The former couple met online when Gypsy Rose was still living with her mother, who falsely claimed that her daughter had been diagnosed with a range of afflictions ranging from chromosomal defects, asthma, epilepsy and leukaemia, BuzzFeed News reported.
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But after Dee Dee’s death, it was revealed that Gypsy Rose hadn’t been ill. Dee Dee was believed to have Munchausen by proxy, a condition in which a child’s caretaker creates fake symptoms for them to mimic illness. And while Gypsy Rose has denounced her actions in connection to her mother’s death, she told CNN that she thinks she would likely still experience medical abuse if her mother was alive today.
While Gypsy is now out of prison and happily married, Godejohn is currently serving a life sentence without parole at the Potosi Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in Mineral Point, Missouri.
Nicholas Godejohn and Gypsy Rose Blanchard met on a Christian dating forum
According to BuzzFeed News, Godejohn and Gypsy Rose met on a Christian dating website without her mother’s knowledge. The two formed a texting relationship, and became a couple in October 2012, Gypsy Rose testified during Godejohn’s trial. According to the Springfield News-Leader, their messages ranged from talk of their love, future together and potential sex life, to discussion about killing.
It was during those conversations that Gypsy Rose asked Godejohn to kill her mother, People reported.
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“It was panic, desperation,” Gypsy Rose told the outlet. “Because I was facing yet another surgery pretty soon, and I really did not want to have the surgery.”
Friends started to worry that something had happened to Dee Dee after a Facebook status appeared on her page on June 14, 2015, that read, “That b***** is dead,” BuzzFeed News reported. Police found Dee Dee’s body in her bedroom.
Police traced the Facebook posts on Dee Dee’s account to an IP address in Big Bend, Wisconsin, belonging to Godejohn.
In the days following Dee Dee’s death, the couple stayed at a Days Inn in Springfield, and then bought Greyhound tickets to Wisconsin.
Waukesha County Sheriff’s deputies confronted and detained them in Wisconsin on June 15, 2015, per the Springfield News-Leader. According to the publication, Gypsy Rose told authorities that she was the one who made the posts to Dee Dee’s Facebook page, so that her mother’s body would be found.
Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder
In June 2015, the couple were both charged with first-degree murder. Godejohn and Gypsy Rose initially pleaded not guilty to that charge.
Gypsy Rose’s lawyer, public defender Michael Stanfield, secured a plea deal for her after he obtained her medical records, BuzzFeed News reported. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 10 years, the minimum sentence, in 2016.
Godejohn, however, was convicted of first-degree murder in November 2018, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in February 2019. Gypsy Rose testified at his trial in 2018, saying that she was the one who suggested they kill her mother, and that she convinced Godejohn to do it, per the Springfield News-Leader.
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“I was blindly in love,” Godejohn said during his sentencing hearing. “That was always very much the case.”
Godejohn’s lawyers argued during his trial that he had “diminished capacity” during the killing because of his autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and his low IQ. His lawyers argued that it allowed him to be manipulated by Gypsy Rose.
“She learned the art of manipulation from her mother, and that’s part and parcel of who she is,” his trial lawyer Andrew Mead said.
Godejohn is serving his life sentence at the Potosi Correctional Center, which is located in Washington County, Missouri. In August 2022, he asked for a new trial on the grounds of having ineffective counsel, but was denied.
Godejohn appeared in a 2019 Oxygen TV documentary and spoke about the couple’s time together
Godejohn appeared in an Oxygen TV documentary about the killing in 2019. He said he did the show because he felt he wasn’t able to tell his side of the story.
“Those five days that I was with her, physically with her, that was probably the best days of my life,” he said.
He also said that he felt Gypsy Rose wasn’t taking full responsibility for her actions. “But at the same time, due to the way I know she was raised, I can’t blame her. I can’t,” he said.
Godejohn also spoke of discovering something dark within himself as a teen.
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“I just remember looking in the mirror and I saw a glimpse of something I didn’t recognise in my eye,” he said, adding, “there was almost no light at all in there.”
Of the murder, he said, “I would have done it again. I might have done it differently, but I would have done it again.”
Gypsy Rose and Godejohn are no longer together
In April 2019, People reported that Gypsy Rose was engaged to another man who wrote to her in prison. The two, however, did not marry. Gypsy Rose went on to marry her current husband, Ryan Scott Anderson, while still serving her sentence, after he also wrote to her. Anderson picked her up after her release, and told People that he was looking forward to taking her out on a “real date”.
Gypsy Rose spoke about Godejohn during her first TV interview post-release on Good Morning America.
“I’m sure that we both have a lot of regrets,” she said. “All I can really say is that I did my time. He’s doing his time for his part. And I wish him well on his journey.”
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