Crime Weekly - S3 Ep232: Crime Weekly News: Public Turns on Gypsy Rose

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard has been in the headlines since her release from prison, and while the public was initially rooting for her success, it seems her most recent choices have started to bother those that follow her online... Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod  

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And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to give a big round of applause to Stephanie Harlow. If you see, if you're watching on YouTube, look at that camera setup. Look at that camera setup. We've seen the comments to be completely transparent. I don't know why her setup looked like that before. We couldn't figure it out. It might've been a bad sensor. We have the exact same cameras, but I would argue now yours looks even better than mine i mean you gotta you got you got the setup going the lighting the camera it looks it looks great on my end let us know what you guys think it should be a lot better now yeah something was going on with my old camera i mean it was like oh it was like you had it a long time seven years old i think a sensor was people kept saying even on my channel like oh, oh, this isn't,

this isn't good quality. You look blurry. And I kept like changing and refocusing and doing all these things. And finally I was like, okay, I started looking it up and they were like, yeah, it's probably just like, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work. So. It's not gonna fix itself up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm happy to see it. I I've always, we, we record over zoom or like a zoom style program. So it's always a little blurry for us, but I was seeing it on the backend and thank you. It looks great now. It even looks better as we're recording.

So that's good. So this episode tonight, I, I didn't even give Stephanie a heads up on this when I was looking it up. It's something I've kind of felt strongly about for a while. Although I was like, you know what? I'm just not going to fight that battle. It's not worth it. Right? Like it's not, it's going to run itself out eventually. So we'll go from there, but there's some interesting developments in the gypsy Rose case because we did cover it before and we never covered it on crime weekly, where we went into the extent of

what happened with gypsy Rose. We did cover it. I believe it was crime weekly news. And you went over some of the, I guess some of the overview of what happened as Gypsy Rose. We did cover it. I believe it was Crime Weekly News. And you went over some of the, I guess, some of the overview of what happened as far as her and her boyfriend getting together. And there was this allegations of Munchausen by proxy, which we do believe are true at this point. Is that fair to say? We do believe that was occurring, right? Is that fair? Oh, yeah. I would say so, yeah. Okay, good. So we're not, nobody's disputing that, that she went through hell. However, there was a leak of Gypsy Rose's mother's crime scene photos. I don't know how they got out.

They should have never gotten out. But if you are unfortunate enough to have seen them. Do you have any theories about how they got out? I haven't. I mean, listen, it had to come from internals, right? It had to. And when you think about Gypsy Rose and you think about the popularity of it, you know, I'll even go out on a limb.

This is pure speculation on my part. I wouldn't be shocked if there was someone who kind of feels like me, and I'm going to get into my opinions, in that police department and sees Gypsy Rose being glorified and sees her being put on this... Oh, you think in the police department? Where else would they come from?

They shouldn't come from anyone other than the police department or the prosecutor's office. Would she have access to them? She should not. Okay. She should not. Now, I will say this.

There are the people that would have access to it. The prosecution, should not. Now I will say this. There's, there are the people that would have access to it, the prosecution, the defense. So I'm not saying here, that's why it's speculative. It could be from the police department. It could be from a lot of people that during this, the court process had access to this. It could be court clerks. So it's expansive. A lot of people could have leaked these photos, but either way, I think she's been pissing people off, honestly. And it's like, it could be anybody. It could be anybody. It's fair.

There's a lot of people over the years who have had these photos go through their hands through the judicial process. But let's just say it's somebody in the police department who says, I'm sick of seeing this girl everywhere. Right. She's making millions of dollars. Like her mother was brutally murdered. And this woman played a part in that.

And again, I'm not saying that's what they did or what happened. But I will speak for myself when I say I don't think Gypsy should have been villainized for what happened. She served her time. And I've always said that. The justice system did its job. They found her guilty. She served her time. And she was let out. And she's allowed to move on with

her life. She's pregnant. Congratulations on that. Happy for her. Live your life. Do I, did I find it weird that she was being put on this pedestal of like people were calling her mother and queen. Like she's the role model we should be looking up to.

Not for me. Weird, weird. Not for me. And so I, that's just my opinion. You know, I'll take a line from Stephanie. You don't come for me, but there are better people. There are better role models to follow out there. You want to see some of them go watch the Olympics, right? Go see some of what these people do. And half of their names, we don't even know them until the Olympics come. But, you know, here we are making TV shows around Gypsy Rose and I get it. Listen, I've done the TV thing. I understand these production companies, these networks. They're going to make shows on things that people want to watch and people as long as people want to watch her, they're going to keep making the shows. They do not care. That's coming from someone who's in reality television.

I did big brother. I mean, listen, I'm in no place to talk and people are gonna say, well, you know, you have what you have cause you're on big brother. Yeah.

But you know what? I didn't, I'm not known because I didn't kill your mother. I didn't, I didn't contribute to the, to the murder of my mother. So now these photos come out. And the reason I want to talk about it is because now you're having a lot of people see these photos and they're attaching a crime scene to Gypsy Rose, which is what it's always been.

But I think for a lot of people, when they hear the story, it's a lot different than seeing it. You feel a lot of sympathy for her, too. Of course. And you can still have sympathy, but when they realize and see what she is also attached to, even the younger people are going, oh, wait a second. This is pretty bad. And there's a couple of things here.

I was looking at an article that came out. There was a TikTok that was put up about it. And there was some different comments from some of the viewers on that. I'm going to read a couple of them. Again, you may feel differently way down in the comments below. If you're watching on YouTube, let us know what you think, but I'm looking at the tick tock right here. And one person says, I saw it. And oh my God, another person said, saw them. And my jaw jaw hit the floor. Someone else said, I just saw

the pictures and it made my heartbreak a little. Um, I think these are all valid feelings. And I think that shock factor really does hit a lot of us because you don't envision that unless you've been there before. As a police officer, I've been to a murder scene. We've covered a lot of murders on here. Unfortunately, Stephanie's seen a lot of crime scenes through her research. And it doesn't really, even when you go there as a police officer to your first couple homicides, as a human being, when you see it, it takes a few minutes for your brain to process that what you're seeing isn't a movie prop. It's not until you start to smell what you're standing in that you realize, oh no, that's an actual human being who has been here for days. There

was another comment that I saw that I thought really summarized what I'm trying to say here. And it was after seeing these pictures, people that had previously supported Gypsy Rose have dropped her completely. These pictures are very, very bad. I do not recommend going and seeking them out. I agree. Don't go look at them if you haven't. They're terrible. I wish they weren't out there because if everything's true, what is being said about gypsy Rose's mom, and it appears that it is, then it's not good, but she didn't deserve this. And I think now people seeing the reality of gypsy Rose's situation are having a different feeling on it. How do you feel about all of this? Because I know you're kind of on the same sentiment as me, but you kind of have a better pulse on the vibe that's out there. You have a much bigger YouTube channel.

What's your thoughts on it? What's my thoughts on exactly what? Let's break it down. First off, the fact that you have Gypsy Rose, who was clearly involved in the plot. Clearly, I mean, she's admitted to be. She's admitted to that, okay? And she gets out of prison

and you have these networks and her social media following blew up tremendous. I mean, I don't even know how many followers. She has millions of followers. What was your kind of gut reaction to the love that she was getting from a large portion of the population was really loving everything Gypsy Rose?

So I wasn't surprised by that, to be honest. The true crime community has a lot of benefits. But as we know, it can be toxic and the lines can be blurred. We've seen this with Chris Watts, where women were like, oh, I'll marry you. I won't be nagging like the wife you killed. You know, like they think we've seen this for decades with Charles Manson and Ted Bundy and all of the women that kind of go after them when they're in prison and they romanticize them. And it's not just women. Men do this.

Of course. Right. We've seen that with we talked about I think it was Susan Smith who who killed her kids and then had a bunch of suitors while she was in prison. What's the psychology behind that? I don't know. I'm not even going to touch on that right now, but I wasn't surprised. There's a big push and a big movement behind, you know, setting boundaries, standing up for yourself, pushing back against your abuser. And I get that.

And without a doubt, Gypsy Rose was abused by her mother. Her life was essentially ruined by her mother. And is that the reason, a big reason of why she is the way she is today? Because, I mean, there's something still clearly not right about this person. Yes, I do think that she would have had more of a chance of having a normal life had this not been her childhood. So I wasn't surprised to see her embraced so thoroughly. As you said, we do have a big sort of reality TV kind of society right now. We've seen the Kardashians be put on pedestals for decades when we really couldn't even tell you what they did to earn our respect and admiration. You know, it's just that they're there. We see behind the scenes. We

know what they're doing. We know who their friends are. We know what their, you know, favorite foods are, things like that. It's almost like this weird parasocial relationship that gets developed. I was not surprised to see her embraced in the way that she was. I am surprised that she sort of leaned into it in the way she did. I mean, I don't know if you saw. Yeah, for a while there was some tick tocks being made and they were just bizarre, bizarre. And it was kind of like you'd feel that going through what you went through, right, as a child and then going through the whole orchestrating your mother's murder and then having to go to prison for that at such a young age, you'd think you'd come out with a little bit more perspective, a little bit more maturity, and also some understanding of what's important and what's not. And let's be honest, social media is not important. People who are chronically online are generally not happy. So you'd think you now have your freedom. You might want to do something with it, like not be making weird TikToks all the time and kind of embracing the celebrity that you earned by being a part of your mother's murder. You'd think you

want to distance yourself from that is what I should say. I want to live a normal life now and have a normal relationship, a normal marriage. I want to be a mother. I want to have a job. I want to know what it's like to be an average person because that was taken away from me. But it doesn't seem that she wants to know what that's like. So what's my take on it? I never took part in any of the idolization of Gypsy Rose because I see her for what she is. She was abused.

She's mentally ill and she needs a lot of help and a lot of therapy. And she needs to start looking inward and start looking towards internal validation as opposed to external validation. And I hope she does. But now with these new crime scene photos dropping, it says, you know, she's lost a lot of support that she once had. I can't be surprised about that. As you know, she's lost a lot of support that she once had. Oh, yeah. Which I can't be surprised about that. As you said, it's a different thing to know than to actually see. It's the difference between reading a transcript and hearing the audio or seeing the video. Like sometimes you read words and you're like, oh, that's terrible. But then you hear them being said or you see them happening or and see them being said and it's completely different. It's a far more impactful and you can put yourself a little bit more in the shoes of the person who's experiencing it. That's the same thing here. I think when people saw the reality of we're part of it. Right. We're part of it where our society has become desensitized to murder in a lot of ways because of TV movies and true crime podcasts like ours where you're hearing about these stories, but you're not having to actually experience them. So we're hearing about these names, whether it's the victims or the offenders,

and they're more characters than they are actual people. Caricatures, some might say. Exactly. And so when you're smacked in the face with the photo of the victim, and you now know that that offender that you've kind of been idolizing, some may say, for a period of time contributed in some way to this, it's like, whoa, I don't want to support this person. And so I think my takeaway from it is it's not even so much about gypsy. She's going to do what she's got to do in her defense, you know, just to play devil's advocate. She's making millions of dollars doing this. I get it. She doesn't have a lot of discernible skills at this point to go out there and make money. She's a, she's a felon.

She's someone who came out and immediately had access to this revenue. Can you blame her for taking advantage of it? I can't, I don't, I don't blame her for going out there and doing the social media stuff, but I will say since the murder scene photos dropped, she has scrubbed her social media. She's deleted over half of her posts. Yeah. But why not all of them? Why not all your posts? Why not deactivate your social media totally at this point? I think it's, I'm not a defender. I think it's the money. I think it's the money right now. So you think some of these posts were like contractual and she can't delete them? I think there's some to it. I mean, look at us. There's certain things that we have to do contractually that we have to promote certain times and certain segments in there. I'm sure she had a management team and they were also promoting on her behalf. She was probably just filming this stuff and they were creating content off of it.

So I'm not even making this episode more to say like, shame on you, Gypsy Rose. I've always known what she was part of, right? Like I read the, you talked about it. I know what it looks like to see a murder scene like that. I didn't know the details of the murder. Now I unfortunately do with the photos, but I knew what it looks like to see a murder scene like that. I didn't know the details of the murder. Now I unfortunately do with the photos, but I knew what was behind it. And I'm not going to sit here and glorify a person like that.

You even see it just to switch it up for a second. When the Netflix series dropped on or the episode dropped on Ted Bundy with Zac Efron, right after that people, because they saw Ted Bundy as Zac Efron, not Ted Bundy, even though Ted Bundy, according to some people, wasn't a bad looking guy, but then you go and take a second. I mean, he wasn't

Zac Efron though. Come on. Right. I mean, Zac Efron, he's a great guy. Zac Efron, I know. But then some people went and looked up his victims and looked at those photos. Of course, yes. And it changes your perspective. So you have to see both sides of it overall. Well, dude, isn't it kind of like that that who's that new murderer that everyone's talking about he's got the tattoos and everyone's like oh my god he's so hot he's so hot and it's like he's a serial killer do you know what i'm talking about no no um really like oh my god it's crazy uh he's got tattooed he's got tattoos on his face you know you have to know okay i've got it wade wilson you don't know you haven't heard about wade wilson wade wilson from deadpool that's about it dude okay exactly so they started

calling him the deadpool killer because his name's wade wilson but like he kind of looks like jake gyllenhaal all right and he's a literal serial killer. All these women can talk about it. Not all women, but a lot of women are like, oh, my God, he's so attractive. Like, he can kill me. I've seen the most horrendous things. And it's like, do you not know? Look at the faces of his victims. Okay?

The faces of his victims. So, yeah, he's got a swastika tattooed on the side of his half shaved head he's got like like this like it looks kind of like you know when you cut somebody's mouth and make a smile and then it looks like stitches there he's horrible he's horrible but he's been sort of um put on a pedestal because of the way he looks. Yeah, well. And I just don't, I don't get it. Like, how can you overlook?

And I mean, also, there's this, there's this, and I completely get it, right? Because sometimes humor helps to put light into a very, very dark situation, which Wade Wilson and yeah, who he is, that's a very, very dark situation. He killed multiple women. So I understand. But I think we as a society at this point have gotten so far to that, that where we can make a joke about anything. We're just so freaking unserious that we forget behind this handsome murderer are real victims with real family members and real sadness and real pain that he left in his wake. And sometimes people can compartmentalize and separate the two.

And that's fine. But it went a little far. I'll just say that. My takeaway from this wasn't to villainize Gypsy Rose. She didn't ask for a lot of the notoriety that she got from this. It came to her. It fell on her lap. So by no means is this episode meant to be something like shame on you, Gypsy Rose, because what happened then has always been the case. I just think for everybody now getting to see these

photos, it's a sad realization that as you said, there are real people behind these with families and it's not only the victims themselves, but their friends and acquaintances and everyone that was in their life that is affected by it as well. And to see those photos of Dee Dee, I'm not trying to sit here and say that she was doing the right thing before her death, but I stand behind the fact that she did not deserve what happened to her. She nobody deserve, it doesn't matter what you do. You don't deserve to die. You, you deserve to tell your, your part of the story. You deserve to face justice in court. Like you said, you deserve to get mental health help if you need it. Right.

And I wonder, I really do wonder if eventually both Gypsy and Didi got the help they needed, did whatever they needed to do, if they would have possibly reconnected and there would have been and could have been a happier ending to this story. Because it doesn't seem like anybody's really doing well now. Yeah. And the only one in prison is Nicholas Godejohn. He's obviously. Which I'm not saying he shouldn't be, but damn.

Yeah. Well, those photos coming out will not help him ever getting out. That's for sure. Well, he shouldn't. He shouldn't get out. But yeah. Overall, my takeaway is just, he shouldn't get out, but yeah. Overall, my takeaway is just, you know, let's be careful of the people we decide to look up to, that we decide to idolize, that we decide to support because although they may have changed their lives, it doesn't change what they have done and the impact they may have had on others.

So wishing the best for everyone involved. Glad to see that there's some common sense out there in the social media world where people can look at these photos and not try to justify them by saying, oh, she deserved it. And I'm sure there's those too as well. But from what I saw from doing my quick little cursory search, most people after seeing these photos were like, okay, you know what? Let me revisit this one.

And I do respect and appreciate that. She'll still have her supporters, which is fine. Of course. And nothing wrong with that. Listen, I wish nothing. She served her time. I stand by that. She served her time. You may think it was enough. You may not think it was enough based on what you saw. The judge decided it's over with. She's allowed to move on with her life, and I hope she has a very good life with her, with her family, and everything works out great. This is more to just

to hold everyone accountable, including us. When we're talking about these stories, we always make it a point to emphasize who the victims were in life, not only in our stories, because that's important. These are real people. It's not just something that we're creating. It's not fiction. This is real. And we always have to, I think these stories are good to remind even ourselves of them as storytellers, because you can sometimes get caught up in it because we do so many of them so it's a lesson for all not even caught up desensitized of course yeah yeah of course and it's completely understandable because the human brain does things to protect you from horrendous things i will say obviously yes gypsy did her time she needs to get off social media for a little bit and sort of connect with

the real world that she was kept from for so long because of her actions now she needs to just get and you said like she doesn't have marketable skills this isn't that you can get a job at target okay yeah like she's got enough money to last her now i think for a while for sure she's doing all right it does look like she is taking a step back. Maybe not to the extent you're saying, but she is taking a step back. Like I said, deleted a lot of her social media posts and she's probably realizing at this point, okay, these photos are out here now. There's no escaping it. I need, as you're saying, I need to move on with my life. I have a child coming into the world. I just want to be happy. And, and we, I can speak for myself. I hope that's the case. I hope that's

the case. And again, not to pick on gypsy. Gypsy, there's a lot of other people that I could have named who are also glorified and idolized and they're criminals. I mean, we see movies about it. So we could sit here all day. Any final words from you? One thing, I think having a child really does change you. I think having a child really does change you. I think having a child changes you. And I think that it does sometimes heal or give you the ability to heal a lot of your own childhood trauma, because it's almost like you can play out the childhood that you wish you'd had.

And in a way that ends up healing you. And so I really do think that that will be impactful for her. And I'm glad. And I hope that she's a good mother and I hope she has a great relationship with her child. And I hope she's healed through that relationship. I concur. Guys, we appreciate you being here. We're going to be back later this week for the Gainesville Ripper part two series that we are covering on Crime Weekly. Until then, everyone stay safe out there and we'll see you soon. Thank you.