Gypsy Rose Blanchard — the Missouri woman recently released after serving nearly eight years for conspiring with her ex-boyfriend to kill her abusive mother — left social media this week to avoid going back to prison.
The 32-year-old, who became vocal on social media on the heels of her release from prison in December, left Instagram, TikTok and other platforms “at the advisement of her parole officer, so she won’t get in trouble and go back to jail,” an insider told People.
Her departure follows a “public apology” Blanchard issued Thursday in a video on her since-deleted TikTok account.
“Number one: To all the people that I offended with a lack of accountability the first month or so that I was out of prison, and the lack of accountability in my interviews, I’m sorry. I’m learning,” Blanchard said, according to People. “I take accountability for my part, and I’m saying this right now. I’m taking accountability. I did a bad thing.”
Noting that she’s “trying to take steps forward,” Blanchard requested “a little grace” amid this “second chance at life,” asking people to “let my actions match my words. And we’ll go from there.”
Blanchard, originally sentenced to 10 years behind bars, was released early from the Chillicothe Correctional Center in northwestern Missouri just ahead of New Year’s Eve.
In 2016, she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in convincing then-boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to kill her mother, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who experts believe suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, now referred to as factitious disorder imposed on another.
As the name suggests, the psychological disorder is characterized by caregivers fabricating or inducting the signs or symptoms of a disease on someone who is not actually ill. In the case of the Blanchards, Gypsy Rose was at times kept wheelchair-bound and subjected to a feeding tube, as her mother falsely claimed the young girl suffered from illnesses included leukemia and muscular dystrophy.
Speaking to “Good Morning America” on the heels of her release, Gypsy Rose said there “wasn’t that much of a difference” between her mother’s home and state prison.
“I also had more freedom in prison than I ever had with my mother,” she said, but noted, “I don’t believe my mother was a monster.”
Rather, Gypsy Rose says Dee Dee “had a lot of demons herself that she was struggling with.”
EXCLUSIVE: Gypsy Rose Blanchard speaks out to @DebRobertsABC in her first TV interview after being released from prison: “I share my story to be a cautionary tale, so that the next person that might be in a situation like mine, they don’t take the route that I did.” pic.twitter.com/kp3FaXjOKH
— Good Morning America (@GMA) January 5, 2024
“I didn’t want her dead. I just wanted out of my situation,” she explained. “And I thought [killing her] was the only way out.”
Blanchard’s story was the focus of the acclaimed HBO documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” and the Emmy-winning Hulu series “The Act,” starring Joey King and Patricia Arquette as Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee, respectively.
