Rod Blanchard is the father of Gypsy Rose who killed her mother Dee Dee, an abusive lady who used physical abuse to control her daughter, always holding her daughter’s hand in the presence of others.
Whenever Gypsy said something that either suggested she was not genuinely sick or seemed above her purported mental capabilities, Gypsy recalls that her mother would give her hand a very tight squeeze. When the two were alone, Dee Dee would strike her with her open hands or a coat hanger. Rod Blanchard, Gypsy’s father, is more forgiving. He told BuzzFeed,
“I think Dee Dee’s problem was she started a web of lies, and there was no escaping after. It was like a tornado got started.”
Rod Blanchard and Gypsy Rose bond
Rod Blanchard tied the knot with his first wife Dee Dee Blanchard when she was 24 and became pregnant. At that time Rod Blanchard was 17. They named their daughter Gypsy Rose because Dee Dee liked the name Gypsy and Rod was a fan of Guns N’ Roses.
Shortly before Gypsy Rose’s birth in July 1991, the couple separated when Rod realized he “got married for the wrong reasons”. He resisted Dee Dee’s efforts to get him to return, and she took her newborn daughter to live with her family. Rod was happy the first time that he saw a video of Gypsy walking under her power.
Rod Blanchard is close to Gypsy Rose
Rod Blanchard continued to make monthly child support payments of $1,200, as well as sending Gypsy gifts and occasionally talking to her on the phone (during one call, on her 18th birthday, he recalls Dee Dee telling him not to mention her daughter’s real age since “she thinks she’s 14”).
Whenever Rod and his second wife planned to visit Gypsy Rose in Springfield, Dee Dee would modify plans for several reasons. In Springfield, Dee told her neighbors that Gipsy Rose’s father was an alcoholic and violent drug user who had never accepted his daughter’s medical problems and had never paid them any money.
In 2009, an anonymous caller told the police about Dee Dee’s use of different names and birth dates for herself and her daughter. He also told the police that, Gypsy was in better health than claimed.
Officers who performed the resulting wellness check accepted Dee Dee’s explanation that she used the misinformation to make it harder for her abusive ex-husband to find her and Gypsy, without talking to Rod, and reported that Gypsy seemed to genuinely be mentally disabled. The file was closed.
Rod’s early days with Dee Dee
According to Rod, who remained involved with his daughter at every point. By the time Gypsy was three months old, her mother was convinced that the infant had sleep apnea and began taking her to the hospital where repeated overnight stays with a sleep monitor and other tests found no sign of the condition.
Dee Dee later began to believe that Gipsy suffered from a variety of health problems many of which she linked to an unknown chromosomal abnormality. At one time, Gypsy’s mother forced her to use a walker, claiming she had muscular dystrophy.
Dee Dee was granted public assistance for her daughter’s alleged medical conditions, and she and Gipsy lived in public housing in Slidell. They paid their bills with Rod’s child-support payments.