August 7, 2024 • 47 mins
Some people say Gyspy-Rose Blanchard is Munchhausen-by-proxy survivor, the victim of her own mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. And they would be right. Some people say Gyspy-Rose Blanchard is a murderer, and they too, would be right. After lifelong physical, mental, and medical abuse, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard met a disturbed young man online and concocted a plan to getaway from Dee Dee Blanchard and begin her life as an adult. But Dee Dee would have to die. The crime scene was shocking, and now the pictures are out in the public. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan is going to explain why the photos were taken to begin with and how pictures at a crime scene actually do more than just document what has happened, sometimes they can help investigators discover a lot more.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.01 Introduction, taken advantage of a storm
03:07.93 Talk about Dee Dee Blanchard, opportunist
08:13.54 Discussion of Dee Dee claiming Gypsy-Rose was sick as a baby
10:37.33 Discussion of crime scene photos released
15:04.43 Talk about the story of Dee Dee and Gypsy-Rose
20:08.29 Discussion of using hurricane Katrina
25:05.99 Discussion of surgeries not needed
29:54.59 Talk about Gypsy-Rose and boyfriend
34:14.12 Discussion of Gypsy-Rose "story" about death of Dee Dee
39:50.66 Discussion of crime scene photos of Dee Dee Blanchard murder
40:59.73 Talking about photographic documentation of crime scene
47:38.96 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Dots with Joseph Scott More. A few years ago,
my wife and I we lost our home in a
tornado here in Jacksonville. We lost everything. It was I'd
never experienced anything like that in my life. Of course,
we live in Alabama, and Alabama is known, i think,
(00:25):
right in the heart of southern version of Tornado Alley.
And the thing about a tornado is you don't really
have much of a warning. That's the way it was
with us. But there is one meteorological manifestation you do
have warnings for, and that's hurricanes. And being from Louisiana
(00:45):
and my family being from there, we have over the
generations written out a number of hurricanes. But you know,
you can kind of see it coming, can't you. You
can see it coming from a great distance up to
you to get prepared to do what you need to
do to take care of you and yours. Today, I'm
(01:08):
going to delve into a story that's been talked about
quite a bit, and it does have to do with Louisiana,
has to do with a hurricane, and it has to
do with a mother and daughter who I believe took
advantage of the system and gained it, and of course,
it wound up resulting in one of the most brutal
(01:32):
murders in recent memory. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is
bodybacks Dave I had. Can you believe that it has
been almost nineteen years since Katrina?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You know, Joe, nineteen years since Hurricane Katrina. And because
the media likes a round number, next year, for probably
three months before August and you know, up until the
twentieth anniversary of that hurricane, there will be a lot
in the media. Not so much this year, but next
year there will be. But that hurricane plays a central
part in today's episode about the death of D. D. Blanchard.
(02:12):
A lot of people when you say de de Blanchard
kind of go, I kind of know what you're talking about.
Maybe I remember chubby woman, and it's like if I
say Gypsy Rose Blanchard.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Now we know D. D.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Blanchard was the mother of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. And at
this point in time, Joe, when you brought up Hurricane Katrina,
Hurricane Katrina was what allowed D. D. Blanchard to leave
the area where everybody knew her to go because she
had to. Hurricane Katrina caused her to flee everybody she knew,
(02:43):
and she landed in Missouri, and oh my gosh. Without
Hurricane Katrina pushing her out and with Gypsy Rose, I
don't think the con would have ever gone as far
as it did. With what Dede Blanchard did and what
her daughter, Gypsy Rose Blanchard eventually did to her. There's
(03:04):
so much psychological stuff here, but today we're dealing with
the forensics and Joe. When you see somebody like this
that they just find a way to take advantage of
things that are devastating to others, opportunistic comes to mind.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
There are opportunists everywhere you look, and I don't know
that I could magnify that anymore than turning the spotlight
today on Dede Blanchard, the mother Gypsy Rose Blanchard, because
you talk about a gamer, you talk about somebody that
(03:41):
knows the system, knows how to weasele their way around
the system, and that will that will turn anything within
her realm into a utility that she can use to
not just survive, but literally two enricher at the expense
of anybody else. It's arguably, it's arguably one of the
(04:06):
most disgusting things in the world, and of course.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
What's really bad is she's the victim of our story today.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, she is the victim of the story and in
a sense that you know, she's she's a homicide victim,
and obviously one of the most talked about cases, you know,
within I don't know, the last two decades, three decades,
one of them. I mean, we've got a whole pantheon
of cases now, but this kind of sticks out. I
(04:35):
Mean there's been I wish you and I had a
dollar for every every television show that's been done, you know,
about these circumstances, articles that have been written, books that
have been written, all these sorts of things. But when
it comes down to it, you've got the genesis of
this twisted tale that starts off Obviously, it starts off
(05:00):
when you know, when DeeDee gets pregnant with this fellow
Blanchard's child and she's you know, she's living down actually
on the west side of the city or the metro
area of New Orleans, down toward the swamps, that area
that people generally associate, you know with, you know, like
(05:21):
that show that's on television where they were going out
hunting Gate, you know, chewed them, cheat them all that
that that area down there, which I have an affinity for.
It's quite beautiful if you've never been to the swamps
and seen it down there. But you know, that's kind
of what she, you know, comes from that environment down there.
People are very poor, they don't have a lot, and
(05:43):
she found herself pregnant. Now she's I don't know, several
years older than the guy that she got pregnant by.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
They got married before she was pregnant. I did not
know that until I was researching this. I assumed since
she was twenty four and Rod Blanchard was eight at
the time of of Gypsy Rose birth seventeen when they
got together. He was seventeen when they got together, and
(06:11):
they did get married. I that just shocked me. I
just assumed he got her pregnant and they got married,
or they got you know, any number of things, but
not got married and then got pregnant. So do you
know where the name Gypsy Rose comes from? There's an
actual real reason, and I I assumed it was something else.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
But it's not right, No, it's not. It's kind of disappointing.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, well, Rod Rod Blanchard was a big fan of
guns and roses. Yeah, that's where the Rose Park came from.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I had no I know, and Mom liked the name Gypsy.
And of course, you know, now gypsy is like a
pejorative term, you know that people, you know, people get
in a twist about. I don't know if that population,
that segment of the world population actually is offended by it,
but there's people out there that are professionally offended by everything.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And so you know, she was a term where I
was supposed to know, oh.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, wow, And so she saddled with this name to
begin with uh. And that's you know, that's essentially how
this child starts her journey but in life.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
To back up just a little bit, when we mentioned
the story is about the murder and aftermath of Dee
Dee Blanchard, when Dede Blanchard and Rod Well, when Deed
he married Rod and they had Rod had already decided
to leave before Gypsy Rose Blanchard was born. They were
no longer cohabitating together. He had left and when, and
(07:48):
the reason was real simple, Dede you mentioned a minute.
It was an opportunist. She was a con woman. She
was a con artist. And he realized that fairly early on.
This is not an honest person that I want to
be with. So even though she's pregnant and even though
they're married, Rod got away and Dede did what she
(08:10):
pretty much she became the victim of social by using
her daughter from her infancy, claiming that Gypsy had sleep
apnea as an infant that should sleep avena. That was
the first trek into the hospital and in a matter
of months anything and she wasn't nurses a. Dede Blanchard
knew a plenty of different issues medically oriented that she
(08:33):
could utilize to make claims that you don't have to, uh,
you can't really prove kind of like if you if
you if you're kind of a if you're a rich bum,
you know you come from a family of wealth, but
you don't really have a job or a career. You
could claim to be a photographer, you can claim to
be a writer. You don't actually have to prove anything
to claim those as careers. Filmmaker, Yeah, there you go,
(08:56):
there you go. And Dede Blanchard realized there are a
number of medical elements maladies that one can say their
child has based on symptoms that only you can see
and require treatment.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And that's what Yeah, and let me give you another
example to this very non specific diagnosis, which by the way,
they never could confirm this, this non specific diagnosis of
seizure disorder. Oh yeah, well, you know, seizures have there's listen.
(09:29):
I could sit here for hours and we could literally
talk about all of the variety of seizures that are
out there. It's not all epilepsy. There's a variety of
things that seizures can arise from. And so you think
about this, it's very non specific. You get this kind
of sense for this, and write you our day about D. D. Blanchard.
(09:55):
She had a peak, if you will, behind the curtain
relative to the medical world and the world of medicine
and treatment. And I listen, I don't doubt that probably
in her work as a nurse's age she had encountered
people that were in fact gaming the system. They're everywhere.
(10:19):
But I can tell you this, after much planning, she
played the medical community and even more broadly, the communities
that she landed in like a fiddle. Friends, I'm sure
(10:50):
that you will. You're scratching your head right now and
you're thinking, Morgan, have you lost your mind? Why are
you talking about this case? Because it's it's old now,
it is an old case. Well, the reason I'm talking
about this case today is that, and I've told you
about this, Dave my inbox, my email from all of
(11:14):
these news outlets, I started getting hit. I guess it
was this past Monday because people were losing their minds
over the fact that these crime scene photos from the D. D.
Blanchard homicide had apparently been kind of, I don't know,
(11:36):
reinjected into the public forum, into the conversation. They've been
re released, and now they're making the circulation around and
so people, you know, I had these folks reaching out
to me about the graphic nature of them. They some
people even want me to hold forth on the idea
of why people want to see these images, and so,
(11:59):
you know, it really made me begin to think, well,
what's what's the purpose behind all of this? And look,
I know that Gypsy Rose, who obviously now is famously
out of prison. My god, you know, they they have
anointed her, you know, as like she's in the zeitgeist,
(12:20):
as they say, she's everywhere. You can't get past her.
She's out there, she was with a boyfriend, she thought
she was pregnant. Then she's going to get some kind
of television show. She's had a nose job, now she's
getting married, now she is pregnant, you know, and all
of this stuff. And you know, Dedi's I'm going to
(12:42):
make a really dangerous comment here right now. Are you
ready for this? Hopefully this doesn't collectively end our careers.
Dedi's no longer around. She's a homicide victim. So I
guess my question is who is it that's ol there
that is now using Gypsy Rows for their own benefit?
(13:05):
Because it's I can tell you this, it's not little
old Gypsy Rose that's pushing her out and making her
part of the national conversation. Again. This person she has
utility for other people, just like she had utility, I
submit to you, just like she had utility for DD.
And now she's out there and people are drinking this
(13:27):
in day in and day out. They can't get enough
of it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Dave, So you're suggesting that Gypsy Rose is taking advantage
of what she did.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yes, And also I would tell you that people that
have a lot of money, a lot of money in
media and entertainment also see the opportunity, oh to exploit
this situation.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I think that two words there opportunity and exploit. Those
are two things that Rose learned early. And there are
those are two things that are learned in media and
those who take advantage of certain stories and exploit them.
And I don't know why people want to look at
crime scene photos, but I know this, Joe. We go
to movies all the time to see the gore. We
(14:16):
see fictionalized gore. And and now over the last power
many years, we see more reality.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Not me. I only watch I only watch rom comms.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Dave, Yeah, and you only read Playboy for the articles.
But when you get right down to this, you've got
plenty of people that are interested. Because we watched this
child that we thought was sick, that had all of
these issues and her single mom just struggling to make
things work. And we saw the video she was named,
(14:48):
you know, queen of this and king of that. I mean,
the awards came in from exod.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I was fascinating. And you know, I don't think I
don't think I remembered that necessarily, because this stuff gets
so poleful on and layered. You forget that every little
spot that she kind of inhabited DEDI would use that
opportunity to insert this child into these and all the while, hey,
(15:13):
get this, you talk about a lot of activity going
on behind the scenes. So as she's outwardly promoting the
horror of all of these so called ailments this child had,
she's backstage, you know, telling them to do things like, yeah,
well she's drooling really bad, let's go ahead and take
out her salivary glands. Just let that resonate with you
(15:38):
just for a second, if you know. There's a term
that she used, and it generally applies to people that
work that are former military types that go and hire
their self out, and it's called mercenary. Mercenaries have more
honor than this. Mercenaries are going out selling their selling
their skill set to the highest bidder. She's literally using
(16:00):
her daughter as a product.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
At the end, Tom and Gypsy Rose knew it because
while her mother just to give you a very quick
look at this, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was honored as the
two thousand and seven Child of the Year by this
only foundation that promotes their advocating those who have to
(16:25):
use a feeding tube. Now, I don't know that this
is a huge deal, Like do people that have a
feeding tube get picked on? I don't know. I just
know that this group raises money to raise awareness for
those who have to have a feeding tube. And Gypsy
(16:47):
Rose Blanchard was the Foundation's Child of the Year because
she had a feeding tube. This is a girl whose
mother lied about her age so that she would be
younger and had her use a feeding tube that she
didn't need to get her nourishments. Rose Blanchard was on
a liquid pedia, lah Pedia, sure pedia care things you
(17:11):
give a child that is sick, you know that they get.
She had that totally. She was in her twenties. This
is how deep this went. And by the way, when
Gypsy Rose Blanchard was told by her mother, you have
muscular dystrophy or muscular sclerosis. You have to use a
walker because your legs don't work right. And even though
(17:33):
the little girl's gone, they seem to work fine to me.
You know, she's raised on this going. But they could
give out on you at any moment. You need to
use these, you know. Then she is in This little
girl who's so sick, is in a motorcycle accident with
her grandfather when she's seven or eight years old. She
skins her knee, skins her knee. Her mother takes her
(17:59):
to the emergency room because she has all of these
other issues. They admit her, you know, to take a
look and make sure she's okay. She's there for a
skinned knee, Joe, but because of the other issues, they
she's checked in. Now, what happens when you leave the hospital?
When you're a patient at the hospital and you are leaving,
what did they do? They wheel you out in a wheelchair.
(18:22):
Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother convinced her after the skinned knee,
the doctor gave her a wheelchair because that's what she
needs to use. Now, that's when Gypsy Rose ended up
in the wheelchair, and you.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Think about the utility of a wheelchair. Listen, I'll be
the first one admitted here. I'm chief among sinners. I
stare at people that are in wheelchairs. I can't. I mean,
I'm not going to turn away, you know, because when
I see if I'm in a location, I'll look and
see if someone is actually riding about in a wheelchair.
I want to know what happened to them. You know,
(18:58):
what's going on with this. Don't think for two seconds
that Dede did not look at the wheelchair and see
that as an outward manifestation or an outward demonstration rather
of what was going on with this child. If she'll,
if she would go to the links of having a
feeding tobe inn as child to have unnecessary surgeries and
(19:21):
these wild, wild diagnoses that were being made, which by
the way, the line chair of them were made in Louisiana.
And this brings us to Katrina. You know, you put
forth this supposition that she's been diagnosed with MS and
(19:44):
that now because of Katrina, they have to be evacuated
where they were living in Slighte l Louisiana, which is
just if you follow it ten it's just to the
east of New Orleans. You have to cross a part
of Lake Pont Training to get there. They were living
in public housing there and granted, slide l got hit,
they got hammered by Katrina, and they did lose things, okay,
(20:08):
And then they were they moved to Covington, Louisiana, which
I have a lot of relatives in Covington, and there
was a special facility where if you were handicapped in
any way you could stay there. And so they move
into this and it's it's where this is where the
sea got planted by the the the therapist, the physician
(20:35):
that was actually treating them, and said, hey, I'm from
the Ozarks. I'm from the Ozarks. Maybe you guys ought
to give that area of the country a try.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Really, that's where they came from.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, yeah, it came from someone within that clinic that recommended, yeah,
you need.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
To be I wondered, how how did they why of all.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
The all the places in the world that you know,
while southwest Missouri, which is a beautiful place and there
many times my wife's family is from up in that
region and I and you know, it's gorgeous, it's those arcs,
and but you know, the one thing that it doesn't
have is knowledge. They didn't have knowledge of what had
(21:15):
been going on with these two to begin with. So
they get to show up and there's you know, it's
like now they're going to tap into a completely new
vein of gold that they've discovered. They've kind of exhausted
everything in South Louisiana at this point. You know, how
many how many more crowns can you put on the
little girl in the wheelchair, Well, let's go somewhere else
(21:39):
where there are more crowns, and the crowns are just
merely representative of all of the bounty that's going to
be afforded to them in this location.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And course is the fact that she truly is a
sick little girl with a lot of issues and a
mother struggling to take care of her.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, and we have to, yeah, we have to go
back to Dave. You have to understand as well. And
there was, there was all kinds of fraud that went
on as a result of Katrina. This is merely and
I can't say that this was fraud on her part
relative to Katrina. It's an opportunity though the nation is glued.
(22:18):
I don't know if you remember, the nation is glued
to this drama day in and day out, watching people
on the roofs of homes. Helo's coming in to try
to evacuate people out of there. There's imagery of the dead.
And you know, my friends at the Orleans Parish Corner's
office down there, they had to relocate, can you imagine,
(22:39):
And they couldn't deal with the volume of bodies. They
had to you know, they had to have refrigerated trucks
where they could transport the bodies to a location once
they were recovered. Because you didn't know who they were.
It was madness, absolute madness, and everybody's drinking us in.
So if you're up in southwest Missouri, all the way
(23:00):
away from South Louisiana, and she shows up and she's
got this child in tow by the way in a wheelchair, yep,
and they say, you know, more Porridge police. You know,
they're they're there in this environment where they can they
can leverage every bit of this. And these people, oh
(23:22):
my god, these these people from South Louisiana, they're you know,
they're they've been through Katrina. Oh my gosh, they've been
through the Ringer. Let's open our hearts and God bless them.
I mean, the people up there just gave and gave
till it hurt, and you know, and they saw she
saw the advantage in that, and.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
She saw when people had questions because experts in the
field know how this plays out, and they know what
somebody with these issues looks like, acts like, talks like,
sounds like. And yet when questions came up about previous diagnosis,
previous help, surgeries, what have you, Yeah, sadly, you know,
it was all lost in Katrina. And so you have
(24:03):
to trust this woman who has gained the system to
tell you what's really going on with her daughter that
you see is certainly in bad shape. She's in a wheelchair,
her hair is a lot of times her have we
shaved her mother claimed it was from chemotherapy.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Or chemotherapy, yeah, yeah, and this is the term. This
is what she had, if I remember correctly, let me see,
it was, we're going to go ahead and shave your head,
because you're going to lose your hair anyways. Best that
you go ahead and get used to this, and we're
going to slap a wig on you. And you know
it's at some point in time, you know that I
would imagine that that Gypsy Rose. You know, she's starting
(24:44):
to go into her teenage years now, she's you know,
like all teenagers, you're going to rebel. She's starting to
understand that she's being played, I think to a great degree.
And that creates a perfect storm, if you will, for
somebody it's got this little flame that's burning inside of
them that doesn't want to be a part of this.
I can't look. I can't imagine everything that she went through.
(25:08):
I don't know nobody could. I don't think unnecessary surgeries
and all this stuff you know. But there was one
physician up there in Springfield that and he was a neurologist,
I believe that was taking a look at labs and
doing all this stuff. And he's thinking, this doesn't marry
up with what I have been trained to look for
(25:30):
as as a clinician, you know, as far as this
manifestation with the MS and all of this. He makes
a phone call back to New Orleans where this diagnosis
was actually made, and they did a biopsy of muscle
tissue on her and there's a manifestation that you can
see if you have this condition where it presents at
(25:53):
a cellular level and you're looking, you know, in the
microscope at this and they said, yeah, we it was
We never didn't make that diagnosis. There was no evidence
of it there. And so he's thinking, this guy was
actually told that you need to tread very carefully here
if you're going to call her out, you know, and
(26:16):
say that she's lying. Wow, because you know, she had
gained everybody to this point. And I think that Gypsy Rose,
you know, was certainly aware that she was you know,
she she had grand utility, I guess if you will, Yeah, yeah,
and that's just it and so when you move forward
(26:38):
in this case and you begin to understand that she
had in fact run the course, I guess she came
to the conclusion that she wanted to be free of this.
But how do you do this? How do you do this? When?
And I had this vision I can't remember some one
(26:59):
of these cars to things that my kids watch, one
of these movies where you've got the princess in the
tower and there's a dragon garden the tower. You know,
how do you get past if you want to save
how do you get past the dragon this garden the tower? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's what it was. And so you know you're thinking
about this, and you're thinking, you know, how do they
get access? You know, how does she escape this? How
(27:22):
does she escape it? And that's that's when this Gatta
John person makes this presentation in her life. And I
got to tell you, dude, hell followed after it. Who's
(27:43):
going to be the white night here, Who's going to
come riding in to saved? The little girl in the
wheelchair that's had her salivary glands surgically removed, who's been
told that she's, you know, got cancer, that she's been
told that she has these other horrendous diseases. You know,
it's smacks of I guess. You know. People throw around
(28:05):
the term Munchausen by proxy syndrome, and there's a part
to that for me. With Munchausens, it's generally the mother
trying to get attention. But it doesn't seem like a
pure Munchausens because Munchausen's people are not there to necessarily
profit financially. Dedi is a scam artist and she's profiting
(28:28):
off of her child's illness. So you can say Munchausen's
if you want to, But it's not just about the
attention that she's getting. It's about everything that comes along
with it, Dave.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Her financial survival was based on the illnesses suffered by
Gypsy Rose. The daughter. Gypsy Rose was twenty one and
playing much younger than her actual biological years, and she
was using the Internet. And this is twenty twelve, all right.
(29:00):
We're not talking about a time before the internet. We're
talking about somebody who is inside their home with access
to the Internet and a phone and everything else, and
that's where she meets. You mentioned his last name. Go
to John Nicholas. Good, Wait a minute, go to John
right to John, all right, Nicholas, go to John. Gypsy
Rose communicates with him online through a Christian singles website,
(29:24):
and itsent enough. He's from Bend, Wisconsin and she's there
outside Springfield, Missouri. As they meet and develop an online relationship,
Gypsy Rose is starting to confide in people, in particular
a nextdoor neighbor who's a friend of hers kind of
(29:44):
talk to her like a sister, and she's talking to
this neighbor about eloping with Go to John. That they've
communicated at this point where go to John, has you
know you mentioned the white Knight who's going to get
her away from this overbearing other. Obviously, Gypsy Rose knows
she doesn't have all these maladies that she's pretending to have.
(30:05):
She does her squeaky voice. Granted, she doesn't have much
education where it is that she probably only completed maybe
first grade, maybe not, but she didn't go to school,
so her intellect, her education is not there. She talks
like a child. She uses the wrong verbs and things,
so she sounds like a child who has a lot
of issues, but she's really an adult woman who's now
(30:27):
in her twenties, so she has adult feelings and everything else,
and that's where Nicholas got John comes into play. They're
talking online. There are aspects of the flirting that become
very sexual, and some see that Gypsy Rose God bless
(30:49):
her in terms of her growing up years being taken
advantage of by her mother. Some suggest that go to John, Nicholas,
Go to John was a sexual predator and he was
preying upon Gypsy Rose. I don't know if that's true
or not. I don't know. I wasn't there, And to
be honest with you, there's so much this story to unpack, Joe,
we would need Bethany Marshall and a few other Sykes,
(31:09):
you know. But ultimately she and Nicholas come up with
a plan to get rid of Dede Blanchard. They can't
see any other way. I guess Gypsy Rose feels trapped.
So they be on the loping and anything else that
she could be drawn back to her mother, and I'm
sure Nicholas is there helping along the way because we
(31:32):
know what happened. But they decide to kill Dede Blanchard
while she's asleep. So Nicholas Good or Down travels from
Wisconsin to Springfield, Missouri and us Yeah by bus.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
I think she had sent him the money in order
to facilitate this. And here's the thing, Dave. So when
when they when they had gotten passed, you know, kind
of the whole online thing where they're getting to know
one another and they get off into this kind of
sexual deviant kind of thing that's going on in the
(32:10):
world of the internet. Sense, Gypsy Rose had told him
that if he showed up, she would have everything set
up for him. Now he was familiar with the home,
(32:30):
obviously he had been there. But here's the thing about it.
Timing had to be just right. So people people that
say that go to John, who has some pretty serious
mental issues to begin with, and has an IQ that
is in the low end, all right, I think that
(32:52):
he could probably be pretty easily manipulated. She's furnishing everything,
I mean everything from duct tape to a knife, all
of these sorts of things. But she's also furnishing him
with with a timeline and you know, when mom is
(33:12):
going to go to bed, it's the best time to
do this sort of thing. And this has played out
very distinctly. And this brings us back to, you know,
our conversation today about the photography here when you see
when you know, I have seen this myriad of photographs
(33:34):
that have come out, this crime scene photography has come out,
and it's it's really really it's very graphic stuff. You
know that he had to have an awareness of what
was going on. So to say that he did this
solely on his own, he may have been the perpetrator
as far as it goes to plunging this knife at
(33:56):
least seventeen times into Deedee's body as she lay there
in bed. I don't think that her hand, her hand
being Gypsy Rose's hand was not in this. And you know,
she's portrayed herself as having gone into the bathroom, sat
on the floor, covered her ears so that she didn't
have to hear mom screaming and this sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
How much truth there is to that job?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
You know? I have? And here's here's something. And actually,
my my wife at Kim had pointed this out to me.
He was she was like, was indeed like a kind
of a big.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Robust, robust woman.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yes, yeah, and he's he's a pretty tiny, tiny fellow.
And so I'm thinking, I'm thinking, well, did he truly
pull this off by himself? Did he facilitate this, and
I got to tell you that one of the things
that really struck me from a forensic standpoint, and that's
why photographic documentation is so important in our field, is
(34:55):
that there are a couple of places on Dede's bare
back because he her skir her nightgown was raised up.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
To Before we get to that job, yeah, we kind
of skipped go to when Gypsy Rose, Blanchard and Dedi
go to a doctor's appointment. Nicholas go to John comes
into Springfield. Gypsy then it Rose hands him the packet
of gloves, duct tape, and knife and wait for her
(35:24):
to go to sleep. The timeline they know what time
DDI's going to sleep because she's on a regular routine.
Once she's in bed asleep, that's when Gypsy Rose claims
she goes to the bathroom MC covers her ears while
Nicholas goes in and stabs Dde Blanchard seventeen times at
least while she's asleep. As you mentioned, Dede is not
(35:46):
a small woman. She is a handful and then some
so the idea that unless his first strike, unless his
first thrust of the knife somehow made it impossible for
her to fight back Joe. Yeah, I'm not picturing it.
(36:07):
And because she does have some extra weight on hers,
some extra bulk, I'm not I guessing that first knife
is enough to take her out.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, I think that it would be. It's certainly, uh,
it would be a mammoth undertaking. I think for him
to well, well, first off, it'd be dumb luck, I
think to right, Yeah, of course she's got She does,
in fact have a very nasty injury to the back
(36:36):
of her head and some people have are to the
back for neck, and some people have characterized this as
as almost a decapitation. I've seen this injury and you
can see down through the layers of fat uh to
the subcu fat in the back of her neck. Dave,
this is not a stab wint. This is an incized one. Okay,
(36:58):
so the now the might be stabbing that's associated with
it within the wound, but the back of her neck
is literally opened up and then she's got multiple stab
winds and interesting, you know, le enough, the medical examiner
Slash Corner that was present at the scene, they have
a gloved hand on in the photograph and they're pointing
(37:19):
specifically to the insult at the back of the neck.
You can see them there. You can't see the person,
you just see their gloved hand pointing. And that's something
that we do at crime scenes, you know, because we're
not going to clean it up there. You don't want
to do that. You want to have it in pristine condition,
untouched in that environment. Because if you wash well, and
(37:42):
you and I have talked about this, if you wash
or wipe away anything, you're destroying evidence there. You have
to be able to contain it. And that's what they
were doing. And they're pointing to the number and the
clustering of these injuries. But Dave, you know what one
thing is really fascinating about this that I saw. I
think I saw two of them. There's a transfer bloody
handprint on her back, her bare back where you can
(38:05):
see that a hand has been placed and it's in
And I've seen this happen before. I famously had a
a a domestic abuse case many years ago, where this
this guy was he would take his belt, he'd get drunk,
he'd take his belt off and he would beat his
(38:27):
wife with it, and then he drank and well, he
passed down on the sofa drunk. He had beaten her
with a belt. The belt was still laid on the floor,
and she got on top of him and there were
bloody handprints all on his back. She broke the knife
blade off in his back. Wow, as a steak knife.
I'll never forget that. But you could actually make out.
(38:48):
And I used this to teach my students about trace
evidence and transfer evidence and this sort of thing. You
can actually see this on her back, but I think you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Could see the handprint on d. D. Blanchard.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, you can clearly, clearly demonstrated.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Now you mentioned that DEDE. Blanchard has been stabbed at
least seventeen times. She's got the wound to the neck.
But was her body then positioned or was what else
was going on? Because the entire focus of today is
about the photographs that were taken at the scene of
(39:25):
the crime, which have now been released, and I do
not know what type of value they have other than
prurian interest that these photos could possibly have to anyone
other than Again, I don't see this as a teachable
moment here.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
But it's not.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's taken.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's it's it's it's teachable in the sense that
if you're running a forensic science program or crom scene
program somewhere, and they're not the best quality photos that
I've ever seen generated from a crime scene.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
All right, a these photos how important?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I'll tell you how important it is. It's it's important
in the sense of you've frozen that moment in tom
You've captured it where let's just say, for instance, and
I'd love to talk about forensic photography this way, you're there,
(40:22):
your eyes on as an investigator, where you are snapping
these photographs to tell a story about what actually happened
this case. Let's just say a case like this might
go and solve for fifty years. Well, by the time,
by the time the case makes any headway, everybody that
(40:44):
worked that case is either retired or dead. So all
we have to rely on is the photographic documentation, any
kind of notes that were taken at that moment time
that can take us and transport us back to that
moment in time. That's why it's so important when you
do crime scene photography that you have frozen those moments
(41:07):
day to the point so that and you make it, say, dude,
you make it so clear that when these new investigators
get their eyes on all of this documentation, you literally
transport them back in time day. Just think about how
powerful that is. You know. One of the things I
think about is like the Hindenburg blowing up. You know
(41:28):
that film reel, which is like the first time something
like that ever happened, you know, like documenting in real time.
You know what I'm saying, and how horrific that was,
but you get a sense for that moment in time
you're transported back.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Well.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
With crime scene photography, one of the things that we
do is just so that to give people kind of
a primer about this, you imagine D. D. Blanchard's body
as the center of a clockface, okay, or the center
of ampus is actually a better example of this. If possible,
(42:05):
I'm going to start off on all four points of
the compass, taking what's referred to as macro photographs, that is,
in the broadest sense, where I'm going to be extending
out to the most distal, western, eastern, northern, and southern
perspective of this body. Then I'm going to move in
(42:26):
about half that distance and do it again, and then
half that distance again and do it again, all the
while kind of tightening down that focus. Because if you
think of yourself as observing something. Let's say you've got
damage to your car and you walk out. You don't
just look at the damage to your car that's in
(42:46):
your driveway and say and walk right up to it
and say that's it. You're going to get a wide,
broad ranging perspective because your perspective might change, and every
view that you have of the scene is going to
be lost after that body has gone, maybe long after
this little habitat for humanity home is taken down to
(43:07):
the ground at sometime in the future. You've frozen that
moment in time. And so when you get down to
the nuts and bolts, when you get into the microphotography
here and I say micro, I'm using that very very loosely.
It's not like we're using a microscope. I'm just talking
about macro, broad, micro small. And you begin to look
(43:28):
at those little details. That's why I wanted to point
out the handprint to you, or the nature of the
stab ones. You know, I can see that stab wound
at the scene, even though it's crusted in blood. I
can appreciate the scene that this is a single edged weapon. Okay, well,
if I can delineate that, I know that I'm not
looking for a dagger. I know that I'm looking for
(43:50):
a blade, for a knife, for a sharp instrument that
only has a single edge to it, so that that
kind of narrows things down at that point in time,
and any of the other associated Yeah, yeah, pretty clearly.
You see it better in the morgue once it's cleaned up.
But for our purposes, there might be that moment in
(44:13):
time where you're standing there with a detective and if
you're doing the examination, you say, look at this, and
you see that it is single edged and single edge.
I always tell people a knife wound looks like a
winking eye, and it kind of does it if you
imagine the outer portion of the eye is where the
(44:33):
actual blade is. The inner portion of the eye is
kind of the blunted backstrap of the knife itself. And
so you're looking at this and then you can get
an idea Dave also in the orientation of how the
weapon was held. Now, I'm not saying people always ask me,
can you tell the individual's left handed right handed? That's
(44:56):
very difficult to do. There are people out there that
say that they claim they can do that. I'm sure
that there are. It's not something I would want to try.
But I can tell you the orientation of the knife.
I can tell you that they were holding it so
that the blade, the sharp edge was was oriented to
the left or to the right. And if it's oriented
(45:17):
to the left and the right, because you're talking about
seventeen injuries, you have to the idea is that they
changed their position relative to the attack. They maybe changed hands,
went to the offhand, and they got tired. Stabbing somebody
is something that is physically taxing to undertake, and so
(45:41):
you're documenting that all along. I guess the question that
I would ask is what's the public's need to see this?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Right? That's my whole point, Joe. When Yoused told me
these pictures were going to we're getting out there, I
thought they were like pictures that had been edited, that
things have been blocked out, and we're talking about real
crime scene photos that have made their way into the
public on purpose.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Apparently, Yeah, they've been released on very broadly. I mean
they're worldwide now. I mean they're on a Google drive
that somebody just kind of released, and it's my understanding
they have been released before. But again we go back
to this idea. Doesn't this come full circle? Yeah, we
(46:29):
go back to this idea that it's all a show.
It's all a show, Dave, because now we're super saturated
in the media with Gypsy Rose Blanchard. We're following her life,
we're seeing everything that's gone on. And let me throw
(46:50):
this out to you as kind of the cherry on
top of the Sunday. Not only do we get to
see Gypsy with her plastic surgery on her nose, not
only do we hear about her breakup with her boyfriend.
(47:10):
Not only do we hear she's getting married. Not only
do we hear that she's pregnant. But to round it
all off, let's show the images of her slaughtered mother.
Regardless of how you might feel about Dede Blanchard, ask yourself, this,
(47:38):
what's the purpose. I know it has nothing to do
with forensics. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks.
Body Dots with Joseph Scott More. A few years ago,
my wife and I we lost our home in a
tornado here in Jacksonville. We lost everything. It was I'd
never experienced anything like that in my life. Of course,
we live in Alabama, and Alabama is known, i think,
(00:25):
right in the heart of southern version of Tornado Alley.
And the thing about a tornado is you don't really
have much of a warning. That's the way it was
with us. But there is one meteorological manifestation you do
have warnings for, and that's hurricanes. And being from Louisiana
(00:45):
and my family being from there, we have over the
generations written out a number of hurricanes. But you know,
you can kind of see it coming, can't you. You
can see it coming from a great distance up to
you to get prepared to do what you need to
do to take care of you and yours. Today, I'm
(01:08):
going to delve into a story that's been talked about
quite a bit, and it does have to do with Louisiana,
has to do with a hurricane, and it has to
do with a mother and daughter who I believe took
advantage of the system and gained it, and of course,
it wound up resulting in one of the most brutal
(01:32):
murders in recent memory. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is
bodybacks Dave I had. Can you believe that it has
been almost nineteen years since Katrina?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You know, Joe, nineteen years since Hurricane Katrina. And because
the media likes a round number, next year, for probably
three months before August and you know, up until the
twentieth anniversary of that hurricane, there will be a lot
in the media. Not so much this year, but next
year there will be. But that hurricane plays a central
part in today's episode about the death of D. D. Blanchard.
(02:12):
A lot of people when you say de de Blanchard
kind of go, I kind of know what you're talking about.
Maybe I remember chubby woman, and it's like if I
say Gypsy Rose Blanchard.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Now we know D. D.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Blanchard was the mother of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. And at
this point in time, Joe, when you brought up Hurricane Katrina,
Hurricane Katrina was what allowed D. D. Blanchard to leave
the area where everybody knew her to go because she
had to. Hurricane Katrina caused her to flee everybody she knew,
(02:43):
and she landed in Missouri, and oh my gosh. Without
Hurricane Katrina pushing her out and with Gypsy Rose, I
don't think the con would have ever gone as far
as it did. With what Dede Blanchard did and what
her daughter, Gypsy Rose Blanchard eventually did to her. There's
(03:04):
so much psychological stuff here, but today we're dealing with
the forensics and Joe. When you see somebody like this
that they just find a way to take advantage of
things that are devastating to others, opportunistic comes to mind.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
There are opportunists everywhere you look, and I don't know
that I could magnify that anymore than turning the spotlight
today on Dede Blanchard, the mother Gypsy Rose Blanchard, because
you talk about a gamer, you talk about somebody that
(03:41):
knows the system, knows how to weasele their way around
the system, and that will that will turn anything within
her realm into a utility that she can use to
not just survive, but literally two enricher at the expense
of anybody else. It's arguably, it's arguably one of the
(04:06):
most disgusting things in the world, and of course.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
What's really bad is she's the victim of our story today.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, she is the victim of the story and in
a sense that you know, she's she's a homicide victim,
and obviously one of the most talked about cases, you know,
within I don't know, the last two decades, three decades,
one of them. I mean, we've got a whole pantheon
of cases now, but this kind of sticks out. I
(04:35):
Mean there's been I wish you and I had a
dollar for every every television show that's been done, you know,
about these circumstances, articles that have been written, books that
have been written, all these sorts of things. But when
it comes down to it, you've got the genesis of
this twisted tale that starts off Obviously, it starts off
(05:00):
when you know, when DeeDee gets pregnant with this fellow
Blanchard's child and she's you know, she's living down actually
on the west side of the city or the metro
area of New Orleans, down toward the swamps, that area
that people generally associate, you know with, you know, like
(05:21):
that show that's on television where they were going out
hunting Gate, you know, chewed them, cheat them all that
that that area down there, which I have an affinity for.
It's quite beautiful if you've never been to the swamps
and seen it down there. But you know, that's kind
of what she, you know, comes from that environment down there.
People are very poor, they don't have a lot, and
(05:43):
she found herself pregnant. Now she's I don't know, several
years older than the guy that she got pregnant by.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
They got married before she was pregnant. I did not
know that until I was researching this. I assumed since
she was twenty four and Rod Blanchard was eight at
the time of of Gypsy Rose birth seventeen when they
got together. He was seventeen when they got together, and
(06:11):
they did get married. I that just shocked me. I
just assumed he got her pregnant and they got married,
or they got you know, any number of things, but
not got married and then got pregnant. So do you
know where the name Gypsy Rose comes from? There's an
actual real reason, and I I assumed it was something else.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
But it's not right, No, it's not. It's kind of disappointing.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, well, Rod Rod Blanchard was a big fan of
guns and roses. Yeah, that's where the Rose Park came from.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I had no I know, and Mom liked the name Gypsy.
And of course, you know, now gypsy is like a
pejorative term, you know that people, you know, people get
in a twist about. I don't know if that population,
that segment of the world population actually is offended by it,
but there's people out there that are professionally offended by everything.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
And so you know, she was a term where I
was supposed to know, oh.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, wow, And so she saddled with this name to
begin with uh. And that's you know, that's essentially how
this child starts her journey but in life.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
To back up just a little bit, when we mentioned
the story is about the murder and aftermath of Dee
Dee Blanchard, when Dede Blanchard and Rod Well, when Deed
he married Rod and they had Rod had already decided
to leave before Gypsy Rose Blanchard was born. They were
no longer cohabitating together. He had left and when, and
(07:48):
the reason was real simple, Dede you mentioned a minute.
It was an opportunist. She was a con woman. She
was a con artist. And he realized that fairly early on.
This is not an honest person that I want to
be with. So even though she's pregnant and even though
they're married, Rod got away and Dede did what she
(08:10):
pretty much she became the victim of social by using
her daughter from her infancy, claiming that Gypsy had sleep
apnea as an infant that should sleep avena. That was
the first trek into the hospital and in a matter
of months anything and she wasn't nurses a. Dede Blanchard
knew a plenty of different issues medically oriented that she
(08:33):
could utilize to make claims that you don't have to, uh,
you can't really prove kind of like if you if
you if you're kind of a if you're a rich bum,
you know you come from a family of wealth, but
you don't really have a job or a career. You
could claim to be a photographer, you can claim to
be a writer. You don't actually have to prove anything
to claim those as careers. Filmmaker, Yeah, there you go,
(08:56):
there you go. And Dede Blanchard realized there are a
number of medical elements maladies that one can say their
child has based on symptoms that only you can see
and require treatment.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And that's what Yeah, and let me give you another
example to this very non specific diagnosis, which by the way,
they never could confirm this, this non specific diagnosis of
seizure disorder. Oh yeah, well, you know, seizures have there's listen.
(09:29):
I could sit here for hours and we could literally
talk about all of the variety of seizures that are
out there. It's not all epilepsy. There's a variety of
things that seizures can arise from. And so you think
about this, it's very non specific. You get this kind
of sense for this, and write you our day about D. D. Blanchard.
(09:55):
She had a peak, if you will, behind the curtain
relative to the medical world and the world of medicine
and treatment. And I listen, I don't doubt that probably
in her work as a nurse's age she had encountered
people that were in fact gaming the system. They're everywhere.
(10:19):
But I can tell you this, after much planning, she
played the medical community and even more broadly, the communities
that she landed in like a fiddle. Friends, I'm sure
(10:50):
that you will. You're scratching your head right now and
you're thinking, Morgan, have you lost your mind? Why are
you talking about this case? Because it's it's old now,
it is an old case. Well, the reason I'm talking
about this case today is that, and I've told you
about this, Dave my inbox, my email from all of
(11:14):
these news outlets, I started getting hit. I guess it
was this past Monday because people were losing their minds
over the fact that these crime scene photos from the D. D.
Blanchard homicide had apparently been kind of, I don't know,
(11:36):
reinjected into the public forum, into the conversation. They've been
re released, and now they're making the circulation around and
so people, you know, I had these folks reaching out
to me about the graphic nature of them. They some
people even want me to hold forth on the idea
of why people want to see these images, and so,
(11:59):
you know, it really made me begin to think, well,
what's what's the purpose behind all of this? And look,
I know that Gypsy Rose, who obviously now is famously
out of prison. My god, you know, they they have
anointed her, you know, as like she's in the zeitgeist,
(12:20):
as they say, she's everywhere. You can't get past her.
She's out there, she was with a boyfriend, she thought
she was pregnant. Then she's going to get some kind
of television show. She's had a nose job, now she's
getting married, now she is pregnant, you know, and all
of this stuff. And you know, Dedi's I'm going to
(12:42):
make a really dangerous comment here right now. Are you
ready for this? Hopefully this doesn't collectively end our careers.
Dedi's no longer around. She's a homicide victim. So I
guess my question is who is it that's ol there
that is now using Gypsy Rows for their own benefit?
(13:05):
Because it's I can tell you this, it's not little
old Gypsy Rose that's pushing her out and making her
part of the national conversation. Again. This person she has
utility for other people, just like she had utility, I
submit to you, just like she had utility for DD.
And now she's out there and people are drinking this
(13:27):
in day in and day out. They can't get enough
of it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Dave, So you're suggesting that Gypsy Rose is taking advantage
of what she did.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yes, And also I would tell you that people that
have a lot of money, a lot of money in
media and entertainment also see the opportunity, oh to exploit
this situation.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
I think that two words there opportunity and exploit. Those
are two things that Rose learned early. And there are
those are two things that are learned in media and
those who take advantage of certain stories and exploit them.
And I don't know why people want to look at
crime scene photos, but I know this, Joe. We go
to movies all the time to see the gore. We
(14:16):
see fictionalized gore. And and now over the last power
many years, we see more reality.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Not me. I only watch I only watch rom comms.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Dave, Yeah, and you only read Playboy for the articles.
But when you get right down to this, you've got
plenty of people that are interested. Because we watched this
child that we thought was sick, that had all of
these issues and her single mom just struggling to make
things work. And we saw the video she was named,
(14:48):
you know, queen of this and king of that. I mean,
the awards came in from exod.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I was fascinating. And you know, I don't think I
don't think I remembered that necessarily, because this stuff gets
so poleful on and layered. You forget that every little
spot that she kind of inhabited DEDI would use that
opportunity to insert this child into these and all the while, hey,
(15:13):
get this, you talk about a lot of activity going
on behind the scenes. So as she's outwardly promoting the
horror of all of these so called ailments this child had,
she's backstage, you know, telling them to do things like, yeah,
well she's drooling really bad, let's go ahead and take
out her salivary glands. Just let that resonate with you
(15:38):
just for a second, if you know. There's a term
that she used, and it generally applies to people that
work that are former military types that go and hire
their self out, and it's called mercenary. Mercenaries have more
honor than this. Mercenaries are going out selling their selling
their skill set to the highest bidder. She's literally using
(16:00):
her daughter as a product.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
At the end, Tom and Gypsy Rose knew it because
while her mother just to give you a very quick
look at this, Gypsy Rose Blanchard was honored as the
two thousand and seven Child of the Year by this
only foundation that promotes their advocating those who have to
(16:25):
use a feeding tube. Now, I don't know that this
is a huge deal, Like do people that have a
feeding tube get picked on? I don't know. I just
know that this group raises money to raise awareness for
those who have to have a feeding tube. And Gypsy
(16:47):
Rose Blanchard was the Foundation's Child of the Year because
she had a feeding tube. This is a girl whose
mother lied about her age so that she would be
younger and had her use a feeding tube that she
didn't need to get her nourishments. Rose Blanchard was on
a liquid pedia, lah Pedia, sure pedia care things you
(17:11):
give a child that is sick, you know that they get.
She had that totally. She was in her twenties. This
is how deep this went. And by the way, when
Gypsy Rose Blanchard was told by her mother, you have
muscular dystrophy or muscular sclerosis. You have to use a
walker because your legs don't work right. And even though
(17:33):
the little girl's gone, they seem to work fine to me.
You know, she's raised on this going. But they could
give out on you at any moment. You need to
use these, you know. Then she is in This little
girl who's so sick, is in a motorcycle accident with
her grandfather when she's seven or eight years old. She
skins her knee, skins her knee. Her mother takes her
(17:59):
to the emergency room because she has all of these
other issues. They admit her, you know, to take a
look and make sure she's okay. She's there for a
skinned knee, Joe, but because of the other issues, they
she's checked in. Now, what happens when you leave the hospital?
When you're a patient at the hospital and you are leaving,
what did they do? They wheel you out in a wheelchair.
(18:22):
Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother convinced her after the skinned knee,
the doctor gave her a wheelchair because that's what she
needs to use. Now, that's when Gypsy Rose ended up
in the wheelchair, and you.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Think about the utility of a wheelchair. Listen, I'll be
the first one admitted here. I'm chief among sinners. I
stare at people that are in wheelchairs. I can't. I mean,
I'm not going to turn away, you know, because when
I see if I'm in a location, I'll look and
see if someone is actually riding about in a wheelchair.
I want to know what happened to them. You know,
(18:58):
what's going on with this. Don't think for two seconds
that Dede did not look at the wheelchair and see
that as an outward manifestation or an outward demonstration rather
of what was going on with this child. If she'll,
if she would go to the links of having a
feeding tobe inn as child to have unnecessary surgeries and
(19:21):
these wild, wild diagnoses that were being made, which by
the way, the line chair of them were made in Louisiana.
And this brings us to Katrina. You know, you put
forth this supposition that she's been diagnosed with MS and
(19:44):
that now because of Katrina, they have to be evacuated
where they were living in Slighte l Louisiana, which is
just if you follow it ten it's just to the
east of New Orleans. You have to cross a part
of Lake Pont Training to get there. They were living
in public housing there and granted, slide l got hit,
they got hammered by Katrina, and they did lose things, okay,
(20:08):
And then they were they moved to Covington, Louisiana, which
I have a lot of relatives in Covington, and there
was a special facility where if you were handicapped in
any way you could stay there. And so they move
into this and it's it's where this is where the
sea got planted by the the the therapist, the physician
(20:35):
that was actually treating them, and said, hey, I'm from
the Ozarks. I'm from the Ozarks. Maybe you guys ought
to give that area of the country a try.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Really, that's where they came from.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, yeah, it came from someone within that clinic that recommended, yeah,
you need.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
To be I wondered, how how did they why of all.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
The all the places in the world that you know,
while southwest Missouri, which is a beautiful place and there
many times my wife's family is from up in that
region and I and you know, it's gorgeous, it's those arcs,
and but you know, the one thing that it doesn't
have is knowledge. They didn't have knowledge of what had
(21:15):
been going on with these two to begin with. So
they get to show up and there's you know, it's
like now they're going to tap into a completely new
vein of gold that they've discovered. They've kind of exhausted
everything in South Louisiana at this point. You know, how
many how many more crowns can you put on the
little girl in the wheelchair, Well, let's go somewhere else
(21:39):
where there are more crowns, and the crowns are just
merely representative of all of the bounty that's going to
be afforded to them in this location.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And course is the fact that she truly is a
sick little girl with a lot of issues and a
mother struggling to take care of her.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, and we have to, yeah, we have to go
back to Dave. You have to understand as well. And
there was, there was all kinds of fraud that went
on as a result of Katrina. This is merely and
I can't say that this was fraud on her part
relative to Katrina. It's an opportunity though the nation is glued.
(22:18):
I don't know if you remember, the nation is glued
to this drama day in and day out, watching people
on the roofs of homes. Helo's coming in to try
to evacuate people out of there. There's imagery of the dead.
And you know, my friends at the Orleans Parish Corner's
office down there, they had to relocate, can you imagine,
(22:39):
And they couldn't deal with the volume of bodies. They
had to you know, they had to have refrigerated trucks
where they could transport the bodies to a location once
they were recovered. Because you didn't know who they were.
It was madness, absolute madness, and everybody's drinking us in.
So if you're up in southwest Missouri, all the way
(23:00):
away from South Louisiana, and she shows up and she's
got this child in tow by the way in a wheelchair, yep,
and they say, you know, more Porridge police. You know,
they're they're there in this environment where they can they
can leverage every bit of this. And these people, oh
(23:22):
my god, these these people from South Louisiana, they're you know,
they're they've been through Katrina. Oh my gosh, they've been
through the Ringer. Let's open our hearts and God bless them.
I mean, the people up there just gave and gave
till it hurt, and you know, and they saw she
saw the advantage in that, and.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
She saw when people had questions because experts in the
field know how this plays out, and they know what
somebody with these issues looks like, acts like, talks like,
sounds like. And yet when questions came up about previous diagnosis,
previous help, surgeries, what have you, Yeah, sadly, you know,
it was all lost in Katrina. And so you have
(24:03):
to trust this woman who has gained the system to
tell you what's really going on with her daughter that
you see is certainly in bad shape. She's in a wheelchair,
her hair is a lot of times her have we
shaved her mother claimed it was from chemotherapy.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Or chemotherapy, yeah, yeah, and this is the term. This
is what she had, if I remember correctly, let me see,
it was, we're going to go ahead and shave your head,
because you're going to lose your hair anyways. Best that
you go ahead and get used to this, and we're
going to slap a wig on you. And you know
it's at some point in time, you know that I
would imagine that that Gypsy Rose. You know, she's starting
(24:44):
to go into her teenage years now, she's you know,
like all teenagers, you're going to rebel. She's starting to
understand that she's being played, I think to a great degree.
And that creates a perfect storm, if you will, for
somebody it's got this little flame that's burning inside of
them that doesn't want to be a part of this.
I can't look. I can't imagine everything that she went through.
(25:08):
I don't know nobody could. I don't think unnecessary surgeries
and all this stuff you know. But there was one
physician up there in Springfield that and he was a neurologist,
I believe that was taking a look at labs and
doing all this stuff. And he's thinking, this doesn't marry
up with what I have been trained to look for
(25:30):
as as a clinician, you know, as far as this
manifestation with the MS and all of this. He makes
a phone call back to New Orleans where this diagnosis
was actually made, and they did a biopsy of muscle
tissue on her and there's a manifestation that you can
see if you have this condition where it presents at
(25:53):
a cellular level and you're looking, you know, in the
microscope at this and they said, yeah, we it was
We never didn't make that diagnosis. There was no evidence
of it there. And so he's thinking, this guy was
actually told that you need to tread very carefully here
if you're going to call her out, you know, and
(26:16):
say that she's lying. Wow, because you know, she had
gained everybody to this point. And I think that Gypsy Rose,
you know, was certainly aware that she was you know,
she she had grand utility, I guess if you will, Yeah, yeah,
and that's just it and so when you move forward
(26:38):
in this case and you begin to understand that she
had in fact run the course, I guess she came
to the conclusion that she wanted to be free of this.
But how do you do this? How do you do this? When?
And I had this vision I can't remember some one
(26:59):
of these cars to things that my kids watch, one
of these movies where you've got the princess in the
tower and there's a dragon garden the tower. You know,
how do you get past if you want to save
how do you get past the dragon this garden the tower? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's what it was. And so you know you're thinking
about this, and you're thinking, you know, how do they
get access? You know, how does she escape this? How
(27:22):
does she escape it? And that's that's when this Gatta
John person makes this presentation in her life. And I
got to tell you, dude, hell followed after it. Who's
(27:43):
going to be the white night here, Who's going to
come riding in to saved? The little girl in the
wheelchair that's had her salivary glands surgically removed, who's been
told that she's, you know, got cancer, that she's been
told that she has these other horrendous diseases. You know,
it's smacks of I guess. You know. People throw around
(28:05):
the term Munchausen by proxy syndrome, and there's a part
to that for me. With Munchausens, it's generally the mother
trying to get attention. But it doesn't seem like a
pure Munchausens because Munchausen's people are not there to necessarily
profit financially. Dedi is a scam artist and she's profiting
(28:28):
off of her child's illness. So you can say Munchausen's
if you want to, But it's not just about the
attention that she's getting. It's about everything that comes along
with it, Dave.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Her financial survival was based on the illnesses suffered by
Gypsy Rose. The daughter. Gypsy Rose was twenty one and
playing much younger than her actual biological years, and she
was using the Internet. And this is twenty twelve, all right.
(29:00):
We're not talking about a time before the internet. We're
talking about somebody who is inside their home with access
to the Internet and a phone and everything else, and
that's where she meets. You mentioned his last name. Go
to John Nicholas. Good, Wait a minute, go to John
right to John, all right, Nicholas, go to John. Gypsy
Rose communicates with him online through a Christian singles website,
(29:24):
and itsent enough. He's from Bend, Wisconsin and she's there
outside Springfield, Missouri. As they meet and develop an online relationship,
Gypsy Rose is starting to confide in people, in particular
a nextdoor neighbor who's a friend of hers kind of
(29:44):
talk to her like a sister, and she's talking to
this neighbor about eloping with Go to John. That they've
communicated at this point where go to John, has you
know you mentioned the white Knight who's going to get
her away from this overbearing other. Obviously, Gypsy Rose knows
she doesn't have all these maladies that she's pretending to have.
(30:05):
She does her squeaky voice. Granted, she doesn't have much
education where it is that she probably only completed maybe
first grade, maybe not, but she didn't go to school,
so her intellect, her education is not there. She talks
like a child. She uses the wrong verbs and things,
so she sounds like a child who has a lot
of issues, but she's really an adult woman who's now
(30:27):
in her twenties, so she has adult feelings and everything else,
and that's where Nicholas got John comes into play. They're
talking online. There are aspects of the flirting that become
very sexual, and some see that Gypsy Rose God bless
(30:49):
her in terms of her growing up years being taken
advantage of by her mother. Some suggest that go to John, Nicholas,
Go to John was a sexual predator and he was
preying upon Gypsy Rose. I don't know if that's true
or not. I don't know. I wasn't there, And to
be honest with you, there's so much this story to unpack, Joe,
we would need Bethany Marshall and a few other Sykes,
(31:09):
you know. But ultimately she and Nicholas come up with
a plan to get rid of Dede Blanchard. They can't
see any other way. I guess Gypsy Rose feels trapped.
So they be on the loping and anything else that
she could be drawn back to her mother, and I'm
sure Nicholas is there helping along the way because we
(31:32):
know what happened. But they decide to kill Dede Blanchard
while she's asleep. So Nicholas Good or Down travels from
Wisconsin to Springfield, Missouri and us Yeah by bus.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
I think she had sent him the money in order
to facilitate this. And here's the thing, Dave. So when
when they when they had gotten passed, you know, kind
of the whole online thing where they're getting to know
one another and they get off into this kind of
sexual deviant kind of thing that's going on in the
(32:10):
world of the internet. Sense, Gypsy Rose had told him
that if he showed up, she would have everything set
up for him. Now he was familiar with the home,
(32:30):
obviously he had been there. But here's the thing about it.
Timing had to be just right. So people people that
say that go to John, who has some pretty serious
mental issues to begin with, and has an IQ that
is in the low end, all right, I think that
(32:52):
he could probably be pretty easily manipulated. She's furnishing everything,
I mean everything from duct tape to a knife, all
of these sorts of things. But she's also furnishing him
with with a timeline and you know, when mom is
(33:12):
going to go to bed, it's the best time to
do this sort of thing. And this has played out
very distinctly. And this brings us back to, you know,
our conversation today about the photography here when you see
when you know, I have seen this myriad of photographs
(33:34):
that have come out, this crime scene photography has come out,
and it's it's really really it's very graphic stuff. You
know that he had to have an awareness of what
was going on. So to say that he did this
solely on his own, he may have been the perpetrator
as far as it goes to plunging this knife at
(33:56):
least seventeen times into Deedee's body as she lay there
in bed. I don't think that her hand, her hand
being Gypsy Rose's hand was not in this. And you know,
she's portrayed herself as having gone into the bathroom, sat
on the floor, covered her ears so that she didn't
have to hear mom screaming and this sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
How much truth there is to that job?
Speaker 1 (34:20):
You know? I have? And here's here's something. And actually,
my my wife at Kim had pointed this out to me.
He was she was like, was indeed like a kind
of a big.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Robust, robust woman.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yes, yeah, and he's he's a pretty tiny, tiny fellow.
And so I'm thinking, I'm thinking, well, did he truly
pull this off by himself? Did he facilitate this, and
I got to tell you that one of the things
that really struck me from a forensic standpoint, and that's
why photographic documentation is so important in our field, is
(34:55):
that there are a couple of places on Dede's bare
back because he her skir her nightgown was raised up.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
To Before we get to that job, yeah, we kind
of skipped go to when Gypsy Rose, Blanchard and Dedi
go to a doctor's appointment. Nicholas go to John comes
into Springfield. Gypsy then it Rose hands him the packet
of gloves, duct tape, and knife and wait for her
(35:24):
to go to sleep. The timeline they know what time
DDI's going to sleep because she's on a regular routine.
Once she's in bed asleep, that's when Gypsy Rose claims
she goes to the bathroom MC covers her ears while
Nicholas goes in and stabs Dde Blanchard seventeen times at
least while she's asleep. As you mentioned, Dede is not
(35:46):
a small woman. She is a handful and then some
so the idea that unless his first strike, unless his
first thrust of the knife somehow made it impossible for
her to fight back Joe. Yeah, I'm not picturing it.
(36:07):
And because she does have some extra weight on hers,
some extra bulk, I'm not I guessing that first knife
is enough to take her out.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, I think that it would be. It's certainly, uh,
it would be a mammoth undertaking. I think for him
to well, well, first off, it'd be dumb luck, I
think to right, Yeah, of course she's got She does,
in fact have a very nasty injury to the back
(36:36):
of her head and some people have are to the
back for neck, and some people have characterized this as
as almost a decapitation. I've seen this injury and you
can see down through the layers of fat uh to
the subcu fat in the back of her neck. Dave,
this is not a stab wint. This is an incized one. Okay,
(36:58):
so the now the might be stabbing that's associated with
it within the wound, but the back of her neck
is literally opened up and then she's got multiple stab
winds and interesting, you know, le enough, the medical examiner
Slash Corner that was present at the scene, they have
a gloved hand on in the photograph and they're pointing
(37:19):
specifically to the insult at the back of the neck.
You can see them there. You can't see the person,
you just see their gloved hand pointing. And that's something
that we do at crime scenes, you know, because we're
not going to clean it up there. You don't want
to do that. You want to have it in pristine condition,
untouched in that environment. Because if you wash well, and
(37:42):
you and I have talked about this, if you wash
or wipe away anything, you're destroying evidence there. You have
to be able to contain it. And that's what they
were doing. And they're pointing to the number and the
clustering of these injuries. But Dave, you know what one
thing is really fascinating about this that I saw. I
think I saw two of them. There's a transfer bloody
handprint on her back, her bare back where you can
(38:05):
see that a hand has been placed and it's in
And I've seen this happen before. I famously had a
a a domestic abuse case many years ago, where this
this guy was he would take his belt, he'd get drunk,
he'd take his belt off and he would beat his
(38:27):
wife with it, and then he drank and well, he
passed down on the sofa drunk. He had beaten her
with a belt. The belt was still laid on the floor,
and she got on top of him and there were
bloody handprints all on his back. She broke the knife
blade off in his back. Wow, as a steak knife.
I'll never forget that. But you could actually make out.
(38:48):
And I used this to teach my students about trace
evidence and transfer evidence and this sort of thing. You
can actually see this on her back, but I think you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Could see the handprint on d. D. Blanchard.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, you can clearly, clearly demonstrated.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Now you mentioned that DEDE. Blanchard has been stabbed at
least seventeen times. She's got the wound to the neck.
But was her body then positioned or was what else
was going on? Because the entire focus of today is
about the photographs that were taken at the scene of
(39:25):
the crime, which have now been released, and I do
not know what type of value they have other than
prurian interest that these photos could possibly have to anyone
other than Again, I don't see this as a teachable
moment here.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
But it's not.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's taken.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's it's it's it's teachable in the sense that
if you're running a forensic science program or crom scene
program somewhere, and they're not the best quality photos that
I've ever seen generated from a crime scene.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
All right, a these photos how important?
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I'll tell you how important it is. It's it's important
in the sense of you've frozen that moment in tom
You've captured it where let's just say, for instance, and
I'd love to talk about forensic photography this way, you're there,
(40:22):
your eyes on as an investigator, where you are snapping
these photographs to tell a story about what actually happened
this case. Let's just say a case like this might
go and solve for fifty years. Well, by the time,
by the time the case makes any headway, everybody that
(40:44):
worked that case is either retired or dead. So all
we have to rely on is the photographic documentation, any
kind of notes that were taken at that moment time
that can take us and transport us back to that
moment in time. That's why it's so important when you
do crime scene photography that you have frozen those moments
(41:07):
day to the point so that and you make it, say, dude,
you make it so clear that when these new investigators
get their eyes on all of this documentation, you literally
transport them back in time day. Just think about how
powerful that is. You know. One of the things I
think about is like the Hindenburg blowing up. You know
(41:28):
that film reel, which is like the first time something
like that ever happened, you know, like documenting in real time.
You know what I'm saying, and how horrific that was,
but you get a sense for that moment in time
you're transported back.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Well.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
With crime scene photography, one of the things that we
do is just so that to give people kind of
a primer about this, you imagine D. D. Blanchard's body
as the center of a clockface, okay, or the center
of ampus is actually a better example of this. If possible,
(42:05):
I'm going to start off on all four points of
the compass, taking what's referred to as macro photographs, that is,
in the broadest sense, where I'm going to be extending
out to the most distal, western, eastern, northern, and southern
perspective of this body. Then I'm going to move in
(42:26):
about half that distance and do it again, and then
half that distance again and do it again, all the
while kind of tightening down that focus. Because if you
think of yourself as observing something. Let's say you've got
damage to your car and you walk out. You don't
just look at the damage to your car that's in
(42:46):
your driveway and say and walk right up to it
and say that's it. You're going to get a wide,
broad ranging perspective because your perspective might change, and every
view that you have of the scene is going to
be lost after that body has gone, maybe long after
this little habitat for humanity home is taken down to
(43:07):
the ground at sometime in the future. You've frozen that
moment in time. And so when you get down to
the nuts and bolts, when you get into the microphotography
here and I say micro, I'm using that very very loosely.
It's not like we're using a microscope. I'm just talking
about macro, broad, micro small. And you begin to look
(43:28):
at those little details. That's why I wanted to point
out the handprint to you, or the nature of the
stab ones. You know, I can see that stab wound
at the scene, even though it's crusted in blood. I
can appreciate the scene that this is a single edged weapon. Okay, well,
if I can delineate that, I know that I'm not
looking for a dagger. I know that I'm looking for
(43:50):
a blade, for a knife, for a sharp instrument that
only has a single edge to it, so that that
kind of narrows things down at that point in time,
and any of the other associated Yeah, yeah, pretty clearly.
You see it better in the morgue once it's cleaned up.
But for our purposes, there might be that moment in
(44:13):
time where you're standing there with a detective and if
you're doing the examination, you say, look at this, and
you see that it is single edged and single edge.
I always tell people a knife wound looks like a
winking eye, and it kind of does it if you
imagine the outer portion of the eye is where the
(44:33):
actual blade is. The inner portion of the eye is
kind of the blunted backstrap of the knife itself. And
so you're looking at this and then you can get
an idea Dave also in the orientation of how the
weapon was held. Now, I'm not saying people always ask me,
can you tell the individual's left handed right handed? That's
(44:56):
very difficult to do. There are people out there that
say that they claim they can do that. I'm sure
that there are. It's not something I would want to try.
But I can tell you the orientation of the knife.
I can tell you that they were holding it so
that the blade, the sharp edge was was oriented to
the left or to the right. And if it's oriented
(45:17):
to the left and the right, because you're talking about
seventeen injuries, you have to the idea is that they
changed their position relative to the attack. They maybe changed hands,
went to the offhand, and they got tired. Stabbing somebody
is something that is physically taxing to undertake, and so
(45:41):
you're documenting that all along. I guess the question that
I would ask is what's the public's need to see this?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Right? That's my whole point, Joe. When Yoused told me
these pictures were going to we're getting out there, I
thought they were like pictures that had been edited, that
things have been blocked out, and we're talking about real
crime scene photos that have made their way into the
public on purpose.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Apparently, Yeah, they've been released on very broadly. I mean
they're worldwide now. I mean they're on a Google drive
that somebody just kind of released, and it's my understanding
they have been released before. But again we go back
to this idea. Doesn't this come full circle? Yeah, we
(46:29):
go back to this idea that it's all a show.
It's all a show, Dave, because now we're super saturated
in the media with Gypsy Rose Blanchard. We're following her life,
we're seeing everything that's gone on. And let me throw
(46:50):
this out to you as kind of the cherry on
top of the Sunday. Not only do we get to
see Gypsy with her plastic surgery on her nose, not
only do we hear about her breakup with her boyfriend.
(47:10):
Not only do we hear she's getting married. Not only
do we hear that she's pregnant. But to round it
all off, let's show the images of her slaughtered mother.
Regardless of how you might feel about Dede Blanchard, ask yourself, this,
(47:38):
what's the purpose. I know it has nothing to do
with forensics. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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