Strange Sight | CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND UNSOLVED CASES

Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose

[OVERVIEW]

Late on the night of June 14, 2015, sheriff's deputies in Greene County, Missouri, found the body of Dee Dee Blanchard facedown in the bedroom of her house just outside Springfield, lying on the bed in a pool of blood from the stab wounds inflicted several days earlier. There was no sign of her daughter Gypsy Rose, who, according to Blanchard, suffered from leukemia, asthma, muscular dystrophy, along with several other chronic conditions and had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" she had suffered as a result of her premature birth.

[EARLY LIFE IF DEE DEE]

Dee Dee was born Clauddine Pitre in Chackbay, Louisiana, near the Gulf Coast in 1967 and grew up with her family in nearby Golden Meadow. During her childhood, relatives recalled, she would occasionally engage in petty theft, often as retaliation when things did not go her way. At some point early in her adult life, she worked as a nurse's aide. After her death, the family expressed suspicion that in 1997, she might have killed her own mother, by denying her food.

When she was 24, she became pregnant by Rod Blanchard, then 17. They named their daughter Gypsy Rose since Clauddine 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, as he said in 2017, realized he had "got married for the wrong reasons". Despite Clauddine's efforts to get him to return, he did not, and she took her newborn daughter to live with her family.

[GYPSY'S HEALTH AND CHILDHOOD]

Bobby Pitre, Dee Dee's nephew, recalls that Gypsy's birth might have been slightly premature, possibly affecting the development of her skull but other than that, she had no known health issues. According to Rod, who remained involved with his daughter at this point, by the time "Gyp" (as she was known in her extended family) was three months old, her mother was convinced the infant suffered from 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. Nevertheless, he recalls, Dee Dee became convinced that Gypsy had a wide range of health issues, which she attributed to an unspecified chromosomal disorder

When Gypsy was 7 or 8, Bobby recalls, she was riding on her grandfather's motorcycle when he had a minor accident. She suffered an abrasion to her knee, which her mother said was the visible sign of injuries that would require several surgeries to treat properly. From then on, Gypsy was confined to a wheelchair, although he saw signs that she was indeed healthy enough to walk on her own on several occasions. Nonetheless, she often went with her parents to Special Olympics events. In 2001, when Dee Dee claimed Gypsy was eight, she was named the honorary queen of the Krewe of Mid-City Parade, a child-oriented parade held during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Gypsy seems to have stopped going to school after second grade, possibly even as early as kindergarten. Her mother homeschooled her after that supposedly because her illnesses were so severe. Gypsy managed to learn to read on her own through the Harry Potter books.

While Gypsy's father Rod had remarried, Dee Dee moved in with her father and stepmother. They would later claim that Dee Dee, when preparing food for her stepmother, poisoned it with Roundup weed killer, leading to her own chronic illness during this period. During that time, she was arrested for several minor offenses, including writing bad checks. When the Pitres began to regularly confront her about her treatment of Gypsy and expressed suspicion about her role in her stepmother's health, she left with Gypsy for Slidell, although the family would not know this for several years. Her stepmother's health returned to normal shortly afterwards.

In Slidell, she and Gypsy lived in public housing; they paid their bills with public assistance Dee Dee had been granted due to her daughter's supposed medical conditions and Rod's child-support payments. They spent most of their time visiting various specialists, mostly at Tulane Medical Center and the Children's Hospital of New Orleans, seeking treatment of the illnesses Dee Dee claimed Gypsy suffered from, which she now said included hearing and vision problems. While a muscle biopsy found no sign of the muscular dystrophy Dee Dee insisted Gypsy had, she was successful in securing treatment for her daughter's other purported issues. After she told doctors Gypsy had seizures every few months, they prescribed anti-seizure medication. Several surgeries were performed on her during this time and Dee Dee regularly took Gypsy to the emergency room for minor ailments.