Chillicothe Correctional Center/Greene County Sheriff\'s Office Gypsy Blanchard and Nicholas Godejohn recent mugshots.
Nicholas “Nick” Godejohn was sentenced to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and he was denied a request for a retrial. He and Gypsy Rose Blanchard had been together for nearly a year when he murdered her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, at Gypsy’s request. Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years. But the case is more complicated than that. Dee Dee had been essentially torturing her child for her entire life. Gypsy was perfectly healthy, but her mother got her misdiagnosed with a myriad of illnesses that led to Gypsy being wheelchair-bound with a feeding tube and losing all her teeth.
To this day, Godejohn still insists that he loves Gypsy, even though he now believes that she was just using him to be free of her mother. Here are a series of photos of Godejohn, and yes he does look different in all of them.
He and Gypsy met on a Christian dating site in 2012, but Dee Dee wasn’t killed until 2015. He said he learned about how Dee Dee had mistreated her daughter and wanted to help Gypsy escape. He also said he was more easily manipulated because he’s always been gullible, he told Ozarks First. He said he believed that he and Gypsy would get married. They were both Catholic and had agreed on names for their children, Vanity Fair reported. But their relationship was long distance — he was in Wisconsin and she was in Missouri.
They didn’t meet in person until March 2015 at a Springfield movie theater, Vanity Fair shared. Gypsy dressed as Cinderella and he dressed as Prince Charming. But Dee Dee didn’t like him and ordered Nicholas to stay away.
Nick has said that he and Gypsy decided to kill Dee Dee because it was the only scenario they could imagine where Dee Dee wouldn’t manipulate and convince the authorities to put Gypsy back under her control, Vanity Fair reported. Dee Dee was killed in June 2015, just about three months after Nicholas and Gypsy first met in person.
Ozarks First reported that Nick said about the murder: “She felt that it was a non-escapable path she was on and she needed someone to understand her enough to be willing to basically risk their life for her.” Godejohn said that he was learning that Gypsy might have just been using him, but he felt it was real love at the time.
Godejohn was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. His attorney had hoped to get a retrial because he said he was a low-functioning person with autism, Springfield News-Leader reported, but that was denied.
Godejohn said in 2018: “I wish I would have known it was more manipulation than love cause if I would have known that, I probably would not have been in the situation I’m in. Maybe do regret putting my heart out there, but in another way I don’t regret it any because it has made me a stronger person. As they always say, no pain, no gain.”
He also said that he will always love Gypsy. “You might have betrayed me and turned your back on me, but that’s not going to stop me from loving you, I’m always going to love you whether you want to accept it or not.”
You can watch his court appearance from 2016 below:
And you can compare that video to when Godejohn was sentenced on November 16, 2018 below:
Nicholas Godejohn is serving his prison sentence for life.