Blanchard, who’s set to be released early this week after being sentenced to a decade behind bars for plotting mother’s murder, now says her mom didn’t “deserve” to be killed and should instead be “sitting in prison doing time.”
Gypsy Rose Blanchard will be released from prison on Thursday and is wasting no time getting her side of the story out there when it comes to her mother’s murder, her regrets and plans for the future.
With a Lifetime docuseries already dropping next week, the now 32-year-old also opened up to PEOPLE about how she feels today about her mom Dee Dee’s 2015 murder, which she plotted with her then-boyfriend Nicholas “Nick” Godejohn. Blanchard was given 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder but will be released after serving just eight; Godejohn, meanwhile, was sentenced to life in prison.
The murder made headlines and inspired Hulu’s The Act, after the bizarre details of the case began to come out. According to Gypsy Rose, her mother forced her to use a wheelchair and feeding tubes and claimed the child had numerous illnesses and disorders, including muscular dystrophy — with other doctors calling BS on those diagnoses and claiming Gypsy Rose instead suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, now known as Factitious disorder imposed on another.
Courtesy of the Blanchard Family/Lifetime
“If I had another chance to redo everything, I don’t know if I would go back to when I was a child and tell my aunts and uncles that I’m not sick and mommy makes me sick or, if I would travel back to just the point of that conversation with Nick and tell him, ‘You know what, I’m going to go tell the police everything.’ I kind of struggle with that,” Blanchard said in a new interview with PEOPLE ahead of her release.
Of the murder, she said she was “desperate to get out of that situation” and “just wasn’t having it” when her mother allegedly scheduled an operation on her larynx. Feeling she had no other options, Godejohn, she says, told her, “I would do anything to protect you.”
“I said, ‘Anything?’ He said ‘Yes,'” she claimed, before he then stabbed her mother 17 times, killing her.
“She didn’t deserve that,” says Blanchard now. “She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn’t educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior.”
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Blanchard also told the outlet that “Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did,” adding, “I regret it every single day.”
Reflecting back on the alleged treatment she endured, Blanchard said she knew she didn’t need a feeding tube or wheelchair, but was really confused about everything else. She also said her mom would “get really, really upset with me and start manipulating me” whenever she questioned the situation
“It was very similar to a domestic violence type of relationship. As long as you’re complacent everything’s fine. Put your foot down, then it’s bad,” she added, saying her mother began “hitting, punching, slapping her,” while also calling her names like “bitch, whore, slut.”
With her release on the horizon, she said she’s “in love” with husband Ryan Anderson and hopes people in abusive relationships look to her and see they should “not resort to murder.”
“It may seem like every avenue is closed off but there is always another way,” she concluded. “Do anything, but don’t take this course of action.”
She also recently told TMZ she’s hoping to meet Taylor Swift after her release and has already bought tickets to a Kansas City Chiefs game on December 31.
See more from Blanchard when Lifetime’s docuseries The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard premieres January 5.