Gypsy Rose Blanchard has today been released from prison, and has already made major plans to celebrate her freedom.
The 32-year-old spent the last eight years in prison for orchestrating her medically abusive mother Claudine ‘Dee Dee’ Blanchard’s murder in 2015.
While the killer, Gypsy Rose’s online boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn, will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, she has now been released from prison, reports TMZ, after she was granted parole in September.
She previously revealed that at the top of her to-do list upon her release from prison was to meet Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs game.
She told TMZ that she and her husband Ryan bought tickets to a game three days after her release from prison in hopes that she runs into Swift.
Blanchard also told the outlet that she intends to buy tickets for Swift’s October 2024 tour stop in New Orleans if she fails to meet the star.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released on Thursday, after serving eight years of a 10-year prison sentence for orchestrating the murder of her medically abusive mother
The felon has been released from Chillicothe Correctional Center in Chillicothe, Missouri, with prison officials attempting to keep the moment as low-key as possible by keeping the media away and not revealing when she will leave
Claudine ‘Dee Dee’ Blanchard (right) convinced her daughter Gypsy Rose (left) and others that she was suffering a variety of illnesses including leukemia and muscular dystrophy. The abuse continued for years, until Gypsy Rose ordered her mother’s murder to ‘escape’
She told TMZ that she refers to Swift as the ‘kick-ass chick’ who taught her the meaning of girl power, adding that she uses the commissary money her father sends her to buy every album released by the star.
The internet has seemingly backed her dreams, with an online petition encouraging Swift to meet Blanchard being posted online.
The petition, set up on December 22, reads: ‘Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s story is one of resilience and strength. Having endured years of abuse and hardships, she has become a symbol of survival for an entire generation.
‘Her journey has touched the hearts of many, including mine, and I believe that meeting her idol, Taylor Swift, would bring immense joy not only to her but also to countless others who have followed her story.’
She is also set to have a book that retells the difficult upbringing she had, detailing the physical and emotional abuse she suffered at her mother’s hands.
A press release, published by Penguin Random House, reads: ‘Gypsy saw her story told by others again and again in the media, from news reports and podcasts to TV series.
‘Now, granted early parole and preparing to start a new life, she’s free to speak directly to her supporters and the world.’
The book is set to be published in January 9.
Despite the international attention that Blanchard has enjoyed for several years, Missouri prison officials have ruled that no one was allowed on the premises when she was released from Chillicothe Correctional Center.
This decision meant there were be no cameras to capture the moment when she first tasted freedom, or fans to welcome her.
Although she has given interviews from behind bars, she will reportedly not be giving a statement or speaking to the media upon her release.
The stricter rules over the release reportedly came at Gypsy Rose’s request, with the felon reportedly already making a plan for where she will live.
Fears over the safety of prison staff have also led officials to keep the parking lot off limits for her release, as a large number of fans are expected to attempt to catch a glimpse of Gypsy Rose after growing obsessed with her bizarre story.
The teen is believed to have suffered one of the highest profile cases of Munchausen Syndrome, where her mom’s insistence that she suffered various made-up illnesses led her to undergo painful surgeries and take medications with adverse side effects.
Gypsy Rose ordered Godejohn, an autistic man she had met online three years prior, to murder her mom to ‘escape’ her control – which began when Gypsy was only three months old and her mother told doctors the infant was having trouble breathing.
She was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given breathing apparatus, the first of many instances where Dee Dee falsified her daughter’s ailments.
Because of her mother’s unyielding focus on Gypsy’s non-existent illnesses, she was forced to use a wheelchair from a young age, and Dee Dee told her family the child was suffering a chromosomal disorder that limited her movement.
Dee Dee once conned doctors into removing Gypsy Rose’s salivary glands, and was accused of a number of depraved lies including shaving her head to make it appear that she was suffering from leukemia
Dee Dee is believed to have suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, as she led people to believe that her daughter was terminally ill to enjoy praise as a doting mother along with perks such as charity-funded tickets to concerts and Disney World
Gypsy Rose (left) was handed a ten-year sentence for plotting to kill her mother, while her online boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn (right) was given a life sentence
In the subsequent years, the list of diseases and illnesses that Dee Dee told people her daughter suffered from included leukemia and muscular dystrophy, as she insisted to anyone speaking to her to remember she had the ‘mind of a seven-year-old.’
She would shave Gypsy Rose’s head to mimic the effects of leukemia, force her to use a wheelchair 24/7, sleep with a breathing machine, and even ordered the removal of her salivary glands.
Dee Dee was also accused of plying her daughter with certain medications to mimic symptoms, such as using a topical anesthetic to numb her gums to make her drool.
It was believed Dee Dee thrived on control over her daughter, and she had previously been ostracized from her family due to suspicions she killer her mother by withholding food.
At his trial, Godejohn’s lawyers described the killer as a ‘low-functioning person with autism’, who was ‘so in love with (Gypsy Rose) and so obsessed with her that he would do anything… and Gypsy knew that’
While many of Gypsy Rose’s disorders were entirely fictitious, Gypsy Rose’s frequent hospital visits saw her take an array of medications that severely hampered her health. In one instance, she was diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed Tegretol, which caused her teeth to fall out.
This also saw Dee Dee fit a feeding tube to her wheelchair, despite Gypsy Rose’s ability to eat and drink normally.
After years of abuse, Gypsy Rose schemed with Godejohn to rid herself of her mother, and the two believed they would only be able to be together if she was dead.
Shortly after their first encounter in 2015, the couple began to plan Dee Dee’s murder, fueled by Gypsy Rose’s confessions of the abuse she had suffered throughout her life.
She later told a Discovery ID documentary that the moment the plan formed came as the couple ‘were talking one night, and he said that he would do anything to protect me, and I asked him, ‘Anything?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’
‘From anybody?’ [I asked], he said ‘Yeah.’ ‘Even my mom?’ [I asked], he said ‘Yes.’ And that’s when this kind of plan started to develop [into] a murder plot.’
According to Fox4, she sent Godejohn money to help him travel from Wisconsin to her home in Missouri, and stole a knife from Walmart for him to use in the attack.
The twisted story was told in Hulu series ‘The Act’, with Dee Dee portrayed by Patricia Arquette (left) and Gypsy Rose played by Joey King (right)
Questions remain over Gypsy Rose’s culpability in her mother’s murder, amid claims she funded her killer boyfriend’s travel and provided him with the knife used in the 2015 slaying
Godejohn then arrived at the family home in Springfield in June 2015, however it is not clear the exact date of the attack as Dee Dee lay in a pool of her own blood for several days.
He was let into the home by Gypsy Rose after her mom had gone to sleep, and hid in the bathroom with her hands over her ears to mask the noise of the savage stabbing.
She told ABC News that she wanted her mom to die ‘not because I hated her… it was because I wanted to escape her.’
Dee Dee was found on the morning of June 14 2015 after being stabbed 17 times in her sleep by Godejohn.
Police were initially baffled by Gypsy Rose’s disappearance after her mother’s murder and believed she may have been abducted, however investigators quickly realized her home life may not have been as it first seemed.
Chilling Facebook posts announcing and celebrating Dee Dee’s death led investigators to Godejohn’s home in Big Bend, Wisconsin, and the two were subsequently arrested.
Now, while Gypsy Rose readies for freedom, her twisted story still raises eyebrows to this day, with Green County Sheriff Jim Arnott recently telling Ozarks First that he still has doubts about the case to this day.
‘From my perspective, she was the mastermind behind the murder of her mother,’ he said, feeling that the 10-year sentence she received, in response to a guilty plea, was too lenient for her role in her mother’s murder.
‘If she served the 85%, then it is what it is. She did her time,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of victims in this deal. And that’s not just Deedee and it’s not Gypsy. It’s the entire community.’