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Gypsy Rose Blanchard Reveals How She Mourns Mom Dee Dee’s Death on Anniversary of Her Murder
On the ninth anniversary of the murder of Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, Gypsy Rose Blanchard revealed how she mourns her mother’s death this time of year.
“When June 9 comes around every year, I find myself in a very depressive state. It’s a hard day for me, the Louisiana native, 32, told E! News in an interview published on Sunday, June 9. “Some days, what I do is I listen to music, I listen to some of her favorite songs and I allow myself that time to grieve — and I do it privately because I don’t want to be judged.”
Gypsy also said that she finds comfort in her loved ones, especially boyfriend Ken Urker, to whom she was previously engaged from 2018 to 2019. The couple recently reunited after her split from estranged husband Ryan Anderson in March.
“Ken has done this with me a lot over the years,” Gypsy continued, noting that her annual ritual involves a prayer for her mom “and just thinking about the good times, the good things, kind of blocking out all of the negative and just honoring her memory in that way.”
Gypsy and her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, were arrested on June 15, 2015, after Dee Dee was found stabbed to death in her bedroom at the Blanchards’ Springfield, Missouri, home. It was believed that Dee Dee had Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSP), a mental disorder that caused her to fabricate Gypsy’s various medical issues and lie about her daughter’s age. Gypsy endured years of unnecessary and often painful medical treatments, and she claimed that her mother also physically abused her and kept her extremely isolated from the outside world. She and Nick, 34, carried out the murder as a way for her to escape the alleged abuse.
In 2016, Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, Nick was found guilty of first-degree murder for being a coconspirator to the crime in 2018 and later sentenced to life in prison without parole. Gypsy served roughly eight years at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri before she was released early on parole in December 2023.
The former inmate told E! that she’s “come to a level of forgiveness” with her mother.
“I would hope that wherever she is — I am a spiritual person, I am a religious person. So, I hope that she is in Heaven, and I hope that she can look down on me and see me as a woman who has grown from her circumstances. So hopefully that mutual forgiveness has happened,” Gypsy concluded.
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