Gypsy Blanchard, the Springfield woman who conspired to kill her mother who forced her to pretend to be disabled, has been released from prison.
She walked out of the Chillicothe Correctional Center on Thursday at 3:30 a.m. with very little fanfare. A reporter on the scene said she did not see her leave the facility where the media was staged.
The Missouri Department of Corrections announced earlier this year that Blanchard, 32, will be released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center in northern Missouri on Thursday after the state granted her request for parole.
Upon her release, Gypsy Blanchard said she hopes to meet Taylor Swift, who she told TMZ inspires her.
The convicted felon told the media outlet she has tickets to a Kansas City Chiefs game on New Year’s Eve and hopes to run into her idol at Arrowhead Stadium.
Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in July 2016 in connection to the death of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard.
She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Investigators said Gypsy Blanchard convinced her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to stab her mother to death in 2015. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In court, Gypsy Blanchard testified that her mother forced her to use a wheelchair and undergo unnecessary medical tests to collect gifts and charitable donations.
She also said she planned her mother’s killing, considering poison, arson, or using a gun.
According to investigators, Dee Dee Blanchard used her daughter as a disabled poster child to gain sympathy and con people out of money.
It is widely believed that Gypsy Blanchard was a victim of Munchausen by proxy, a rare form of abuse in which a guardian fakes illnesses in a child for attention and sympathy. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the abuse can also be called Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another.
The case made national headlines and led to the 2017 HBO documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and the 2019 Hulu miniseries “The Act.”
After seeing her story told by others in the media, Gypsy Blanchard will publish an eBook, titled “Released,” on Jan. 9 with a collection of interview transcripts and journal entries to tell her side of the story, according to Penguin Random House publishing.
Gypsy Blanchard will also tell her story in Lifetime’s new docuseries “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard,” premiering Jan. 5.
The Blanchards moved to Springfield, Missouri, from Louisiana in 2006 after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
In a new interview with PEOPLE, Gypsy Blanchard said she regrets having her mother killed but was “desperate to get out of that situation.”
Looking back, she said she should have confided in her extended family members about what her mother was doing to her or she should have told the police.
“Nobody will ever hear me say, ‘I’m glad she’s dead’ or ‘I’m proud of what I did.’ I regret it every single day,” she told PEOPLE.
