How Gypsy Rose Blanchard became the world’s most captivating ex-con
People have been gripped by the tale of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the young woman who plotted to murder her mother to escape a prison of false sickness, ever since she was arrested in 2015.
For a long time, British interest was limited to an especially interested and extremely online few. The case was huge in the States, but didn’t quite cut through in the UK to the same extent. This was until last week, when Blanchard was released from prison after serving eight years for second-degree murder, and her name hit the headlines all over again — and this time, it’s everywhere.
In the interviews and online postings since her release, Blanchard is quickly cementing herself as the world’s most captivating ex-inmate du jour (move over, Anna Delvey). From her long standing love of Taylor Swift to her graphic clapbacks at critics of her new husband, here’s how a young woman from Louisiana with the “mental capacity of a seven year old” became a murderer, and then a martyr.
A baby riddled with illnesses is born ‘prematurely’ in Louisiana
On July 27, 1991, 24-year-old Clauddine "Dee Dee" Pitre and 18-year-old Rod Blanchard welcomed their first and only child. They decided on the names Gypsy, a favourite of Dee Dee’s, and Rose, thanks to Rod’s love of the band Guns and Roses. The pair married while Rod was 17, but split before Gypsy was born, after Rod realised the relationship wasn’t right for him around the time of his 18th birthday. “I wasn't in love with her, really. I knew I got married for the wrong reasons," he told Buzzfeed in an interview.
Gypsy was left in the primary care of Dee Dee, who was herself a troubled child. Born in 1967, also in Louisiana, Dee Dee was one of five children,
