true crime

Dee Dee Blanchard

   Clauddine Blanchard was born May 3rd 1967 in Chackbay, Louisiana

--background--

  Dee Dee Blanchard was born Clauddine Pitre in Chackbay, Louisiana, near the Gulf Coast in 1967, and grew up with her family in nearby Golden Meadow. Blanchard was one of five children of Claude Anthony Pitre, Sr. and Emma Lois Gisclair.

Relatives recalled that she had a habit of stealing from her family, which they speculated was a form of retaliation when "things didn't go her way". At some point early in her adult life, she worked as a nurse's aide. The family expressed suspicion that in 1997 she might have killed her own mother by denying her food.

When she was 24, she became pregnant by Rod Blanchard, then 17. They named their daughter Gypsy Rose because Clauddine liked the name Gypsy and Rod was a fan of Guns N' Roses. Shortly before Gypsy Rose's birth in July 1991, the couple separated when Rod realized he "got married for the wrong reasons". He resisted Clauddine's efforts to get him to return, and she took her newborn daughter to live with her family.

--life of Gypsy--

  According to Rod, who remained involved with his daughter at this point, by the time Gypsy was three months old, her mother was convinced that the infant had sleep apnea and began taking her to the hospital where repeated overnight stays with a sleep monitor and other tests found no sign of the condition. Clauddine subsequently became convinced that Gypsy had a wide range of health issues, which she attributed to an unspecified chromosomal disorder. At some point her mother claimed that Gypsy had muscular dystrophy, and made her use a walker.

Gypsy stated that, when she was 7 or 8, she was riding on her grandfather's motorcycle when they were involved in a minor accident. She suffered an abrasion to her knee. Her mother stated that doctors had given her a wheelchair which she would need to use.

Gypsy often went with her parents to Special Olympics events. In 2001, when Dee Dee claimed Gypsy was 8 (she was actually 10), she was named the honorary queen of the Krewe of Mid-City, a child-oriented parade held during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Gypsy seems to have stopped going to school after second grade, possibly even as early as kindergarten. Her mother homeschooled her after that, supposedly because her illnesses were so severe; this was later believed to have been an attempt to isolate Gypsy to further her abuse. Gypsy managed to learn to read on her own through the Harry Potter books.

While Gypsy's father Rod had remarried, Clauddine moved in with her father and stepmother. They would later claim that Clauddine, when preparing food for her stepmother, poisoned it with Roundup weed killer, leading to her own chronic illness during this period. During that time, she was arrested for several minor offenses, including writing bad checks. When the Pitres began to regularly confront her about her treatment of Gypsy and expressed suspicion about her role in her stepmother's health, she left with Gypsy for the New Orleans suburb of Slidell. Her stepmother's health returned to normal shortly afterward.

In Slidell, she and Gypsy lived in public housing; they paid their bills with Rod's child-support payments and public assistance Clauddine had been granted due to her daughter's supposed medical conditions. They spent most of their time visiting various specialists, mostly at Tulane Medical Center and the Children's Hospital of New Orleans, seeking treatment of the illnesses Clauddine claimed Gypsy had, which she now said included hearing and vision problems. While a muscle biopsy found no sign of the muscular dystrophy Clauddine insisted Gypsy had, she was successful in securing treatment for her daughter's other purported issues. After she told doctors Gypsy had seizures every few months, they prescribed anti-seizure medication. Several surgeries were performed on her during this time and Clauddine regularly took Gypsy to the emergency room for minor ailments.