All through her childhood, Dee Dee manipulated Gypsy and medical professionals into believing that her daughter had a mess of issues. As a method out, the now 32-year-old deliberate to homicide her mother together with her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. The plan was carried out in 2015.
Following the homicide, consultants started investigating Dee Dee Blanchard’s childhood and revealed some chilling particulars, just like how Gypsy Rose Blanchard grew up.
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The Notorious 2015 Homicide
Dee Dee Blanchard was murdered on June 14, 2015. Her daughter, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, conspired together with her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to kill her.
Gypsy had suffered years of abuse below her mom’s care, as Dee Dee, who labored as a nurse’s aide, had fabricated quite a few sicknesses and disabilities in her daughter, a situation often known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Gypsy and Godejohn deliberate the homicide collectively, with Godejohn touring to Dee Dee’s house in Springfield, Missouri. Whereas Gypsy hid within the toilet, Godejohn stabbed Dee Dee a number of instances, finally killing her.
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Inside Dee Dee Blanchard’s Childhood
In accordance with Gypsy’s uncle, Evans Pitre, Dee Dee Blanchard was their mother’s favourite. “She loved being the little princess,” he claimed one thing that resembles Gypsy’s childhood as she beloved Disney and sometimes dressed up as a princess.
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Each Suffered From Medical Issues At A Younger Age
One other chilling similarity between their childhoods — each had been identified with a dysfunction at a younger age. Pite mentioned his sister had a coronary heart murmur, and their mom stored her from “a number of stuff.”
“She would not have the ability to play exterior. Perhaps that is the place a part of Dee Dee acquired that, as a result of she was the sick child,” he informed producers.
That is just like how Dee Dee Blanchard handled her daughter, claiming she had sleep apnea when she was a child, and issues snowballed from there.
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Dee Dee Blanchard Used To Take Baths With Her Daughter
When recalling how shut she was together with her mother, Gypsy Rose Blanchard claimed they used to do “all the things” collectively.
“We used to take baths collectively. We used to sleep in the identical mattress collectively,” she mentioned within the Lifetime docuseries. “Once I hit puberty and I acquired my first interval, I used to be crying. I used to be freaking out, and he or she did not inform me about pads or tampons, she informed me to make use of diapers,” Gypsy claimed.
She was 13 years previous on the time.
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What Is Munchausen By Proxy?
After listening to Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s facet of the story, investigators consider Dee Dee Blanchard suffered from Munchausen by proxy, a psychological well being dysfunction wherein a caregiver, usually a mum or dad, fabricates, exaggerates, or induces medical issues in somebody below their care, usually a toddler, to realize consideration, sympathy, or different advantages. The caregiver presents the sufferer as in poor health, injured, or impaired, resulting in pointless and sometimes dangerous medical interventions.
Among the key traits of Munchausen by proxy embrace deception, attention-seeking, and frequent medical visits, all of which occurred to Gypsy.
For instance, the caregiver might intentionally mislead healthcare professionals concerning the sufferer’s well being standing and may very well trigger bodily hurt or sickness to the sufferer to assist their claims. On this case, Dee Dee was a nurse’s aide, which means she had information of medicines and their unintended effects.
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How Did Dee Dee Blanchard Persuade Medical doctors?
It’s believed Dee Dee Blanchard satisfied medical doctors of sure medical issues in order that she might administer medicine to create different signs, resulting in a mess of issues.
“I used to be simply as a lot at nighttime as a lot as everybody else,” Gypsy said within the 2017 documentary ‘Mommy Useless and Dearest’. “[The] solely factor I knew is that I might stroll. As for all the things else, the leukemia, the epilepsy, I used to be taking medicine that [Dee Dee] mentioned was most cancers medication.”
One other signal that the now 32-year-old was a sufferer of Munchausen by proxy is the variety of physician visits. Victims often have a historical past of quite a few hospitalizations, medical assessments, and procedures. On this case, over the course of 9 years, Dee Dee took Gypsy Rose to the hospital over 100 instances, per medical situations.