Growing up, DeeDee's family would say she was weird. She would steal, petty theft and a bad history of lying. She always seemed very manipulative. At some point in DeeDee’s early life, she would work as a nurse’s aide. And when DeeDee’s mother was sick, she took care of her and it would be later on that the family become suspicious that DeeDee was actually responsible for their mother’s death. The family believed that DeeDee was poisoning their mother and also would deny her food but they didn’t have much evidence to make DeeDee guilty. When DeeDee was 24 she ended up getting pregnant by a guy named Rod, he was 17 years old. Later, Rod and DeeDee decide to get married because they thought it was the right thing to do at that time. Shortly after Gypsy's birth in July of 1991, that’s when the couple decided to separate. Rod was reporting saying that he got married for all the wrong reasons. So once the marriage ended DeeDee took Gypsy Rose and they moved in with DeeDee’s father and her stepmother. At three months old, is when DeeDee expressed that she believed Gypsy had sleep apnea and she began taking her to the hospital where they had overnight stays with a sleep monitor. It became very frequent that they were at the hospital a lot. 

     Who is Gypsy Rose Blanchard? Gypsy Rose was a young girl born July 27th, 1991. She suffered from leukemia, asthma and MS. According to Gypsy mom, Clauddine Blanchard ``DeeDee'' she had the mental capacity of a seven year old girl. Gypsy had a black electric wheelchair, she had a feeding tube through her nose touching her stomach to keep food down. At night she would sleep with an oxygen mask because she had a history of not breathing in her sleep. When she was staying at the hospital for the sleep apnea, they concluded that she did not have this condition. DeeDee stood by the fact that something was wrong with Gypsy.

     Dee Dee told everyone that she needed a wheelchair that she couldn’t walk. Gypsy stopped going to school in 2nd grade. And Dee Dee began homeschooling Gypsy because her illnesses were so severe that she couldn’t go to school. At this time Dee Dee and Gypsy were living with Dee Dee’s father and stepmother. And during that time Dee Dee would make meals for their stepmother. Later her stepmother started getting really ill. During the time Dee Dee was living with the family she got arrested for some minor things, one of them including writing bad checks. The family became suspicious, when Dee Dee was arrested the stepmother wasn’t ill, they suspected that Dee Dee was poisoning their stepmom with a roundup weed killer. The family confronts Dee Dee and she moves out with Gypsy to Slidell. They lived in public housing and paid their bills with public assistance Dee Dee had been granted due to her daughter’s supposed medical conditions and also from Rod’s child support payments of $1,200 monthly. 

     In 2005 hurricane Katrina hit, Dee Dee and Gypsy lost everything. Their apartment was completely ruined. Dee Dee later said that Gypsy’s medical records had been destroyed in the flooding. They were staying in a shelter that took in individuals with special needs. A doctor recommended that Dee Dee and Gypsy to move to Missouri to see more experienced doctors specializing in Gypsy’s needs. Later they end up moving to Missouri. In 2008 Habitat for Humanity built them a small home, and this home had a wheelchair ramp, hot tub and handicap needs. This instantly caught the media's attention because she was a single mother of this handicap child who suffered so many different illnesses, they lost everything in Katrina and it turned into a very big deal. It also brought in more charities to help them out such as free flights to different doctor appointments, trips to Walt Disney World and backstage passes to concerts. Gypsy’s dad, Rod would also call her from time to time and try to speak with her, he would send gifts but Dee Dee was pretty controlling. Dee Dee did not want a relationship between Gypsy and Rod to happen. There’s one instance where Rod had called  for Gypsy’s 18th birthday. Dee Dee picked up the phone and Rod said, “I just want to wish Gypsy a happy 18th birthday.” Dee Dee told Rod, “Don’t tell her that she’s 18, because she thinks she is 14.” Rod thought that this was strange but Dee Dee was constantly telling everybody that Gypsy had the mental capacity of a 7-year old. Because Rod wasn’t really involved in Gypsy's life because of Dee Dee he just had to be okay with it. Dee Dee would tell neighbors and Gypsy that Rod was a drug addict, abusive and an alcoholic and that he never sent money. Her mother would shave Gypsy’s head to make it look like she was a chemo patient. When they would leave the house Dee Dee would bring an oxygen tank and a feeding tube everywhere they went.

     Gypsy would be reported to say if she ever mentioned to her mom that she was not really that sick or she felt fine, that Dee Dee would give her hand a really tight squeeze which let Gypsy know to shut up. Gypsy would also say when they were alone Dee Dee would strike her with an open hand or a coat hanger. Finally they go see a neurologist and he becomes suspicious of the MS diagnosis that supposedly Gypsy had. He ordered MRI’s  and blood scans and he later ended up finding no abnormalities. So, nothing wrong with Gypsy. And he asked Dee Dee, “Why can’t she walk? She seems to have muscle in her legs.” And when the doctor brought this up to Dee Dee it made her upset to say the least. She left and she never went back to that doctor again. It made the doctor suspicious so he asked Dee Dee for some background records. But she responds with, “Oh we lost everything in Katrina we don’t have anything.” He began to make calls to Gypsy’s previous doctors and the test these doctors had run also, the MS was proven to be not a thing and the test showed that nothing was wrong with Gypsy. The doctor ends up writing in Gypsy’s report that he believes Gypsy does not have MS or any type of illness that he can find. The doctor believes Munchausen syndrome by proxy. When the doctor talked to Gypsy’s previous doctors he said something was off, and Gypsy’s previous doctors told him to give up the suspicion because they’ve been in and out of the hospital for years. They were just a highly respected family that nobody believed in.

    An anonymous person called the police and told detectives that Dee Dee was mistreating Gypsy, that she wasn’t sick, that Dee Dee was using different names and birth dates for herself and her daughter. They suggested that Gypsy was in better health than they claimed. Officers who perform a wellness check accepted Dee Dee’s explanation that she used the misinformation to make it harder for her abusive ex-husband to find her and Gypsy. 

     In 2010, Gypsy would use the computer when her mom went to bed. The internet was the only way for Gypsy to escape and she became curious about boys, dating and sex. Eventually Gypsy came around to dating websites where you can meet people of the opposite sex. One night when Dee Dee went to bed Gypsy was on a Christian dating site and that's when she met Nicholas. They were the same age, about 18. Nicholas had some issues of his own, he had a criminal record for indecent exposure and 3 mental illnesses, his family said that he was autistic as well. Next door to Gypsy and Dee Dee was a woman and her daughter living there. Her daughter was 25 years old and would occasionally go out and talk to Gypsy. Gypsy would consider her to be her older sister and she ended up confiding in her by telling the neighbor and saying that she met this guy online and she was gonna marry him. On the other hand, Dee Dee didn’t like her and didn’t want Gypsy hanging out with her or anybody.          Gypsy and Nick ended up having their own secret facebook accounts and on the account they would share messages. This is where Nick introduces Gypsy to BDSM. He was really into BDSM and would tell Gypsy he had multiple personalities. Nick would role play and she Gypsy just went along with it.

    Eventually Gypsy wanted to meet Nick in person versus just communicating through messages. They came up with a plan to meet up at the movie theater. So Gypsy sent Nick money, and the plan was to have a run-in at the movie theater. Nick was going to show up at the movie theater alone, Gypsy was going to strike up the conversation as if she didn’t know who he was and then invite him to sit with Dee Dee and Gypsy at the theater. Gypsy and Dee Dee walk in with each other and Nick goes alone and they have this run-in and Gypsy invites Nick to sit with them and Dee Dee doesn’t like it. She asks Gypsy, “Who is this guy?” She responds,”He’s just a stranger that looks like he needs a friend.” It was later said that Nick and Gypsy snuck in the bathroom to have sex for the first time in a bathroom stall.

     From this day forward Gypsy knew in her heart she wanted out from Dee Dee but she just didn’t know how. Gypsy began to tell Nick the trauma she had to live through and Nick asked Gypsy, “Do you want me to kill her?” Gypsy never really went along with it.

    One night Gypsy and her mom Dee Dee get into a fight and Gypsy ends up messaging Nick saying, “Okay I want to do it. I want you to kill my mom.” So they came up with a plan for Nick to kill Dee Dee so Gypsy could be free. So Nick came down to Gypsy and Dee Dee’s home. Gypsy was messaging Nick, saying, “I have duck tape, gloves and a knife for you.” And to “Be quiet, that front door is squeaky.” Nick would tell her to hide into the bathroom and cover her ears so that she wouldn’t have to witness her mom dying. Nick ends up going into Dee Dee’s bedroom when she’s asleep. Dee Dee wakes up, she yells for Gypsy and then he stabs her over 12 times. Gypsy reports that she heard her mom screaming, that she yelled her name. So once he kills Dee Dee, they go back to Gypsy’s bedroom and have sex, Gypsy would say it was forced. 

     They took about $4,000 in cash that Dee Dee had stashed and they left and stayed at a motel. After that night they took a Greyhound Bus and headed out to Nick’s home in Wisconsin. They were going to stay at his house with his family. Nick told his family that Gypsy was homeless, and that she was being abused. On the afternoon of June 14th, Gypsy told Nick to use his phone to post two updates to Dee Dee’s Facebook. Gypsy wanted somebody to discover the body, because at that point it'd been a couple of days  and they hadn’t heard anything about a body being found. And Gypsy was feeling kind of guilty that her mom was there and nobody found her. So Nick posted, “That b*tch is dead!” Obviously people and her friends on facebook are replying, “What are you talking about?”, “What’s going on?” Nick posted something again in the comment section saying, “The b*tch is dead and I raped her daughter.” This made people extremely worried. The next door neighbor and the daughter of the neighbor went over to the house and knocked at the door and got no answer. They were trying to look through the window but they had a dark film on it so no one could see in the house. They began looking for windows around the house and they found an open one and went inside. They called 911 before entering the home. When they walked inside, it looked undisturbed, nothing was out of the ordinary. One major thing they noticed was how Gypsy’s black wheel chair was still there but there was no Gypsy. When police arrived they got a search warrant and immediately went inside the house. As they approached Dee Dee’s bedroom they see her dead body lying on the floor. The police believe that they came to kill Dee Dee and take Gypsy. This put everybody in a panic because she has no wheelchair and she is on a lot of medication. When the police were there the next door neighbor’s daughter pulled the police aside and told the police, “Hey, I know about Gypsy having a secret Facebook account and she also had a boyfriend.” Based on that information when police went to the facebook page from Dee Dee’s posts they were able to track an IP address. The IP address gives away your phone number, location and time you posted. It linked to Missouri and where Nick was at. The next day, police go to the home and both Gypsy and NIck surrender themselves to police. Police then take Nick and Gypsy back to their home and have a big welcoming for them because people are thinking, “Yay? They found Gypsy, she’s not dead.” 

     But then the police do a press release summing up to not donate your money to the GoFundMe account. It's a scam. So the media soon reported the truth behind Dee Dee and Gypsy. That Gypsy had never been sick, and she was always able to walk, and that her mother was making Gypsy pretend otherwise. This news was shocking to the entire world. Both Nick and Gyspy were taken to be questioned , Nick spilled everything to detectives saying, “Gypsy asked me to kill her mom. It was the only way for Gypsy to get out.” But he stood by the fact that it was Gyspy’s idea, that he did it but it was mainly because of Gypsy. In Gypsy’s interview she sat there and detectives tell her, “You know your mom has been found dead?” And Gypsy just starts pretending to cry trying to be shocked like she had no idea. Eventually the person questioning her says, “You know you’re a part of this, Nick already spilled the beans. Just tell us what happened.” Gypsy begins to talk about how Dee Dee has been abusing her, she’s not really sick, she can walk and it was NIck’s idea to kill Dee Dee and she had nothing to do with it. They both end up going to prison with a million dollar bond.