Gypsy Rose Blanchard is now serving a ten-year sentence in prison for conspiring to kill her mother Dee Dee, knifed to death in June 2015 in Springfield, Mo. by Nicholas Godejohn, a boyfriend Gypsy met on the Internet. He will be tried this week, while Gypsy seems twice imprisoned. As Erin Lee Carr’s documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, to air tonight on HBO tells Gypsy’s story: from the time she was an infant her mother claimed she was sick. The list of illnesses seems impossible to fathom for one person alone, including cancer, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and mental retardation. Wheel chair bound, her head shaven, Gypsy depended on Dee Dee for everything, and they were inseparable, traveling on a donated trip to Disneyland, living in a free house, a single mom taking advantage of the misfortunes of a child with extreme medical issues. Interviews with doctors, lawyers, sheriffs, and family help to unravel the truth of this tawdry tale, with the added twist of some kinky texts between the young lovers prior to the murder. Even the sight of Dee Dee in bed, in a blood-smeared gown, does not arouse a whit of sympathy.

On a recent evening Gypsy Rose’s father Rod and stepmother Kristy attended a special preview screening at HBO. He’s in the film, frying catfish, which is his specialty. After he separated from Dee Dee early on, she found clever ways of keeping him away from his daughter. I thought I had a dysfunctional family, opined one viewer to Rod, but yours has everyone else’s beat. He smiles, and says in a thick Southern accent, “We hoped for a lighter sentencing for Gypsy.  But for now, we will be there for her release to give her the life she deserves.”

Regina Weinreich

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