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The Different Murder Methods Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Nick Godejohn Considered: "Once We Do This, We Are Not Going To Be Able To Go Back"
Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Nick Godejohn debated several methods of killing Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard, Godejohn said in a revealing interview.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s compelling and tragic story has become a well-known one, the subject of several TV shows and documentaries. Everyone in her community was shocked when she — a perceived sick girl with everything from leukemia to muscular dystrophy to developmental issues — and an online boyfriend were arrested in connection with her own mother’s murder.
After their arrest, the bizarre tale unraveled in the media: her mother Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard had pretended Gypsy was sick, forcing her to endure multiple surgeries and consume unneeded medications — a condition often referred to as Munchausen by proxy, which is now known as factitious disorder imposed on another.
RELATED: Gypsy Rose Blanchard Blasts Her Husband's Haters, Says He's "Rocking My World Every Night"
The scam, which allowed Dee Dee to receive financial donations and free trips, came to a halt when she was stabbed to death by Nicholas Godejohn in 2015.
Why did Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Nicholas Godejohn decide to kill Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard?
After years of dating online, Godejohn and Gypsy cooked up a plan to kill Dee Dee after deciding that it was their only option if they wanted to be together. After a movie-date meetup intended to impress Dee Dee went sour, the couple then began discussing killing her. According to Killer Couples: Gypsy Rose & Nick: A Love to Kill For, they explored several homicidal options before settling on a stabbing death.
“OK, if you’re really serious about this, then this is something to not joke around about,” Godejohn recounted telling Gypsy on the show. “You have to understand that once we do this, we are not going to be able to go back. This is something to not turn back from.”
Godejohn said she understood and from there, according to him, they discussed their options:
Staged Suicide
Godejohn said the couple discussed this option but that Gypsy thought it would be “too much work.”
Poisoning
From there, he said they talked about poisoning.
“For the poisoning thing, we really didn't know how to get our hands on any poison,” Godejohn told the producers of Killer Couples.
Gunshot death
“Once she [Gypsy] brought up a, a firearm, I’m thinking, that makes too much noise,” he said he told Gypsy. “You don’t want to alert anyone around you.”
Stabbing
“Nicholas determined stabbing would be the best way to kill Dee Dee because she would bleed out faster and he just thought it would be just a quick easy death for her," reporter Brea Douglas said on Killer Couples.
He explained on the show why he felt it would be the best option.
Why did Nick Godejohn choose to stab Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard to kill her?
“That was silent," Godejohn said of a stabbing murder. “And I told her that you don’t want to alert your neighbors or anything else like that so that might be the way we have to go about it. So, really, in my eyes, the way I see it, I see it as basically a conjoined decision. It was really both of our decisions to use the knife, really.”
It does not appear that Gypsy sees it that way. In a 2017 prison interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, detailed in episode four of his true crime podcast Analysis of Murder, she claimed Godejohn had conditions for the murder. One condition, she claimed, was that he had to kill DeeDee with a knife.
Godejohn told the producers of Killer Couples that when he attacked Dee Dee, his rage came out. He said the “dark shadow part” of him didn’t waste any time making an example out of someone. He got on top of her, which woke her up.
“She end up asking me, ‘Who are you?,'" he recalled Dee Dee asking. He said he told her, “I’m your f’ing nightmare.”
Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard was stabbed 17 times by Nicholas Godejohn
Godejohn stabbed her 17 times in the back, and injured her so bad he almost decapitated her, according to Douglas.
“I went as far as I could into her,” Godejohn said. “And, not meaning to, I ended up puncturing some very vital parts of the body.”
He said he lost control.
Psychiatrist Dr. Marc Feldman told Oxygen digital correspondent Stephanie Gomulka that he doesn’t “think Nick would have killed anyone in his life if it hadn't been for this strange powerful relationship he developed with Gypsy. I mean I can't know that. But nonetheless, there is no evidence from his past for violence of any kind. And so I think it was this perfect storm of some predisposition perhaps and his meeting a person who had a goal and that goal evolved into the death of her own mother.”
Godejohn was sentenced in February 2019 to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder. Gypsy Rose, meanwhile, was sentenced in 2016 to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder for her role in the attack. She was let out of prison on parole on December 28, 2023.
Originally published Jul 13, 2019.
