Gypsy Rose Blanchard has been released from prison three years before her original release date for the murder of her mother. The Missouri woman sparked hundreds headlines in 2015 (and later, several documentaries and a Hulu miniseries, The Act, starring Joey King) after her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, stabbed Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard 17 times.
The duo had conspired to kill Dee Dee after years of the elder Blanchard forcing her daughter to fake serious illnesses due to Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Blanchard, now 32, was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 28 in Missouri, and spoke with PEOPLE about her feelings around being released.
"If I had another chance to redo everything, I don't know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I'm not sick and mommy makes me sick," she explained, "or if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, 'You know what, I'm going to go tell the police everything.' I kind of struggle with that."
But, she adds, "Nobody will ever hear me say I'm glad she's dead or I'm proud of what I did. I regret it every single day."
While no one here is condoning murder, it is worth noting the circumstances under which the younger Blanchard lived and felt driven to such an extreme point. Before she was even 7 years-old, Gypsy had been told she suffered from several extremely debilitating illnesses, including Leukemia, seizures from epilepsy, and muscular dystrophy, which confined her to a wheelchair she didn't need. She had feeding tubes and shaved Gypsy's head. For years, friends, family, and doctors alike were manipulated and tricked into believing these illnesses were real.
"Obviously I knew that I could walk and didn't need a feeding tube, but everything else was a really big confusion for me," Blanchard explained. "Whenever I'd question it my mother would say I'd had a seizure the night before and didn't remember. There was always an excuse."
We hope Blanchard finds peace and a bit of normalcy in her release.
