Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who served time in prison for her role in her mother’s murder, has been granted parole and is scheduled to be released in December, the Missouri Department of Corrections announced Thursday, Ozarks First and The Springfield News-Leader.
In July 2016, Blanchard, 32, pleaded guilty to murder for her role in the slaying of her mother, Clauddina “Dee Dee” Blanchard. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Courtesy of ABC News
Gypsy is scheduled to be released on December 28, 2023. By then, she will have served 85% of her 10-year sentence. Prior to her prison sentence, Gypsy spent time in the Greene County Jail, and the time she spent in the county jail adds to her total sentence.
Dee Dee Blanchard was found dead in June 2015, and soon after Gypsy and her boyfriend Nick Godejohn were charged with first degree murder.
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Gypsy and Dee Dee Blanchard. GREENE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
After the couple was arrested, it was discovered that Dee Dee had fabricated all of her daughter’s health problems and that Gypsy was a victim of Munchausen by proxy syndrome—a rare form of abuse in which a caregiver exaggerates or causes illness in a child for attention and sympathy.
Dee Dee convinced her friends, family and community that Blanchard was a terminally ill teenager with the mind of a seven-year-old who suffered from muscular dystrophy, leukemia and other illnesses. In addition, Blanchard claimed that her mother did not allow her to speak during the doctor’s visit and told her that the police would not believe her story if she ever tried to escape.
How a murdered Missouri mom fooled the world and controlled her daughter by faking the girl’s health problems
In the 2018 Investigation Discovery documentary Gypsy revenge, Blanchard explained what her childhood was like as she endured abuse from her mother. I couldn’t just jump out of the wheelchair because I was scared and I didn’t know what my mother would do, Blanchard said. “I had no one to trust.”
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After her sentencing in 2016, Blanchard told Dr. Phil McGraw that she did not “believe [she] merit[d] as many years as [she] got.”
“I firmly believe that, no matter what, murder is wrong,” she told McGraw. “I believe I deserve to spend some time in prison for that crime. But I also understand why it happened and I don’t believe I’m in the right place to get the help I need.”
Blanchard’s boyfriend, Godejohn, 32, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2019 after a trial. He was convicted of first-degree murder in a 2015 stabbing Springfield News-Leader, reports local station KY3 and KOAM.
Nick Godejohn says Gypsy Rose Blanchard was his ‘soulmate’ in new prison interview
Godejohn met Blanchard online and traveled from Wisconsin to see her in Missouri. Blanchard told the court that she “talked him into it.”
“It was, man, probably the best days of my life, that’s the only way I can describe it,” Godejohn said of his time with Blanchard in a prison interview for a 2019 Oxygen special. Gypsy Rose & Nick: Love to Kill. “I enjoyed every second of it.”
Godejohn continued, “All I knew from the beginning was that we were kindred spirits. Those five days when I was actually with her, physically with her, those five days were the most intense, magical, and terrifying days I’ve ever had.”
Blanchard and Godejohn have since separated. A family friend told PEOPLE in April 2019 that she is engaged to a man she met while corresponding while in prison.
The case was the focus of an HBO documentary Mom, dead and dearest and inspired a Hulu miniseries Rank.
A spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for additional information Thursday.
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