Gypsy Rose Blanchard regrets conspiring to kill her mother. Ahead of her early release from prison, the 32-year-old tells People that asking her then-boyfriend, Nicholas "Nick" Godejohn, to kill her mother, Dee Dee, was a mistake.
"Nobody will ever hear me say I'm glad she's dead or I'm proud of what I did. I regret it every single day," Gypsy says. "... She didn't deserve that. She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn't educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior."
Dee Dee's 2015 murder came after she is believed to have inflicted years of abuse on Gypsy due to Munchausen by proxy, a rare disorder in which a guardian exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.
"I was desperate to get out of that situation," Gypsy says, before describing some of the abuse she says she suffered.
"Obviously I knew that I could walk and didn't need a feeding tube, but everything else was a really big confusion for me," Gypsy explains. "Whenever I'd question it my mother would say I'd had a seizure the night before and didn't remember. There was always an excuse."
When she would voice concerns about unnecessary procedures, Gypsy claims her mother "would get really, really upset with me and start manipulating me. She'd say, 'If you do well at the hospital then we're going to Toys 'R' Us to buy a new Barbie.'"
On top of that, Gypsy says she was "very sheltered" and largely cut off from her dad, stepmom and other people.
"I was limited in what I could watch and the exposure I had to other kids," Gypsy says. "What I knew of the outside world was only in Disney movies and those don't talk about warning signs of bad parents."
In addition to the medical abuse, Gypsy claims her mother would call her names including "b**ch, w**re, s**t" and would sometimes start "hitting, punching, slapping" her.
"It was very similar to a domestic violence type of relationship," Gypsy says. "As long as you're complacent everything's fine. Put your foot down, then it's bad."
After years of abuse, Gypsy asked Nick to kill Dee Dee ahead of another unneeded medical procedure.
"I just wasn't having it," Gypsy, who ran away before the scheduled procedure, says. "She found me, brought me back and put in place paperwork saying I was incompetent and she had power of attorney over me."
"I was trying really hard to figure out another way," she adds. "That's when there was a conversation between me and my co-defendant Nick. He said 'I would do anything to protect you.' I said, 'Anything?' He said 'Yes.'"
Nick proceeded to kill Dee Dee in her home while Gypsy waited in the bathroom. He was sentenced to life in prison, while Gypsy received a 10-year sentence for her part in the crime.
"If I had another chance to redo everything, I don't know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I'm not sick and mommy makes me sick, or if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, 'You know what, I'm going to go tell the police everything,'" Gypsy says. "I kind of struggle with that."
Gypsy recounts all that and more in Lifetime's docuseries, The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, which will premiere Jan. 5.
"I want to make sure that people in abusive relationships do not resort to murder," she says. "It may seem like every avenue is closed off but there is always another way. Do anything, but don't take this course of action."
Now, Gypsy, who is scheduled to get an early release from prison on Dec. 28, says she's looking forward to joining her husband, Ryan Anderson, whom she wed in a 2022 prison ceremony, as well as her dad and stepmom.
"I'm on the eve of happiness," she says. "It's a journey. I'm still really trying to come to a place of forgiveness for her, for myself and the situation. I still love my mom. And I'm starting to understand that it was something that was maybe out of her control, like an addict with an impulse. That helps me with coping and accepting what happened."
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