“I put my hands over my ears and then it all went quiet,” Blanchard says
As Dee Dee Blanchard cried for help as she was being stabbed to death, everything went silent for her daughter, who had encouraged her then-boyfriend to kill her mom.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard shared her recollections of the violence in a 2017 interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, a new clip of which was recently released on McGraw’s Instagram account. The clip was shared as a preview for McGraw’s podcast, The Killer Thorn of Gypsy Rose: Analysis of a Murder by Dr. Phil.
“I put my hands over my ears and then it all went quiet,” Blanchard says in the clip, describing the moment in 2015 when Nicholas Godejohn fatally stabbed her mom while she was in bed.
Godejohn was later convicted of first-degree murder and is now in prison for life without parole. Blanchard told authorities she had Godejohn kill Dee Dee to escape her life of abuse; she is currently serving 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
From the time she was very young, Gypsy Rose seemingly suffered from a variety of ailments. The Missouri girl spent her life in a wheelchair, was in and out of hospitals and took dozens of medications.
But the symptoms were all fabricated by her mother. Experts have said that Blanchard was the victim of Munchausen by proxy, a rare form of abuse in which a guardian — in this case Blanchard’s mother — exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.
(The case was chronicled in the Hulu true crime anthology series The Act, starring Joey King as Gypsy Rose and Patricia Arquette as Dee Dee, and also in the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest.)
In her 2017 interview with McGraw, Blanchard discussed her mixed feelings about the murder.
“Are you glad your mother’s dead?” McGraw asked her.
“No sir,” Blanchard replied. “I’m glad that I’m out of that situation, but I’m not happy she’s dead.”
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Earlier this year, the 27-year-old quietly announced to family and friends that she and her boyfriend were engaged.
“They are very happy,” family friend Fancy Macelli previously told PEOPLE. “You can hear excitement in her voice.”
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.