All language subtitles for 1confessions gipsy

(door buzzing)

- [Interviewer] Have a seat.

Grab the mic.

Do you know, you
know how to do it.

- Yes.
- All right.

- I'm just gonna set
that- How are you guys?

- [Interviewer] Good, good.

How are you feeling today?

- Nervous.

Okay.

I'm ready.

I remember my mom said,

"Happy endings are not just in
fairy tales, they're real."

My mother controlled
everything I did.

I was forced to
use a wheelchair.

She started telling
people that I had cancer.

But none of it was true.

There was also lot of
emotional and physical abuse.

I started to feel like
it was either her or me.

- [Reporter] Dee Dee
Blanchard's death was violent.

- And that's when I hear
her calling my name.

"Gypsy, help me."

- [Reporter] Her daughter,
Gypsy Blanchard,

and her boyfriend are now
jailed on first degree murder.

- I played a part in asking him

to commit the murder, that
is why I'm in prison.

I've had six years to
feel those emotions,

and there's things that
I've kept so private.

The reason why I wanna
talk about it now

is because I want to be free

of all these disturbing secrets.

The first time I
tried to run away,

she chained me to the bed.

And before I knew it,
I pulled the trigger.

She never wanted me to
find love or be happy.

I'm sorry. (sniffles)

But I am engaged.

(moody rock music)

Today is the day before
my parole hearing,

and I will finally
share my story

the way that it
should be shared.

♪ No, you can never
take my soul ♪

(birds chirping)

(door buzzing)

- [Interviewer] Your
hair's getting longer.

- I know. (laughs)

I didn't know how I was
gonna wear it today, so.

Okay.

- [Interviewer] I'll
let you settle in.

- [Gypsy] Okay.

- [Interviewer] It's
good to see you.

- And please get some
flattering angles.

I have gained some
weight, so. (laughs)

I have a little
double chin going on.

(gentle music)

Well, ever since I came
to prison, the end goal,

the goal of everything
that I have done

within this facility
was to get paroled.

(tense music)

Today is the day before
my parole hearing

and I'm feeling anxious.

I'm feeling nervous.

I don't have another
shot after this.

I don't have multiple
parole hearings.

It's the one and done.

It is very scary.

It's very frightening. (laughs)

Tomorrow's parole
hearing is a big deal

because it determines my fate.

If I get paroled,

the parole date would
be at the end of 2023.

If I don't get paroled,
then I will be released

at the end of my
10 years, in 2025.

Not getting paroled,

it would take a
toll on my emotions.

I'll be crushed.

To be quite honest, I'm
preparing for the worst,

but I'm hoping for the best.

As I understand it,

the parole board is going
to ask me questions,

certain questions
about my crime.

- [Reporter] 48 year old
Dee Dee Blanchard's body

was found in her house
late Sunday night.

The sheriff isn't
saying how she died,

but has said her
death was violent.

- [Reporter] Her daughter,
23-year-old Gypsy Blanchard,

was located during
a police standoff.

- [Officer] Your
mom's dead, okay?

What I want to ask you-
- [Gypsy] Wait, what?

- [Officer] Listen to me
before you say a whole lot.

Do not dig yourself
in a bunch of lies.

So, I want to know, okay, why?

- [Gypsy] Oh God.
(whispering)

- I'm sorry that I lied
to you from the beginning.

I'll tell you the truth.

I feel worried because
there are things

that the board will ask me,

and I want to give
genuine answers,

but they might not
particularly care

for the fact that I will mention

the abuse that I suffered
at the hands of my mother.

(tense music)

- [Producer] Kristy
interview, take one, mark.

(clapperboard clicks)

- My name is Kristy Blanchard.

I am the stepmother of
Gypsy Rose Blanchard.

Gypsy probably
doesn't even remember

hardly a time where she
wasn't under lock and key,

I'll say, like a prison.

Gypsy was Dee Dee's daughter,
but also her prisoner.

- [Interviewer] Before
you were in jail,

had you ever heard the term,
"Munchausen by proxy" before?

- No, I had never heard of
Munchausen by proxy before.

(tense music)

From a very young age,

my mother had claimed that I had

seizure disorders,
hearing impairment.

I was forced to
use a wheelchair.

And as I got older, she
started shaving my hair off

and telling people
that I had cancer.

And with all these
assumed illnesses,

doctors is what I knew,

hospitals is what I knew,
surgeries is what I knew.

There was no end in sight.

- As far as we know,

Gypsy Blanchard is the
only documented case

of a victim of Munchausen
syndrome by proxy

who has killed their
perpetrator to get out.

That should tell all of us

how desperate Gypsy was
to escape her mother.

- [Dee Dee] You wanna
blow me a kiss?

I love you.

- [Producer] Okay,
Rod interview.

Take one, mark.
(clapperboard clicks)

- [Rod] My name
is Rod Blanchard.

As Gypsy's father, one of
the bigger regrets I have

is not making her feel that

she could come to
me with a problem.

- [Clerk] State of Wisconsin
versus Gypsy Blanchard.

Case number 50-

- I definitely failed
in that department.

Felt terribly sad, you know,

for what she had been
through, what she had to face.

Couldn't imagine how
she felt being so alone.

(tense music)

There you go.

- Thank you.

This was Gypsy in 2005,

and you know, she
could have been running

and having this and doing this,

and no, she was in a wheelchair.

- Now that Dee Dee's gone,

I have a completely
fresh start with Gypsy.

If, you know, if she makes
parole and she's released,

I think that's important
that, you know,

she can have some level of
trust when she gets out.

She knows she can talk to me.

- How did you plead
to the class A felony

of murder in the second degree?

- A lot of people
will argue that

Gypsy is in prison
because of what she did.

To me, that's a very narrow
view of what happened.

I'm Mike Stanfield and
I was the lead counsel

on the Gypsy Blanchard case.

- Be the judgment and
sentence of the court

that you be
sentenced to 10 years

in the Missouri
Department of Corrections.

- It's important for
people to realize

Gypsy didn't choose
to be abused.

She didn't choose to be
somebody else's pawn.

And while yes, she was
involved in the murder,

she just went from
one prison to another.

- The parole board doesn't
know me on a personal level.

They just know what
they've read about my case.

- We have unearthed
the appearance

of a long financial
fraud scheme,

along with this tragic event.

- [Reporter] Deception
down to Dee Dee

and Gypsy's last name.

- [Interviewee] Her last
name is not Blancharde.

It's Blanchard with no E.

- I'm going to feel pressure

to give them what
they want to hear.

My mother taught me how
to lie and manipulate,

but that doesn't
make me who I am,

and I can learn
to tell the truth.

I'm just as flawed
as the next person.

I've made mistakes in my life.

I've made bad choices.

But once the parole board knows
the things that they don't know,

it'll make them understand
a little bit better

who I am and why
I did what I did.

(tense music)

- [Gypsy] When I
first got arrested,

I will admit that I
had a lack of remorse.

It wasn't until even years later
that I began to miss my mother

and begin to understand
that she's not coming back.

- I think that she
loved me in her own way.

I think when she
had me, she loved me

and I think as a
child, she loved me,

but I don't think that
she too much cared

for whenever I'd grow up.

(tense music)

- Here's Gypsy and her mom.

I find she looks like Rod,

especially when she
was a little blonde.

This is one of their
wedding photos.

- Wow, that's a long time ago.

I started getting emotional
and just going down

this emotional
rollercoaster and just,

I wish it would've
been different.

You know, we were only
dating three months

when Dee Dee told
me she was pregnant.

I was 17 years old,

and I think she
told me she was 21.

She was actually 23.

I felt that it was
important to get married,

but I woke up three months
later on my 18th birthday,

and it just kind of
hit me like, you know,

you're married here to a woman
you're not in love with.

I said, "Dee Dee, I'm sorry.

I'll always try to
be there as a father,

but as a husband," I
said, "I don't feel that."

She grabbed our
marriage license,

it was in a frame, and
threw it on the ground.

- I know that the
most devastating

failure to her was
losing my father.

My mother blamed me for
them getting a divorce

because I wasn't the
son that he wanted.

I'm like, thinking in my mind,

how are you blaming
me for something

that happened before I was born?

(gentle music)

- Gypsy was born, she was a
cute little baby, you know.

She was tiny, but
healthy and happy.

She really looked like me.

I thought, well, you
know, that's my child.

After Gypsy was born,
to make ends meet,

I was gone a lot, working.

So there wasn't much
room for anybody else.

I remember when Gypsy was
three or four months old,

Dee Dee told me she would like
stop breathing in her sleep.

She had her tested and
she had sleep apnea.

(tool whirring)

- Gypsy was six months old
when I started dating her dad

and by the time Gypsy
was around a year old,

she had sleep apnea
and then her eyesight,

which she did have an
extremely lazy eye.

(tense music)

- Okay. Wow.

Endocrine, neurology.

Ophthalmology,
allergy, immunology.

I've never seen any
of this information,

and I saw her a lot.

(tense music)

I'm Dr. Rob Steele,

and I became Gypsy's
pediatrician back in 2005.

She was 14 at the time,

but Dee Dee never
had or could show me

any of Gypsy's previous
medical records.

If I had seen any
of this earlier on,

I just think a lot of things
would've been different.

I've only had a
little opportunity

to kind of run through them,

but when I looked in her
earlier medical records,

Gypsy had strabismus
as an infant,

which is when one
eye or both wander,

and over time you go blind.

So you have to have surgery
to correct the problem.

- [Producer] So we don't have
all of your medical documents,

Gypsy, but the ones
that we do have

show that your first surgery

was before you were
even a year old.

- [Gypsy] I didn't
even know that

I had a surgery
before I was even one.

But there's a lot of things that

I don't know about my
medical history at all.

I've had issues
with my right eye

throughout the
course of my life,

and so I do know
there's a real problem.

- When you look at
Munchausen by proxy,

you often see that
there was an encounter

to address a real
need with the child.

But in doing so, Dee
Dee gained attention

from having a child
that could go blind.

That could have been the start

of Dee Dee's
Munchausen by proxy.

- My name's Evans Pitre
and I am Gypsy's uncle,

which Dee Dee was
my younger sister.

Dee Dee was smart.

She was the nurse's assistant,

and she would look
up the disease

and kind of say, "Hey, maybe
Gypsy does have that."

But it's like, we
would never see it.

We would only hear it about

through what Dee Dee was
telling us, you know.

- Dee Dee suggested that
Gypsy had muscular dystrophy

and that she had a
seizure disorder,

and was on a medication
for that seizure disorder.

- [Dee Dee] Hey, Gypsy.

Are you ready to go to school?

- When Gypsy was old
enough to attend school,

she was excited.

- [Dee Dee] Ready to go, okay?

Wave bye-bye to me.

- I don't even think
she went the whole year.

And Dee Dee had
told me the reason

why she pulled her out

was because she was scared

they wouldn't give her
her medication, right?

- She was supposedly
being taught by her mom,

the homeschooling, which
was never the case.

Then one day, my mother
walked into the room

and she had a
wheelchair with her,

and very bluntly told me

to use the wheelchair.

I didn't understand
her reasonings,

but I trusted her.

She was my best friend,
and I loved her,

and I never
questioned as a child.

Now looking back on it,

I wish that I stood
up for myself more.

But people don't know that

there was a lot
of emotional abuse

attached with the medical abuse,

and they don't know how far
back she was doing this to me.

- [Gypsy] Since walking
into Chillicothe prison,

I think my biggest
changes as a person

has been my maturity
level. (laughs)

I thought everything
was just fun,

and I think that was
part of experiencing

more freedom than
I ever had before.

I understand how ironic that is,

but from the time
that I was born,

my mother controlled
everything I did.

(tense music)

(gentle upbeat music)

- My name is Bobby Pitre.

My cousin is Gypsy
Rose Blanchard,

and my aunt was
Dee Dee Blanchard.

For Dee Dee, Gypsy getting
into the wheelchair

was a graduation from like,

wrapping her knee with a
bandage for a basic scrape

to let's see how far
I could take this.

And we all would knew

it was a bunch of
bull (beep), you know?

If there was things that

I would do that
she wouldn't like,

she would favor the cat over me.

She would love on the cat

and then she would just like
look at me with this snarl.

(gentle music)

- This one time we was having
like, a birthday party,

and Dee Dee had
went to the store

and all the kids was, you know,

jumping on the trampoline
and Gypsy said,

"Can I go jump on
the trampoline?"

We said, "Sure."

So she was jumping with
all the other kids.

But when her mom pulled up,

she dropped like a wet rag,

and it's like, what happened?

- It's not uncommon
to see a child

who's in a Munchausen
abuse situation

to just flip on a dime.

When they're with their mother,

they look really sick,
they play the part,

but then as soon
as mother leaves,

all of a sudden the kid
is perfectly normal.

- Dee Dee came out
and was pissed.

She was screaming, "Don't
you know she's crippled?"

And I said, "We all
seen different."

Dee Dee pulled her
off of the trampoline,

put her in her wheelchair
and rolled her in the house

for the rest of
the day, you know.

- We had heard from
some of her family

that Gypsy could walk.

I was confused.

But the relationship
that Dee Dee allowed

Gypsy and I to have
was so fragile that,

you know, I didn't do my due
diligence like I should have.

- We tried and tried and tried,
you know, to be more involved.

We would call her and ask her
what you want for Christmas,

what you want for your birthday.

Gypsy would say,
"Nothing but love."

Then, you know, Dee Dee
would get on the phone

and she would say, "Oh,
Disney this, Disney that.

Princess this, princess that."

(swelling orchestral music)

- I grew up on this
Disney fairytale,

love at first sight notion.

I remember many times hoping

for like, a knight
in shining armor

to make me feel
like I was special.

(gentle music)

- During that time,
Gypsy's grandma,

who was also my mom,

was a very sickly person

and after my mom passed,

Dee Dee's world
came crumbling down.

- Dee Dee moved out of
my grandmother's house

and into projects
all over the place,

and we didn't know if
she was here or there,

or where she was.

She just seemed to
bounce, you know.

- There was a active
warrant out for her arrest

in Lafourche Parish
for writing bad checks.

- She had maxed out two
of my mom's credit cards

after my mom had been
dead for over a year.

So Dee Dee was devious,

and she knew how to
get away with things.

But if she done got caught,

she knew she had to run away.

- When Gypsy and Dee
Dee started moving,

I was visiting, you know,
three or four times a year.

But the further away they moved

from Bayou Lafourche
where we live,

the visit intervals got
further apart as well.

- At that age, I really
didn't understand

why my mother was moving us

from place to place to place,

or why at certain times we
didn't have a place to live.

But it really kind of showed me

that all I really had in
my life was my mother.

(soft tense music)

Since my incarceration,
I am finally free

to build relationships
and friendships.

The best memory that I
have in my entire life

is the day that I got to prison,

and I got to go out
to the picnic tables,

and I'm like, I'm free.

I'm free to have friends.

I'm free to do what I want.

It might be in a
controlled environment,

but this is nice. (laughs)

- [Interviewer]
You're making me cry.

- It's the truth.

It's such a good
memory. (laughs)

- [Interviewer] Wow, wait.

(gentle music)

- When Gypsy was around eight,

Dee Dee had called
Wendy and said

they were in New Orleans.

But that she had some
news to tell us,

and I remember my heart sinking.

(tense music)

- [Gypsy] If I get paroled,
when I leave this prison,

I don't expect it to be easy,

but I think that's
part of the experience

is feeling the hard times,

learning by trial and error.

It's how I learn.

It's how I grow,
it's how I evolved.

(gentle whistling)

- When Gypsy was around eight,
Dee Dee had called one day

and said she was
diagnosed with leukemia.

Like, this poor girl.

She has all of these
illnesses and then has this.

- Honestly, I really didn't
know what cancer was,

but I was going through
so many medications

and surgeries that I
didn't question it.

- Most of the family felt
that it was not real.

You know, it's kind of
like the wheelchair.

But then Dee Dee was
shaving Gypsy's head,

and seeing that the medicine
is making her hair fall out,

so you really didn't
know what was going on.

- Of course, it was years
before we found out that,

you know, she didn't
have leukemia.

That it wasn't true.

That all of it was a lie.

- Munchausen by
proxy perpetrators

go to the ends of
the Earth to maintain

the charade of
having a sick child.

(gentle music)

- Feeding tube. (sighs)

Wow.

After looking at
the medical records,

apparently Dee Dee had suggested
to different doctors that

Gypsy was not getting
enough calories

to allow her to gain
weight, meaning by mouth,

which is just wild because
all of that was a lie.

- [Producer] The
documents that we saw,

Gypsy, said that you
have a fear of eating.

- [Gypsy] That's ridiculous.

Is that something
like my mom said?

- [Producer] Yes.

- [Gypsy] Wow.

No, I never had
a fear of eating.

- Regardless of
what Dee Dee said,

it's a doctor's
job to figure out

what's real and what's not,

and that was not done for Gypsy.

But unfortunately,
the decision was made

to have a surgical procedure

to put a hole into her skin,

down to her stomach
in order to feed.

- [Gypsy] My mom used
to try to make things

that were being done to me fun,

and so like the feeding tube's
name was Mickey Button,

and so she came up with a song.

It went like this.

♪ Mickey Button

♪ M-I-C-K-E-Y

♪ B-O-T-T-O-N

♪ Mickey button

♪ Mickey button

- We find feeding tubes
such a common aspect

of Munchhausen
syndrome by proxy,

because a feeding
tube gives a parent

almost unlimited control

to poison and medicate,

starve and feed their kid.

- I don't believe that

there is a single
rational human being

on the planet that
would not agree

that what Dee Dee did to Gypsy

was one of the most
egregious forms

of parental abuse
you can imagine.

(tense music)

- At one point, Gypsy and
Dee Dee were in New Orleans

and they got in a car accident,

and Dee Dee's foot was
almost severed off.

So while Dee Dee was
recovering in the hospital,

Dee Dee's dad, Claude, brought
Gypsy home to Golden Meadow.

- It was hard because I wanted
to go to my mom in the hospital,

but I had a pretty close
bond with my grandpa.

Then one day, it just
seemed to change.

I didn't imagine that my life

was gonna get darker
than what it already was.

(tense music)

(tense music)

- [Gypsy] Here in prison, I
think I've only scratched

the surface of realizing

how much trauma I
have been through,

and accepting the fact
that it did happen.

I have taken a
trauma therapy class.

However, I'm not getting

as much therapy as I
would hope to have.

Therapy is something that

I find is essential
to my betterment.

(gentle guitar music)

When I was living
with my grandpa

and my step-grandmother, Laura,

things changed in
my life forever.

I was being sexually
abused, molested.

(tense music)

My grandpa would take
me out of my wheelchair

and bring me into a closet

or the shack that was
back behind their house

where he would do woodworking,

and he would perform
sexual acts on me.

He would make me touch him.

He would touch me.

(crows cawing)

At nine, I don't think that
I knew that it was wrong,

but then my grandfather
told me not to tell anyone.

He's like, "You don't want
papa to go to jail, do you?"

I didn't want him
to get in trouble,

so I just kept quiet.

- Years later, after
she got to prison,

Gypsy and I were on
the phone and she said,

"My grandfather,
Claude, molested me."

And I went to fall out my chair.

To take the innocence away
from a child is horrible.

And I told her, I
said, "I love you

and I'm always gonna love you.

I support you."

- Kristy has been the mom

that I always wanted to have,

and honestly, I
can't imagine my life

without her now 'cause she's
just been that supportive.

The abuse was not something that

I wanted to come forward
with publicly, you know,

because I just wasn't
ready for that.

But I feel like releasing

all of that out would be
very therapeutic for me.

- [Interviewer]
Gypsy told us that

there may have been some abuse
that went on in this house.

- [Interviewer]
With you and Gypsy.

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

- [Interviewer] So
that's not true at all?

- [Interviewer] Why
do you think Gypsy

would say that if it's-

- [Producer] So, we talked

to your grandpa
Claude about this.

He said that he absolutely
did not sexually abuse you.

- [Gypsy] Wooow.

- [Producer] He said, you
as a really young girl,

would try and touch him,

and he would have
to tell you no.

- [Gypsy] That just
like confirms that like,

I want nothing to do with him.

Like, I would've had more
forgiveness in my heart

had he just told the truth.

- No, I don't think
that happened.

I think that was just
probably taught to her

by her mom for the attention,

to throw the spotlight on
somebody else besides her.

- [Gypsy] There is no part of me

that questions if
this happened or not.

This 100% happened,

and he can take it to his
grave if he wants to,

but the one person that
is not gonna visit him

at his grave is me.

(gentle music)

- [Gypsy] When
people tell me that,

"You're gonna need therapy
the rest of your life,"

you know, I laugh it off,

but I really do
understand what they mean.

I know that they're
not calling me crazy,

but I understand that
it's going to take

years to undo a lot of
the psychological trauma.

♪ Hush-a-bye

♪ Don't you cry

♪ Go to sleep my little baby

- [Gypsy] When my mom came
home from the hospital,

I wish that I could
have been brave enough

to tell my mom what was going on

with my grandpa while
it was going on,

but she was too badly injured

to physically protect me.

Instead, a good year later,

I finally started to tell
my mom a little bit,

but she started to
cry and blame herself.

So I just clammed up
and nobody ever knew.

(gentle music)

- People come in here
and inquire about Gypsy,

what's going on with her
and when she's getting out

because a lot of
people are on her side.

A lot of people feel
like, you know,

she was wrongly
done by her mom,

and I definitely feel
that, you know, 100%.

Gypsy got robbed her whole life

by the one person
she looked up to.

It was like the movie
"Mommie Dearest" to the max.

A sick, I mean, "Mommie
Dearest" was sick,

but Dee Dee was sicker.

(church bells ringing)

About a year after
my grandmother died,

my grandfather got
married to Laura May.

Dee Dee was very upset
about that happening.

She felt like my grandmother
was being replaced

by this woman that
she probably hated.

- Dee Dee had a vengeful side.

If she wanted to do
something to you,

she went for the jugular.

- So after Dee Dee
got out the hospital,

her and Gypsy were staying
at my grandfather's house,

and one day my grandfather
and Gypsy were hanging out

and Gypsy sees the
Roundup in the corner

and she tells my grandfather,
"Oh, that's the vitamins

that mom gives to
grandma Laura May."

And he's like, "What?"

- [Gypsy] I know that my mother
has this hatred towards Laura,

so that is something that would
be in her character to do.

I remember a very
heated argument.

Laura was just like, "I
don't want you here."

And my mother's like,

"Fine, we'll find
another place to stay."

(tense music)

I was so happy.

I had been asking my
mother over and over again

to leave my grandpa's house,

desperate to get
away from my grandpa

and the abuse that was going on.

Let's just go anywhere,

anywhere but here,
let's just go.

But by exiling us
from our family,

it just gave her free reign

to create new illnesses for me,

to have me put on
more medications

to make things worse.

- That put another
nail in the coffin

for Gypsy and her freedom.

- Laura May ended up dying
a slow, painful death,

and I guarantee you
it had a lot to do

with the poisoning
from that Roundup.

- And when we thought we
heard it all, we didn't.

(tense music)

- Maybe Gypsy
wasn't as childlike

or innocent as we
thought she was.

- Gypsy's case was
literally like peeling

the scariest onion
you'll ever find.

- First time I
tried to run away,

she chained me to
the bed and said that

"You will never find love.
You will never be happy."

I'm sorry. (sniffles)

- Gypsy was just trying
to escape the devil.

- [Gypsy] I pulled the trigger
as many times as I could.

- I wish she could
have come to me.

- [Gypsy] Every time that
I would take these pills,

all my problems went away.

- We should all feel
that we failed Gypsy.

- We are leaving right now
for Gypsy's parole hearing.

- I have been keeping a secret.

I am engaged.

- [Fiance] I didn't realize
writing wedding vows

would be so difficult.

- I think that there
is a possibility

of a happy ending for me.

(tense music)