To the outside world, Gypsy Rose Blanchard spent most of her childhood and young adulthood teetering on the brink of death. The daughter of single mother Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, Gypsy Rose spent her childhood being carted from hospital to hospital, with her mother telling doctors she suffered from everything from leukemia to muscular dystrophy. Most of the doctors believed Dee Dee, subjecting Gypsy Rose to a number of brutal medical procedures, including injecting her salivary glands with Botox and removing her teeth. But as a sheriff from her hometown of Springfield, Missouri would later say, things aren’t always what they appear. 

In 2015, Dee Dee was found brutally stabbed in her home in Missouri, prompting an onslaught of concern for Gypsy Rose, who was missing from the scene of the crime. When investigators started looking into the case, they discovered the truth: Gypsy Rose was not actually a dying young woman at all, but a victim of what experts now believe was Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness in which caregivers intentionally make a child sick in order to garner attention and sympathy. For most of Gypsy Rose’s childhood and adolescence, Dee Dee had been running a con.

Investigators soon found Gypsy in the home of Nicholas Godejohn, a 22-year-old man who, investigators later discovered, was Gypsy Rose’s secret boyfriend. After meeting online, Gypsy Rose had confided in Godejohn about her mother’s abuse, prosecutors would later argue, and the two conspired to kill Dee Dee, with Godejohn sneaking into the house and stabbing her 22 times in her sleep. Both were arrested and Dee Dee was sentenced to ten years in prison for second-degree murder, while Godejohn was charged with life without parole. 

Gypsy Rose’s story garnered extensive national media attention, with director Erin Lee Carr releasing the HBO docuseries Mommie Dead and Dearest in 2017. Hulu later adapted Gypsy Rose’s story into the fictional series The Act, starring Joey King as Gypsy Rose and Patricia Arquette as Dee Dee. The media interest in Gypsy Rose led to a sympathetic social media campaign counting down to the days of Gypsy Rose’s release, and she was eventually let out of prison on Dec. 28, 2023, having served seven years of her 10-year sentence. Gypsy Rose has since become a folk hero of sorts, launching an Instagram account with more than eight million followers and embarking on a press tour to promote her Lifetime docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, which premiered Jan. 5. —EJ Dickson