At 3:30 a.m. local time on Thursday, Gypsy Rose Blanchard left Missouri's Chillicothe Correctional Center after serving 85% of her 10-year sentence for her role in the fatal stabbing of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard in 2015.
Sentenced in 2016 after admitting to convincing her boyfriend at the time, Nick Godejohn, to travel from Wisconsin to the home she shared with her mother in Missouri to commit the murder with a knife she provided him while she hid in the bathroom, Blanchard's early release was confirmed back in September and, in a recent interview with People, she says she's ready for freedom.
Speaking to People about the crime she committed, which was an ill-conceived attempt to free herself from a lifetime of Munchausen by proxy syndrome abuse — a rare form of abuse in which a guardian exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy, she says, "No one will ever hear me say I'm proud of what I did or I'm glad that she's dead . . . I'm not proud of what I did. I regret it every single day." She now refers to her mom as "a sick woman" who didn't deserve to die, but should have also done prison time for her own criminal behavior.
In what the internet is pointing out as being a grim twist, Blanchard was picked up from prison by her husband, Ryan Scott Anderson, in a car featuring a 'Hitman' Hart license plate. The wrestling-themed plate would be innocent enough under any other circumstances, but in this situation it's led to some hot takes.
"I know the home that I'm going home to is with my husband, and I'm going to have a really supportive family dynamic," Blanchard told People. "And I think that that's what I've been missing this whole time."
Anderson developed a relationship with Blanchard in 2020 after writing her a letter in prison and currently works as a special education teacher in Louisiana.
Missouri Department of Corrections declined to issue a statement on Blanchard's release when Salon reached out.
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