The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 6

Hannah J: There's no proof that Dee Dee had Munchausen by Proxy. There's no proof or evidence of that. None.

Javier: This is just my observation. But I bet a lot of Gypsy haters were sympathetic to her once. And somewhere along the way that sympathy melted. The more that circulated about her online, the medical records, the genetic disorder, the lust for fame, the more critical people got. And they're making some valid points. We heard why Gypsy says she kept faking it since she was seven.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I tried to tell my mom a few times and, um, I guess I was just afraid of her not loving me as much as, um, she does if I couldn't walk, you know? Then we heard her downplay how she manipulated Nick into doing it. And yeah, I asked him a question. I asked him to kill my mother, but I didn't hold a gun to his head and make him do it. Then we found out Gypsy really was sick after all. I have a rare genetic condition called microdeletion 1q21.1.

Javier: The anti-Gypsy camp looks at all that and lands here. Dee Dee didn't abuse her daughter. She was a worried mom trying to help a sick kid. But sometimes when the pendulum swings, it swings all the way. First Gypsy is a liar. Then Dee Dee is a victim. Then Dee Dee is a good mom who got murdered for trying to help her kid. There are people out there right now who don't believe she had Munchausen by proxy. Some don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a thing at all. Which leaves one question. Was Dee Dee a sick woman, or was she a con artist with a kid? I'm Javier Leiva and this is PRETEND... Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. So let's start with the case against Munchausen. And it's built on something Gypsy never said. Here's Alaura with Into the Weeds.

Speaker: gypsy put munchausen on the map

Alaura: She never speaks about physical abuse the entire time that she's communicating with Nicholas Goepper, at least nothing that we've seen

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: And I don't want you to worry about my safety. I'll be safe. I'm always safe. I have a pit bull of a mom, as you know. So I'll be safe,

Alaura: she never really talks about abuse even mentally Um she just the worst that she really accuses her mom of is if I remember correctly- Uh she's crying in one video when she's talking to Nick and it's because she wants to move out and live with Nick, and she's really upset that her mom won't support her And uh that's pretty much all that she expressed and that, like-

Amber: And a helicopter parent

Alaura: And a helicopter parent

Javier: you pointed out a really good example of this was if she was really being she would have told Nick during those emails and it would have come out in the FOIA request and the prosecutors would have found if it existed so that's very compelling But does that mean that Gypsy was not victim of Munchausen by proxy Do you believe that Munchausen by proxy exists

Amber: So I believe that Munchausen by proxy is really, um... It I think it's different mental illnesses or different behaviors that probably shouldn't have a blanket term in my personal opinion I do believe that Dee Dee at least lied to the community about different things that were happening, 100%. I think that she probably over-exaggerated some of the things that were happening, um, to Gypsy, to everybody, to get sympathy and to get you know different donations and stuff shouldn't have a blanket term in my personal opinion but it seemed like she did it mostly for profit rather than just to keep

Javier: "I asked content creator Audacious Audrey the same question. She takes it further. Do you believe that she suffered any form of Munchausen by proxy?

Audrey: Not Munchausen, no. No

Javier: think, uh, like from your point of view, like what was your take on it?

Audrey: I just don't think that she was a victim of Munchausen by proxy. If anything, I think she was malingering. think that Dee may have used her daughter's illnesses early on in order to help her thrive and get through and survive as somebody that was poor. And I don't see that as bad if it is with good intent to

Javier: What does, uh, like, like how do you not see that? 'Cause you, you just described Munchausen by proxy, but like how do you not see that as bad?

Audrey: I'm talking about like through the community. If she couldn't afford her bills and all that, doing what she needed to to make sure that her kid was fed, I don't, I won't knock a mother for that. Like, I don't see that as horrible, doing what you have to do for your kid.

Javier: So parading your supposedly sick child on local television and in front of live audiences for attention and money isn't Munchausen? Yes, technically, Munchausen and malingering are different things. Both involve faking or exaggerating illness. Faking a fever to skip school, that's malingering. Slipping at your grocery store for the insurance money, that's malingering. Shaving your kid's head once for a free trip to Disney World, that's malingering. Shaving your kid's head for years, knowing full well she doesn't have cancer, that's Munchausen by proxy. Munchausen by proxy isn't about the money. It's psychological. The caretaker gets paid in attention, sympathy, and praise for being the hero at a sick kid's bedside. The free stuff is a bonus, not the engine. But here's the thing. You can have Munchausen by proxy and be running a scam at the same time. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Which means we might be splitting hairs here. And Dee Dee went to extreme lengths to keep the illusion going. A leukemia diagnosis that never existed. An age that changed depending on what state they were in. A shaved head on a kid who wasn't losing her hair.

Audrey: Have you seen where the shaving came into play, the charity events?

Javier: Uh, re-refresh my memory,

Audrey: So there's pictures of Dee Dee and Gypsy shaving their head together, and it's at a charity event.

Javier: Mm-hmm

Audrey: So do we know if it was because of that? Do we know if it was Gypsy cutting her own hair like kids do? I mean, we have her coming out of prison and Dee Dee's dead, and she shaved her own head. So we don't know if that was Dee Dee taking the clippers to her hair or if that was Gypsy cutting her own hair and then Dee Dee just saying, "Okay, you want short hair? We're gonna have short hair."

Javier: Sometimes this feels like arguing with a flat-earther. They have an explanation for everything. So a teenage girl chose to shave her head at a charity fundraiser, and her mom just went along with it. That takes some mental gymnastics. And I suppose it was Gypsy's idea to go on the local news in a wheelchair, pretending to have muscular dystrophy, to collect the keys to a Habitat for Humanity home?

Speaker: dee dee: It is the perfect town, the perfect place. We're moving to Mayberry. It didn't take a lot to convince Dee Dee and her daughter, Gypsy Rose, to make a new home in Aurora. They already knew it was meant to be. Here's Dee Dee talking to reporters after recieving a habitat for humanity home. dee dee: I think it was, it was a blessing in disguise. It took something like a hurricane to make us have a happy ending. dee dee: A family with a story like theirs gets noticed, and the story here was a critically ill teenager in a wheelchair who'd lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. The headline writes itself. On paper, Dee Dee and Gypsy were perfect candidates, low income with nowhere to go and a kid who supposedly wasn't going to be around much longer. After arranging a helicopter ride from Louisiana to St. John's Hospital, the process began to find them a permanent home. It turns out St. John's already owned this house, and with the help of local donations, it was turned into a home.

Javier: Now to be clear, Habitat doesn't hand out free houses. Dee Dee most likely bought the infamous pink house on a low or zero interest mortgage.

Speaker: If they make too little, they wouldn't be able to pay us back. If they make too much, they'd be eligible for a, uh, conventional loan.

Javier: But think about what it took to get them there. The helicopter out of Louisiana. The hospital on the other end. A flight that could have gone to someone who actually needed it. So was this malingering or Munchausen by proxy? You tell me. One time, I'd buy it. But making her child seem sick was the routine. There's a page in Gypsy's medical records I can't stop looking at. It's in a March 2007 report from Children's Mercy. At the top, in a fancy script font with decorative stars on either side of the title, somebody typed Gypsy Rose's diagnosis. Spelled wrong. So who typed this list and handed it to the doctor? Was it 15 year old Gypsy, or her mother Dee Dee? My money is on Dee Dee. Under it, a list. Epilepsy. Vision impaired. Hearing impaired. GI reflux. Quadriplegia. Muscular dystrophy. Anemia. Hypoventilation. Asthma. Allergies. Mild mental retardation. Leukemia. Incontinence. Lung disease. Heart murmur. Fifteen conditions on one girl, and half of them spelled wrong. This does not look like any hospital document I've ever seen. And next to quadriplegia, in handwriting, two words. Paralyzed at birth. Quadriplegia is all four limbs, not just the legs. And paralyzed at birth isn't the story anybody tells. Not Gypsy, not her critics. A list like that opens doors. It got them a room at the Ronald McDonald House. That's in the records too, page 116 of the 204 page report. Gypsy says she was 10 the first time her mom signed her up for a Make-A-Wish trip to Disney. All expenses paid, on the claim that she was dying. She says it happened again at 13 or 14, through a different wish granting organization. And her date of birth is all over these records. In the Louisiana files she was born in 1991. In Missouri it's 1993. An attorney Dee Dee hired told me Dee Dee gave her 1995. And it wasn't Gypsy handing doctors those dates. It was Dee Dee. She told me about this back in Part 4.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: She would knock down a few years off my age, and every time that she would do that, I would be like, "Well, am I not turning 16?" And then her response to that was like, from the car accident, she had a head injury, she doesn't remember, and then make me feel bad because I'm trying to correct her and she'd start to cry. And so it's, it's like all this emotional stuff that gets tied into it.

Javier: So how many times does malingering have to happen before we call it a mental illness? But then there's this, and it has nothing to do with money. Back to that surgery form. Down at the bottom is a nurse's note. Gypsy had an ENT surgery and a dental procedure scheduled, and the hospital offered to do them together. One surgery, one anesthesia. Knock it out in one shot. The nurse wrote that Dee Dee turned it down. So her daughter went under twice. Even after all of this, Gypsy's critics are not moved. Sure, maybe Dee Dee exaggerated here and there. But none of it proves Munchausen by proxy. Dee Dee was never diagnosed by a psychiatrist, and she was never charged with anything. And to them, nothing in those medical files points to abuse. Every surgery performed on Gypsy seemed to have a reason. The way they see it, Munchausen by proxy is a storyline invented by TV producers after the murder to turn Gypsy into a victim. The real victim, they say, is Dee Dee. They call it Justice for Dee Dee. That's after the break.

Speaker: Dee Dee was a saint

Javier: We can all agree. Dee Dee did not deserve to be stabbed to death in her sleep. Kill first, ask questions later is not a world any of us want to live in. But the critics have a second argument, and this one is harder to wave off. They say we only ever tell the dark version. The wheelchair, the feeding tube, the shaved head. And we leave out everything else. Because they say Gypsy wasn't locked in a basement. She went places. She had friends.

Fancy: So wait a minute. You've spent years claiming this woman is the worst woman on the face of the earth, basically, Well, may I ask you, where are the rights for the dead woman? Like, this is the woman who died. She's the victim in this. Like, you know, no matter what you wanna think about her, she still is a victim. She died. She-- Her life has been taken brutally at that,

Javier: Here's Amber with into the Weeds podcast.

Amber: I was fairly sympathetic as far as like oh man, she didn't deserve to die you know that was messed up and then the murderer's out here doing the most Okay That's kinda how I felt about Dee Dee I didn't really You know I was like well if she did everything Gypsy said then r you know I mean that's pretty jacked up If she didn't you know then I feel really bad for her.

Gypsy: Welcome to Barnstable Harbor.

Javier: This is audio from a home video of Gypsy and Dee Dee from their trip to Cape Cod. Um, we are about to go whale watching. Look at the beautiful beach

Amber: there's a Cape Cod video of Dee Dee dancing- Yeah, she's doing the Cha Cha Slide. It hit me when I saw that video that She may not have been this terrible, evil monster that we thought she was. And

Javier: is though

Amber: Well okay you can be a bad person and you can still dance and have fun, but it did seem like they had a good relationship, at least from the way they were joking around in the video. It's about half an hour long. If you watch it, it's not, it's not something that's gonna like totally, like, change the case or anything I just think it just helped them see her in a more sympathetic light. It humanized her. Like, yeah. It humanized her.

Alaura: I think when I looked at her before with all of the monster behind her I always saw her as kind of stern looking in in the interviews and stuff But when you look at that video you see a real woman interacting with her daughter and they're just having a good time together

Javier: you know think that's fair to at that video and all of a sudden now we have dimension person that the has vil villainized But also doesn't mean that none the stuff that accused of didn't happen right

Amber: Oh I totally agree Yeah most definitely That's why I don't feel strongly about the Cape Cod video whatsoever if I'm being honest I mean it was still nice to see It doesn't really change anything for me But something I'm sure that you've heard of if you've just even known anything about Gypsy Rose is there's this phrase that goes around a lot is you know there's not gonna be a perfect victim and that's used all the time for all kinds of different cases And people always say that about Gypsy Oh you can't expect her to be the perfect victim Well I think the same thing goes for Dee Dee

Javier: And that's true. By the way, I use a lot of clips from Alaura and Amber at Into the Weeds. Not because I want them to be the poster children for the anti-Gypsy community. They're actually the least extreme people on that side of the fence. I use them so often because their opinions are the most measured. We can disagree, and it stays respectful. That's not always how this goes. Here's a video Fancy Macelli made after she decided she didn't like my approach to this story.

Fancy Macelli: Hey guys, it's Fancy, and you're watching the Good Wives Network. And Javier Leiva, this one's for you. In our emails yesterday, you stated that you could not find any proof from the anti-Gypsy side to justify the life that Dee Dee imposed upon Gypsy. But can I ask you what was that life that Dee Dee imposed upon Gypsy? Because by all accounts, Gypsy went to Disney all the time. She swam with dolphins. She went to Harry Potter World. She was on billionaires' boats on the open ocean. She went to Brownies beauty pageants. She was in cheer. She went to summer camp. She went to the beach. She went to all the fa- functions in the area. She was on, in parades. She was a, um, in the Special Olympics. She won wheelchair races. What, what bad life was she subjected to? Was she isolated? No, she was not isolated. She always had friends. She always had family. That's the thing. She is lying about everything, maybe it wasn't Dee Dee. Maybe the person lying about their conditions and fabricating their conditions is Gypsy Rose, which is what I've believed for quite a long time, which would not be Munchausen by proxy, but Munchausen of self, factitious disorder imposed upon self.

Javier: Some content creators take it a bit further. Like Audacious Audrey.

Audrey: My take has been that Gypsy is the abuser, and that goes back to the actual FOIA documents. you look through, you can see on Dee Dee's search history where she is looking up counseling for mother and children, and she's looking up group homes to potentially put Gypsy in, She's right about the searches. After the murder, the Greene County Sheriff's Office took every computer out of that house, and when they pulled the browser history, they found a mother slowly losing control. In the months before June 2015, Dee Dee was searching for counseling for mothers and daughters in the Springfield area. She was looking at group homes. Places that take in adults who can't live on their own. And Audrey reminded me of something else. Gypsy once shot her mother with a BB gun.

Javier: And then you have, she shot her mom in 2011. I'm about to play you a recently released prison call were Gyspy describes the bb gun incident after attempting to run away.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Cause I had just got caught again, and this is after the whole chain me to the bed thing. And so I was just starting to build up trust again, and I was gonna attempt to run away again. Well, that failed, and I freaked out. She was coming to hit me, and things were gonna get physical. And so there was a BB gun on the kitchen table, and I grabbed it. And it all happened so fast that I just grabbed it, and she started to walk toward me, and I started shooting. And I shot about 10 BBs at her, and it, it ended up in her leg, and it didn't, it didn't get much, but just a flesh wound. But, but I was real scared, and then I kept telling her, "Just let me go. Please, just let me go. I'll leave and I'll never come back." And so then I chased her into the bathroom 'cause I was gonna lock her in the bathroom, and I had a knife in my hand, too. So I had the knife in my hand and I had the gun that I had just fired all the bullets out of. And we stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, and she tried to talk me down, and she did.

Audrey: And if you know anything about abuse, abusers tend to escalate over time, the most dangerous time is said to be when you are leaving an abuser, and you have these searches for the shelters and all that just weeks before Gypsy killed her mom. So I think that Dee Dee was kicking her out, and she couldn't handle the rejection. And I'm not gonna say snapped by any means 'cause she had been planning to, you know, leave and, at least. And so I that it was, "If I can get rid of her, I can have everything." So I don't think that it was anything to do with medical.

Javier: I think that it had everything to do with she's seen her mom as an obstacle, and she needed to get her obstacle out of her way, I asked Gypsy about this framing. Dee Dee was not the one abusing you. You were the one abusing Dee Dee- Mm-hmm ... in terms of when the FOIA records came out, they found Dee Dee's search, internet search.

Aly: Mm-hmm.

Javier: And she was looking at places for, uh, homeless shelters for, for kids.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Mm-hmm.

Javier: She was looking for just a way to get rid of you.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: , Back in 2015, but she was threatening me with sending me away to a mental institution. So- Growing up, I always had something I was afraid of. So when I was really little, it was the state, so like CPS.

Aly: Mm-hmm.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: So my mom would be like, you know, treated CPS like CPS was the boogeyman. So, you know, "Don't be bad or the state will come and take you away." So then later on in my teen years and early 20s, then it became, you know, she would watch these Dr. Phil episodes, right? The ones where the, the kids are just completely out of pocket- Yeah ... crazy stuff, uh, back talking, you know, one of those boot camp type of things, right? Yeah. So my mom was, and she was right on the side of me making those Google searches, so I do remember this. And she's like, "This is where I'm gonna send you. It's a mental institution. So I'm, I'm looking it up right now. You're gonna go."

Javier: So it was more of a threat,

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: you're saying? It was a threat. It was a threat. I, I fully, it was, uh, Burl, I think it was called Burl Behavioral or something like that. So yeah, I mean, she did it right in, on the side of me.

Javier: And there were searches that said that she was looking at why do kids steal their parents' drugs?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Yeah. I think she had a very clear understanding that I was taking more of her medication.

Javier: Did you and DeeDee share a computer, or did you both have separate computers?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Okay, so this is where it becomes a little complicated. So she had her laptop-

Javier: Mm-hmm ...

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: and I had mine that I had bought without her knowledge.

Javier: So, so the ones that we're referring to were from her laptop.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Yeah.

Javier: Did you ever use that computer?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Very sparingly,

Speaker: Gypsy is in a very precarious position. In order to defend her actions, which she agrees are indefensible, she has to paint her mother in a negative light. And she says that's not her goal.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I never wanted my mom to be villainized. but also, you can't make excuses for the choices that they made in life either. You can only tell facts. So you don't have to go on and say she was a monster, she was evil, she was this, she was that. Clearly she was a very sick woman. she would've needed a lot of mental health therapy and things like this. but to say she was a good mom in these tributes is such a slap in the face, and it's hard for me to watch because I'm like, "Yes, humanize her, but don't realize she wasn't a saint either." Beca- it's not just me that says that. She has conned so many people and used her own daughter to do it. there's m- family members within her family that their first thought was flush her ashes down the toilet

Javier: I need to stop the tape right here because I totally missed this during the interview. Dee Dee's family wanted to flush her ashes down the toilet? Here's a clip of Claude, Dee Dee's father.

Speaker: she got cremated. She said, "What you want me to do with the ashes?" Everybody said, "I don't want her. I don't want her." Carlos said, "Flush them." I told him, "Flush that in the toilet." They want- Her sister said, "Flush that in the toilet."

Javier: Now, I've heard that the ashes were never desecrated. But sitll, what a thing to say about your own daughter's creamation.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: There is another person in the family, she's passed on now, but my step-grandmother was being poisoned by my mom. So it's not just the things that are involving me. There's other things that my mom did in her life that was just not good. Again, we don't have to bash her, but we also don't have to change the story and wipe her slate clean just because she died. Because if the story was flipped, let's say she killed me in, in the abuse, I died, well then she gets arrested, and the world hates her and villainizes her because all that abuse stuff comes to light. But because she died and I'm out of prison now living my life after m- you know, conspiring to murder her, I'm the villain now in, in some areas of the internet.

Javier: And you, and you very well could be, but it's just like you can't just, uh, revise history and like forget-

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: To change

Javier: it ... both things could be true.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Both ... exactly. Yeah. Both things can be true at one time. Right. You know? Yeah.

Javier: From the outside, Gypsy and Dee Dee looked like a mother and daughter who adored each other. But every now and then, somebody caught a glimpse of something else. Nancy Simpson covered this case from the beginning. She spent nearly 30 years at KTTS in Springfield. Today, Nancy is the host of The Toll podcast. Gypsy and Dee Dee would come to the station and get tickets and they would show up at our tent on concert day and get free tickets to the concertsThey met once, at a Keith Urban concert. Because in mind she was mentally disabled That's how she presented herself She presented herself as 12 or 13 years old they were in the community and people knew who they were It wasn't until after the murder that Nancy found out what had been going on inside that house. what was your opinion on Gypsy?

Nancy Simpson: Uh poor girl Yeah I mean that was the perception here in Springfield it was a girl who was manipulated uh and kept sick by her mom

Javier: How much of that do you feel is true now knowing what you know?

Nancy Simpson: Dah it's a sliding scale and you have to decide where that slide lands And for me some days it lands more for Dee Dee sometimes it lands a little more toward Gypsy Um throughout this discovery of information and these videos I I've really gone back and forth quite a bit where do I stand today I I We know? now that Gypsy really was sick and that her mom was getting her help that she really needed I think that's what any mother would do and I think that it got out of hand And I think the money was there the trips were there the fun was there and they both took advantage Nancy also got something nobody else did. An interview with the Blanchards' next door neighbor.

Speaker: Neighbor Timeline Clues

Javier: you had another exclusive interview with the neighbor, and that was a really interesting conversation. Now granted, I, I think about this too, like if, if my wife murdered me or my kid murdered me and you would interview my neighbor, I don't know what he would say about me.

Nancy Simpson: You know? Like I don't know, uh, you know, if, if they would know me intimately, but it is a very interesting vantage point, right? Living that close to them, seeing them regularly. This is from a neighbor who knew them, not best friends. She saw them from time to time. She went on nightly walks in the neighborhood, and I just wanted to hear what she had to say.

Javier: What did she say about Gypsy around the time of the murder? Did she have any observations about her?

Nancy Simpson: Um, she tells this story about she was walking in the neighborhood, Gypsy was in her wheelchair, and she was crying, and she walked up to her, and she just felt like something was off. And she's like: "Are you okay?" And she's like: "Oh, yeah, yeah, honey, I'm fine, I'm fine." But the feeling in the moment was, um, something very heavy was weighing on her. But how, how do you know? How do you know in just a few weeks there's gonna be a brutal murder in that home?

Javier: there was once where she knocked on the door. Can you tell me that story where she went over to the house and she knocked on the door?

Nancy Simpson: Yeah, she was headed to the house. And that she, um, went up to knock on the door, and she could hear them yelling inside at each other. And, um, Dee Dee comes to the door and answers it, and she's like, "Oh." She was pretending she was asleep, and she's like, "She wasn't asleep, though. They were fighting."

Javier: Let's play a portion of that interview from the Toll podcast.

Neighbor: I remember knocking on their door for some reason I don't remember, and, uh, Dee Dee barely cracked it open and, um, had her robe on, but it was, like, maybe 4:00 in the afternoon and, and she's like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, honey, I, I just can't, uh, I'm sick today and come back another day." But it was weird because I heard a bunch of yelling outside, so I think that's the reason. I just know that I went th- I was on my way there and I heard a bunch of yelling, and so it just didn't make sense, you know? So, like, okay, so now you're acting like you just woke up? Hmm.

Javier: It's clear that things were coming to a head. Here's Nancy Simpson again.

Nancy Simpson: I think even at the end, Gypsy tells the story that that night of the murder, Dee Dee said, "Gypsy, don't hurt me."

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: She said, starting to feel more relaxed, "Don't hurt me." The last words she said to me was, "Don't hurt me."

Javier: It's chilling. There's another call I need to play you. Gypsy is talking to her ex-husband, and she's making a joke.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I'm in prison for doing a reverse abortion. My body, my choice, and murdered my mom so I can protect my body. It's like instead of like the mother wanting the freedom, it's like the kid wanting the freedom, so it's like, "I want the freedom."

Speaker: You can't unhear that.

Javier: There's not a good guy or a bad guy in this story,

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: right? Right, right, right.

Javier: But in a way, I would think that the general population, sympathizes with you.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Yeah.

Javier: Right? But in a way, when you watch some of their content-

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Mm-hmm ...

Javier: they make Dee Dee, I mean, Dee Dee was a victim, but they almost make her the sympathetic character.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: Right, right.

Javier: And they have these tributes almost to her and all that. Mm-hmm. Tell me, h- how does that make you feel?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard: I mean, I, I agree to your point. There... I am a victim of my mother. My mother is a victim of me. It is vice versa. You know, it is... No one is sort of innocent. No one's standing on a podium at this point.

Speaker: Next time on PRETEND. The prison calls. Hours of them, recorded by the state, and now they're all over the internet. had Um, that had a lot of my medical records in it, um, a lot of test results, X-rays, um, things like that, that she had put in two binders. Um, and the night of the murder, I threw them in the trash and picked up the dumpster. And we follow the money. Because Gypsy makes a living being Gypsy Rose. But so do her critics. Everybody in this story is getting paid. That's next time on PRETEND.

Javier: Okay, before we leave, I got a message from a guy named Jeremy Granger. He lives out in 100 Mile House, British Columbia, Canada. And Jeremy wanted me to give a shout out to his wife, Coreen. Jeremy gave me her name, their town, her business, her Facebook. He said, and I'm quoting here, "so you can find her and see that we are actually who we say we are. Not pretending to be someone else." Jeremy. I love you that. So, Coreen Granger. Diehard PRETEND listener. Mother of three kids and two pugs. Nineteen years married to a man who cares enough to track down a podcast host in North Carolina to brag about you. That's a good husband right there. Coreen, thank you for listening. From all the way up in BC. And Jeremy, good work, man. Good work. ---- If you want more Gypsy Rose Blanchard or the latest on the stalker.... consider joining PAtreon or PRETEND+ on Apple Podcast. You can get ad-free, early release episodes. As soon as I finish an episode, I upload it and you can listen to it while it's still warm from the oven. And sometimes, we listen live all together on patreon. It's a lot fo fun. So head on over to my new website thisispretend.com for more information. Today's episode was written and produced by me, Javier Leiva. It was edited by the talented puneeth shenoy with the podcast pundits. Our theme music is by joe basile with the chikcen.net. Special thanks to Into the weeds and nancy simpson with the toll podcast for your help with this episode. Talk to you soon.