Repost- Gypsy Rose Blanchard- America’s Sweetheart Murderer Ep1Repost-
Written by: Fancy Macelli
The Good Wives Guide to True Crime’s first podcast episode on Gypsy Rose Blanchard is live. It’s been a long three-year journey to get here. We originally started out with this just before Mommy Dead and Dearest came out. Fancy approached the Blanchards about doing a scripted series 3 years ago since many people don’t watch documentaries. The series is still in the works but this podcast gives an in-depth look at all the inside info we’ve uncovered on our journey. The series on Gypsy Rose is going to be lengthy. On Halloween, we dropped 3 full-length episodes and a bonus episode answering one of our listener’s medical questions. In November we’ll be back with several more.
This blog won’t be an exact transcript but it should give you enough details from the podcast to get you our main ideas. We know our hearing impaired supporters are super excited about this.
When we first started this case we were 100 percent all about Gypsy but over the last 3 years working with her and her family and uncovering evidence we have shifted our opinions just a bit. We still see that Gypsy was very much a victim of Dee Dee but we also see that the choices she makes today are very much her own and it really calls into question what the real truth of this story is.
In our effort to really understand this whole case we felt that we needed to start at the very beginning and that was long before Gypsy was born. It really started with Dee Dee as a very young girl. Looking into this we sat down with her siblings, her dad, and stepmom Laura, nephew Bobby, and long-time friends Suzette and Titania.
Dee Dee was the youngest of 6 children. She grew up mostly in Louisiana but her family also spent a few years in Brazil too which I thought was super interesting. Her father was a boat captain so he worked offshore much of her life and being the baby of the family her mother spoiled her very much. Her siblings shared with us that Dee Dee always got exactly what she wanted. Birthday parties, cars, money, college education you name it she got it but they never got the same treatment. Emma, Dee Dee’s mom told everyone that Dee Dee was a sick kid (she wasn’t). Her siblings say that she supposedly had a heart murmur but she was never at a doctor’s office or treated. However, what it did do was afford her special treatment.
Emma ran a tight ship and every Saturday was cleaning day. The girls even washed the walls each week. Claudia and Dorla, Dee Dee’s sisters say that they had to remove all their mom’s nick-nacks and clean the shelves and if they didn’t put them back exactly right their momma would grab a bag of flour come out and fling it all over the room and require them to start again. But not Dee Dee. She often lounged on the couch watching TV while her sisters had to do the housework.
Dee Dee cause quite a bit of turmoil in the house growing up and it seemed her sisters always had to pay the price. Often having to go out pick their own switches and then their mom would make them kneel for hours and rub salt into the switch stripes. But, oddly enough they describe their childhood as good and happy and speak kindly of both their mother and father. But the stories about Dee Dee are not good. In fact, in the entire time, I sat and listened to tale after tale about Dee Dee none of them were nice. Not one. From anyone.
So, before I left the meeting with her sisters I asked one last question, “Did you miss your sister.” To which I got a resounding yes. So that begged a follow-up question and that was, “But in all these stories I don’t hear good stories. All I hear is how she was manipulative and mean and conniving so can you share just one good story or one thing you think hmmm, I really which she was here so we could do that one more time with me.”
Silence.
It lasted for an uncomfortably long time and then finally one of her sisters broke the silence and said to me that while they loved their sister because of just that being her sister they really had nothing good to remember. That I found rather telling because it seemed to be the same thing from everyone I talked to. Nobody had a good word where Dee Dee was concerned. Strange stories, mean stories but nothing good.
Kristy, Gypsy’s stepmom put us in contact with two of Dee Dee’s longest friends Suzette and Titania. Titania a nurse actually co-heads our Medical Research Department and she had a lot to share with us about her ex-friend. Suzette and Titania met Dee Dee in junior high. They were the best of friends calling themselves the three musketeers. But it was a hard friendship to maintain and eventually as they became adults drifted apart. They weren’t around very much when Gypsy was born.
Titania and Suzette describe Dee Dee as a mean girl who was obsessed with celebrities and a person you really didn’t want to cross. I’m going to share a few stories here but for the whole story join us on Patreon. We’ll be uploading our notes from all the interviews we conducted with family and friends.
When Dee Dee was in high school she claimed that she was in a relationship with Night Ranger Lead Singer, Jackie Blades. She was his number one fan. The head of his fan club and she alleged that she met Jackie and they fell in love. But, Jackie was a happily married man and never heard of Dee Dee. She would present her friends with long handwritten letters but when asked to see them she’d only show them the signature and then swipe the papers into her book bag in a flash.
This obsession continued on into their early 20’s where Suzette and Titania tell a few stories about their dealings with the band. Dee Dee was obsessed with getting to meet band members so when the concert would end she and her friends would quickly hurry over to the side door and wait for the bands to come out and board their tour buses. One night it was just Suzette and Dee Dee at a concert in New Orleans and Dee Dee instructed Suz to make sure she got a great picture of her and Jackie when he came out. So Suz stood on a cold night shaking because Dee Dee told her that her jacket looked dumb and to leave it behind, waiting for Jackie to emerge. The side door finally swings open and out rolls the band. Dee Dee screams out at Jackie, “Hey Jackie it’s me, Dee Dee.” He was a bit surprised but greeted her with a nice hey and tried to pass her but Dee Dee insisted that he stop for a quick pic. Suzette snapped the pic and Jackie quickly removed Dee Dee’s grasp on his waste and boarded the bus. When Suzette asked Dee Dee about him not seeming to know who she was she told Suz that he has to act that way in public.
A few days later Suz and Ti were hanging out in Dee Dee’s bedroom and there was a brand new 8×10 pic in a frame on Dee Dee’s bedside and she had paired it with one of the handwritten letters. She was telling Ti all about her love affair and some great night with Jackie out on tour with him and how that picture was taken then when Suz leaned over and said, “Ti I’m the one who took that picture.”
These stories were countless. But they didn’t end there. Ti & Suzette shared many crazy stories about Dee Dee each one a bit more concerning than the rest. She was known for doing mean things to friends she wanted to get rid of like arranging pretend dates with guys, alleging that she had been raped while always being friendly with the guy afterward and even flirting with him, and she even tried at one point to convince the town a satanic cult was preying on its youth.
But I think the craziest story that was shared with me comes from her nephew Bobby. He talks about his aunt being into witchcraft. Suz and Ti confirm that they did see witchcraft books in her closet. Bobby tells a story that one of the aunt’s had miscarried a baby. Dee Dee performed a ritual of sorts. She claimed she had the miscarried fetus in a bowl. She had a sack of oranges and she was holding the oranges like a baby and speaking to it. Then she holds the bag up and squishes it allowing the juice to run into the bowl over the supposed fetus. She was chanting and walking around in circles, then crying out. It was all very strange Bobby told us. And while I can’t believe that she had a fetus in a bowl I can believe she tried to convince others she did and what a whacky story. My partner, Brande said it was one she’d have nightmares about for sure.
The stories we have about Dee Dee as a young child and adult are all truly insane. The lengths of manipulation and deception she was willing to go to were outrageous. She didn’t just wake up one day and decide to abuse Gypsy these tendencies were engrained in her long before that. If you’d like to hear the full story we’ve shared today check out The Good Wives Guide to True Crime where you can listen and even leave us a voice message with your questions and you might just be featured in one of our next episodes.
You can also follow us on YouTube where every Sunday we give you another video on various true crime cases. Check us out at Murder by Design. We have an entire series on Gypsy with never before seen footage, interrogation videos in their entirety of her and Nick, as well as lots of discussions we’ve had on the case.
In our next episode of Good Wives Guide we cover the early stages of Rod and Dee Dee’s relationship and read some of a letter that Kristy wrote us about what life was like in Louisiana with Dee Dee. So make sure to check it out. It’s live on any of the main podcast players. We’ll be back next week here to give you some of the details.