Gypsy Rose Blanchard — who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2016 for her connection to the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard — will be released early on parole in December.
On Thursday, the Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed that Blanchard will be released on Dec. 28 after serving time at the Chillicothe Correctional Center, three years before her original release date, reported local outlet Springfield News-Leader.
Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison after admitting she arranged for her boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn — whom she met on a Christian dating website — to kill her mother after enduring years of abuse.
Godejohn was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2019.
The 2015 murder of “Dee Dee” captured headlines and spurred numerous docs (including HBO’s Mommy Dead and Dearest) not simply because of its brutality — Blanchard was stabbed 17 times — but the motivation behind her murder. Gypsy and Godejohn were arrested at his home in Wisconsin days after her mother was found dead.
The years of secrets and lies that preceded Blanchard’s killing were revealed after the arrests. From a young age, Blanchard raised Gypsy to believe she was disabled and chronically ill, subjecting her to unnecessary surgeries and medications. Blanchard convinced family and friends that Gypsy had leukemia, muscular dystrophy, asthma and brain damage that limited her mental capacity to that of a seven-year-old. During this time, Blanchard collected donations from charities such as Habitat for Humanity, Ronald McDonald House and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Despite having full use of her legs, Gypsy was forced to be confined to a wheelchair from the age of eight. “I couldn’t just jump out of the wheelchair because I was afraid and I didn’t know what my mother would do,” Blanchard said in the 2018 Investigation Discovery documentary Gypsy’s Revenge. “I didn’t have anyone to trust.”
Numerous experts who have studied the case believe Blanchard had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental disorder in which a parent or other caretaker exaggerates, fabricates or induces illness in another person for attention and sympathy.
“I feel like I’m freer in prison, than with living with my mom,” said Gypsy in a previous 20/20 interview. “Because now, I’m allowed to … just live like a normal woman.”