On December 28, 2023, the world’s most known Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy victim, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, was released from prison after being convicted and sentenced to ten years for being an accomplice to the murder of her mother Clawdeen Blanchard.
Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy is a rare mental disease that is also a form of child abuse. Typically, the parent will make up illnesses that the child has and gaslight not only their child, but also the public that they are chronically ill. This is exactly what Blanchard went through with her mother. According To ABC Action News, Clawdeen made Gypsy believe that she had cancer, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and other illnesses and allergies. But in reality, Gypsy was very healthy and had nothing wrong with her except the effects of her mother’s physical and mental abuse.
Once Blanchard got old enough to realize that there wasn’t anything medically wrong with her, she began to be aware of her circumstances and to resent and rebel against her mother, who only increased the torture. According to Today.com, eventually Blanchard sneaked onto a laptop where she met Nicholas Godejohn on a dating site for Christian singles in October 2012. The star-crossed lovers were able to meet “coincidentally” at a showing of “Cinderella” at a movie theater in Springfield, Missouri. After this single encounter, according to USA Today, Blanchard came to the realization that she would never be free from her mother’s abuse unless she was killed.
Blanchard and Godejohn created a master plan to stab Clawdeen to death with a fishing knife and flee the scene with hopes of never getting caught. On June 9th, 2015, Godejohn arrived at Blanchard’s home while Clawdeen was asleep and stabbed her 17 times while Gypsy hid in the bathroom. Immediately after, the two lovers fled the Blanchard’s Springfield home, but they left trails of evidence that enabled the police to track them. The biggest mistake was posting “That B*tch is dead” on a Facebook account Blanchard shared with her mom. Just 5 days after the murder, the couple was taken into police custody.
Blanchard and Godejohn were tried separately. Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison with parole after completion of 85% of the sentence, but Godejohn was sentenced to life in prison.
Blanchard’s story is one of the most popular and heartbreaking true-crime stories, and lots of people have mixed emotions about her prison sentence. I believe that Blanchard and Godejohn should have been treated in mental health institutions rather than receiving prison sentences, because it is on record that Godejohn suffers from autism and multiple personality disorder. Over the years, there have been various documentaries and reenactment series based off of Blanchard’s story, with the most popular one titled “The Act,” starring Joey King as Gypsy.
