Matricide commissioned: 32-year-old released in USA

Gypsy Rose Blanchard left a prison in the state of Missouri on parole on Thursday, several US media outlets reported unanimously, including ABC and the New York Times.

Blanchard pleaded guilty in 2016 to planning to murder her mother with her then-boyfriend. The boyfriend who stabbed the mother to death in 2015 was sentenced to life in prison. Blanchard, on the other hand, got away with a comparatively short prison sentence because she had previously been tormented by her mother for many years.

Feigned illnesses

The woman had pretended that her daughter suffered from leukemia, muscular dystrophy and other serious illnesses. Gypsy Rose Blanchard was in a wheelchair, was artificially fed and had to undergo various procedures and treatments – all of which later turned out to be completely unnecessary. She was malnourished, lived in complete isolation and largely had no education. As a young woman, she met her boyfriend, whom she later persuaded to kill her mother, on the Internet.

One of Blanchard’s lawyers described the young woman’s growing up in haunting words in 2016: “Gypsy’s mother kept her like a prisoner,” he said. “Gypsy’s mother physically and medically abused her, gave her medications she didn’t need, made her undergo treatments she didn’t need.”

Munchausen syndrome by proxy

Investigators believe that the mother suffered from the rare Munchausen syndrome by proxy and systematically built a network of lies about her daughter’s condition. Those affected by the syndrome intentionally cause damage to the health of others – mostly children – in order to obtain the care of doctors and attention for themselves and to present themselves as seemingly self-sacrificing carers. The unusual case attracted national attention in the USA and was made into several TV shows.