Most of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s waking life has been spent in some state of performance. Her mother Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard persuaded family, friends and neighbors that Gypsy Rose suffered from an array of afflictions — from muscular dystrophy to leukemia to extreme developmental disabilities — that left her with the psychological capacity of a young child.
Until one day in 2015 when Gypsy Rose's former boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, stabbed Dee Dee to death, her neighbors, friends and their local community in Missouri took Gypsy Rose to be a wheelchair-bound angel who loved Disney fairy tales and bravely battled an onslaught of diseases.
