America, we must stop stanning convicted murderers

I feel like this shouldn't have to be said.

Folks, I come to you with my hands clasped in a gesture of mercy. I’m here, metaphorically on my knees¹, begging you.

We’ve got to stop treating convicted murderers like celebrities.

There are a lot of actual celebrities you’d be better off getting behind. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that between the entertainment industry, YouTube, and TikTok, we currently have more celebrities than we know what to do with. We don’t need to create new ones, especially if they have murdered another human being.

Because this is the age of the social media, where you are guaranteed to find at least one other person who will tell you “That incredibly weird and fucked up thing you just said actually makes a lot of sense, and I agree with it,” we now have large swathes of people who treat true crime as a source of gossip and entertainment. Because we’ve all deluded ourselves into thinking we’re much smarter than we actually are, these people believe themselves to be ace detectives² with Sherlock Holmes-level eyes for detail, and rely on such things as “bad vibes” and not “evidence” to point at potential suspects. Many of these folks think they have what it takes to solve a murder or a missing person case, virtually none have done more than harass the wrong people and get in the way.

Perhaps no other true crime case has attracted a more bizarre fan base (because there’s no better word to describe it) than the story of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. For the benefit of those three or four of you who are normal and not obsessed with this kind of thing³, the Gypsy-Rose Blanchard case might involve the most extreme example of Munchausen Syndrome by proxy ever documented (though considering how easy it apparently is to fool people on the internet into believing that either you or your child is grievously ill, I have no doubt that a strong competitor is just waiting to be discovered). Gypsy-Rose’s mother, Dee Dee, for reasons we will never know because she’s dead, gave new meaning to the word “gaslighting,” convincing her that she was several years younger than she actually was, and afflicted with both leukemia and such severe cerebral palsy that she couldn’t walk.

Incredibly, going largely on her word alone, Dee Dee was able to convince several doctors as well, subjecting Gypsy-Rose to dozens of unnecessary surgeries (including one to remove her salivary glands, which resulted in her front teeth rotting out). She was also able to parlay this sad story into free trips to Disney World, free airline tickets, and backstage passes to meet country singer Miranda Lambert.

Dee Dee was able to get away with this extremely elaborate deception for over two decades, forcing Gypsy-Rose to shave her head and use an oxygen tank when they were out in public so that she would look believably “sick.” She managed to escape suspicion that she was lying either by forging paperwork (or claiming that certain documents were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina), or simply moving and starting all over again with new doctors⁴. It could have gone on indefinitely, if not for the fact that Gypsy-Rose herself became suspicious. She was also active on social media without Dee Dee’s knowledge, and developed a romantic relationship with an emotionally disturbed man named Nicholas Godejohn.

Depending on whose version of the story you believe, either Gypsy-Rose convinced Godejohn to murder Dee Dee so that she could escape and live a normal life, or it was all Godejohn’s idea and Gypsy-Rose just meekly went along with it. In any case, Dee Dee was stabbed to death, the young lovers went on the lam for a few days until they were caught, Gypsy-Rose was sentenced to ten years in prison while Godejohn received life, and there, that’s more than you ever wanted to know about the Gypsy-Rose Blanchard case⁵.

ANYWAY, unsurprisingly public opinion was generally on Gypsy-Rose’s side, particularly when it was revealed that even before she became a mother Dee Dee had a long history of pathological lying and stealing, and was suspected by her family of poisoning her stepmother⁶. However, because no one can ever be normal about these things, as Gypsy-Rose moved closer to a December, 2023 parole date, support shifted into something more parasocial. Now, instead of a traumatized woman who’s never lived anywhere near a normal life being let out into the world, she was treated as a hero returning home from war. She was a rock star, a celebrity, a yass queen, encouraged to do such things as appear on YouTube star Tricia Paytas’s podcast and adjust to her new life in front of a massive Truman Show-like audience.

It doesn’t take an expert in psychiatry to see that the last thing an emotionally fragile person needs is constant scrutiny from strangers, particularly when it’s disguised as “support” or caring about them. Though she was born perfectly normal, due to her bizarre, abusive childhood and teenage years Gypsy-Rose is emotionally and likely intellectually stunted, and it comes through in her child-like mannerisms and high, quavering voice. Nevertheless, she belongs to the people now, and by God they’ll examine everything she says and does with the same kind of eye as one would use to review the Zapruder film.

It also means that they can just as quickly turn on her, and some of her most ardent fans have, after Gypsy-Rose was interviewed post-parole and put full responsibility for Dee Dee’s murder on Godejohn. For reasons I’m not sure I completely understand (I guess she’s not sufficiently repentant enough?), this created some backlash, and an almost immediate reframing of Gypsy-Rose as the instigator who cruelly took advantage of a troubled young man who was both developmentally disabled, and on the spectrum.

This is puzzling, because Gypsy-Rose’s story has basically remained unchanged since Godejohn’s trial. By legal standards she didn’t “get away” with Dee Dee’s murder, she admitted her role in it and served jail time. Yet that seems to be the consensus now among her disillusioned fans, who instead of declaring her to be “mother,” are now poring over recent photos and social media posts for evidence that she’s the sociopath and master manipulator⁷ they suddenly believe her to be based on one (1) interview. To be clear, much of this “investigation” has been directed towards her husband, a special education teacher. The fact that her husband reached out to her first has now been deemed by these experts as “creepy” and a sign that he’s possibly a pedophile, even though he’s 37 and Gypsy-Rose is 32⁸.

What’s happening here is the same trajectory as nearly every celebrity in the era of social media: we love them, we love them, we lift them up, and then when they displease us in some way we instantly tear them down. The fact that people have filmed videos of themselves in their cars expressing their “disappointment” in Gypsy-Rose in the same offended tone as complaining that an actor hasn’t publicly expressed an opinion on the Gaza Strip conflict might be the most stark proof that we’re living in the Upside Down.

If I’m interpreting these brain slug takes correctly, Gypsy-Rose was supposed to emerge from nearly a decade in jail both ready to become the internet’s new sweetheart, and constantly begging forgiveness for what she’s done from…whom? I’m really not sure. But, barely a month out of the joint, she’s not doing it “right,” and now people are mad.

While it would certainly leave a giant hole in everyone’s lives (including my own), I don’t know that it would be such a terrible thing if a solar flare disabled the internet.

This might be the strangest thing I’ve ever written here, but unless a judge deems it, a convicted murderer doesn’t owe you anything. Gypsy-Rose would have gotten out of jail with or without the support of her “fans,” and does not need to spend the rest of her life repaying them for it by behaving in the victim-meets penitent-meets cute little harmless baby sister way they expect her to behave. She’s severely traumatized. She was abused to the point where she believed murder was the only way she could escape. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what’s going on in her head, and how it will affect her in the long run.

I wish Gypsy-Rose Blanchard well. While I concede that we might never know how much she really was or wasn’t directly involved in her mother’s murder, I believe she thought that to be her only way out. But for her sake, and for the sake of humanity, I hope I never have to hear about her again. Let this woman be, and let’s get ourselves some proper hobbies. I’m trying to teach myself how to crochet.

1. You can’t see me, so I’m not really going to do it.

2. The model here is the late Michelle McNamara, a true crime buff who became interested in a California serial murder case that went cold, and significantly contributed to solving it. What’s often overlooked, however, is the fact that McNamara was a professional writer who worked closely with investigators, rather than lighting out on her own and solving it alone like a real-life Jessica Fletcher.

3. And let me be clear, I am also not normal and very obsessed with this kind of thing.

4. It also can’t be overstated how much the concept of “no one wants to be the asshole” allowed her (and in turn many other medical fakers) to get away with it for so long.

5. If you absolutely must know more, read the Buzzfeed News article that launched the public’s obsession with the case, the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest, Hulu’s docudrama The Act, and dozens upon dozens of other media about it.

6. The HBO documentary revealed that Dee Dee’s family wanted so little to do with her that they ended up flushing her ashes down a toilet.

7. And she might be! She was raised by one of the best, after all. But (and again, I’m not an expert, and neither are these people) all I can see so far is that she’s a damaged teenager in the body of an adult woman, with a case of PTSD that doctors will be writing about for years to come.

8. I also stumbled across a spirited debate over whether or not Gypsy-Rose’s husband looks like Dee Dee, which (a) I don’t see it, and (b) it’s not terribly unusual for people to inadvertently marry someone that looks like one of their parents. The unconscious mind is very weird.