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Gypsy Rose Blanchard has revealed the “final straw” that led to the murder of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, Nicholas “Nick” Godejohn.
In her upcoming memoir My Time to Stand, the 33-year-old convicted felon — who served eight years in prison for the role she played in her mother’s killing — detailed her mindset in the weeks before she asked Nick to help her kill Dee Dee.
“People really want to know: What was the final straw? When was the moment when I decided it was her or me?” Blanchard wrote, according to an excerpt obtained by People.
“Here you go, y’all, on page three. One month before the murder, my mother tried to cut my throat,” she continued. “At least that’s how I saw it.
“The cause of concern, suddenly, was my voice. ‘It’s so high-pitched; it’s so squeaky,’ my mother complained to my ear, nose and throat specialist,” Blanchard recalled. “On the way home, I went on and on like, well … a squeaky wheel.
“‘There’s nothing wrong with my voice,’ I said with a whimper, as she pushed me in my portable wheelchair to the parking lot where our car was parked, outside the hospital in downtown Kansas City,” Blanchard wrote. “‘You heard the doctor. That voice of yours might mean there’s a problem with your larynx, and that problem could be causing your sleep apnea,’ she said, her word final.”
At the time, Blanchard was already well aware of her mother’s medical manipulation. Dee Dee had forced her daughter to undergo several surgeries, convincing her she had several illnesses and health complications throughout the first 23 years of her life.
Blanchard noted: “In fact, by this point, the entire ruse had been up between us for a while. I was 23 and had tried to run away twice. I’d shot her with a BB gun. She’d chained me to the bed. I was getting older and much harder to control. The older I got, the more physical and harsher her punishments became.”
“Her carting me off in search of a new surgery, I believed, was her attempt to secure control,” she added.
Already, Dee Dee had allegedly gone to drastic measures to make it difficult for her daughter to speak. Blanchard remembered her “muzzling her mouth shut” at night and using Orajel to numb her mouth, which made her slur her words and drool.
What’s more, Blanchard claimed Dee Dee was the reason her teeth fell out because she had her on several “superfluous medications.”
“Now, the way I saw it, my literal voice, squeaky as it might be, could be taken from me. Her final play,” she said. “Despite my recent awakening to the reality of my life, it was here where I truly feared the scope of her malice.”
Dee Dee went as far as to schedule an “exploratory operation,” telling her daughter it’d be “painless.”
“‘It’s simple, Baby, it’s painless; it will help,’” Blanchard remembered her mom saying.
Blanchard and Godejohn were arrested in Big Bend, Wisconsin on June 15, 2015, the day after the Springfield, Missouri police found Dee Dee stabbed to death in her bedroom.
Almost ten years later, Blanchard is now expecting her first child with her boyfriend, Ken Urker. The happy couple plan to welcome their baby girl, Aurora Raina Urker, sometime in January 2025.
Her memoir, My Time to Stand, which Blanchard wrote alongside Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani,will be available to purchase online and in stores starting December 10.