seven, and my mom was devasted. My mother used to tell me stories of missing a lot of school because her mother said she was sick and would take her to go to doctors. My mother did wind up with severe health issues, like diabetes, which required her to take insulin. I don’t know if the closeness they had allowed my mother to tell her mother what her dad was doing to her, but my mother did tell me that Grandma used to call her own husband a “man whore.”

Soon after they divorced, my father married Kristy and had two children with her, my younger half-siblings, Dylan and Mia. The timeline of my critical and debilitating health began soon after the split. Dee Dee would build a family of just two, and move away from all our family and my dad’s family, to Missouri.

My mother limited my interactions with others as much as possible. I was a Daisy in the Girl Scouts, but when it was time to graduate to become a Brownie, I got stuck there, never becoming a Junior. My mom volunteered for the Girl Scouts, but we changed troops a lot, always starting over. Because my exposure to anyone other than my mother was so limited, I had no idea that the way I lived was different or unusual. How could I?

Without a broader range or exposure to how others lived their lives, I didn’t suspect that our daily schedule was odd or dysfunctional:

We woke up each day at around 11 AM.

I’d have my medicines.

At the start of my day, my mother usually slammed a sealed tube of Pillsbury biscuits against the countertop to pop it open and baked them on a baking sheet for breakfast. I always thought the way she made the pop sound was like magic. When the whole house smelled buttery, she’d prepare my PediaSure and meds and administer them to me through the feeding tube. She would eat the biscuits herself.²

We’d watch The Bold and the Beautiful.

We would only get dressed if we had to run an errand.

We’d watch a movie if there wasn’t an errand to run.

She didn’t eat meat, so most of the time she made sweet peas over rice for her dinner.

We would watch another movie.

Then we’d start our night routine: She’d bathe me, dress me, and put me into our bed. Technically, I had my own bed in my own bedroom, but ever since I could remember I slept on the left side of my mother’s bed. Next, she’d put on my breathing machine, which actually didn’t help me breathe at all. Then she’d turn out the lights.

I didn’t know I had free will until I began to search the internet with an HP Notebook laptop that was gifted to me from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society one Christmas when I was real-age eighteen; the charity thought I was just thirteen. When my mother was knocked out from Ambien, I went on a search for information about the outside world—what friends did together, what relationships looked like, how to kiss, how teenagers spent their day, what kids in classrooms did, and how teenagers spoke. I knew our new neighbor Aleah was probably a teenager, and I was just a kid,³ but hormones were flooding me and I became curious about boys.

If I was found out, I would be in big trouble. Not just for the laptop use, but for the “impure” thoughts. Punishments ranged from the physical to the emotional to the supernatural. I remember a trip to the store when my mother marched in and handpicked the “right” raw cow’s tongue. She needed it for a recipe, but not the kind from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook, as my mother didn’t eat meat. She was cooking up a spell. Parents out there: if bribing your child with new baby dolls or Tiny Tykes starts losing effectiveness, you could always try telling your child that you are a powerful witch.

The spell my mother said she was conjuring with that cow’s tongue had two intentions: to cleanse my sinful soul, and to cast upon me a lifelong curse. Gypsy shall never find happiness; she shall never be free.

Whenever I would compare our normal to how other people lived, my mother dissuaded my protest by reminding me that she and my grandmother had certain powers. Sometimes I still believe it, especially the part that I’ll never be free. It’s really easy to be brought back into line if you think your mother will go out back and mix a potion in a cauldron to punish you forever. Maybe she had watched Snow White too many times, with the mother casting her fair daughter out for the hunter’s delight, jealous of her coming of age.

If I ever questioned our lifestyle, or why she would tell a lie to a friend, or why I couldn’t have friends “my age,” my mother would remind me of her powers. A pencil would fall off the table, and she’d say she did it with her mind. The showerhead would drip water, and she’d claim it was the force of her energy. The little house on Volunteer Way could swallow me up whole if my mother just willed it to.

So my mother was not only my sole caretaker, without whom I could die for any reason at any time; she was like a god to me, with omniscient powers. If I wanted to sleep alone once in a while, she would say with indifference, “I hope nothing happens to you tonight.” And then close the bedroom door. I became afraid of the dark real quick. Of course, this would result in my begging to sleep with her, waiting for her to have mercy on me. “You are my heart,” she’d say while we snuggled away the adrenaline rush I’d just felt from being alone in the dark.

Melissa: Hey, how’s it going? So, I wanted to talk more about your childhood friends, and . . . did you want to go to school or . . . I just see a little girl looking out the window seeing kids get on and off the bus . . . and did you ask your mom, “Why aren’t I going to school?”

Gypsy: When I was probably about four and five and six, my mom homeschooled me using the books and curriculum of A.C.E. School of Tomorrow, a Christian curriculum. It was just ABCs and 123s. Basic. After a certain point, she stopped teaching me. She wasn’t verified through a school district; she was just using the books without anyone with teaching credentials or guidelines. Oh, Melissa, I have about seven minutes left and then I’ll have to call you again.

Melissa: Good to know.

Gypsy: It was all informal. Doctors would ask her what school district was I in, and she’d just say “she’s homeschooled” and they never looked into it. That’s the story of my whole life, right? So I only went through first grade. When I got to prison, they were, like, assuming I went all the way through high school, but I didn’t know anything, except maybe a little addition and subtraction, but I mean multiplication and division . . . I was lost. So they put me in the education program, where I worked for five years to get my high school equivalent diploma.

Melissa: So going to prison was your first experience with schooling, and how about friends? If you never really had friends, what was your definition of one?

Gypsy: Well, when I was little I had some friends. I was a Brownie in the Girl Scouts. I was also in a club called Winners On Wheels. I was about nine. The kids in the club had all different disabilities; some didn’t have arms and legs. I was close with this one girl named Carrie. Her limbs didn’t form right. She had to use her feet to do anything. We were close until she was growing up and started to like boys. My mom disapproved of that, and she said I wasn’t allowed to see Carrie anymore. That seemed to be a theme, where I would have a friend and when they would get to a certain age my mom would cut me off from them. Even in the Girl Scouts, we kept moving troops all the time, and I never even made it past that.

Melissa: That must have been so confusing.

Gypsy: The Disney Channel shows were always about friends and love and I had an idea of what a friend was, but I never had a long-term friend. I would see kids going to school on the Disney Channel. It was a foreign concept to me, getting on the bus, but I thought this is just not my life. So many things about me were already so different than other kids, so I just thought school was just another thing. I was way too complacent and complicit with the way things were. She would get upset if I asked too many questions. So, I just accepted the way things were.

THANK YOU FOR USING SECURUS. GOODBYE.

Me and Miss Kitty. Growing up I had lots of pets; one in particular had a much more exotic name than Miss Kitty. She was a calico Persian named Tebecbo, which in Cajun French means “give me a little sweet kiss.” My cats were my friends. I would play with my cats and stuffed animals and dolls, creating a world where I had a friend group. I’d even use the doll clothes to dress my cats up. They were great listeners too.

Creating a Prison Family

When I came to prison, I had no idea what to expect of a friend or how to be one, other than what I learned from actresses like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez on Disney Channel shows. I didn’t know there were different categories or levels of friendship, that acquaintances play a different role than friends, or what an inner circle was or how to build one. What is a true friend? What is a fake friend? I had no idea. But I really wanted one. The problem is, there’s a prison motto that I had to learn the hard way: you don’t come to prison to make friends.

How do you make friends in a friendless environment? As you already read, as I experimented with trust, betrayal became my frenemy. Trusting the wrong people even got me thrown in “segregation,” aka the hole.

When I met Lori and Amelia, I realized what a good friend was. Each of them had been my roommate at one time. Neither of them befriended me because I was infamous; it happened organically, a blossoming. Before I met Lori and Amelia, I felt like I was giving so much to my relationships. Always listening and giving, and one day I realized I wasn’t getting anything back from these people. But true friends, I now know, make you a better person, and Lori and Amelia have done that and then some.

Amelia, “Millie,” and I initially bonded because her background is similar to mine: her boyfriend also murdered her mother.⁴ We are of similar age and were “the two girls that murdered their mothers.” We both found Mother’s Day a particularly difficult time of year. One year, Amelia was more depressed than usual, seeing commercials everywhere reminding us that Mother’s Day was just around the corner. So, when Mother’s Day rolled around, I decided to bake her a prison cake, and I presented it to her with the writing on top saying “Happy Mommy Issues Day!” Amelia was my plus one at my graduation. It felt so amazing to have a true friend there for such a happy occasion. I learned that friendship isn’t about just leaning on people when you’re down, but having someone equally as happy for you as you are for yourself, maybe even more so.

My List of What It Takes to Master the Act of Friending

Listen closely and attentively.

Be a vault: confidentiality in friendship is very important and sacred to me.

Lots of laughter required.

Have genuine care and concern for your friend’s well-being and happiness.

Tell the truth, even if the truth is hard and will hurt.

Don’t judge, ever. Always be a safe zone.

Prove your trust. Don’t breach theirs.

Notice your friends. Be aware of their moods, body language, read the room, and be empathetic.

Don’t be passive-aggressive. When you are not too happy with a friend, talk it through. No “Bless Your Hearts” allowed.

Have things in common, but also complement each other and teach each other your interests.

Friendship, like love, is not jealous.

Becoming a Real Blanchard

When my mother denied me a father, she also denied me a sister and a brother and the dream of a nuclear family. If I were to see both my half-siblings growing, how could she avoid me giving up dolls in favor of Justin Timberlake? I remember seeing pictures of Dylan and Mia and asking my mother, “How come they are getting bigger and changing and I’m not?” Time seemed to pass for others, but not for me. Other people seemed to grow up and change, and I was living a life where I would stay the same. I would question how Dylan would be catching up to my age, even though he was five years younger than me.

Instead of answering questions like that, my mother would weaponize my brother and sister, reminding me that all my father’s attention went to his new daughter and that he finally got the son he wanted. Even now, in prison, I feel a desire to get to know my sister more. That’s one of my goals when I get out. Mia is the younger sister by ten years but so much older than me in every way except biologically. I would see pictures of her going to prom and graduation, a stark reminder of how close I had come to having a normal existence. It’s hard to not slip into a dark place, looking at her life and mine, me in prison with no teeth or formal education.

While Mia experiments with eye shadows and cream shimmers and lip glosses, a special occasion for me means putting my dentures in. Because my mother numbed my gums to make me drool in order to convince doctors to remove my salivary glands, my teeth decayed. Some teeth fell out on their own while others required extraction. Some of the medications I was unnecessarily taking also had oral side effects, so whatever the actual culprit was, my gummy smile is destined to be a permanent reminder of my abuse. When I speak to Mia, I ask her for big-sister advice, like what kinds of brands are cool, and questions about fashion.

I love my brother and sister. I look forward to being an equal to them, no longer held back from my potential. It takes effort to put the past behind me, because it was so ingrained in me from early childhood to be jealous of what they had, despite my mother lying to me that Rod had been an abusive father and telling me she had saved me from him by running off.

Moving me far away from Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, was only the beginning of my mother making me an unaware yet consenting teammate in the war against my father. Making me sick was a big part of that war. If she couldn’t control him with his love, she’d control him with his sympathy. This would become a pattern that worked for my mother. Sympathy paid dividends. Sympathy could create celebrity. The friendships my mother had were one-sided friendships, the kind where one friend calls and chews your ear off about some misfortune of the day. I often overheard her telling people about my next doctor’s appointment or the reaction I had just had to a new medication, or how broke she was that month because she was a single mother with an ex-husband who didn’t care about me. With every person who marveled over her sacrifices and loyalty to me, she got a high. I see that now, but didn’t have a clue when I was in it.

When it comes to my friends these days, I get a high, too, but it’s because, to them, I’m just Gypsy and not a chronically sick pity party.

After so many months of talking on the phone, I finally got to meet Melissa in real life when she visited me at Chillicothe. She’s been a constant source of friendship and advice to me this whole time.

PRESS 1 TO—

Gypsy: Hey, thank you for the photo! I love it. So cool.

Melissa: Oh, I’m glad you like it. I know it’s a good one. It was good we could commemorate our meeting.

Gypsy: It’s not every day that a friend visits.

Melissa: You’ll make a ton of friends when you go home; I am sure of it.

Gypsy: I hope so. I know I am going to be focusing on becoming a family with Ryan’s family, and that will be good. And then with my sister and brother, that’s a whole other type of relationship I am looking to build. I know Bobby will be there, too, and he’s chill and fun.

Melissa: Are you nervous about what your neighbors might think or if you will be able to . . . or do you have a plan for how you will meet people and make friends? It’s sometimes harder in adulthood to really click, but it happens with mommy friends when the kids go to school and doing things around town, like the gym, or work, or going to school yourself.

Gypsy: Yeah, I hope that will happen for me, especially because I’m really outgoing and bubbly and I love to talk [giggling]. I could talk to a rock if I had to. I think I make a really good friend, so I will let it just happen in its own time. I think getting involved in the community will help . . . and church. Church will probably be my first stop.

¹ A few months after this conversation, my cousin Bobby actually did get to Missouri with the intention of attending my hearing. But due to miscommunication, he arrived at the wrong location. His letter of support went a long way with the board, and just the fact that he traveled all that way warms my heart. (Thank you, thank you, Bobby!)

² I had a permanent feeding tube that was attached to my abdomen. Unlike the portrayal in The Act, my mother never blended real food and fed it to me through the tube. My feeding tube was used strictly to administer me water, liquid nutrition supplements, and medications. When I got to County Jail, I weighed ninety-two pounds, due to a daily menu of PediaSure and other electrolyte drinks.

³ While to this day I don’t know what our true age difference is, I am sure that when we moved to Volunteer Way, Aleah and I were peers.

⁴ Amelia was just sixteen years old when she was arrested after her boyfriend told police that she talked him into shooting both her parents while they slept in 2005. Her mother was killed and her father wounded. Amelia is now serving two consecutive life sentences after she pled guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree assault. Amelia is a kind soul and a great friend. She and I have spent so much time sharing our stories of our abuse and life after our transgressions. Her passion is working with the Puppies for Parole program, training dogs to be rescue dogs.

3. On God and Faith

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER—WE’RE SORRY, THE SYSTEM IS EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTIES; PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.

Melissa: Shit.

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER. TO ACCEPT THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 1—

Gypsy: Hello? Hi, hi, I’m here.

Melissa: Hi! That was so weird.

Gypsy: It was telling me my pin wasn’t working. I’m so sorry about that.

Melissa: No worries. No worries. I thought it was weird because today I was going to ask you more about your mother’s interest in witchcraft and spells, so I thought maybe we cast one on the phone system or something.

[laughter]

Gypsy: I’m Gypsy, but not that kind of gypsy.

[laughter]

Melissa: Oh my God, that is hilarious. Was this a prominent feature in your life growing up, the interest or practice in the occult?

Gypsy: I was actually born and raised Catholic and grew up going to Catholic Mass every Sunday with my grandparents—my mom’s parents—when we lived in Louisiana. When we moved—just the two of us to Missouri—my mother became nondenominational. She actually told me, she told everyone, Gypsy’s going to be a nun when she grows up.

I believe my grandmother Emma took this picture. I imagine she was so proud, as a christening is a rite of passage for our family and a memorable moment of pride and hope.

Melissa: For real, she really wanted you to be a nun?

Gypsy: She was serious. Yup. Can you imagine?

Melissa: What did you think of that plan? Were you okay with it?

Gypsy: Well, at first, I was like, okay, well, “what does a nun do?” And my mom told me a nun helps the church, helps people in need—they do humanitarian work. I always had a soft spot for people and animals and I thought the idea was appealing because humanitarian sounded good. I associated being a good person with being a nun. I wanted to be a good person. But, as I grew older and figured out, wait, nuns can’t get married or date or do things that as a teenager I started to be curious about doing . . . especially when it came to boys [giggle], I thought on second thought this sounds not for me.

[giggling]

Melissa: But you said your mother was nondenominational, not practicing Catholicism.

Gypsy: We bounced around a lot. I think she was kind of exploring, like how you do when you are exploring your identity. We went to several different Christian churches when we left Missouri and moved near New Orleans, and then stayed nondenominational, even going to some really wonky churches while in New Orleans and when we moved to Slidell [Louisiana]. I’ve actually been baptized seven times in my life. Five before the murder, one time when I got to County, and the last time when I got to Chillicothe. I just never felt clean.

Melissa: Before the murder, you never felt clean? Why didn’t you feel clean?

Gypsy: I just never felt I could get clean enough. Getting baptized was about renewal. I felt clean every time. Every time I felt like a bad person, I’d want to get baptized. Like little things made me feel bad. If I would tell her a lie, keep a secret from her, small things, if I talked back to her . . . I’d want to be baptized. Growing up with a mom who had schizophrenia, who saw shapes and shadows and heard voices, I felt like my mom had a judgment of me, when she would be listening to the voices in her head. She told me, “There are eight voices in my head and seven of them don’t like you.” I thought being as clean as possible would get her to accept me. But by the time we got to Springfield, we were back to being Catholic.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Gypsy.

I was so proud to be wearing this dress for my first Communion. It was crocheted by my great aunt Thelma, who was Mommzie Emma’s sister. Of all my cousins, I was the only grandchild who named Mommzie this term of endearment. Growing up, I felt so close to my mother and grandmother—Mommzie is the closest to Mommy without being the same.

In Golden Meadow, Louisiana, everyone had a shrine of the Virgin Mary on their lawn. Wikipedia actually has a whole entry on “Bathtub Madonna,” which is predominant in the Cajun portion of South Louisiana. People cut a bathtub to use as a backdrop for the statue. Bathtubs for my mom and me did not represent purity as the Virgin Mary does. Dirty things happened to my mother in the bathtub, but she still had a statue welcoming us as we pulled into the driveway.

When my mother put me in Vacation Bible School, where she’d work as a volunteer, she bought plastic mini-statues of the saints, like St. Joseph and St. Agnes, from the gift shop. I already thought I was going to be a nun, so I made an altar in my bedroom, where I placed the saints. I aligned my stuffed animals as a congregation, along with my cats, and we’d all attend Little Church. I was the priest. I led us all in prayer and gave out Communion, feeding crackers and grape juice to my cats.

As each year passed and another surgery was performed, my childhood innocence was replaced with the ability to observe and make connections about my mother’s behaviors and what she instructed me to do or say. I was taught to live a life of lies and deception, which made me feel sinful and burdened with a feeling of filth. We’d go to church every week and I’d pray to God to send me a blessing to make all the ickiness go away, but no blessing came. I was mad at God because I’d ask him in church and before bed and in my head, over and over, God, make this tormenting hell stop. Please help. But there was no help in sight, at least not in my sight. I lost my faith. By the time the murder happened, I didn’t have God in my life at all. I didn’t believe in anything or anyone.

My faith and trust no longer in God, I opened myself up to putting blind faith and trust into Nick. When I got to Greene County Jail, I had zero faith in myself and did not trust my ability to judge people. After I was betrayed in jail by an inmate who pretended to befriend me, I became really scared. I was more alone than I had ever been, potentially digging a deeper hole for myself as we awaited my trial. I needed something bigger than myself to call upon. And so for the first time in a very long time, I prayed.

My prayer sounded more like a desperate begging: “PLEASE, GOD. Please help me. I’m so scared, God. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what is happening. Why is this happening? PLEASE, God, I’m so sorry; please send me a blessing.

Melissa: Do you think your prayers came true, that a blessing did come?

Gypsy: I think it did. I think that when they offered me a plea deal, that was my blessing; it was God forgiving me and giving me a second chance. I fully expected to die in prison. And then this blessing of a ten-year sentence comes. That was my sign. The sign I was going to be okay.

Melissa: So you regained your faith again?

Gypsy: Yeah, it wasn’t just faith in God; it was a faith . . . a hope that I felt for the first time in my life.

Melissa: Is that when you got baptized again?

Gypsy: Well, when I first got to County Jail, I just wanted that clean feeling.

Melissa: Maybe this time by “clean,” you mean absolved? Were you looking for absolution?

Gypsy: Yes. There was no confession there, so I think baptism was my form of confession and asking for forgiveness. When I got to Chillicothe, after I realized God’s blessing to me, I was baptized one more time, the seventh time. But I still struggled back and forth with God and keeping my faith. I’ve looked in other places and other religions to strengthen my faith.

Maybe I’ll Become a Witch?

Here I am with the pentagram medallion I wore while exploring Wicca.

My journey back to God and faith was not a linear one. Religion is complicated, and belief takes a kind of faith that is not easy to achieve. I don’t think faith comes naturally or is innate. I think it’s a decision, and a practice unto itself. Practice needs to be reinforced. Practice is not perfect, so sometimes you lapse. It’s hard to stay steadfast in faith, especially when you are like me, who looks for actions as proof positive that there is something to believe in. I know that is the opposite of faith, which is by definition absent of the need for proof. I’ve grappled and still do.

During COVID, at the height of fear and uncertainty, Amelia became my new roommate. She’s a practicing Wiccan and to this day a part of my inner circle. As I mentioned last chapter, she and I had a lot in common, “the girls who had their mothers murdered,” so I asked her to tell me about her beliefs and practices.

Growing up near New Orleans, there was a strong Catholic influence on me, obviously the biggest being Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras, which signified the beginning of Lent, the holiest time of the year that leads up to Easter, Christ’s resurrection. But there was a flip side—the supernatural influence of voodoo and witchcraft; pagan rituals; tarot and fortune-telling—so learning about Wicca felt familiar. Its reverence toward the elements of nature around us—earth, fire, water, air—appealed to me as a nature lover. The idea that one could “control the forces within her/himself,” a core principle of Wicca, was familiar to me as well, growing up with a mother who believed in manifesting outcomes through spells. Exploring Wicca was a necessary phase to go through in my quest to form my identity, just like my mother had done when she explored the supernatural in her twenties and then again by church-hopping.

Last year, in June, I had a nightmare that I was asleep, lying on my back in my bunk in the dark, and I felt something on my chest. In the nightmare I woke up to a dark figure tearing open my chest and eating my heart. When I woke up from the nightmare, I was in the same position I had been in the dream. I felt paralyzed and frightened with the lights off. When I closed my eyes, the scene from the nightmare reappeared in my awake state. The demon was there. When I opened my eyes, it would disappear.

The demon was there.

Something was telling me, “Hey, girl, you need to stop wandering on your own and start believing.” I told Ryan that I think we need to start praying together. I had felt so lost, and not in touch with what is beyond our humanness and our egos. I just started praying on my own, very casually, “Hey, God, I know it’s been a while but wanted to drop a line and say hi.”

The nightmares stopped.

Prayer places a protective barrier over my soul, which has been very helpful with controlling my anxiety and shame. As I achieved a calmness in me, I realized I couldn’t find the solutions to my problem or assuage my fears by reading tarot cards or pulling a hair from my head and reading a love spell. I am not that big and powerful. Only God is.

So now I am back to feeling a devotion to the Creator. And loving his creation.

Melissa: Hey, I’ve been thinking about our last chat about God and how you came and went away from religion and have questioned your faith. I wondered if you think faith is relevant in your life beyond God and religion? I mean we talked about trust and betrayal before. Do you think you need faith in order to trust? Do they go hand in hand?

Gypsy: For me, it’s the other way around. Trust has to be there before faith happens. If I don’t trust you, I’m not going to have faith in you or in the idea that you are safe to have in my life. Having faith in someone else means I know their intentions are pure, and they have that love and that care for me in the same balance as I have for them. For example, I have faith that Kristy is going to be the best mother to me that she can be and treat me no different than her own biological children, because she has already taken those actions and shown me through those actions that this is the case. I’m very much an action person. I used to take people at their word, and their word would wind up empty. There was no action to it. The action must happen for the trust to form, and then the faith develops. The more the cycle goes, the stronger the faith becomes.

Melissa: What is your definition of faith, then?

[long pause]

Gypsy: Faith is having a feeling that you are safe. And that what is making you safe has the power to see you through anything. It’s kind of like you are in the palm of God’s hand. You can go through a hurricane, you can go through a tornado—any kind of storm—but God has you in the palm of his hand and he won’t let anything happen to you. You are safe. That is faith to me.

I feel like I have been put through a lot of storms, and yet I am still not broken. I am not a broken person. I am worthy of being loved; I never had that self-worth before. I am not damaged; I am safe.

Melissa: Do you think some of that self-worth might be threatened once you are released, and since you are such a public figure now?

Gypsy: Because I came from a life of constantly being deceptive and telling lies, I am trying to be extremely transparent in my life and be someone who is an honest person. Like writing this book is me trying to prove the opposite of what people might think of me. I’m not hiding anything. I’m an open book.

Gypsy: It comes back to me being an “actions speak louder than words” person. If I need you to show me the action in order for me to trust you, I need to do the same for people to put their faith in me. I have to show them first what I want them to believe about me, and develop a trust in me that the action will always be consistent. I think that will definitely improve my self-worth.

Melissa: Are you scared or nervous about what is waiting for you on the outside? Like, is there any part of you that is nervous about being released?

Gypsy: I’m not scared to get out. I know it will be different and that’s where the faith in God and hopefully in myself, even though I have a long way to go with that, comes in. I’ll be leaning on my faith and God and my family. I will pull my strength from all three. I am already making strides to try as a public figure to take responsible and meaningful action in a public way. I don’t want to do something because I’m getting compensated. I want to have a presence and an impact. This is what will help me heal while making amends for not just my transgressions, but the transgressions of my mother, who conned so many people and organizations. The one I feel the worst about is the Make-A-Wish Foundation. To give back to them and so many others would be the first exercise of my own free will.

Melissa: Have you forgiven yourself for what you’ve done?

Gypsy: Not everyone has forgiven me for my mom’s fraud. There are still people to this day that will not talk to me. They might not hate me but they don’t want any part of my life. There are twenty people who rejected my Facebook friend request.

Melissa: Do you blame them?

Gypsy: No, not at all. They might not wish me harm but I think maybe that seeing me brings them back to a not happy time for them. It might not be anything personal. The betrayal was so profound. Maybe some people could forgive and not forget. Like my aunts who I speak to once a year or so. The conversations don’t last very long, but they always end with, “You know, you could’ve told us, instead of reaching out to men on Facebook, and you didn’t.”

Melissa: How does that make you feel?

Gypsy: It makes me feel like shit. [long pause] And all I can do is say I’m so sorry.

Melissa: Have you forgiven your mom?

Gypsy: Right now, I think I have the most forgiveness for her than I ever had, and I am doing my best now to understand how my mom was, what made her the way she was. I wonder if there is more that I don’t know about my mother that caused her to become the way she was. Knowing that people are shaped by the things that happen to them, I have gotten to a place of compassion for my mother. I try to use that compassion toward myself too. As for the other people who have done me wrong, like the doctors, it’s a process to let go of the grudge and negativity that can weigh you down. It’s hard.

Melissa: You didn’t say before if you’ve forgiven yourself. Have you?

Gypsy: I’m still working on it.

Having Faith in Myself

When I pray to God, I ask him to give me the strength I need to be a good person and to reach my potential for the rest of my life. I think what I really mean to ask for is the strength to put my faith in myself, in my abilities—to trust that I can become a better version of myself. It’s all a leap of faith.

Like my journey to and from God over the years, I expect that developing a faith in myself will also be a winding road. Who doesn’t have self-doubt? When I do begin to question God or myself, I try to exercise that self-compassion, remembering how far I’ve come, how much work I have done to get to this place where I know I am flawed but not broken.

I have this mental image of an idealistic version of myself—successful, kind, independent—but I know I can’t get there immediately. And nobody can do anything without help, and we need to ask God for it often.

I consider myself a work of art in progress. I have the vision for the final masterpiece, but I’m only a few brushstrokes in. Having faith in the bigger picture, that the full work will ultimately form in the public eye, is how I try to keep the faith in myself. It’s going to take time.

Maybe I need to start praying for patience.

(Fun fact. I’m a terrible speller. And that’s not just because I lacked a formal education. Even today, my spelling sucks. I emailed Ryan before thanking him for his patience in pulling so many of the pictures in this book for me. I wrote, “I really appreciate your patients.” For so long, I never knew there was another spelling of a word that had so much prominence in my life.)

4. On Becoming a Public Figure

Am I even an actual person, or am I just a character?

—me, musing on my tablet from Chillicothe Correctional Center.

Not everything in this book was born out of interview-style questions “that may be monitored and recorded.” I had my own questions for myself and those who love me. Understanding the underpinnings of my mother’s mental illness is equivalent to solving a mystery. To form a full picture—to tear down the green screen as the backdrop of my life—I reached out to people who knew my mother, her essence, before I existed, when she was young and carefree: Beauty Queen Dee Dee.

My mother’s very close friend from high school told me: “Your mother always wanted to be famous. She dreamed of marrying an actor. She loved to follow rock bands.”

I do remember her enjoying the limelight, even though it was only local. Beyond the interpersonal attention, in the form of the sympathy and martyrdom she delighted in, she basked in the bright spotlight when the cameras rolled. “Turn on the news!” she’d say to someone she had called on the phone. “Pick up this Sunday’s paper . . . you’ll never guess who’s in it!” she’d tease with stars in her eyes.

The notoriety added a dimension to her disease. Yes, the Munchausen by proxy was the most dangerous part of the abuse, but it also acted as a backstage pass to my mother’s internal cinematic show. Whatever that movie in her mind was, I wasn’t the star of it. When the press arrived, she’d be doing all of the talking, while I numbly waited for my cue. Like a stage mother, Beauty Queen Dee Dee fed me my lines: “It’s a dream come true,” “This makes me so happy,” “My mom is my best friend.” Through me and through the script we memorized, Dee Dee could achieve some level of the fame she had long desired.

When The Act aired on Hulu in 2019, people often asked me how it felt to become a public figure almost instantaneously. I had to remind them that my mother had always been vying for me to become one. And I am not thankful at all for how The Act ripped me from my private life to a public existence that even my mother couldn’t have manifested with her most wicked spell.

There had been short documentaries, like HBO’s Mommy Dead and Dearest, which I had appeared in; news articles, podcasts, sleezy clickbait. These were snippets of my story that entertained people for the short term, but didn’t impact them. But then The Act aired and I was completely bewildered by the public response.

Before The Act, I had been just another inmate doing her time. To this day, I keep my head down; I don’t need any more eyes on me or extra attention. The Act brought an onslaught of emails from strangers all over the world. The corrections officers looked at me differently. Inmates wanted my autograph; others asked me for money, assuming being on television means you’re rich. I still have no frame of reference or context for what led the general viewing public to their hype, because I have never seen The Act. I was not consulted or compensated for a show that made actor Joey King a household name.

What I have seen of The Act is limited to a clip that was played during one of the prime-time award ceremonies. I think it was a scene of Joey on a bed with a cell phone; it was so far removed from my reality, it was hard to be sure what I was looking at. I just remember seeing Joey glammed out on the red carpet, the stark contrast of our lives casting a dark shadow over me. Here I was in my prison cell wearing my prison uniform, eating my disgusting prison food, while Hollywood celebrated itself. All I could think was, This girl tried to play me, and I had no control over it.

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER—

Melissa: Hey! I thought of something funny about The Act as I was preparing my questions for our call. You know they made a dramatized movie about my dad, right?¹ Lifetime did one called the Happy Face Killer, and guess who plays my dad? David Arquette.

Gypsy: David Arquette? Is he related to the actress who played my mother?

Melissa: Yes, Patricia Arquette played your mother in The Act and her brother is David Arquette.

Gypsy: Oh my God, so we are like TV siblings!

[laughter]

Melissa: I know, right? It’s such a funny coincidence. Tell me about the moment you heard that there’s a scripted series that came out about you.

Gypsy: Kristy first told me, “There’s going to be a TV show about your life and what you went through.” And I just felt like, “How could someone accomplish that feat without even talking to me about it first and asking me one-on-one questions?” I was upset. I didn’t know that this was going to be a drawn-out series. I didn’t have any participation in it. No one asked me if it was okay that they made this about my life.

Melissa: Yeah, they don’t have to with public record. So, take me into the day that The Act aired. Tell me about what that day was like. What were you doing in prison?

Gypsy: Number one, I was happy that we don’t get Hulu here in prison. We don’t get any of those premium channels or anything. You know how I told you people will try to get you in trouble for any small reason, so I was really happy nobody could watch it and assume things about me, whether they would judge me more for my crime or think I had a million dollars somewhere and then try to get me to the hole.² I’m just trying to go through my life, do my time as quietly as possible. So the night that it aired, I started having people email me, and it was just boom, boom, boom. It was one after the other after the other, and I’m like, “What is going on?” It was like a bomb went off and I went from just Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, just doing her time in prison, to being a celebrity overnight. And a celebrity for doing something horrible.

THIS CALL MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED.

Gypsy: I remember crying to Kristy on the phone after an inmate ran up to me and asked me for my autograph. I was like, “Why? You don’t know me.” I was confused over how people could write me letters saying they support me when I wasn’t proud of my crime, by any means. Kristy said, “Baby, you survived something that a lot of kids would’ve died in. People are not proud of your crime; they are proud that you survived and are making yourself do better in life.”

Gypsy: So that gave me a sense of balance, so I could continue to cope with the exposure and not feel ashamed because I understand that, yes, I did something wrong, but I also understand that surviving is unique and something positive. I keep myself grounded by always remembering that I am here because I committed a crime, not for any other reason. Every time an interview request comes in or someone asks me for my autograph, I say to myself, You’re a murderer. No high horse here. That stays at the forefront of my mind.

Melissa: Tell me about the weird things that people have done since The Act aired.

Gypsy: Oh boy. [giggle] Where do I even start? You know it ranges . . . from really nice people to the meanest people—many are strangers . . . and so many random things in between.

Melissa: Wasn’t it a stranger’s social media post that got you put in the hole?

Gypsy: That was awful. I was put in the hole as they investigated me for a potential plan to escape prison. I was like, “My parole hearing is in a few months and I’ve already done the majority of my time. I would never do that. I’m not fucking crazy, y’all!”

Melissa: I am so sorry you had to go through that. How long were you there for?

Gypsy: It was traumatizing. I was in there for a solid two weeks while they went through my stuff, looking for writings or plans or any correspondence that indicated I knew the person who posted. Which I didn’t. This person just wrote on social media something like, “She doesn’t belong in prison. I wish I could bust her out.” That’s all. And someone reported that post to the prison and that was it. I was literally in my pajamas, at around 10 am, having my morning coffee, watching the Food Network, and they had gloves on and they said, “Miss Blanchard, come with us.” They took me to the guard shack observation cubicle, and said, “Turn around and cuff up,” which means you’re going to the hole. I was like, “Wait. What? What did I do? What did I do?” And they’re like, “We don’t know.”

THIS CALL HAS ENDED. GOODBYE.

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER. PRESS—

Gypsy: Hey, so sorry. I have about seven minutes for this session.

Melissa: Sure. Sure. Okay, so . . . they didn’t know? Jeez, what an answer . . . So, okay, we’ll definitely need to talk about your time in the hole—wow, I can’t even imagine—but for now, anything else that happens after your privacy is lost in response to The Act?

Gypsy: Yeah, that’s okay. Well, I get letters, nice letters from people who are going through their own challenges, like the letters that made me confused at first that Kristy had to explain to me. And I get letters saying awful things.

Melissa: Do you mind telling me some of the meanest things you’ve heard?

Gypsy: Well, the M word. I get called the M word . . . and, you know, that I’m even worse than Nick was, because he didn’t have a murder weapon. He wouldn’t had one if it weren’t for me. They say, “You’re the one who put the knife in his hand; you’re more evil than he is . . .”

[pause]

Gypsy: And sometimes the people who write have affected my whole family. After The Act, people wrote my parents. Strange women wrote my father, a married man, for fuck’s sake. People have no boundaries. No boundaries at all. Kristy, my dad, me . . . we are all guilty for engaging with some of these strangers, some who had tried to become our so-called friends only to sell us out, but that’s a whole other story. That’s where trust and betrayal really became a tricky theme in all our lives.

Setting Boundaries

I don’t mean to be cynical, but it took me a long time to grow up and see that, in this world, far too many people behave badly. Trust has not been my strong suit, and betrayal has caused me lots of pain. The intrusion into my private life—a private life that I am trying damn hard to build for myself—has been the worst part of the aftermath of The Act. The paradox is that I’ve met some beautiful people because of the media surrounding my story. But the same publicity that brought one kind soul to me also scared him off.

Ken wrote me a heartfelt letter after he saw Mommy Dead and Dearest. I thought he sounded like a cool guy, so I wrote him back. We became pen pals and started talking on the phone. He was easy to talk to, and we had so much in common. I couldn’t wait for him to visit me. When he did, after thirty-seven minutes, he gave me a kiss that let me know how he felt. We started totally making out right there in the visitation room! Poor Ken got kicked out for that since the rule is “NO TOUCHING.” I got lucky, because that’s an offense that can get you thrown in the hole. It was 100 percent worth it because we started dating and eventually became engaged.

Then The Act aired, and I was transformed into a pseudo-celebrity. My personal life became public, which was really hard on Ken. Clickbait articles appeared mockingly announcing our engagement. Ken was a private person and didn’t want the attention or the scrutiny. While I understood and shared in his sentiment, I took it hard when he ended our relationship. My first experience with real heartbreak—I didn’t know what to do. The rite of passage of losing my first love happened alone in jail instead of in my bedroom surrounded by girlfriends playing me a breakup mix and eating pints of Ben & Jerry’s like in the movies. It was a time when I missed my mom, a time that should’ve been shared between the two of us, but never would be.

My faith, along with the passing of some time, revealed that God had a plan for me. Ken served a purpose in my life, to prepare me to be a better partner for the man I was meant to marry, and I’ll always be grateful for that.

Being a better partner to my later boyfriend, Ryan, meant I had to set boundaries and really keep my personal life, including challenges within my relationship, close to the vest. I knew this in theory but not in practice. I didn’t want to risk Ryan feeling closed in by being in my life, but with my trust muscle still weak, I did risk it.

In October of 2022, about four months after Ryan and I had our prison wedding, the weight of the responsibility of being someone’s wife hit me hard. Self-doubt smeared my fledgling self-worth and being Mrs. Anderson threw a wrench in my still-developing identity. What I’m trying to say is . . . I freaked the fuck out. Poor Ryan. I picked fights with him and maybe on some level was pushing him away. Alone and tired of crying over the latest argument Ryan and I had, I thought I could share my fear and confusion with some trusted friends, writing:

“Hi friends, I just want to let you know I am thinking about going forward with an annulment.”

I was hoping my friends would talk me off the ledge, tell me it was normal to feel this way, that the finality of being married sinks in for so many newlyweds—and that would be that. Have you ever heard of unintended consequences? Well, the next day, I received a surprise visit from Ryan, who traveled to Missouri from Louisiana to sort out our argument and work things out. I was so moved and happy and nervous to see him. As I was undergoing a routine strip search in the changing room before entering the visiting area, the guard said to me, “Why are you getting an annulment?”

“How do you know that?” I asked, stunned—and, frankly, creeped out.

“I read it online in In Touch magazine. Is it true?”

I don’t know which of the recipients of my confidential email took the screenshot of it and sent it to the tabloids, but I have my suspicion. That was the last time I ever shared private feelings with anyone outside of my inner circle. I have gotten better at boundaries.

TO ACCEPT THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 1.

Melissa: I can’t believe it. Are you okay? I mean, do you know who leaked the parole news?

Gypsy: You do not know how shocked I was when everyone in the canteen came up to me and were like, “We know you got parole . . .”

Melissa: Uh, Gypsy, I’m so sorry. We were all blindsided.

Gypsy: We have been able to be private about it for so long and then, four months out, boom, leaked. I know who it is—so do Kristy and my dad. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

Melissa: This is the thing about boundaries . . .

Gypsy: Yeah, don’t set them too late.

THE CALL HAS ENDED.

Praying for a Purpose

I’ve been talking to God about purpose—mine. About making sense of the nonsensical. I was never the child who wanted to be a famous singer or a rich actress on television or even president. I didn’t dream of things like going on American Idol or landing a big feature role playing another person, like Joey King did. I never wished to be rich and famous. I wanted to be a veterinarian. A paleontologist. An artist. And yes, even a nun. Living the life I had with my mother, my only prayer was to have a normal, average life. Things today seem to be going in the opposite direction. As much as I have resisted the public role, it keeps finding me, in bigger, more transcendent ways.

I know that doing two books, a Lifetime docuseries, and a follow-up series will look nothing like the private life I wish I had. People will criticize me. They’ll accuse me of being a publicity hound or selling out or who knows what. But blessings like this found me. When I am grappling with the optics and falling prey to guilt and shame, I wonder if the outlets that have been afforded to me are like that joke about the man drowning in the ocean, praying to God to save him. He passes up a boat, a plane, a man with a life raft, repeatedly saying no to their rescue efforts: “God will save me.” Maybe the public life is my life raft, God showing me my purpose. And if I turn it all away, telling myself that God will show me my purpose, he’ll say to me, “I sent you a book deal, a docuseries, and social media. Why didn’t you take them?”

I’m going to stay steady on the path I’m on. Make the exposure count toward a bigger, more serious career. A career in advocacy. In awareness. In positive change. My nightmares are being replaced with aspirational daydreams of starting my own organization, spreading knowledge and awareness about Munchausen by proxy, and mentoring others who have experienced trauma and abuse.

I feel like I have a responsibility now, one I don’t take lightly. I’ve been blessed to have been given a second chance at life. Not everyone has the opportunity to bring awareness to a horrible situation or create meaning where there once was none. This is the good thing about being public: having the ability to reach a lot of people with a message of positivity.

I don’t want to be the victim and the perpetrator any longer. I want to have influence; maybe even go to the Capitol and get some laws in place, get some things changed. For starters, I’d create oversight so doctors can be kept accountable for doing harm and for being inept. Maybe this is my purpose. By exercising my purpose, I can ensure doctors are more observant of their patients’ care and trained to look for red flags. My medical history was not a red flag. It was a goddamn red banner that reads, HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW?

My public platform will become a podium on which my self-worth and identity will blossom, and I hope that others, especially helpless children, will benefit from the sweet smell of the bloom.

¹ See About the Authors at the end of this book for details.

² Solitary confinement, which is also being rebranded as “segregation,” as if that’s supposed to have a softer landing .

5. On Self-Worth and Identity

Desperately Seeking Self-Worth

“There are eight personalities in my head and seven of them don’t like you.”

It’s a tough one to unhear.

“This is your fault, Gypsy.”

Another doozy.

“I do everything for you. I’ve sacrificed everything. And this is how you repay me?”

The hits keep coming.

It was always my fault. I got blamed for everything, even my father leaving my mother. I got blamed for her sisters not favoring her, which made it hard for me to form a relationship with them. My mother uniquely positioned a wall between me and her family, the Pitres, which is one of the reasons I didn’t call them for help. Any failures in my mother’s life were because of me.

Throughout my time at Chillicothe, I signed up for multiple twelve-week-long classes. These certificates of completion are valuable reminders of my search for understanding. At one point, I was taking four classes at one time. I was able to even facilitate ICVC and Pathways to Change. For the ICVC class, I needed to be trained to teach, which was really rewarding. This is where I fell in love with the idea of mentoring others.

According to the penal system, I don’t qualify for therapy. I’m too “well.” For a person who was always told she wasn’t ever well, this makes me laugh out loud. However, I have been able to take classes and read books on a bunch of issues that definitely affect me: codependency, PTSD, insecurity, abandonment, personality disorders, addiction, trust, and on and on.

One very impactful course was on codependency. I read about attachment and learned how and why we form attachments, especially dysfunctional ones. Attachment styles usually begin with the mother. I learned that my attachment to my mother was an insecure one, so I made it my mission to please her on the off chance I could turn some of her other personalities in my favor. My self-worth was dictated by what my mother thought of me, how she reacted to my performances, and the big one: whether or not she’d withhold her love. Love was a dangling carrot that made me jump higher to please her, even if it meant going against what felt right.

My mother used love as reward and punishment, withdrawing it on demand. She knew the things I was afraid of, like being alone in the dark, and so to punish me, she’d leave me alone in the dark. As I got older and the dark scared me less, my mother would smash my things with a hammer. I’d cry, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time. Just love me.” She did this thing where she’d just ignore me; she’d give attention and love to the cat instead. She’d baby talk to the cat as if having a private conversation and pretend I wasn’t sitting right there, like I didn’t exist—I was invisible and nonexistent to her. If she did acknowledge me, she’d snarl at me and turn back to kissing the cat. That was the worst.

I’ll be happy if I never say those words, “I’ll do better next time,” again.

When you’re groomed to believe you’re not worthy of love or even of “like,” you tend to lose yourself to people-pleasing. Narcissists prey on insecure people. Validation and love become mechanisms for control, and later, as with most childhood grooming, validation- and love-seeking patterns learned from childhood seep into adult relationships, and not just romantic ones.

Creating my profile online was the first time I didn’t create a false persona. I dressed the way I thought I would look if I had grown up normal. The picture I posted was me wearing a brown wig, because my hair would’ve been brown if my mother hadn’t shaved it off. I wore a prom dress that my mother bought on clearance from JCPenney after prom season ended. Lying across my couch, I posed with a rose. I felt beautiful in my body. I liked having breasts and hips. Maybe I was on the way to finding myself, exploring myself, but that came to a screeching halt when I got matched with a boy who “winked” at me.

Nick must’ve liked my profile description, which said, basically, “I’m a very happy, bubbly girl that is interested in sci-fi and fantasy. I am a virgin and am waiting to commit myself to my husband.”

I added my love for animals and being outside—even though my time in nature was contained to being in my backyard, marveling at butterflies and slugs. When I was surfing the internet, I was a butterfly. Nick wanted this butterfly to be his girlfriend, and it was the first time I experienced the feeling of pride. Someone wanted me for me—this was tasty bait for the insatiable narcissist. I wanted love and attention that had nothing to do with pity, so I made the videos he requested and directed. The more he praised me for a “good job,” after sucking a dildo he had ordered from Japan, the more I believed he loved me. Of course, when I would do the videos “wrong”—forgetting to call him “master” or not being a “dirty enough girl”—he’d threaten to pull that love away. I was familiar with the carrot-and-stick game. My mother loved me when I was sick and took her love back when I wasn’t. In order to be accepted and loved, I needed to meet the expectations of others.

I have always been interested in fairies. After seeing the movie Tinker Bell with my mom when I was real-age twenty-one, I was inspired to paint a self-portrait using acrylics on canvas. Here I am in my happy place as a nature fairy with wings to fly wherever my heart wanted to go.

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT THE CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. TO ACCEPT THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 1—

Gypsy: Hey there, Melissa, how are you today?

Melissa: I’m good. I’m so happy you called. I wasn’t expecting you, but it’s always great to hear you.

Gypsy: I just wanted to check in because I was thinking I wanted to share something that someone said to me recently that really bugs me, because it’s this thing that is always said to me, and it pisses me off.

Melissa: Oh, great . . . give me a sec while I just get the record button up . . . Okay, I think it’s recording. Yup, it’s good; we’re good. So, you were saying you wanted to share something, like a pet peeve?

Gypsy: A bunch of us were talking about me getting out and starting a life with Ryan and one of the girls was like, “How are you going to do anything? You don’t even know who you are.”

Who are these people who don’t know me telling me I don’t know me? I’m like, “You want to bet?” I get told this nonstop. This has given me a complex because I’m well aware my self-worth and identity has mostly formed under the thumb of my mother. Sometimes I question: Do I know my core values? Yes. Do I have convictions? Yes. That is part of knowing my identity. Do I know if I like Mexican food? No. Because I never had it. Self-worth is a struggle for me and hearing people say this about something so personal sometimes feels like I’m taking steps back, questioning myself whether I can do it.

Melissa: Do you see your self-worth and identity as being connected?

Gypsy: I think when you are secure with who you are, know your identity, it feeds into your self-worth, but I also think the reverse is true.

Melissa: Ah, yes, the chicken and the egg.

THIS CALL MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED.

Gypsy: My lack of identity is more obvious because I had to hide myself for so long, but the self-worth is a little trickier. As a human being, I know who I am. I would like to think I have a good idea, but the idea that I am enough is hard for even a person who had the perfect upbringing. Self-worth is hard to develop for a lot of us, which makes me feel, I guess, a little normal, if that makes sense.

Melissa: Yes, yes, Gypsy, I totally agree and I’ve been there. Being a teenager when I found out my dad was a serial killer made me not only question who I was and lose the identity I had all my life, but totally messed with my self-worth. Shame kills self-worth. But when I share that with others, more people open up to me and it’s a big problem for so many people.

Gypsy: That’s why I wanted to talk about this for this book. When people say that to me, that I don’t even know who I am, I’ve had to learn to stop second-guessing myself. And I believe that even if we do have a strong identity, it can change over time, so there’s always work to be done.

Melissa: Do you believe people can change, then?

Gypsy: I do. I do. I do believe people can change some things with age and wisdom. I mean, I’m definitely not the same person I was twelve years ago. There is growth and change over a lifetime. But, I mean, I think there’s always an essence that remains. Like, I love animals and nature. I love to make silly voices and practice exotic accents. I’m a clown. I love dictionaries. I don’t expect those things to go away when I’m ninety. But in the future, after I’m released, I might become a food or wine connoisseur or take up figure skating or own my own business. Those parts of myself I have yet to meet. And when I do, I think it will strengthen my self-worth because I’m looking to myself for validation and not the acceptance and love of others.

THIS CALL HAS ENDED. GOODBYE.

When There’s No “I” in Identity

I have a job in prison: janitor. I mop the floors of the dining room before and after my thirty-minute lunch break, Windex fingerprints off the plexiglass shields on the sides of pay phones, and remove crumpled balls of tissues from the visitors room. Sometimes I work outside in the yard, where I dispose of cigarette butts, fresh wads of gum, and general debris that’s blowing around. For some, that might feel confining, but the prison yard has been like a playground. I’m good at my job; I’ve had a lifetime of practice complying with the system and pleasing others.

Being a people-pleaser requires you to submit a part of yourself to the person you aim to please. You give up your own needs and desires, and put the person’s interests in front of your own. In return you expect a payment in the form of validation and acceptance. This kind of currency is dangerous because the cost is you.

After a while, you begin to be able to predict what people want to hear, so you begin to say things you don’t mean. Positive reinforcement to your people-pleasing teaches you real quick how you should act. Deferring to my mother to make decisions for me, to tell me what I like to do, watch, wear, made it impossible to understand myself. Who am I? What makes me tick? What interests do I have? How do I view the world? These questions, which over time and with experimentation help form and shape an identity, were suppressed for me during a time of life that should’ve encouraged them. For twenty-three years I only had one identity, Gypsy-Rose, and for far too long remained one-dimensional.

PRESS 1 TO—

Melissa: Hi, so I wanted to talk about some of the experimentation that you have done, especially since you said that being in prison was the freest you had been in your life.

Gypsy: Well, yeah, in prison I could walk and talk about things I wanted to talk about. I got to have a job and be responsible for my own space and just meet people and learn how to make friends—or not. So, of course, I didn’t know anything at all. I don’t even know what size clothing I am because I was always dressed in some costume or boy clothes. The only time I wore a pair of jeans—that were hand-me-downs—was the night I left the house with Nick after the murder. I remember they felt scratchy.

Melissa: Tell me about some of the phases you went through in prison.

Gypsy: First of all, prison is like a grown-up high school. Women in their forties act like they’re sixteen. When I first got here, I joined a clique and I tried to be one of the mean girls. I took on a new nickname—Jersey—because I acted like my shit don’t stink.

Melissa: Wait, like New Jersey, like you were a tough girl from the Jersey Shore show or the housewife show?

Gypsy: Yeah, exactly! [giggling] With the mean girl / Jersey persona, I had to make fun of people or be like, “Oh my God, did you see what she was doing in the canteen?” It wasn’t me at all. It’s not nice to make fun of people, and I realized quick that I wasn’t a mean girl. Then, I went through a goth phase and listened to heavy metal and [wore] black lipstick. That was brief too.

Melissa: It does sound like you are in high school. [giggle] That’s what we all did in high school, just trying on different hats and different friend groups to see which one fit.

Gypsy: I tried to experiment with my sexuality too. I was pretty sure I was straight, but I tried anyway. Because of sexual abuse I had experienced, and the way my mother made me feel dirty in my own womanly body, I have a mental block that prevents me from full satisfaction. I thought perhaps if I experimented with women, I would have a better chance of reaching climax. I think as a young girl I was exposed to watching shows like Xena: Warrior Princess—Xena and Gabrielle were lesbians—and I watched it and didn’t understand it. When I was sixteen or so, I thought girls were pretty, so that confused me, so I thought, Am I gay? There’s a saying here, “Gay for the stay, straight from the gate,” so when in Rome . . . I did kiss a couple girls and became a pillow princess, four times.

Melissa: A pillow princess?

Gypsy: If you think about it for a sec, it will make sense. Let’s just say I didn’t initiate.

Melissa: Oh . . . OHHHHHHHHH.

[raucous laughter]

Sinese Sudds painted this beautiful reimagining of my first embrace with my dad in prison. She sent it to Kristy and my dad as a gift to our family. Thank you, Sinese, for sharing your talent with us.

Bloom Where You Stand

How do you go about figuring out who you are when you spent your life unconsciously playing pretend? And that’s not just a question a person with a crazy life, like me, asks. It’s for all the people-pleasers out there, giving up a part of their self-worth and identity for outside acceptance. Like everyone else doing life, I had to cycle through a ton of growing phases. Trial and error over and over. Whether taking leaps of faith with friends and learning from their betrayals to licking my own wounds after my breakup with Ken, or even figuring out how to be more assertive, forming my identity and learning to love myself has been a process, and it’s no way near complete.

How do you learn to see yourself in new ways, take yourself out of the box you might have put yourself in? For me, one thing that helped was a friend’s gorgeous painting of me and my dad. She depicted the first time I hugged him after I got sentenced, but unlike the real-life moment, in her version of the hug my hands were not handcuffed. Her interpretation became a symbol of hope for me.

You don’t have to go beyond your mind to grow and develop self-worth; to form a secure identity. Like a flower, I can bloom where I stand.

In order to bloom, an old part of yourself has to wither away. I’ve reflected on the harmful ways in which I sought acceptance and love, and like reading that old diary, I cringe. But I have to face these poor decisions, to make room for wiser ones. Nick was the most toxic example of sexual predators on the internet, but there were many other deviants online who immediately sensed my insecurity and exploited me. My mom always made me feel ashamed of my body, and that breasts were sinful. To have a part of my body, especially one that functions to feed and sustain life, be considered dirty confused me and chipped away at my womanhood.

Back when I was twenty, the only way I would feel good about myself was by taking my clothes off online for these perverts (I have very nice boobs). I’d wear a wig, and I would have my dentures in. I wouldn’t be hooked up to machines and I’d hide my feeding tube, showing off my body. I got compliments. And that reinforced my behavior. When I really hated myself, I just numbed myself with my mother’s prescription narcotics. I was really harming myself physically and emotionally.

Being a prisoner of my pain for so long is actually one part of my identity I don’t want to lose. I believe people are who they are because of what they’ve been through, but really because of what they’ve survived. I have done so many horrible and sinful and harmful things to myself and others that I am the least judgmental person on Earth. Anyone can tell me anything, and I empathize with them and understand and don’t look down on them. This part of my identity will give me a purpose as an advocate and mentor for others, especially younger people, who turn to the internet and do exactly what I was doing. Self-worth comes from having a purpose and for seeing the value in yourself. None of us will ever find a purpose by desperately seeking self-worth.

Don’t take to the internet as a personal diary, like I did when I was younger. Your purpose and meaning are not in the likes or the numerous requests to be a foot fetish model, or being told by strangers you’re beautiful. Stop right now! I learned the hard way, and I don’t want that for you.

As I write this, I’m so close to freedom, I can taste it. Do I know who I am? Do I love myself? Not all the time. Maybe not even half the time. But it’s a hell of a lot better than it used to be, and with therapy, I’m going to get there. I plan to use therapy to not only make sense of my past but help me not mess up my future. I already see triggers emerging and affecting my behavior, especially toward Ryan. We talk every single day, several times a day on my tablet. Once, he told me, “You’re my heart,” and my body felt like it was trapped in a room filling up with water, so I cussed him out.

He didn’t know my mother had said that to me constantly.

It’s inevitable that the things that my mother did and said, and how I was raised, will affect certain decisions and behaviors moving forward, but I don’t want them to. I want clarity on how I live and what I choose to carve out for myself and my future family. That will take work—but I’m a hard worker.

Of all the doozies my mother said, this one is the dooziest: Gypsy shall never find happiness; she shall never be free.

I guess we’re about to find out if she was right.

6. On Love and Freedom

This is one of a few love letters that I sent to Ryan. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, and I find something special about physical letters that you can smell and touch and keep forever. Chillicothe has since gone completely digital for correspondence. It’s sad that you can’t send physical mail through the prison anymore. But I look forward to one day showing our kids what old-fashioned letters looked like.

When I got to Chillicothe, I was freer than I had ever been. It’s an irony of all ironies, I know. But here in prison, I have traces of independence in that, as I live out my day, nobody is holding my hand. These rules, my mother’s rules, no longer apply:

Stay quiet.

Don’t seem overly happy or excited (because sick people don’t have that kind of energy).

When adults talk, don’t talk.

Don’t eat.

Nowadays, I don’t shut up. I’m very bubbly, and I talk to adults all day long. And you can say that I’ve adjusted well to the eating thing. So, with those four restrictions lifted, my days feel fuller and freer.

The one thing that is similar to the life I lived with my mother is that I know where I have to be at all times.

7:30 AM. Count time. We sit up in our bunks and turn the lights on. Corrections officers (COs for short) account for all inmates. This takes about fifteen to twenty minutes, after which I go back to sleep. I don’t like getting up that early.

10:30 AM. Get down from my top bunk, click on my TV, make a cup of instant coffee. People imagine prison to be how it is on TV shows like 60 Days In, but where I stay resembles a dorm room quad. With my coffee in hand, I head to the day room to call Ryan from the phone there. I like to start my day wishing him a good morning. This takes about fifteen to thirty minutes before he goes to work as a special education teacher.

Go back to my room, look at my locker, pick from my canteen items, make mac and cheese or some other processed packaged food, like ramen noodles, and go back to the dayroom.

1:30−3 PM. We have recreation time. I like to work out on the elliptical machine for about an hour. Come back to the housing unit, shower, and by the time I’m out and dressed, it’s around 3 PM.

3 PM. Go to work. My job is custodial, so I take out the trash, sweep and mop, change toilet paper rolls, and so on. Twenty minutes.

4:30 PM. Count time again. We return to our rooms and sit on our bunks until the COs finish.

5−7 PM. Talk with Ryan. I hear about his day, and I tell him about mine. He checks my social media accounts—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter (now X)—since I don’t have access to the internet. I read to him what I’d like to post, and he types it verbatim.

8 PM. I’m a little antsy about responses on my social media, so I call Ryan back for him to tell me whether anyone liked my post or shared it. But really, I just love talking to Ryan and hearing his voice. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie that I have on my tablet. He’ll sync up the same movie on his end and we’ll watch it over the phone. We have a wide selection of movies to choose from and we tend to watch them for Date Night, which is reserved for Saturdays. It’s so cheesy but I love it. It’s five cents a minute to keep him on the phone, so it’s expensive, but I like to laugh and react to the movies together.

10 PM. Count time and time for bed. I go to my room and I click on my TV and watch it for a little bit. This count time is different than the morning and afternoon counts. Here we are off our bunks, standing by our door with our ID in our hands, so the COs can easily see our picture and our names. After they walk by, and we go back to our bunks, we go to sleep.

I’ve outgrown this version of freedom.

THIS IS A FREE CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT THE CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER. TO ACCEPT THIS FREE CALL, PRESS 1. THIS CALL MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED.

Melissa: Hey there! Big chapter to discuss today: Love and Freedom.

Gypsy: I know. I can’t believe it. The last one. I’ve actually been thinking so much about this chapter—it’s the most important to me, you know, because it’s the ending but also the beginning.

Melissa: Yes, well said.

Gypsy: And especially because poor Ryan has been reading Michele’s writing to me chapter by chapter¹ and having to read out loud about everything and everybody other than him! He is such a trooper. I keep wanting to say to him, “Babe, just wait, your time is coming.”

Melissa: Aww, that’s really sweet. Best for last. Okay, well, do you want to start there? Or I was going to ask you what freedom is, like what your definition of freedom is. You mentioned you’ve outgrown the current version of freedom that you at first referred to as a playground. So then, what is freedom to you now?

Gypsy: Well, I had a feeling you were going to ask that [giggle] so I wrote down some of my thoughts. Can I just read to you?

Melissa: Sure, even better! I’m recording.

Gypsy: So, freedom to me is never having to feel like I have to conform myself to the demands of others to feel loved and seen. All of my life I have had to conform to fit what others wanted me to be. My mother wanted an eternal child. Nick wanted a love slave to control and conquer. And Ken wanted me to be his Barbie. Well, I’m not a child, I’ll never be a slave, and I am no blonde Barbie Girl.

Gypsy: For thirty-two years all I ever wanted is to be loved, to be me. I am a quirky brunette with an eclectic personality. When I do interviews for shows like Dateline and Dr. Phil, I put on my mask of invisibility—physically I’m visible for everyone, but hidden inside. I fear showing myself as vulnerable. Putting on a brave face is easier than letting the world know how much I hurt inside. With many nights contemplating suicide in prison, freedom becomes more of a state of mind. The pain of my past trauma is nothing compared to the guilt I carry for my mother’s murder.

Melissa: Really beautiful. I am sorry you got to a point where you considered ending your life, Gypsy. That’s a tragic place to get to.

Gypsy: There was a bunch of hurt that I just couldn’t deal with—it was around the time of COVID, when things felt especially dark. But, Melissa, I have to go right now.

Melissa: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.

Gypsy: No, you didn’t. It’s afternoon count time, so I’ll call you back in a little bit. So sorry.

THE CALLER HAS HUNG UP.

These Are the Themes of My Life

From 2019 to 2021, crisis seemed to creep into every corner of my existence. The COVID pandemic penetrated my psyche as it did for so many, but it was my spirit that ached. That short window of time represented both my lowest point and my greatest growth. By this time, I had some battle scars. I’d been betrayed several times, from so-called friends to wannabe journalists who lambasted me publicly, to Ken, my fiancé and first functional romantic relationship, who broke my heart. Full of shame, guilt, and a lousy case of the “why me’s,” I lost my faith, forgetting God because I assumed he forgot about me. I struggled building a rapport with family members and began to doubt the small amount of self-worth I’d worked to gain since the murder was committed.

The chapter titles of this book—the themes I continue to explore as I write my memoir—are not accidental. Trust and Betrayal, Family and Friends, Faith and God, Becoming a Public Figure, and Self-Worth and Identity—these things became headwinds along the path I was running out of courage to walk. While the world outside went batshit crazy during the pandemic, I found myself at a crossroads. Do I allow my disillusionment and hardened heart to lead me to wave a white flag of surrender? Or do I keep going with hope and strength in my heart? Time seemed to stand still as I stood frozen in this in-between moment.

Then I received a letter.

THIS IS A CALL FROM AN OFFENDER AT THE CHILLICOTHE CORRECTIONAL CENTER. PRESS 1—

Gypsy: Hi, I’m back.

Melissa: That was pretty quick. I was able to grab a snack before we continued onto the fun stuff . . . love.

Gypsy: Yes, wow, love. [giggle] I never ever thought it would happen for me, not after the devastation I felt when Ken broke our engagement.

Melissa: So Ryan just wrote you a letter out of the blue?

Gypsy: Well, not really. It was on a dare. He had seen my documentary on HBO, which coincidentally was the reason Ken had first contacted me in 2019, right after he watched it. But Ryan didn’t write me until much later. I see now that God was waiting, and timing is everything.

Melissa: Why was he dared to email you? I’m not quite sure I’m following . . .

Gypsy: Well, it was during COVID, the 2020 lockdowns, when people were just watching anything and everything on television, and I guess Ryan and his friend were looking for ways to entertain themselves from the boredom of being locked down. So his friend was like, we should write letters to famous people on TV just to see if they write back. She had teased that, if she could, she’d write the Tiger King, and asked him who he would write. On a whim, he said, “I should write Gypsy-Rose Blanchard from HBO,” and he actually did.

Gypsy: And I get this letter, and I just thought, this guy seems really cool. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend but it just felt easy, so I wrote him back.

Gypsy: And it kind of just went from there, progressing to phone calls, and he just made me laugh. Ryan always says a way to a woman’s heart is through laughter, and I totally agree. We laugh so much all the time; I just love it. I kept calling him because he made me laugh. And we’d have deep conversations about life in general. I figured out very quickly that we had so much in common. He is also from Louisiana and he has that deep, sexy southern accent. But I didn’t want to trust again. There was that choice again; I was still stuck. My fear and feeling that I wasn’t good enough were like brick walls that I couldn’t bust through. Do I let him in? Do I try this again and risk getting hurt?

YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE LEFT.

Melissa: And here you are. You must be happy you took the risk?

Gypsy: Once I let Ryan into my life, the trust slowly built. We began to pray together and we asked God to be in our life and guide our relationship. I felt like I have a real family to build a future with now. It all is coming together.

Melissa: All the themes of your life.

THIS CALL HAS ENDED.

Dear Ryan

After the above conversation, I used what was left of my commissary money to call Melissa back. I wanted to read her a letter I wrote to Ryan, so it could be included in this book. Since Ryan has been reading the manuscript to me over the phone, so I can make changes and approve it, it won’t be the surprise I wished for him to receive when the book is published. But I guess it’s a surprise right now.

Dear Ryan,

You came into my life at a time I had hardened my heart. You are so very charming, with your sexy southern accent that makes a woman feel special. Growing up in Louisiana, we have a lot in common, partnered with flirtatious laughter and deep conversation, our attraction bloomed from there. Remember our back-and-forth dance of desire for two years before we finally made our commitment to each other? I will cherish those moments. Those moments that told me my mother was wrong, that all men aren’t out to hurt us.

Ryan, you are beyond an amazing husband who has tended to my heart that is heavy with years of pain. You have done and still do so much for me without any complaints. I am not easy! That I know. Yet, you remain faithful to me in body and mind. I haven’t been held before by a man like you hold me.

After my past sexual abuse, I still experience roadblocks that prevent me from being 100 percent comfortable in my own skin, and being able to let go and enjoy sexual pleasure. I have never been passionately and tenderly made love to before but I am reassured that you are the kind of man who will take his time on me. Drawing you that diagram of my scars was my first attempt at vulnerable intimacy. Soon I will be in the flesh.

After a lifetime of being in love with the idea of being in love it is now, in my thirties, that I found the belonging I always wanted, in a family that I had been robbed of growing up. I now have my southern prince charming who neither stands before or after me, but beside me in our love story.

Our wedding day was July 21, 2022. My friend Laurie was my one inmate guest, which was fitting, since she has come to all my big milestone events, including my high school equivalency graduation and even the brief breakup Ryan and I had. She was instrumental in playing the role of friend and also mediator to us both.

THIS IS A CALL FROM—

Melissa: Hey, Happy Halloween!

Gypsy: Oh, yeah, Happy Halloween. You forget in here sometimes when there’s holidays. It’s not as festive.

Melissa: Well, just think, next Halloween you can dress up and pass out candy. Do you think you’ll dress up?

Gypsy: Oh, yes! I still love to dress up. When I first got to prison, I took my sheet off my bunk and wore it as a toga and did the whole Ancient Greece thing. Then the shine wore off and I stopped dressing up. I’ll probably have Ryan dress up with me next year. I really want to do Beauty and the Beast. I still like Disney, but I don’t make my whole life revolve around it. I can beat anyone at Disney trivia. Sometimes I make Ryan ask me questions, and he’s like, “Babe, no way, you can’t know this.” I’m like, “Well, you know I’m not cheating. I don’t have the internet.”

Gypsy: Ryan and I have personalized New Orleans Saints football jerseys that say “Anderson” on the back. Mine has the number 7 on it, and Ryan’s has the number 21 on it, which is our anniversary.

Melissa: That’s so cute.

Gypsy: And I always say when we have a baby, we should wear our jerseys and dress the baby up like a football for Halloween.

[laughter]

Melissa: So, do you think you’ll have kids right away?

Gypsy: Well, I don’t want to wait too long. I’m already thirty-two, but I do want Ryan and I to have time as newlyweds, and actually have a real wedding and go on a honeymoon. I’m thinking Hawaii.

Melissa: I did wonder about your plans for when you initially get out. I mean aside from bucket list stuff, which must be a long list, because, I mean, everything is going to be new to you, not just from the freedom of being out of prison, but because you didn’t have many experiences growing up.

Gypsy: Right, right. Well, I need to find a therapist—

THIS CALL MAY BE MONITORED AND RECORDED.

Gypsy: That’s definitely on my list. And I want to get some work done on my nose and exercise and really focus on healthy eating. That’s a big goal of mine. The food they give you in prison is very processed and unhealthy. I want to learn the right way to eat whole foods and use nutrition to keep healthy.

Melissa: That’s a great goal. Do you have any concerns about navigating the freedom you will have? Do you think you’ll be waking up at the crack of dawn automatically for count time? Or just stop in the middle of the day feeling like you’re forgetting something, because you would usually report to your custodial job or for afternoon and evening count?

Gypsy: Yes, I think that may happen, for sure. My body is trained. But I don’t have concerns per se. I know Ryan and I are very similar in many of our habits, like we both need white noise to sleep and he is a terrific cook, while I hate to cook. He makes the most amazing gumbo. So, we have a yin-yang thing going. I think it will be an adjustment to not only being married, but to living with a man. I never lived with my dad or grew up living with a brother. It was always me and my mom, girl stuff, so yeah, that will be something.

Melissa: Yes, the wonders of living with men. They hide out in the bathroom, I’m pretty sure. It’s a thing when they don’t want to be around you. I swear . . .

Gypsy: I guess I’ll find out if that’s true. I’ll let you know!

[laughter]

After our wedding ceremony, Ryan and I traced our hands to capture our new union and wedding bliss.

Gypsy: We balance each other. I’m very impulsive and act on emotion, and Ryan is very calm—he waits things out, weighs the options, and then takes an action. That helps me a lot, because I have this hyper, no-filter personality. I don’t have anger issues but I am quick to be sassy. My words have teeth sometimes. He will calm that situation down. But I have to be careful not to keep doing that, and I will work with a therapist to learn to catch myself so I don’t wear him down. Everyone has their limits.

Melissa: Do you worry about anything that you guys will have to deal with at all? Sounds like you aren’t too worried about living together, but do you ever discuss things you’ll need to watch out for, or possible problems? Married life is hard enough, but you guys have even more to deal with.

Gypsy: I think the only thing we will need to be patient and careful about is me getting out and being that public figure we discussed. But also Ryan will be public now too. He is going to be in the docuseries,² and is going to go from being, I guess . . . obscure to recognizable.

Gypsy: Ryan sometimes is like, “What if you want to go drinking and barhopping because you never did that before, and want to experience hooking up and stuff?” and I’m like, “That sounds terrible.” Why would I ever want to hook up with strangers who don’t know me or care about me? By the way, I haven’t ever had alcohol, so I don’t know if I will want it. I would never cheat—I’m not a cheater. My whole life has been centered on instability. Random hookups would be going back to chaos, not the stability that I enjoy with my husband. But I think, after I saw how strangers can come out of the woodwork to befriend you once you are on TV . . . I mean, remember those people who wrote to even Dad and Kristy? What if people start writing Ryan? Will it all just become too much noise? Will my insecurity turn on? I don’t want that for us.

Melissa: What do you want?

[silence]

Gypsy: I want what my mother didn’t have, which is what I think made her the way she was.

I want a stable and loving family. I want an adoring, faithful, present husband.

I want a successful career as an advocate, to make real change and impact, and to live with purpose. I want to help others, especially helpless children, even if I never meet them.

I want healthy and happy children of my own, and friends who have my back and who turn to me when they need a hug or a compassionate ear because they believe they can rely on me.

I want to be self-assured, confident, and constantly learning. I want to make people laugh and feel joy.

I want to try to give back to the people and organizations that were hurt by my mother and me.

I want God’s plan for me to reveal itself and for God to bless Ryan and me forever.

I want God to forgive me and take care of my mother in heaven.

I want to make my mother’s life mean something. I want to learn to live my life the way my mother didn’t know how to.

I want the happily ever after. I want to be released.

THIS BOOK HAS ENDED.

May the next one begin.

Love,

Gypsy

¹ Michele transcribed the interviews and combined them with my writing to compile the first draft for this book.

²A Lifetime documentary series is planned for 2024.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to thank my husband Ryan Anderson for loving me as I am. You have been my advocate, and my partner, and instrumental in helping me gather my thoughts and materials for this book. We already make a great team, and I can’t wait to see how we conquer the world together once we are united in the flesh.

To the mother I always wanted, Kristy Blanchard, a super mom in every way: you have taken me under your wing and accepted me as your own. I want you to know how much your love and support uplift me, and prove how blood does not need to pass between a mother and daughter.

Thank you to my father, Rod Blanchard, for your amazing level of unconditional love. It doesn’t matter what I do, you never judge me. You too have had so much to come to terms with and figure out while helping me do the same. I appreciate you and want you to know I see that we both have grappled with many of the same experiences and hurt, just on different sides of the coin.

I am so grateful to BenBella Books, who took a chance on me, and did not shy away from my high-profile case, and had the courage to allow me to have a voice.

Finally, thank you to Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani. We have been an amazing, ROCKING team together. Looking forward to much more.

-Gypsy

About the Authors

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard¹ is an advocate, author, and speaker, who after eight-and-a-half years was released from prison. Her unbelievable story of abuse has touched millions of people around the world and raised awareness of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental health disorder in which a caregiver falsely claims that another person, typically their child, is sick, injured, or has a disease. Gypsy’s abuse is one of the most significant stories of Munchausen by proxy known to the public, causing her to have been unnecessarily treated with harmful medications, surgeries, and physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. Gypsy-Rose’s mission is to support other children who are abused and to provide knowledge to the medical establishment that might otherwise be deceived by a person with this psychological disease. You can follow Gypsy on X (@GypsyRose_B), TikTok (@GypsyRoseBlanchard727), and Instagram (@GypsyRose_A_Blanchard).

Melissa Moore is an Emmy-nominated executive producer and investigative journalist, host and special correspondent of several true-crime TV programs and podcasts, advocate for families of victims and perpetrators, and author. Melissa’s book Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter described her discovery that her father, Keith Jesperson, was the infamous “Happy Face Killer” who murdered eight women in the early 1990s.

Melissa was the true-crime correspondent for The Dr. Oz Show’s “True-Crime Tuesdays” for four years (2016–2019), during which time she developed more than seventy episodes. Melissa created and hosted Monster in My Family, which ran for two seasons (2015, 2017) on Lifetime, where she was the executive producer. She was also a special correspondent for the daytime TV newsmagazine Crime Watch Daily and was nominated in 2016 for an Emmy Award for her investigative work.

She is the executive producer and host of several podcasts for iHeartMedia, including Happy Face and Happy Face Presents: Two Face, for which she won the Best Breakout New Podcast Award from iHeart. CBS All Access is adapting the Happy Face podcast for TV.

Melissa also coauthored a self-help book, Whole: How I Learned to Fill the Fragments of My Life with Forgiveness, Hope, Strength, and Creativity (Rodale, 2016), which was well reviewed by Publishers Weekly and received a starred Booklist review: “There is a wealth of wisdom here for anyone, whether he or she is struggling with an unhappy childhood, struggling with his or her own addiction or that of loved ones, or just trying to cope with life.”

Photo credit: Sabrina Clark

Michele Matrisciani is a veteran publishing professional and a New York Times bestselling editor and former editorial director of HCI Books—the original publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul and the harrowing blockbuster memoir of parental abuse A Child Called “It.” Specializing in memoir and prescriptive nonfiction, Michele was an acquisitions editor and developmental editor for fifteen years. In 2011, Michele founded Bookchic LLC, a full-service content development consulting company. She is the coauthor with Melissa Moore of Whole: How I Learned to Fill the Fragments of My Life with Forgiveness, Hope, Strength, and Creativity.

Michele will earn her MFA in creative writing from Stony Brook University in 2024. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee for her personal essay “The Case for the Second Mom.”

Visit Michele at www.michelem.net.

¹Everyone gets my name wrong. Legally, it’s one word, separated by a hyphen, but I usually let the error go.

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