The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 1

Javier: I actually have no idea where we're going with this, but

Gypsy: I, I don't either. That's why I was like, I wanted to hop on a call with you 'cause, um, I'm like, "What is this about?"

Javier: You can't mistake that voice. Gypsy Rose Blanchard somehow became the most beloved convicted murderer in America. Half of America fell in love with her. The other half never forgave her. Maybe you watched the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest.

Speaker: Gypsy was in a wheelchair. She had leukemia, and she was having seizures, and she had to be tube-fed And then gradually, that story fell apart.

Javier: Or maybe you discovered her story from the Hulu series The Act.

Speaker: My mom is my best friend. GYPSY!

Javier: Or maybe you binged her reality TV show on Lifetime.

Speaker: I don't want people to Look at you like, "This is Gypsy Rose. She's famous- I don't either ... for killing her mother." You shouldn't be famous for something like that.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Exactly. I hate that, that F word, famous.

Javier: Chances are you just kept seeing her face pop up on your For You page.

Speaker: We listen and we don't judge. I went to prison for eight and a half years because I my own mom. Oh my God.

Javier: Or maybe you've been living under a rock and don't know who the heck I'm talking about. Here's the short version: Gypsy Rose Blanchard spent 23 years in a wheelchair, hooked up to a feeding tube, breathing machine, had her teeth yanked out, put under for surgeries she never needed, told she had cancer, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, leukemia, you name it. Then she had her mother killed. Turns out that was the cure, because when police found her days later, she walked out of the house on her own. All those health issues... poof. gone.

Gypsy Lifetime: I've been incarcerated for eight and a half years. I will be released on Thursday,

Javier: In December of 2023, Gypsy Rose Blanchard walked out of a Missouri prison after serving less than ten years for the murder of her mother. And America lost its mind. People were curious. Like, genuinely curious. Her TikTok account reached 7 million followers within days of her release.. So yeah. America's sweetheart is also a convicted murderer. And depending on who you ask, she's either the most sympathetic person alive, or the most dangerous woman on the internet.

Speaker: You know Gypsy Rose Blanchard, right? Yeah. Okay, it's all a lie. What do you mean, what part of it's a lie? The fact that her mom did all that to her and, like, made her get these surgeries and, like, all of it. Isn't there- It was just a defense ... but it's all a lie how long do you guys think it'll take for everyone to turn on Gypsy Rose Blanchard? 'Cause you guys love her right now, like that's your slay queen. Have you guys seen all the backlash Gypsy Rose been getting lately, being like, "Oh my God, look how crazy she was. Like, wait, she's actually insane. We should have kept her locked up"? No shit. Y'all were the ones that tried to make her famous for ending her mother's life. There is so much publicity on Gypsy Rose Blanchard, and what is that teaching us? That is teaching us that it is okay to murder someone, go to jail for only a few years, get out, and have all the money that you can think of Someone else is going to do something horrible and their excuse is going to be, "Well, she got away with it. Well, now look at all the money that she's making off of it." The official story, the one the media told us, is that Gypsy Rose Blanchard is a survivor. A victim of one of the most extreme cases of medical child abuse this country has ever seen. Gypsy says she underwent approximately 30 different medical procedures forced upon her by her mother Dee Dee Blanchard. Pick a disease. Any disease. Chances are Dee Dee told a doctor that Gypsy had it. Rare diseases. Chronic conditions. Terminal diagnoses. By the time Gypsy was eight years old, her mother had checked nearly every box on the list.And doctors believed her. Because why wouldn't they? She showed up with a bald kid in a wheelchair who couldn't walk, couldn't eat, could barely function without her mother right there. I've combed through Gypsy's medical records, posted publicly on a true crime content creator's Patreon page. Her mother claimed she'd already been through four eye surgeries to correct a crossed eye that kept coming back. A feeding tube inserted directly into her stomach because Dee Dee said she couldn't swallow properly. A procedure to remove the saliva glands in her neck, because Dee Dee said she drooled too much. And a surgery where surgeons literally wrap part of your stomach around your esophagus to stop acid reflux. On a little kid. The medications list in these same records runs over a page. Anti-seizure drugs she'd been on since she was three months old. Valium for pain delivered through her feeding tube. Asthma inhalers. Steroids. Allergy medications. And then there's this one. Someone documented in her allergy history that Gypsy had an anaphylactic reaction to processed sugars. Anaphylactic reaction to processed sugars. As in, sugar. The thing that's in basically every food on earth. A life-threatening allergic reaction to sugar is not a real medical condition. It doesn't exist. But it made it into her medical chart, because Dee Dee said so. And nobody questioned it. And the teeth. By the time Gypsy was a teenager, her teeth had rotted and been removed. A young girl wearing false teeth, riding around with a shaved head, in a wheelchair. That's the official story. But an entire community online decided it was a lie. They flipped the whole narrative around. Suddenly it was Gypsy who was the manipulator. Gypsy who fooled the doctors. Gypsy who used her voice, her looks, her tears, to con everyone around her, including her own mother. And let me tell you, this community is not small. They are loud.

Javier: I've spent the last few months trying to figure out which one is true. Spoiler: it's more complicated than either side wants to admit. You're listening to the Gypsy Rose Obsession. I'm Javier Leiva. And this is PRETEND. Stories about real people pretending to be someone else.

Speaker: ///AD BREAK///VO: I was completely oblivious to the outcry against Gypsy Rose Blanchard. To me, I always considered her a victim of Munchausen By Proxy. That poor girl. I can't imagine what her childhood was like. I didn't agree with her decision to murder her mother, because no one deserves to be murdered, but I can imagine why she resorted to violence.

Javier: I just assumed everyone felt the same way about her. But boy was I wrong.

Andrea Dunlop: Hello, it's Andrea Dunlop, and today on Nobody Should Believe Me, we have a very special episode that is a full circle moment for me and the show, my conversation with Gypsy Rose Blanchard.

Javier: Andrea Dunlop released a two part interview with Gypsy on her podcast Nobody Should Belive me. If you've never listened to Nobody Should Believe Me, go check it out. Andrea has seven powerful series bringing Munchause victims stories to light.

Andrea Dunlop: I remember a lot of people asking me, you know, "Are you gonna interview her?" Like, "Why hasn't she been on your show?" honestly, I couldn't believe it took her 7 seasons for Andrea to interview Gypsy. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, put munchausen by proxy on the map. I don't know Munchause by proxy was a thing before gypsy's case. Gypsy's case has brought a lot of awareness. I think that she is actually a very articulate representative of it and is very thoughtful in the way that she sort of explains it and explains her healing process and the after effects. When people think of medical child abuse, they think of gypsy rose blanchard. She's the poster child. This should not be on Gypsy's shoulder. She is a person We should not put the onus on one person to be a representative or an advocate for an abu- a form of abuse just because they've experienced it. I was curious about Andrea's interview with Gypsy, so I listened. Then I started reading the comments. oh boy. I couldn't believe the backlash. Let me read some of them to you piling on Andrea. Are you kidding me? You call yourself an advocate, but decide to bring a murderer to your podcast. cant sit by as we make martyrs out of MURDERERS. as a long time listener I’m extremely disappointed by the complete lack of REAL research on GRB All your credibility has done shot out the window. You just ruined your career by not doing your research. she lied about everything Hundreds off comments just like this. That was my first exposure to the anti-gypsy community. So I started going down the rabbit hole. What research were these people talking about? What were Andrea and I missing from the conversation? And before I knew it, I found myself in the deep end.

Fancy: Every single thing you've ever heard out of their mouths about this is a lie. So for all these years, we've been told this story of just massive abuse. She didn't need any of the things that were done to her. She has no long-lasting effects. All of that, correct?

Speaker: Right.

Fancy: That's a lie. That's all a lie.

Javier: Suddenly, I started seeing some questionable things and asking myself the same questions. Inconsistencies in her story. Home videos that nobody was supposed to see. A version of Gypsy Rose Blanchard that looked nothing like the girl I thought I knew. It was enough to make me pump the brakes.

Speaker: VO: Did we all get Gypsy story wrong? Was everything I knew about this case a lie? I knew I had to go straight to the source, Gypsy Rose Blanchard.

Javier: Gypsy and I exchanged a few emails. And within a few hours we were on a call. I was very unprepared for this conversation. And it took place early on in my research. I have to be honest, I thought she was lovely. All I know about you is the HBO doc, right? so I was like, I had no idea that there was this, like, other world that, like, you're living in it, but I had no idea, you

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Oh, it's, it's insane. It's, it's called the Gyp verse

Javier: Oh, what, uh, what does... I get the gyp part, but what's the first part,

Gypsy: the, the Gypsyverse, it's, um... I mean, like in,

Javier: Oh, like verse, like the

Gypsy: yes, like the Marvelverse. So it's, it's an, it's two communities, and one is pro-Gypsy and one is anti-Gypsy. Um, one,

Javier: one's louder?

Gypsy: uh, I mean, I would say that the anti-Gypsy side is, is probably the loudest, and I think that goes for, for any sort of, um, hater community. Um, they're so vocal about it, whereas the, the supporters are just kind of like silently watching because unfortunately, a- and you see, you see this on TikTok, I don't know if you're on TikTok or

Javier: yeah, on TikTok. Mm-hmm

Gypsy: so a lot of times if someone posts a video in support or just having a, a, a neutral opinion, you can't even have a neutral opinion about me because you will get death threats. You

Javier: you're walking into the crosshairs,

Gypsy: yes. You're walking into literally a, a war zone between these two communities

Javier: And without even knowing it,

Speaker: without even knowing it.

Javier: because like if you're a pro-- you're, if you're in the pro gypsy verse, you're, you know, you're sympathetic to like the abuse that you've faced and all that stuff. And like it would never even cross your mind that there's this other universe that will just pounce on you, right? Like, The internet did what the internet does. Her nose was too big.

Speaker: Gypsy Rose has been spotted for the first time since her nose job, and it turns out she didn't just get a nose job.

Javier: And her teeth, the same teeth her mother had yanked out when she was a kid, became content too.

Speaker: I'm going to Children's Mercy Hospital to see my dentist for my teeth She can't even post pictures with her in a swimsuit without getting comments. Gypsy Rose is up early around 6:30 AM this morning on a Monday posting herself in a two-piece bikini.

Javier: Content creators mocked her voice .

Speaker: Hey, babe. Yeah? Can you do your, uh, Gypsy Rose impression for me? the D is I had to kiss the frog to meet the prince." I'm on a high right now. You can't bring me down Right now he's eating a brownie, and later he will be In fact, people impersonating her was trending on tiktok

Hairgypsy: Like, I just... I, I was wearing a wig in a lot of my videos, because last year and the year before that, like, I bleached my hair so much, because I was so excited to try new things with my hair, that I didn't, you know, realize that bleaching and bleaching and bleaching was gonna fry it as bad as it was.

Gypsy: So unfortunately, you know, my hair was down to almost to my butt when I got out of prison, and I had to shave it all off. And, you know, the anti side was like, "Well, wouldn't that be a trigger for you?" And the logical side of me is, of course, wanting to defend myself and being like, "Do, do you wanna walk around with fried hair? It's kind of a necessity." So I used a wig for a couple of months, and I'm just starting to kinda, like, be okay with this being my authentic

Javier: like it. Uh, it, For those of you listening on the podcast feed, Gypsy is sporting a pixie cut.

Gypsy: Self, you know? So

Javier: you know? You know? How old are you now? I know you're not supposed to ask a woman. Okay. ask a woman. Okay.

Gypsy: I'm getting old.

Javier: you're not supposed to ask a woman that, but, uh, I

Speaker: A lot has changed since being released from prison 2 years ago. She's been married. Then she got divorced. And now she's a mother. She has a whole new life. And her only career, is being gypsy rose. One of the main critisms against her, is that she's figured out a way to monitize and profit off of her mother's murder. She has a cameo account, a book deal, tv shows,... gypsy is everywhere. And If you ask the internet, they will tell you that gypsy is rich.

Javier: It's so much easier to just like hide and make it go away. You know what I mean? Like, uh, do you ever think about that?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I've tried, and it, it's... I've tried getting offline, deleting my social media. Um, when I first came out of prison, I gained millions of followers on my TikTok and Instagram. Well, in the process of me, you know, going through my parole time, um, there was just so much harassment on my parole officer that he said, you know, it'd probably be best to, you know, maybe get off of social media. So I, I deleted my Instagram with, like, 9 million followers. And then I had switch parole officers due to me moving, and so that parole officer was like, "You're fine to be on social media. Just make sure you kinda keep a low profile. You don't wanna, you know, rub the beast the wrong way." So I made a new Instagram, quickly gained a lot of followers on that, approaching 1 million now, and I still maintain my 9.3 mil on TikTok. And I've had a love-hate relationship with this account. Um, I've deactivated and reactivated. At this point, my followers just know it's part of my behavior. Um, but when at a time where I was not on social media for, like, a month, um, Turns out deleting your account doesn't make you anonymous when your face has been on every screen in America."

Famousjavier Leiva: You have a very distinctive voice, you know what I mean?

Gypsy: yeah

Javier: Like, do you ever get like spotted or like how do you deal with that?

Gypsy: Oh, yeah. I mean, thankfully nobody in person has ever came up to me or my family and been mean in any type of way. In fact, it's the opposite reaction. It's like, "Oh, my God, there she is. There she is, like, it's Alfie." Like, and what's crazy is, and, and I, I don't unders- I don't understand it, but a lot of my fans are, you know, 95% is women,

Javier: Mm-hmm.

Gypsy: from analytics from my socials. But it te- like, teens, some as even young as 10, will stop me at the mall or the grocery store, and I'm kind of like, "Are you old enough to like, what is your parents letting you watch?"

Javier: But, but isn't that kind of weird though? Like, that you have, like just the fact that you have fans. Isn't that kind of weird? Like, what are they a fan of? Like, I'm just saying like you're not a performer, you know what I mean? Like, you're not a singer.

Gypsy: Exactly. And I, I, I thought my, I thought that to myself too. I mean, it, it... I've always kind of just been appreciative that they've been nice, but even I don't really understand it. Because yes, I can understand, you know, um, watching my story and feeling, you know, a compassion, but a, a fandom I, I don't get and maybe it's a, it's a social media thing. Oh my goodness, this girl has 10, you know, almost 10 million followers. I, I, I don't know. I don't, I don't

Javier: Honestly, I think the answer is a lot simpler. And sorry that my dog is

Gypsy: Oh,

Javier: Th- there's people outside my house, so they're like... She's freaking out. But, um, you know, I, I think the answer is a lot simpler. It's, it's just this parasocial relationship, right? You don't know them, but they know you, even though, uh, it... Forget, the context is not even that important. And maybe they are sympathetic to your story. And so it's like, uh, you're famous, you know what I mean? Like, and so they...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I guess. 'Cause I never, I never call myself famous. I don't call myself a celebrity. I call myself, like, well-known. If I, if I'm addressing it, I'll say I am well-known in the public eye, because that's the facts of it. You know, you get the recognition, you get media coverage, you have the following. What is that? You know what I'm saying? You're well-known in the public, and with that comes a lot of responsibilities and, and burdens, too narration? The anti-gypsy side coralized a hate campaign against me and was raising money, fundraisers, GoFundMe, to put up billboard signs in my neighborhood, in the city that I live, um, and stuff like this. Here's a clip of an anti-Gypsy activist putting up wanted-style posters around her town."

Speaker: If you dislike schmurderers, send Tammy a gift. If you are here for some street justice since the criminal justice system failed us, send Tammy some gifts

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: So, and, and even after I got off of parole, the day that I got off of parole, I wanted to celebrate with some friends of mine. So we were like, "We're gonna go to New Orleans. We're gonna have a drink. We're gonna have a good time." So the anti side was busy for two days straight putting up flyers at all the bars, a "murderer's in town" warning.

Speaker: This is pathetic Gypsy don't give a fuck. Gypsy don't give a fuck. Now what? Oh, y'all wasted y'all money. Fuck you guys. Motherfucking Louisiana- 'Cause I had a great time in New Orleans anyway ...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: And then me and my friends are driving. We come across a mobile billboard, and they have a picture of me and my daughter and my partner from when my daughter was born, and I flipped out.

Speaker: They put minors on billboards. Billboards. Minors. My minor child. A minor child. Minor child. On a billboard. Look at that. Look at that. Look at, Gypsy don't give a fuck. Do not

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I... Hindsight, I should not have even looked at it. I should have just let it be. But instead, I got out of the car, and I went on live stream, and I was flipping the haters off and just reacting to it. I'm like, "This is my minor child." Like, my minor child should not be up on a billboard, especially when I'm not plastering her on social media.

Speaker: Gypsy Rose's baby's face has now been revealed. and I probably really shouldn't because it's a baby, but everybody's gonna see it anyway because it's, it's, it's out there. So here is the picture.

Javier: Well, it feels like crossing the line, right? one thing, it's one thing to have issues with you and you've chosen to be public and whatever, blah, blah, blah. But, but to like bring a kid, I just feel like, yeah, now, now you're crossing a line. Gypsy told me that she doesn't have a safe space. Not even her home.

Gypsy: Every single residence since I've been out of prison has been doxxed on the internet. There's currently a video of my house where somebody drove by my house and recorded it, and is like, "This is where they live." I'm an average person. I'll go to Walmart, I'll go to the grocery store, get what I need, drive back home and not think two things about it. Obviously someone must have followed me to know the street Right. That's so scary. Like, oh my God. Uh, 'cause like I'm not even, I'm not, I don't think I'm famous, like at all. Like, I have a very large podcast audience, but it's like just my voice. You know what I mean? Yeah, but that's good. That's good.

Javier: no, but I'm saying like, I can't even imagine, like people know your face.

Gypsy: Oh, yeah

Speaker: CONTROVERSYJavier

Leiva: "These people are obsessed with her. And not in a good way. Her critics say Gypsy didn't serve enough time. That she got away with murder while the man who actually did the stabbing, Nick Godejohn, is sitting in a Missouri prison serving life without parole. His appeals have so far been unsuccessful. Barring some kind of miracle, Nick will die in prison. And Gypsy is out here living her life. To a lot of people, that math doesn't add up.

Javier: I have to say, I'm fascinated by Gypsy Rose Blanchard. She is one of the most complicated people I've ever reported on. But I'm not interested in doing another story about a fandom gone wrong. What caught my attention was the evidence. Videos, text messages, documents that have surfaced since the HBO documentary. Things that paint a very different picture of Gypsy Rose Blanchard than the one most of us walked away with.

Speaker: It is your sexy slave, Demona, I can steal, I can torture. I could kill, just not those people. Gypsy Rose talking about how she plans to SA her own daughter when she turns 13, if we have a girl, the way it has to be is if we have a girl, she has to lose her virginity to you because you are the master of the household.

Javier: Now before you spiral, let me give you some context. These clips were recorded years before Gypsy ever had a daughter. What you're hearing is a roleplay game that Gypsy and Nick Godejohn played online. Nick is the man who would later stab her mother to death. In this game, Gypsy played a character named Demona, a vampire slave, and Nick played her master. And in that fictional world, they said some very dark things. Violent things. Sexual things. Things that, ripped out of context and posted on TikTok, sound like a confession. In context, they raise a whole different set of questions about the dynamic between Gypsy and Nick, and who was really in control of that relationship. That's a conversation we are going to have. In detail. Just not in this episode. But one thing is for sure. I can't do this series without Gypsy. She's talked about her story plenty. But as far as I know, she has never publicly addressed the Demona videos, the home videos, the text messages, none of it. At least not in front of a reporter. Until now.

Speaker: Meeting gypsyJavier Leiva (4): I was thinking, 'cause this is kind of a cool, um, story if you're up for it. But like how comfortable are you... It- once I start doing research, 'cause I haven't even started, like once I dive into the hellish waters of

Gypsy: Mm-hmm. Whoo!

Javier: like how comfortable are you with uncomfortable questions and stuff like that?

Gypsy: I mean, I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty open. Um, everybody has always known that I'm a pretty open book. I do, I'm currently in development for a podcast of my own. That's where,

Javier: about your life, or?

Gypsy: Remember, you're listening to my pre-interview with Gypsy. Just a get to know ya session to see if she's interested.

Javier: So if we were to do this, because like you said, I think maybe the story is that like your-- y- the people that know you, like the, in the Gypsy verse, they know about this, and then obviously the haters know about you as well, if not more, because they just, they won't let it go, right? Like this has been years and years and years and, and it seems like every time you make some sort of public opinion or video or appearance, they p- they jump on it. Um, but, but like the outside world has no idea. So like I really do think that that's the story and also like, because of the theme of my show, I never even told you, uh,

Speaker: Oh yeah, tell me about yourself

Javier: I don't even know, I don't even know if you know my show, but my show is called "Pretend" and it's about people pretending to be someone else. And so when I was trying to think about this story, it's like, so what's the pretend angle here? And I started thinking about like you, m- like when you're in front of the camera, in front of the mic, you have to pretend, you know, you

Gypsy: Yeah, I'm, I'm my polished

Javier: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. When you've done a lot of these interviews before, so y- you have some media training, right? Um, but it's almost like your whole childhood was robbed from you, and then now all of a sudden you're an adult and you have to figure out who is Gypsy Rose Blanchard. You know what I mean? And so like, I d- I feel like you pretend and you fill these roles until you kind of figure out who you are. You know what I mean? Like, and do you know who you are at this point?

Gypsy: I'm learning. I'm learning a lot as, as with every new experience, 'cause I think that that's how we grow, is just, like, experiencing things. So I think that I've gotten to where I'm comfortable. It's, it's going to be, um, basically instead of me getting interviewed all the time, I'll be the interviewer, and it's, it's discussions with people, both celebrities and not, that, you know, have been defined by their past. So it'll be controversial figures, it'll be survivors, it'll be, you know, friends of mine. Um, so a- and it'll have some stuff, my everyday life too. So, um, that's who I was on a Zoom call with before this, 'cause we're actively pitching right now.

Javier: Oh, you, so you're not in production yet, you're

Gypsy: we're not in production, we're pitching right now. So they're looking at the deck and the sizzle and stuff like that,

Javier: That's awesome. And is it, it'll be a video podcast?

Gypsy: W- there, one, um, one of the people that we met with does want it to be a vlog cast and, um, the

Javier: that's a smart thing. Every podcaster is trying to figure out how

Gypsy: I

Javier: break into the video world. like, if you just like go into it thinking this is a video podcast and it happens, you could just use the audio on the audio side, but this is primarily video, it'll save you a lot of headaches later on. But so yeah, but I mean, going back to like the uncomfortable questions and

Gypsy: Yeah, I mean, I don't think that there's anything that I...

Javier: could find that you haven't seen already?

Gypsy: exactly.

Javier: Yeah.

Gypsy: I've I've had some tough ones come at

Javier: that's what I figured. That's what I figured. Well, I mean, this is a kind of a, a really int- like I'm, I'm very intrigued and I'm like looking forward to seeing what, what happens here because, um, like I said at the beginning of this call, I have no idea what, what I'm getting myself into. But, um, if you're up for it, y- so you live in Louisiana?

Gypsy: Yes, I live about an hour south of New Orleans

Javier: Oh, south of New Orleans? I didn't Wow, isn't, like, New Orleans on the water? I guess I need to

Gypsy: Yeah. It's, it's, it's like you wanna say like a C shape. New Orleans is here, I'm like way down

Javier: okay. You're... right. I'll, I'll look at a map. But I was thinking if, if you're up for it, um, I'm willing to, like, travel down there for, like, a weekend, maybe, like, hang out for, like, a day and, and do the interview in person. Would you be game for

Gypsy: I'd be down for that.

Javier: Yeah? right.

Speaker: TEASE (LET IT BREATHE)Javier

Leiva: Next time on PRETEND. I flew to Louisiana to meet Gypsy Rose Blanchard in person. Almost three hours, just the two of us. And she answered every question I threw at her.

Javier: And we'll also cover a recent discovery about Gypsy's health puts everything into question. That's next time on PRETEND..