Gypsy Rose Blanchard Documentary: We Watched It, So You Don’t Have To

Summary:

• A Lifetime documentary about Gypsy Rose Blanchard, an accomplice in the murder of her mother Dee Dee, has premiered recently.
• Gypsy's mother had Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy – she kept her daughter in a wheelchair for years and assured everyone that Gypsy had a variety of serious illnesses, including cancer.
• In addition, at the age of nine, Gypsy was sexually abused by her grandfather, who told her not to talk about it.
• When Gypsy was declared mentally incompetent and Dee Dee took complete control of her life, the girl met the man who would later become her mother's killer.

In June 2015, all of America was outraged by the brutal murder of Dee Dee Blanchard. But the biggest concern was the fate of her disabled daughter, Gypsy Rose. The girl, confined to a wheelchair, disappeared, and authorities could only assume that the killer had kidnapped her.

But the reality was worse: Gypsy was found the next day, along with her boyfriend, who turned out to have killed Dee Dee. Public opinion began to shift in Gypsy's favor when the full details of the case became known: Dee Dee had kept her daughter in a wheelchair for years on the pretext of non-existent illnesses – the mother suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by proxy.

Gypsy Rose Was Recently Released from Prison

Eight years later, in December 2023, Gypsy was released from prison. All these years, the Lifetime channel recorded interviews with the girl – the documentary about the life of Gypsy Rose Blanchard (The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard) consists of six episodes, where she talks openly about her past.

In the movie, Gypsy admits that she perceived the sentence as a transfer from one prison, where her mother kept her, to another. But she also says that she felt a kind of freedom – in prison she could communicate with people as she wished.

Beginning of Dee Dee’s Illness

Gypsy describes how her mother's illness developed. When Gypsy was five, she fell off her motorcycle and scratched her leg. But Dee Dee took the scratch too seriously and brought a wheelchair for her daughter. At first, Gypsy took it as a game, but a week in the wheelchair turned into a month and then years.

Then Dee Dee started telling others that Gypsy had allergies, then shaved the girl's head, explaining that Gypsy's hair was falling out because of chemotherapy – Gypsy never had cancer, nor did she have any therapy.

Gypsy Rose Was a Victim of Sexual Assault

At the age of nine, another tragic incident occurred – one day, her grandfather took Gypsy out of her chair, took her down to the cellar and began to grope her body, asking her to touch him, and then forbade the girl to tell anyone about it.

One day, Gypsy's doctor noticed that the girl's medical records had three different birth years: 1991, 1993, and 1995, but thought there was some kind of mistake. In the documentary, a psychiatrist explains that Dee Dee did not want her daughter to grow up, so she changed her birth date to a later one in order to control her life completely.

When Gypsy learned that her mother had been granted power to manage her affairs, declaring her mentally incompetent, she realized that she could remain a prisoner of Dee Dee forever. It was then that she began making plans for a new escape, conspiring with her mother's future killer.

If you still want to watch the documentary yourself, you can check it out with Lifetime app, DirecTV Stream's free trial, Philo, or Hulu+ Live.

Source: The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard