Hidden True Crime - GYPSY ROSE EXPOSED - With Dr John Matthias, Forensic Psychologist

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Gypsy Rose Blanchard has recently been released from prison after serving an 8 year sentence for murdering her own mother. Gypsy Rose is the victim of Munchausen by proxy [Factitious disorder imposed on another]. Gypsy received a plea deal and lesser sentence than her co-conspirator Nick Godejohn, and since her release from prison she has done several media interviews and garnered millions of followers on Tiktok and Instagram. She is also the subject of the recent Lifetime Documentary: "Prison confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard". Dr John Matthias, criminal Psychologist, takes us into what's hidden within the case of Gypsy Rose. This episode was originally livestreamed on our YouTube Channel on January 7, 2024. "A better understanding of crime is a better understanding of ourselves” – Dr. John Matthias Dr. John Matthias is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with over twenty-five years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He has performed over 500 forensic and psychological evaluations and risk assessments for the courts since 1996, assessing the risks for violent and sexual recidivism for both adults and juveniles. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government, and he has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims of abuse and trauma, including with survivors of the Las Vegas shooting massacre in 2017. He also received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling from the University of Southern California and he has worked with hundreds of families, couples and children over the years. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day. He received his doctorate from the University of Southern California. Dr. Matthias has been an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program since 2007 and he has trained over 25 doctoral students since that time. Contact them at [e-mail] Support them at Patreon.com/hiddentruecrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's time for another live hidden hour, this time on Sunday night. Thanks for the extra day. I haven't been feeling well. In fact, this is the first time I've showered in a while. That's how much all of you mean to me. I won't do that for John, but I'll do it for all of you. And look, babe, we match. So.

Yep. Still clinging to the holidays in red. We refuse to let it go. We're so grateful for all of you being here, and it is a big show tonight. And since I don't have a voice, I'm just going to hand this over to you, John. Okay. Yeah. So we're going to dive into the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.

And I just want to preface this with a few ideas. Number one is that our discussion may not always be popular tonight, but I think it's important. Our channel is always believed in providing our version of events, no matter what that is or where it leads us. And sometimes that's not always the most popular. We don't express the most popular ideas all the time, but we express ideas that we think are accurate. There may be some discussions tonight that are controversial, and I invite all of you guys to participate in those discussions. And having said that, I want to also say, before we begin this conversation, this episode, that I do have a lot of empathy for Gypsy Rose. I do believe that she was horrendously victimized by her mother.

I believe that she went through was indescribably painful and unnecessary. I believe that the medical system did fail her, that every system failed her, and that this should have been and could have been caught so much earlier that so many people could have prevented this. So I have a tremendous amount of empathy for what she went through. There's no question of my mind that Gypsy Rose is a victim, and she was abused, and I just want to set that straight before we begin this conversation. because we're going to go down some paths here that might be a little controversial.

I want to start by now that I mentioned the victim part. I do think that in analyzing this case, I think it's important to consider two facets of this case. There's the case of Gypsy as a victim of abuse, and then there's Gypsy as a murderer. And I think those are very different parts of this analysis and they're important parts to consider. I think that Gypsy the murderer is quite different than Gypsy the victim of abuse. So I will be separating those two parts of this analysis.

So let's start with there is a video from 2009, I believe, of Gypsy singing at, an event for a cancer? Is it the American Cancer Society? Okay. The American Cancer Society, yes. Okay. So if you could go ahead and please play that. All right.

Here you go. There you go. Okay, right. For those of you who have watched Gypsy's Prison Confessions, and I haven't, we haven't, Lauren and I haven't watched all of it, by the way, because the last two episodes are airing tonight. In fact, they're here,

they're airing during the show. So we haven't seen all of it. We have watched the documentaries, including the HBO documentary. We've looked at the interrogation videos. We've looked at just about everything we can, and we've watched the recent prison confessions. So that's where we're getting our information, in addition to some articles and some discussions and some groups.

But we've looked at a wide array of sources. So I want to say that those are our sources tonight. Gypsy Rose raises a really important question early on. And that question is, she sees it as the most important question. It's a question she gets over and over again. And that question is, and I'm going to quote her here, this is from the prison confessions. She says, people ask her, quote, why didn't you just stand up? And that's how she puts it.

So, you know, it's interesting that she doesn't say that the question, is why didn't you just stand up to your mother? She says, why didn't you just stand up? And there's a sense in which, ironically or interestingly enough, I think she's talking about two senses of standing up. One is standing up literally. In other words, getting out of her wheelchair and standing up and showing the world that she can stand. And by the way, Gypsy knows that she can stand. She knows this from a very early age. In fact, she, the reason she's, she's, she's, she, she's, took to a wheelchair was because she was in a motorcycle accident with her grandfather, Claude, when she was five years old, and she scraped her leg.

It was a fairly minor accident for her, but she scraped her leg, and then her mother saw that scrape. So her mother, Didi, saw the scraped leg, and she used that to put Gypsy in a wheelchair. And from that moment forward, Gypsy never left the wheelchair, even though the family would see her bouncing on a trampoline and the family would see her later when when deedy had an accident and gypsy was around age 10 that gypsy stayed with clawed again and even though she had a feeding tube she ate normally she walked around the home right so there were there were plenty of instances where gypsy was actually out of her wheelchair people saw that gypsy knew it but the question here is the question she poses is

why didn't you just stand up? Right? So there's two senses in which I take that question to mean, number one, why didn't she get out of her wheelchair and show the world that she could stand? Because if she did that, she would disprove everything that was going on, right? If she just stood up, she would tell the world, look, this is all a facade, this is all a fiction, this is invented by my mother. I can walk.

Okay, so part of her question I take it is, why doesn't she show the world that this is a facade? The other part of the question is, and maybe the bigger part, is why didn't she just stand up to her mother? Right? Since the main theme in all of these documentaries and the confessions is that Gypsy is a hostage. These are terms that are used constantly. Gypsy's a hostage. Gypsy's a prisoner. Gypsy's a captive.

Gypsy has no choice. She has no options. That she's just her mother's puppet, that her mother's the puppeteer. Her mother's pulling all the strings. So that's the second part of this question. And so when I wanted to show the Cancer Society song for a couple of reasons,

because I want to ask this question about that particular incident. So what's interesting about Gypsy's, singing at that event is that Gypsy's actually 18 years old. Right. Her mother is telling people that she's 14. She's 18. So she's an adult.

She's a legal adult when she's singing to a group of people pretending to be a child. Right. And when Gypsy is doing this, by the way, she absolutely knows that she can walk. She knows that she can eat normally. She knows that a lot of these illnesses she's been labeled with are not real. Yes. What's interesting to me about this particular moment is I wonder what it would have been like if Gypsy actually stood up during this event.

And my question here is, could Gypsy Rose, when she was 18 years old and an adult, could she have literally stood up in that moment and shown the world that this was all a facade? And it seems to me that there's three reasons why there's only three options here about why she wouldn't stand up or she could stand up. One is that she chooses not to stand up. Right?

So she's making a deliberate choice not to stand up. The other option would be that she can't stand up due to a medical condition. So one of the conditions her mother says she has is muscular dystrophy. And that's the explanation about why, generally speaking, she's in a wheelchair because she doesn't have the capacity to stand up. So we know that number two is false. We know that she has the capacity to stand. And the third reason that she wouldn't be able to stand is the reason that Gypsy gives all the time.

This is her pat answer. Her pat answer is that she's afraid. She's too afraid to stand up. She says, quote, in the prison confession, she says, quote, I was scared of my mother. That's why she doesn't stand up. If we agree that at the Cancer Society meeting, just hypothetically, if we agree that she has the capacity to stand up and she chooses not to, the question is why, right? And this is the question I want to answer because this is. really is the key to Gypsy Rose.

Okay. The question is, why does she choose not to stand up? We need to examine that question, and we need to examine whether the reason is fear, or is it something else, right? And so I think our show tonight is really going to try to dig into this issue of the big question she raises about, why doesn't she stand up? and I think most people would agree that it's a choice, that she chooses not to stand up,

because we know that she doesn't have muscular dystrophy, right? I mean, we don't know it at the time she's singing. And so what is it in that moment on that stage? Let's say that Gypsy Rose on that stage with her mother is the main attraction, which she is. She's the main attraction. She's singing. People know her story.

you know, they're sort of enthralled with her in her situation and all these illnesses she has and all this adversity she has to confront. Right. So what does that mean? Right. What does that mean that Jitzy Rose at 18 knows she can stand? She knows that all of this stuff is more or less a fiction

and she chooses not to stand up because here she is in front of hundreds of people, maybe more as the main event, the main attraction. She's it. She is the main attraction. Right. And I think that, I think putting it in those terms, I think, is going to get us really close to where I want to start going with this.

And this has to do with the Moonschaushausen's bi proxy. This has to do with why she's making a lot of her decisions. It has to do with really, I think, understanding this case. And I want to say the chat is. full of things like, well, she didn't stand up because of coercive control, because of fear, because of abuse, because this is what normal was to her. I just want to share that I am seeing the chat scrolling and there are people saying that and we're going to tackle that, right?

We're not going to ignore those people that are saying these things. You work with victims of coercive control. You know it well. I think those are all part explanations. I think that all of those things are going on here, and they're especially going on when she's younger. You know, the, well, this starts when she's very young. This starts when she's less than three.

You know, it starts with Strabismus, by the way. So let's talk about the origins of Gypsy Rose here and the origins of all these medical issues. She legitimately has Strabismus when she's a child, which Strobismus is translated is cross-eyes. And there's different ways to correct it. Sometimes you can correct it with glasses. Sometimes you need surgery.

But I think, so D.D. sees this medical condition. And I think for whatever reasons, D.D. latches on to this idea that her child needs to be sick. she latches onto this idea that her child can get a lot of attention and she can get a lot of attention if her child is perpetually sick. And so the Strabismus, which is real, and by the way, a lot of her conditions stem from, like the motorcycle accident at age five with Dee Dee's father, Claude, Gypsy's grandfather,

the motorcycle accident. There was an injury. It was just minor. but D.D. saw that as an opportunity to transform this minor injury into something major. So once she's in a wheelchair, it becomes muscular dystrophy, which she doesn't have. And then it becomes leukemia. So she shaves her head. If she's going to be in a wheelchair and she can't walk, she needs to be sicker. She needs to have leukemia.

So I think leukemia is diagnosed around age eight. It becomes this progression where D.D. is piling up illness after illness. As the documentaries point out, that as one of the psychiatrists says, Dr. Mark Feldman is his name. He was in the HBO documentary. He says that this is probably the most egregious and clear-cut case of Moons-spy proxy that he's ever seen. And he's an expert in that area. And then he goes on to explain that Moons-Bry proxy is either a feigned illness or a created illness, a manufactured illness, in a child to benefit the parent in some way.

Usually it's a way for the parent to get attention or, you know, so typically to feel special, that kind of thing. I don't think there's any dispute here. And by the way, just to update that, the Munchausen's by proxy is no longer referred to that anymore. It's now called Fictitious Disorder imposed upon another. So the name has changed. Because all these people talk about Munchausen's,

that's what I'll use, but just know that I'm aware of the fact that the DSM-5 refers to it as factitious disorder imposed on another. So that would be typically what we would talk about, but we're going to call it, for our purposes, we're going to call it Moonschausen. So you have this escalating cycle of illnesses that really kind of puts D.D. in the driver's seat. and it really gives Dedey a lot of control over Gypsy Rose. And in most cases of Moonschausens, by the way, occur with minors, with children under the age of 18. And that's going to be an important point here, by the way,

because most cages and Moonshausenshans involve not only minors, but typically minors who have some type of, illness that can't be explained. So in a lot of these cases, you'll see some type of poisoning, for example. And when you give a child, let's say you give a child anaphrase, for example. I mean, that's horrendous, but let's just say that's the case. When the mother takes the child into the doctor repeatedly and they're trying to figure out what's going on, they're not looking, they're not assuming that a mother's going to poison a child. So they're not really looking for antifreeze poisoning, for example.

And so there is a real sickness because the child is being poisoned, right? Right. But it's not obvious what that is. And so most doctors just naturally assume that there's some illness that's coming from the child and not from the mother. And so unless they discover, unless they dig a little deeper and find out that there's antifreeze in the child system, and then they'll obviously know that the mother initiated it. But a lot of these cases, you have some illnesses that although they can't be explained,

there is a real sickness there. There really is a sickness. Yes, that's right. Whenever we talk about Munchausen, we talk about how the child is very, very sick and they don't know why they're sick and they don't understand what the person is doing. They want to know why they're sick. They're in pain. And the doctors are baffled.

Yeah. And so it's important to point out with Gypsy that there's no poisoning here as far as we know. Well, there was a lot of medication early on, wasn't there? A lot of medication. She was taking a ton of medication. But medication, you know, medication, you know, so in the HBO documentary, they said that the medication actually induced some of the illnesses she had. But let's consider that. So at some point, at some point she was deemed to be quadriplegic.

There's no medication that can induce quadriplegia. At some point, she was considered to be intellectually disabled. There's no medication that can induce a 13-year-old to act like a five-year-old, right? She was diagnosed with leukemia. I'm not sure how, but, I mean, Part of this was able to happen because of the hurricane, because of Hurricane Katrina and the move to Missouri, where D.D. claimed that all the medical records disappeared in the hurricane. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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A lot of these illnesses, seizures, okay, you might be able to induce. There's some of the stuff you probably could. But so the medication in and of itself would not explain all of her illnesses. It would go a long way to sedating someone. It would go a long way to creating a zombie of sorts. It would go a long way to presenting concerns that need to be investigated further with blood work or whatever else, right, with further testing.

Yeah, or the ore gel made her drool, but it didn't create the leukemia necessarily. Right. So the origil is an example of when she had her salivary glands removed, her mother gave her a ton of oregill so that she would salivate a great deal unnecessarily, that she would drool. And based upon that, based upon that little trick, the doctors were convinced, and based upon Didi's persistence, the doctors were convinced that she had to be able to, a problem with their salivary glands so they were removed. So that's an instance of of inducing an illness or problem that doesn't really exist.

So I think, you know, there are some big differences here in terms of there's no poisoning here. Yeah. There's no, there's no like underlying illness that any of these doctors can pinpoint. point. There's a lot of D.D. saying, you know, seizures, asthma, right, the leukemia, quadriplegic. Like, yeah, there's a lot of, go ahead. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of specula. There's a lot of pronouncements on Didi's part about all the sicknesses and illness she has. But none of those are really confirmed.

By testing. I do feel, yeah, I do feel like there is a big difference between this case of Moonshausen and others I've seen. The others I see, the child is very sick. They're in pain. They might be on their deathbed. And then the doctor finds out that they're slipping stuff into the IV or that the mother is poisoning the child. In this case, you're right, the mother is saying, she has this and she has this and she's creating the diagnoses, but she's not, and she's sedating and creating some symptoms. But you're right. It's different. Right. It's different. And that's going to start moving us in the direction of the answer that we'll be getting towards here. The other part, so there's another piece to this too, that in one of the documentaries,

they mentioned that this is the only Moonschausen's by proxy case where the victim killed the offender. The only one. This is the only documented and known Moonschausen's case where the victim killed the offender. And that takes us to the other part of this issue of the other issue of Munchausens, which is that most cases of Munchausens, almost all of them, occur with minors. And specifically, for example, let's go back to the poisoning example. If you're poisoning a child, the child has no voice. The child doesn't understand what's happening.

The child has no recourse. But what's different about Jipsy's case is that she's an adult for a large chunk of this. that her mother, Didi, has changed her birth certificate so that she's four years younger than she was born in 91, the birth certificate has changed to 95. This allows Didi essentially to perpetuate this idea that she's a minor when she's not. Right.

And so I think that starts moving us towards this, why is this the only Munchausen's case where the victim essentially retaliated? And I think part of that is because Gypsy Rose is an adult. The Gypsy Rose, that as an adult, with a better understanding of what's going on here, the Gypsy Rose has a lot of anger and she has a lot of rage about what her mother has done to prevent her from having a normal life. You won't see that in a 10-year-old.

You won't see that in a child. You won't see that in an 8-year-old who's being poisoned because they, don't have the intellectual capacity or the means to fully understand that. So what makes Gypsy Rose case unique is both the fact that she has to participate in some of her illnesses. In other words, she has to go along with her mom, which, by the way, before every doctor appointment she was coached, her mother would tell her what to say, what to do. She would say, when the doctors is a reflex test, make sure you don't move your leg.

She was coached before interviews. So that is very unique to Moonchazen. That doesn't happen. Well, you have children can fain or malinger or fake illnesses. But when they do, in some ways, they have to play a role. They have to play the role that their parent wants them to play. Right. And so you have a lot of that here.

that when her mother says she has quadriplegia, or she's a quadriplegic, gypsy Rose knows that she knows that's not true. Right. But in order to perpetuate that fiction, she has to go along with that. She has to play along, otherwise she exposes the horoos.

Right? And so as she gets older, and as she starts realizing the extent to which I think, her mother is abusing her and taking advantage of her and perpetuating all these fictions. And as she starts becoming more independent, I think she starts becoming much angrier. I think she starts realizing what's happening, obviously. Which, again, in much houses occasions, you just don't, cases you don't see that. Because most of the children are younger.

and they simply they don't they they have no capacity to understand how and why the person who's supposed to be protecting them would be harming them you know getting back to my initial question about why she doesn't stand up so let's go back to that now with with the understanding that most moons most moonshausen's cases involve younger children often that are exhibiting significant illnesses that can't be explained and the doctors are baffled by that. Here you have someone who's older, and in fact she's an adult for a big chunk of this, and she's having illnesses that don't exist. She's exhibiting illnesses that don't exist.

And so the question, if we go back to that question about why she doesn't stand up, why is she choosing not to stand up? Well, okay, I'm sorry. Let's let me actually back up a little bit. I think we need to, before I get to that answer, I'm going to leave a little suspense here. So let's actually back up a little bit. And I want to go back to when she's age five. And we'll come back to this question, of course. but at age five, when she first takes to a wheelchair,

she said something, there's a couple things that are going to be important here, that if you don't pay attention to her prison confessions, you can miss them really quickly because they come and go quickly. But I, of course, in my job, you know, my job is to try to pick out the little things that sometimes are monumentally important. And this is one of them. So, Gypsy Rose is talking about when she was five years old, and here's what she says. This is from the prison confessions.

She's saying this as an adult, of course. She's saying this prior to her release and during the interview, but she's talking about when she was age five. She says, quote, I knew I could walk, but I only craved her, meaning I only craved my mother's attention. and I was afraid of losing it. Then Gypsy Rose goes on to explain, she goes to elaborate on that, and she tells a story about how she's five. And she's just been put in a wheelchair.

And she knows she can walk, so she knows this is a facade, she knows this is a ruse. She tells a story about how she wasn't giving her mother enough attention. And she was being a little disobedient. She wasn't completely obeying her mother's instructions. And when she did that, the story is that her mother turned to the cat.

Her mother turned to the family cat and started showering the family cat with, quote, with more attention than she ever gave to me. The quote, she said in the documentary is, quote, mom favored the cat over me if I disobeyed or I didn't give her enough attention. This is a really important disclosure, I think, because now we're starting to get into issues around attachment and issues around attention seeking and issues around parenting. And in fact, this reminded me a lot of a fairly well-known experience. called the Stillface Experiment that was conducted by Edward Tronick in 1975.

And we actually have some footage from that. I wanted Lauren to play here. Babies this young are extremely responsive to the emotions and the reactivity and the social interaction that they get from the world around them. This is something that we started studying 30 years. four years ago when people didn't think that infants could engage in social interaction. In this still face experiment, what the mother did was she sits down and she's playing with her baby who's about a year of age.

I'm like a girl. And she gives a greeting to the baby. The baby gives a greeting back to her. This baby starts pointing at different places in the world and the mother's trying to engage her and play with her. They're working to coordinate their emotions and their intentions, what they want to do in the world. And that's really what the baby is used to. And then we asked the mother to not respond to the baby.

The baby very quickly picks up on this. And then she uses all of her abilities to try and get the mother back. She smiles at the mother. she points because she's used to the mother looking where she points. The baby puts both hands up in front of her and says, what's happening here? She makes that screechy sound at the mother. Like, come on, why aren't we doing this?

Even in this two minutes when they don't get the normal reality. They react with negative emotions. They turn away. They feel the stress of it. They actually may lose control of their posture because of the stress that they're experiencing. Okay. And what do you do? Oh, yes.

Oh, what the good. It's a little like the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is that normal stuff that goes on, that we all do. goes on that we all do with our kids. The bad is when something bad happens, but the infant can overcome it. After all, when you stop the still face, the mother and the baby start to play again. The ugly is when you don't give the child any chance to get back to the good. There's no reparation and they're stuck in that really ugly situation. Okay.

So the story I just talked about when at age five, when her mother starts favoring the cat in front of Gypsy Rose, starts giving the cat attention, I think that's a version of this. That's a version of Stoface. that essentially when she's doing that. So this is, by the way, this is what psychologists call operant conditioning. So operant conditioning is the famous B.F. Skinner, you know, mazes and rats and boxes and that kind of stuff. Operate conditioning is based on a series of rewards and punishments. So that's exactly what's going on here, is that, that Didi is trying to shape gypsy's behavior.

She's rewarding her when she gives her attention. She's giving her a still face or rewarding the cat when she's not giving her enough attention. So she's really, what she's doing essentially here is she's creating a huge amount of dependency. She's creating a huge amount of dependency upon her for attention. And she's also forcing Gypsy, Dede's forcing Gypsy, to be attention-seeking.

from her. And so it's interesting to think about, if you think about, if you move forward with the still face experiment, so the still face experiment is with little, you know, toddlers and infants. It's with little ones. But as children get older, you get, you have, you get a version of the still face experiment, which is that parents, especially narcissistic parents, they begin to empower. impose their will and their ego upon their children. So this process that you see here that the Tronic is showing,

it's a dance between the child and the parent. And I think every relationship is like that. That there's reciprocity and you have this give and take and you have this dance. And, you know, somebody shows some nonverbal and then you respond to it. Right. And so, but at some point, I think that when a parent becomes threat, are when a parent's narcissism takes over, the dance begins to shift

so that the parent is demanding that the child respond to their needs and their ego and their narcissism rather than to the child's own needs. And that's what's going on here. And when that happens, by the way, you start losing the opportunity to develop a real sense of self.

Yes. This is what Winnicott, the famous British psychoanalyst, called the false self. That when the parent starts putting their needs and their ego above the child's, and they start kind of imposing their ego on the child, then the child really doesn't have a chance to develop any sense of self. Right. They become a reflection of the parent. They do what the parent wants.

they become objectified by the parent. They become a reflection of the parent. And so I think that's the process we're looking at here. So you have, you have, I think from a very young age, you have a situation where you have insecure attachment in the sense that Gypsy Rose is not given any freedom to really kind of explore the world and develop her own sense of the world.

She always has to be attached to her mother. So typically we would see that as like an anxious, anxious, ambivalent type attachment. In the sense of the child, when the child is away from the mother, the child feels extremely anxious. And so I think, I think you begin this story with insecure attachment,

and then you have some version of stillface, the stillface experiment, where the mother is essentially threatening the child, if you don't behave and do exactly as I say, I'm going to withdraw all my attention from you and all my love from you. And then as the child gets older, it becomes even more extreme.

The mother says to the child, you have to reflect back exactly what I want and what I feel and not what you feel. And so you go from this insecure attachment to this incredible sense of dependence, dependency and to this need for attention. So I think you have these three components in play here. You have attachment issues.

You have a huge amount of dependency and you have a real attention seeking behavior. I'm feeling this. Keep going. Keep going. We're with you. So now that we've done that. And so I think the catch story then becomes really important. and these ideas become really important

and going back to our question. And by the way, Gypsy Rose also mentions, I forget what episode, but in her prison confessions, she mentions that she cares immensely about what the other prisoners think of her. She says for seven of her seven years of her prison sentence,

she can't stop worrying about what the prisoners think of her. And that would be consistent, by the way, with these issues I just discussed. That's this attention-seeking dependency component. So you not only see this at age five when the mom's giving attention to the cat, but you also see it in prison when she's age 31. She claims that she's overcome this, but we'll get into this later. But clearly her media tour and all the things she's doing now would best be described.

as attention seeking to say the least. Right. So this notion of attention seeking is really important in this case. And she says that. She tells us that in prison, in prison, she only cares about what the other prisoners think of her, right? And so that continues from age five until whenever. So let's go back to, let's go back to, let's start thinking again about,

I asked that question about why doesn't she stand up and expose this whole ruse when she's singing in front of the American Cancer Society? Right. And I think we're in a better position to start answering that now. Okay. So the question is, we know that she's choosing not to stand up, right? She is. Yeah, she's making a choice. despite the coercive control and the abuse,

and you've acknowledged that at the beginning, she is making a choice not to stand up. Right. And so I think if you really delve deeply into Gypsy Rose and her upbringing, and again, I want to be clear that I'm very empathic, that this is clearly a form of abuse.

Her mother is narcissistic, as narcissistic as one can imagine. And her mother, is negating any chance that Gypsy Rose has of developing kind of a solid sense of self. Yes. Because her mother is imposing her notions of selfhood onto her daughter, and she's not letting her daughter have a voice. However, when you think about this singing at the Cancer Society, I think the clear answer

to me is the reason she doesn't stand up and expose this whole. ruse is because she wants attention. She wants validation. She by now at this point in her life, even though she's an adult, she's 18 years old, she's received so much attention for being sick. She has. Her mother has received so much attention. So this kind of goes back to the cat story. She doesn't want, even at age 18, when she's singing and getting all this attention, she doesn't want her mother to go back to loving the cat. Right. More than her.

Right. And so the short answer is a big part of Moonshausens is that the parent, so Dede, Dedy wants to be seen as a wonderful, perfect, heroic parent. She's getting a lot of kudos from the community. She's getting a lot of attention from the community for taking care of such a sickly daughter. right and so there's this element of there's this this this need that dd is getting fulfilled of of excellence in parenting or heroic parenting or however you want to call it whatever we we want to call it that she's getting a lot of attention dd when she wouldn't

otherwise get that attention yes and the other part of that is that gypsy's the star of the show gypsy's the main attraction that these two go together gypsy has to play that role So Dede's parading gypsy around and basically saying to her, look, I'm getting this attention, but so are you. People love you. People are befriending you. People are giving us money. People are, you know, are really- Giving us a house.

Giving us a house. They're giving us a house. They're giving us trips to Disneyland. They're giving us, you know, trips to the Make a Wish Foundation. She's doing all this stuff. She's traveling all over the country. She's befriending all these people. She's got right, like, it's not, this isn't a story just about Diti as the heroic parent.

This is also a story about Gypsy as the star of the show. Gypsy is the main attraction. And that's what we see at the Cancer Society. It's certainly true that Gypsy was abused, that you can see Gypsy as a hostage, you can see her as a prisoner, you can see her as a captive. And I think a lot of that is accurate. I don't really dispute that. But I think if you dig a little deeper,

it's important to see that Didi and Gypsy are creating this ruse together. And Gypsy says it's fear. Gypsy says the reason she plays along and doesn't stand up is because she's afraid of her mother. The problem with that explanation is simple, which is that in terms of actual threats to her life or fear for her physical safety, D.D. is perfectly fine until gypsy runs away at age 19.

There's no physical abuse until age 19. The gypsy essentially says my mom was perfectly loving. I mean, she was abusive and she, you know. Emotionally and manipulative. Yeah, controlling. Yeah. But not physically until she was an adult. Right.

There's no fear for her life. So the only way to interpret then, if there's no physical threats or fear for her life physically and there's no physical abuse, then the fear she's talking about goes back to the quote I just read about the cat. Let me read that again. at age five, Gypsy says about herself at age five, I knew I could walk, but I only craved her attention and I was afraid of losing it. That's it right there. She tells us the fear is she's going to lose her mother's attention.

The fear is not that she's going to get killed by her mother. The fear is that her mother's going to withdraw her attention and her love from her and give it to the cat. And so do I think that fear is legitimate? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's all she's ever known. It's a different kind of fear. And it's, if you think about,

so for those who have watched, I just killed my dad, it's a documentary on Netflix by Sky Borgman. It involves an adolescent by the name of Anthony, Anthony Templi, who essentially, there's a version of this with Templey, except for Anthony, in Anthony's case,

his father was very physically abusive. He literally locked him in his room and wouldn't let him go out. He didn't go to school. He had no friends. His father kept cameras around the house to monitor him. And Anthony, at some point, Anthony shot his dad to death when he felt like his dad was going to kill him.

And that, so. In self-defense. Yeah. In self-defense, right. And so. Not playing. in a quick moment.

Yes. Right. It was an impulsive moment when his father was chasing him. He gets the gun. He shoots him. Right. But you have the same elements. You don't have Moonshausens, but you have this hostage situation.

You have the prison. Like all the things that could apply to Gypsy Rose also apply to Anthony. The difference, however, is that Anthony has a legitimate concern that his alcoholic father who lost his job is starting to become more violent and he's escalating his behavior and he's legitimately afraid for his life. Whereas D.D., although after Gypsy Rose runs away and she locks her, she locks Gypsy in her room and chains her up and all that kind of stuff, that happens at age 19. That happens much later. With Anthony, this is occurring when he's a teenager or, you know, a late teenager.

And so. Yeah. And people are mentioning in chat, well, the physical abuse when she was younger because of the medication she had to take. That's true. We're referring to like threats to her life at this moment. Or maybe you can explain that. So yes, physical abuse and the medications.

Right. I'm talking about threats to her physical safety. Right. Threats to. She mentions that after age 19, her mother gets a gun. her mother starts putting a knife by her bed. There's these signs, certainly, that there could be physical violence. That's what we're referring to.

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Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. Those starts to have more concerns for her physical safety. But there's never an instance as far as I know when D.D. says to Gypsy, I'm going to kill you and points a gun in her or something of that nature, right? So the fear, I think the fear is legitimate, but it's not the same fear that somebody like Anthony Templey has. Right. It's a different kind of fear. It's the fear of not getting her mother's attention.

And so that goes back to this issue of and this motivation of attention and validation. And in some ways, I think that those are existential threats to Gypsy. Rose. So while there may not be this actual fear for her physical safety, there is a legitimate existential fear of if you withdraw attention from Gypsy Rose, in some ways that probably feels like death. Yeah. Because it's all she's ever known.

Right. That's all she's ever known. And her mother has created this deep dependency. Right. This deep dependency. that's just, I have a quote here. So this is also from the prison confessions. She says, Gypsy says, of her relations with her, another quote,

we were bonded by this lie that we couldn't escape. That's interesting, right? That in some ways, Gypsy's saying there that she knew about the lie and she played her role in perpetuating that lie. because that's what kept them together. That's what let her, you know, get all this attention from her mother and from other people and from, you know, houses

and all this stuff. I think this story... People are mentioning that, oh, this started when she was three months old. Yes, we're acknowledging that. That is why she craves this. And like, I don't think that what you're saying is not acknowledging that. I want to say that everyone's saying,

but this, yes, this. is what she knows. Right, exactly. Right. I'm not, I'm certainly not arguing that Gypsy Rose was not abused. I'm not arguing that there wasn't Moon Chalzons by proxy. I'm not arguing any of that. Right.

What I'm saying is that I think that as Gypsy Rose became older and she started to become an adolescent and started having this desire for kind of, sexual experiences and more independence, this narrative starts changing a little bit. And Gypsy Rose feels more options. You know, I mean, she runs away multiple times. She does. If you're going to perpetuate this idea that she's a total prisoner and did everything that her mother wanted her to do, then how do you explain her running away?

Why is not that the same as standing up at the American Cancer Society? Yes. Right. And so I guess my point is that if you really dig a little bit deeper into this case, there's a lot of complexity. There's a lot of gray area. I'm not saying that I don't want to say that, and we're going to get into the murder part in a minute, by the way.

So I want to set all of that up with this notion. that at some point, and I don't know when, at some point, Gypsy Rose knows that this is a ruse. And she knows that to keep getting attention from her mother, she needs to play this role. She needs to play along with her mother. Her mother's coaching her before every doctor's appointment. This is not someone who's dragged along against her will at every turn. This is someone who, even at one doctor's appointment, she can stand up. and end all of this.

She can call her father and end all of this. She can do something. Her argument is, essentially her argument is, I had no options. I was a prisoner held against my will. I could not choose. I, you know, and I don't want to say that there's no validity to that because I do think she had a distorted view of reality. I do think that her reality testing,

and what that means is the kind of how, we know the world and how we engage with the world and how we make decisions, I do think that was impaired. She had a limited perspective of the world. She had limited relationships. She was obsessed with Disneyland and she lived in fantasy. And all of that certainly impacted her ability to make good decisions. But again, if I want to go, so going back to my hypothetical of the singing at age 18 at

the American Cancer Society could. she have stood up or did she not have that option? So and I guess philosophically the larger question is here is did gypsy will, did gypsy Rose have free will? Or was all of this determined by her childhood and the way her mother treated her? Did she have any capacity to choose? Did she have any free will to express herself? And you know, if you look at the murder and how premeditated it was, and what happened with the murders, you have to argue that this is someone who had choice. She ran away more than once, again.

She had the choice to run away. She made the choice to run away from her mother. You know, also the first time she runs away, she's 19 years old. She meets this guy, Dan at VisionCon. Dan is 36 years old. She decides, Dan talks her into leaving and staying with him in Arkansas or something.

She runs away, but she, and these little bits are so critical. She runs away, but she leaves her cell phone behind. Think about that. Right, right. Is that a mistake? So her mother, the only reason her mother finds her is because her mother sees her phone, cell phone that she leaves behind,

and her mother tracks her. Her mother looks at the text. Her mother figures out where she is. Her mother finds her, brings her back home. That's when the first physical abuse occurs. She left her, she ran away from home and left her life home. Left her cell phone behind, telling her, telling her mother exactly where she was. So does anyone think that's an accident?

I'm sure there are some people, but I don't think you do. But clearly, Gypsy Rose, if you leave your cell phone behind, you know you're going to get caught. If her mother doesn't find herself, her mother does not know where she is. And she probably runs away somewhat successfully. I mean, I think because that dependency is so strong, she wants her mother to find her. She wants her mother to bring her back. The dependency, yes. She doesn't want to lose that attention. But she does have this capacity to choose. She does have the capacity to run away. She has the capacity to plan a murder in, you know, in some depth. She has a, she has a capacity to start a relationship online that lasted

for three years, three years in secret. She has the capacity to get on Facebook behind her mother's back, to get on social media behind her mother's back. She understands all of that. But her argument is that because she's such a hostage and such a captive, that she can't choose, that she can't make choices, that she can't function as an adult. And, I mean, I think there is a middle ground here. I don't think it's one or the other. I think that she can be both a hostage and a prisoner

or at least feel that way. She can feel that way. I think the dependency made her feel that way. I think she was a hostage to her mother in many ways because of her dependency. She can feel as if there's no way out. I agree with all that. But then you have to argue that she also understands that she's acting, that she can walk,

that she can eat. She knows all that. In order to perpetuate this fiction, she has to pretend as if none of those things are true or that she can't walk. Right? And so you have all these contradictions. You know, in the confessions, I have to say that I do think, I do think she's done some work. I do think she mentioned that she's been in trauma therapy.

I do think she's matured quite a bit. I do think she's come a long way. You know, it's interesting. So I do think she's progressed a lot. And I give her a lot of credit for that. on the other hand you know she's perpetuating this narrative

which makes perfect sense because she's promoting a lot of her her documentaries and she's promoting a lot of her stuff her book she comes out with a book but her narrative is pretty simple that she you know that she's a hostage

and she was abused which she was and that she has really, that really she had no choice. She did what she did because she felt like she had no choice. And so, you know, there's a bit of a contradiction there. You know, I think it's suffice it to say that I think she's a very complex person like all of us. And, you know, even the documentaries will leave certain things out. You know, there was in the HBO documentary, there was some implication that she was physically abused before age 19. And then Gypsy Rose tells us she wasn't in the confession.

So, you know, each of these documentaries is clearly trying to present a particular perspective on this case or a particular narrative. But what about Nick? Because that's one of the things I think that bothers people. But I don't want to get you off track. Do you want to keep going? Let me just throw out a few other thought. There's so much to talk about here. I feel like I'm

I feel like I'm missing some big chunks of this but I think there's another part of this story that's really been overlooked and that is this underlying, I'm going to call it repressed rage. Okay. This underlying anger and rage that just gets buried in the story. And what I mean by that is that I've listened

now and watched, I don't even know, hours, like well over 10 hours of Gypsy Rose stuff in the last three or four days. And there's only one place, including in her prison confessions, there's only one place where Gypsy Rose mentions anger at all. It's in the HBO documentary from 2017. It's in an interview she's doing with the HBO producer or director. I think it's the director. So roughly 20,

it must have been before, this interview must have been done, I presume, before she went to prison. So this would have been like 2015 or 16, maybe early 2016. In the interview with the HBO director, she says, quote, I'm angry at the world,

and this is unfair. That is the only mention of anger in any of this. So I think there's something really, I don't know, there's something really dishonest here about if most normal human beings went through what Gypsy Rose went through, I think that they would acknowledge that they had some anger at their mother for being treated so poorly and unfairly that have anger at her mother for losing their childhoods, their entire childhood to abuse and all these. manufactured illnesses, right? There has to be some anger here. Yeah. And she never talks about it once.

She never says, I'm so mad. I'm so enraged at my mother. That was, and I think that was a part of her decision to murder her mother. Yes. But you never see it. It's not talked about. It's not expressed. It's buried.

It's repressed. And that's a problem. And it's repressed in all of the videos of her, too, with her high-pitched voice saying, fairy tales do come true. I'm so happy. I'm such as giggly, sing-songy, cheerful little girl. You never, ever, ever see that range or anger. That's part of what was so shocking about this case,

is where did this come from? Right, exactly. And so, you know, as a forensic psychologist whose job is to assess risk and recidivism and all that kind of stuff, if I see someone like Gypsy Rose who murdered her mother in cold blood or played a major role in murdering her mother and she's not able to express any anger or rage about what happened or any rage that may have played a role in her crimes that's a red flag to me you know she wants to present this image of herself now as someone who's reformed and come a long way and she has

she's going to be quote her best self like she she throws out all these like new wage terms, you know, self-help stuff. And that's great. There's no question in my mind. She's come a long way. But if you really want to go that extra mile, if you really want to figure out what's going on, I think you've got to look at some of the anger. Well, some people are saying maybe she doesn't know she has that rage or anger.

But you're saying that's probably that's part of the problem. Well, this is going to bring us to Nick. Okay. So she meets this guy, Nick, Nick Go to John in roughly, 2012-ish, 2012-13. She meets them online, and she learns that Nick

has this dark side. So Nick has this part of himself that he calls Victor. And Victor, apparently, is a 500-year-old vampire who can be violent. And he describes as being evil. So Nick has this alter ego. He says he has multiple personality.

I don't think he does, but he's got this alter. ego named Victor. Victor's a vampire. Victor's prone to violence. Victor's impulsive. Victor is into BDSM and, you know, some sexual deviancy perhaps. Victor is, for the most part, sort of this violent, malicious alter ego that Nick develops. Chipsy says initially that she's repulsed by by this idea of Victor. But then but then

she starts cultivating this dark character herself and this character's named Ruby and Ruby wears these wigs and Ruby dresses in lingerie and Ruby does these like salacious poses for pictures where she's like

licking butcher knives and engaging in kind of this pseudo porn. She's wearing lingerie. this is not we're getting a long way away from the 18-year-old talking in the sing-song voice acting like she's 12 right ruby becomes this expression of this other side of gypsy rose even gypsy rose describes ruby as being evil or potentially evil it's it's it's her alter ego to kind of mimic this character that Nick is created called Victor. Right.

And so my point is that that Gypsy Rose is complex, that there's something here in Gypsy Rose that's a lot darker than we think. There's something here that there's something here that encompasses a lot of anger and a lot of rage. It's he's only able to express through this character of Ruby.

I think that this character, this Victor character, by the way, I think this Victor character is very much a projection of Ruby's darker side. That this appeals to her because she knows that she needs to connect to something or someone like that if she wants to murder her mother. In other words, we give Victor a lot more attention

than we give Ruby. and maybe we should start looking at Ruby a little bit more. Well, you know, Gypsy's narrative, Gypsy's story is that this evil-doer Nicholas Godaghan comes into her life, hell-bent on murdering her mother, right? She's putting, she's pinning most of the blame for the murder on Nick. And then she's using this character of Victor to show how evil Nick is or could be. Now, never mind the fact that Nicholas Godaghan has no history of, violence. He has no, he does have an arrest. He does have a sex offense, but it's, it's, it's, it's, I don't know what we

can say about it on YouTube. It was at McDonald's and it had to do with touching himself for several hours. Right. So he was in public. He was in a public space. He was in public space engaging in an illegal sexual act with himself. Let's just say that. And so, which by the way, so the other thing. I said it better than you. You're the one than my. Yeah, I know.

I should have left it at that. I think everyone got it. Okay, keep going. YouTube has my tongue tied. I know. So they always do. So the thing about Nicholas's crime there is that it wasn't violent. Right. It wasn't an assault. It didn't involve somebody else.

These are the things John looks at when he's looking at risk and recidivism. So he says that casually, and that might seem shocking because people might think, wait, that was violent towards people that might see it. So John is talking very literally factually as it's his job in how he, this is what you do. I just need to explain that to people that might. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. You're talking very casually because this is your job and other people are like, that is a terrible. thing he did. So I just try to explain this is this is like everyday talk, every day speak for John's job. So okay. So go ahead. Let me let me let me explain that a little bit. So I've assessed so many sex offenders. I've lost track of how many, but that the I've had case. So there's there's other things you need to understand about Nick Godagin. Number one, he was apparently according to his mother, he was diagnosed with autism. She said that his mother, Nick's mother said that

he has the intellectual capacity of a 15-year-old, roughly 15-16. So he's got some intellectual delays. And so, oddly enough, that particular crime, I've worked with, I've assessed a lot of adolescents, and young adults who have similar crimes and they have similar diagnoses

that they tend to be delayed a little bit and or maybe autistic, maybe not, but intellectually impaired to some degree. I think that's the commonality. And for whatever reasons, that's a reasonably, I don't want to say common, but it's a crime I've seen more than you would expect among that group.

So that doesn't really alarm me. I mean, what I'm, what I would be more concerned about is that he happened to have a knife with him when he was doing that, is that if he attacked someone with a knife, or if he tried to assault someone, right? Like, and I'm not, I'm not saying that his crime was nothing, but, but, but what I am saying is that there's a big distance between that particular crime and murdering someone, brutally. Right. with a knife, right? And so in that sense, there's really nothing in Nicholas Go to John's past that would point in the direction of that type of violence. And I think that that gets us closer to discussing the murder.

And so the components of the murder that are interesting to me are number one that Gypsy Rose is the one who suggested it. Gypsy Rose was persistent and relentless about convincing Nick to murder her mother. Even towards the end, Nick had reservations. Nick had discussed just running off. You know, Nick asked the question, do we really need to do this? Nick saw this as an extreme behavior.

But Chipsy Rose was not going to let it go. Chipsy Rose is very clear this is what she wanted. Gypsy Rose was persistent and she said no my mother needs to die you can see that there's text threads out there I don't you know we don't need to repeat those but but I mean it certainly raises the question about you know in some ways this starts to look like potentially it starts to look like a murder for hire type situation right she found someone who was gullible she found someone who was intellectually delayed or had intellectual disabilities. And when you watch his interview, you can tell that he is delayed.

She convinced him that the only way that they could have a relationship in which he desperately wanted. So she created a huge amount of dependency between herself and Nick. There was a huge amount of dependency on her, Nick on Jitzy Rose in their relationship. So she perpetuated this fantasy that, They would live happily ever after, even if he killed, even if he killed Gypsy Rose's mother. You know, those are all troubling elements of this situation. The DA initially charged them both with murder in the first degree, which would have meant life in prison and or the death penalty.

And then because of mitigating circumstances or mitigating factors, which were Gypsy Rose's past childhood trauma. he reduced her sentence to second-degree murder, which is basically manslaughter, which ended up being eight and a half years. So, you know, do I think that the punishment was just? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I have a hard time with this. I have a hard time that he's doing time behind bars for life while she's out in 10 years.

It seemed like they plotted and planned together. And, you know, it seems like other people are curious and have a hard time with that, too. We've watched several interviews with Gypsy since she's been out of prison on the view, with ABC. I think there's one other. And they ask her this. They ask her, how do you feel about Nick, you know, still behind bars and will be for life? And she has a scripted answer.

I'm sure he has regrets, too, just like I do. I did my time and he's doing. his. No, her, yeah. She said, I did my time. I know he's doing his time, and I wish him well on his journey. She always says, I wish him. There's no journey.

There's no journey. Right. Right. There's no journey for Nick. The journey for Nick is a small prison cell and then death. Like there's no life journey for Nick in the same way that a gypsy rose. I want to say Ruby since I introduced their. alter ego, her evil alter ego. Yeah, right, there's no, there's no journey for Nick.

His life's over. You know, it does show her response to that question to what are your thoughts about Nick. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off.

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Protect yourself now at ORA.com slash remove. I just show a startling lack of empathy. You know, I might say that it does kind of sound like it's scripted from lawyers, so I get that. You know, maybe she's just saying what she needs to say. to appease her lawyers. But I mean, it really negates her prominent role in the murders. I have to share what Missy said because this is what bothers me.

She lied in the interrogation video and Nick told the truth. Nick was so truthful, so truthful, so direct. And she lied. She lied. And he said exactly what happened. That said something to me. Who's more manipulative? of. Let's play the, can you play a bit of the interrogation interview? Let's get to that now that we're

talking about it. Thanks, Missy, for that great segue. I've pulled about four minutes of the interrogation video with Gypsy Rose when she and Nick are taken in. Here we go. Let's be honest with each other, okay? I'll be honest with you as long as you're honest with me. Okay. And I want you understand that your honesty goes a long ways, okay? You don't want something in this nature to be like a big snowball, we'll use that as an example, okay? You don't want that snowball to be so big that you know how you when you pack a snowball

and it's real small? And what happens when you start rolling it down a hill? Bigger. It's bigger, okay? And what happens if you start telling lies? They get bigger and bigger, and you don't remember which ones you said and which ones you told.

And as soon as that thing gets so big, it goes down to bottom of hill, and it crashes into a lot, right? And it hurts a lot of people, right? Because it's so big and crashes isn't hurts it. Right. Now, if you're telling the truth, that's not going to happen, is that right?

Right. Okay, so that's kind of why I want you to be honest with me about it. So, once you had your mom's passed away, okay, and she's deceased, all right? Now, what I want to ask you, did you have involvement in this? No. Remember the snowball that we talked about? You remember the pencil that we talked about? I almost demonstrate some of the past stuff going on any day.

Why these things happen, okay? You know exactly, sweetheart, I've listened to me. Listen to me, let's not go down that road, but taking your pencil and writing a bunch of mistakes down. And then when you get to a certain point, that paper's gone, and guess what? You can't erase it, can you? No. You can't erase it anymore. Do you want that?

No. I don't think you do. I think you're smart enough to understand where we're at with this, okay? I think you know, okay? And I know that you know, all right? I wouldn't be here if I didn't know. And I know the answer to us a lot of these questions. Okay, because you don't want this thing.

Just boyfriend's in here. Okay? He's in here. Mm-hmm. Okay. Do you think that we've not talked to people? No, I know. Listen to me before you say, hold on,

not dig yourself in a bunch of lies. Because what's going to happen, that snowball's going to get so huge, sweetheart, that it's going to explode on you, and you're never ever going to dig yourself out of it. So I want to know, okay. Why? Never heard me.

Sweetheart, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. I've got kids. I've been doing this for a long time. I know that's her. And I want you to understand something. Don't dig yourself. Listen, what do you think is going to happen if you go down that path?

It's not a path to go down. If anything, I don't tell. I would never hurt my mom. Okay. Sweetheart, do you really want to dig yourself? You're digging yourself deeper, okay? No, seriously, I would never hurt for. Listen to me.

Okay. I don't play around what that is, okay? They want to know why. I think I've done things very clear. Listen to me. My mom are best friends. Listen to me. Listen to me.

Please don't date yourself in this whole. And that's what you're doing. Yes, I saw a few of the comments. And the Oscar goes to. Right. Obviously, she's not only is she lying and being manipulative and thinking that she can get away with it. So anytime she's been manipulative previously, people have fond of it. over her, right? So she thinks

she can run the same act and the interviewer's going to believe it. But yeah, obviously, her acting here is amazing. Yeah. Right? And so And the amount of times, and the amount, like, the cop was so nice too. The cop was like, look, just look, I'm trying

to help you. Your mom's gone. Like, this is going to snowball. I'm trying to help you. And she just was like, no. And then she says, I would never lie while she's lying. When you combine, this part of the interview, the interrogation interview,

with the Facebook post. So the Facebook post, which was written by Gypsy Rose, that people thought her account was hacked. It wasn't. It was written by her. She wrote it in Wisconsin because she wanted the police to come to the house

to find her mother's dead body. The Facebook post basically said, I'm going to, I can't say what it says, or we're going to get demonetized by YouTube. So the post basically said, My mom is dead. B.

The B is dead. What? Yeah, the B is dead. The B is dead. That somebody came into the house and slashed her and assaulted the daughter, right? It's very explicit. I can't, you can find this post anywhere. It's pretty commonly out there.

But let me just mention a comment. This is the only place I've, again, after 10 hours of reviewing material. and videos and documentaries. There's one comment by one professional who happens to be a forensic psychiatrist who specializes in Moonschhozzan by proxy. He made a comment about the Facebook post that was posted after the murders. And this is from Dr. Mark Feldman, the forensic psychiatrist. Here's what he said of the Facebook post.

Not the interview, but the post. Quote, the Facebook post implies a fair degree of sociopathy. That was in the HBO documentary in referencing that Facebook post. So let's continue along that line for a minute. And I'm not, by the way, I'm not diagnosing Gypsy Rose here. I'm referring to other people and I'm referring to the things that Gypsy Rose has said. So I wouldn't presume to know if, I mean, I might go so far as to say that Gypsy Rose has some psychopathic trend.

or qualities, and that would be true of just about every murderer. So I'm not pinning that on Gypsy Rose. But Dr. Feldman, he says that the Facebook post, quote, implies a fair degree of sociopathy. This is what Gypsy Rose says in one of her prison confessions. She says, quote, when I was first arrested, I had no remorse, unquote. In her HBO interview, she says, and this is a quote, I didn't know right from wrong, unquote. these are direct quotes from Gypsy Rose. So I'm not, I don't want to necessarily

contextualize those. Or to, you know, I don't want to place those in a diagnosis. But I think most of our viewers kind of get the point that those would be statements that would cause some concern. And yes, I just want to say this too. And yes, could this all be because she was abused? Yes. Yes. but I think

I guess where I'm going because I'm looking at chat going but she was abused but she was abused we want to excuse every negative aspect of Gypsy Rose because she was abused that's not fair either there are many many abused people that don't make the choice that she did and there are many many murderers

who were abused and we don't give them the same empathy I just I'm just having a hard time looking at the chat, seeing, I have empathy for Gypsy Rose. I do. I do. But I think I'm having a hard time in my brain, how we give her every excuse in the book,

but not other people that commit crime. Lori Valo, I think, was abused as a child. Would we be cool? She got a plea deal and Alex Cox was alive and he got life? I mean, I don't want to start comparing because we can't compare him. Now everyone can start saying, well, that's completely different. And it is. It's completely different.

But I just, I don't, I just want to say I'm looking at the chat going, what? Like, and yeah, she's great at being a victim. She is a victim. She is a victim, but she is also really good at being a victim. She is both those things. She, she is an actual victim. And she shows us that she's very good at being a victim when she stands up the American Cancer Society and seems.

She is both, both of the victim. and really good at being one when it matters. Well, let's go further. It's something I said in the beginning. She's a victim and a murderer. Yeah. The Gypsy Rose is not just the victim of severe and extreme childhood abuse. She's also something darker and more menacing.

She's ruby. She's filled with rage. She's something that I don't even think she knows. I don't even think she can define it. But it's that something that came out when she murdered. And that's the part of this whole thing that really concerns me. I don't, do I think she's going to murder again? I think it would require a really unusual set of circumstances for her to murder again.

I don't think her, I don't think the possibility of recidivism is particularly high here. However, do I think that she's going to live a life that's going to include a good deal of deception and manipulation and line, do I think that she's going to have struggles in relationships, building healthy relationships? For sure. This is someone who I think, I'm quite sure, probably has some type of insecure attachment, probably an anxious, ambivalent type of attachment. She can overcome that, but it's going to take a lot of work.

And also, she talks about being addicted to opiates. She talks about being addicted to painkillers. I think her real drug is attention. Yeah. I think the real drug that drives her and motivates her is attention. And she is out there seeking more attention than any of us can imagine. She has millions of social media followers. I don't even know. It grows exponentially by the day.

She literally walks out of prison and walks into the studios of Good Morning America to give an interview. I mean, it seems to me like a normal response here would be give yourself at least a few months. She said in the view interview. which, you know, John knows. John knows he helps with perpetrators. The best thing that you can do when you get out of prison is to get a nine to five job, rehabilitate back into society. She said on the view, yeah, I'll get a nine to five. But I don't have time for that right now. I don't have time for that right now because she's so busy. And so I think, I think it's a little confusing to me because she's, she's this, she's become. the celebrity without any, I mean, for, for what? Like, there's not, there's no special skills or

knowledge or what is she, she's a celebrity because she went through these horrific childhood experiences and then she engaged in premeditated murder. Is that what our culture is celebrating? Also, the drug that she seeks is attention, it's validation. This is what she's always wanted from her mother and received. And that's why she doesn't stand up or didn't stand up. And here she is doing exactly the same thing. So in that sense, I'm not sure that there has been much change. You know, and I say this with a certain amount of sadness because I really do, like you, Lauren, we really do empathize with what she went through is horrible.

I would not wish that on any human being ever. And she's been given a second chance and we want people to have second chances. John and I love it when people have second chances, including gyps, Rose. We have a lot of hope. We hope good things for her. You know, I think she has grown. I think there's some hope here. I think she could live a normal life and maybe contribute to society. I mean, I hope she does. I think she's definitely learned some lessons. I don't think that her chances of murdering again are particularly high. I think she may have some problems in her marriage. I would anticipate that her marriage is going to be a struggle because she got married when she was in prison

and she doesn't really, I don't think have a strong template for healthy relationships. I mean, it's a huge flag to me that she did get married in prison, but, you know, this is someone who, this is someone who's always defined herself in relationship to someone else. That goes with the dependency. This is someone who cannot be alone. This is someone who needs others for validations. So in that sense, it doesn't surprise me that she's obsessed with finding a relationship in prison. She was engaged in 2019 to somebody named Ken.

And he broke it off. Like she cannot exist without being in a relationship. And that, you know, if nothing else, I would say to somebody like this, look, just step back a little bit. Take some time to be alone and to figure out who you, are and what you want with your life, right? Like, we all need that. You can't really define yourself without some solitude and some alone time, but she's not

allowing herself that. Right. And then she broke, Ken broke up with her. And then she met her now husband that she's living with. And even her family, even her family in the lifetime documentary, they have stated her dad and stepmom who have been her major advocate. I admire how much they've advocated for Gypsy Rose, her biological father and her stepmom. Even they are concerned.

They wanted her to move home, to get acclimated, to have a family life. And here she is now moving in with her new husband. You know, it's worrisome. It's worrisome. I like Christina's common here, by the way, about when I adopt that tone, And it's like I'm saying, hey, bro, here's my bottom line. I think maybe I should say that. Hey, bro, here's my bottom line and then lay it out.

But also, thanks for, thanks for disagreeing with me, Christina. I, like I said earlier, I want to reiterate this point. There's a lot of gray area here. There's a lot of uncertainty. I'm not, I'm not, you know, I would not endorse my opinions in this show 100%, because there's a lot of uncertainty to me too. But I think there's a lot of uncertainty. here that hasn't been discussed, that's being ignored by people out there that are treating

Gypsy Rose like a hero. And they're buying into this narrative that she had no choice, that she was a victim of abuse. So of course she had to kill her mother. Like, it's just not that simple. No. And you know, I want to bring this up too because we talked about this. I got to go back to Nick because Nick is doing life and we talk about we we we have a lot of cases we talk about where there are people there are co-defendants Judy Judy Judy Ruby and Jody Ruby the real Ruby, Ruby Frankie and Jody Hilda Brand in in it together Lori Vallow Chad Daybill in it together so now we have now we have Gypsy Rose and and Nick in it together So I think it's really important to talk about this and what your test is, John.

What's your litmus test for this? Like, is it fair that he's doing life and she's not? Yeah, but one of the questions I always ask is if you eliminated one or the other of these parties, would this have occurred? Would the crime have occurred? In the day, right, would the crimes have occurred? So in the Daybell case, you know, my litmus test is if you eliminate Chad Daybell, does any of the, do any of these crimes occur? And the answer is no. And here, I think if you,

if you go through each party and you say, well, if you eliminate Nick, or let's, let's say, if you eliminate Gypsy Rose, does this crime occur? And the answer is no, because Nick wouldn't kill anyone, I don't believe. I mean. Unless someone asked him to, which is what you said. Unless someone, Right, forced his hand to the point where he felt completely trapped. Ironically, he's the one who feels like he's a prisoner because Gypsy Rose tells him over and over, if you don't do this, I won't love you and we won't have a relationship. And Nick, Nick believes that, you know, he's found the one. He's, he'll do any, as he says, he'll do anything for her.

So if you take Gypsy out of the equation and all of her persistent, you know, badgering to get him to kill her mother, then Nick is free now. Nick would never commit this. I don't see Nick committing this type of crime without somebody like Gypsy and Rose in the equation. And if you eliminate Nick, my guess is that Gypsy Rose finds someone else.

She finds another version of Nick to commit the same crime. So who's, right? So who's, keep a mind that Gypsy Rose had been online prior to Nick. interacting with men online way before Nick. In fact, that's where she met this guy, Dan at VisionCon. And then she started getting online. And she was trying to initiate informed relationships with other people online before Nick. Nick wasn't the first person.

So what was she doing? Right? I mean, I can't say that she was deliberately trying to find someone to harm her mother, but maybe she was. We don't know. I don't think she'd ever be honest about it. but Nick's replaceable. She can find some version of Nick to, you know,

to kill her mother at some point more easily than Nick can find someone to replace her. Yeah. And we're not, again, in all these groupings, we just suggested the Jobi, as someone just suggested, we call Ruby and Jody, or Chad and Lori or Nick and Gypsy Rose, we're not, every party is responsible. We're not saying it's one or the other. But it's just a question of like,

Who is calling the shots? How does this crime occur? The other thing I didn't mention about Nick, which I should point out, is that in two of the documentaries, Nick, and in his interrogation, Nick talked about having voices in his head and taking medication for it. So that would be strongly suggestive of the possibility of schizophrenia. I don't know if that's true, but certainly. Someone said Nick's mom's interview really helped me understand what kind of person he was.

He maybe was a pervert, but he was not a killer at heart. I mean, I kind of, that's how I felt too. And yes, he's older than I thought. I said he was young at first and everyone corrected me in his late 20s. He's now in his 30s. So he had not had a violent crime. That's important that he was older and he had not yet had a violent crime. There was no violent history before this happened.

Right. And that's very important. That's extremely important. And yet, you know, Nick, Nick is going to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. And now Gypsy Rose is getting out. and more than likely, I don't know how she's going to monetize all this, but I'm sure she will. More than likely, she's going to make a lot of money and she's going to obtain a certain amount of fame and fortune, right?

So quite different paths. Both have regrets. I am grateful for second chances. I am grateful that Gypsy Rose will have this second chance. and I do wish the best for her and hope for the best for Gypsy Rose. I have been very impressed with the advocacy. Again, her father and stepmother have shown her and the family they've given her. And I do think she's made great strides too.

So I do hope for the best for her. Yeah. And it's, again, her strengths are I do think she's worked on herself in prison. She's developed some insight. She's developed a stronger sense of self. She has a really strong social support network in her father, Rod, and her stepmother, Christy. So she's got a lot going for her. I think there's some buffers out there.

I think the downside is that she's going to really struggle with lying and manipulation for most of her life. I think she's going to struggle to really develop healthy relationships. And so I think it'll be interesting to see where her marriage goes. or how that goes. Yeah, you're a realist. Thank you for sharing that. No, that was a question people are asking.

How is you going to struggle? You know, if you could give her advice, I mean, if you could hope for one thing right now or give her advice to make things a little bit better, what would you suggest for her? I would, I'd make two recommendations. So I'm going to quote her again. This is from her prison confession.

She said, quote, my mother taught me to lie and manipulate, but that doesn't define me. That's something that she's probably going to have to work on her entire life. I would recommend that she really continues to attend therapy or maybe some support groups or something where she can recognize when she's engaging in those types of behaviors and she can start correcting it. She can start seeing that and really making sure. changes to address some of those issues because it's it's got to be so ingrained at this point in her

psyche in her personality that just this and again we saw it in the in the interrogation interview um just this ease she has with line and manipulation and i think that's something she's going to struggle with for a long time and then the second the second issue i think is is something I talked about earlier that she's just avoiding completely and she hasn't mentioned it at all. And that is this anger. I think there's probably some underlying anger, maybe even rage. I think it's severe. And I would really, you know, ask her or have her think about that issue. And whether she does, whether she has anger towards her mother, I mean, you just don't see it. But it's, it was clearly a part of the murder. Yeah, it clearly was.

I'd be very concerned that if she just pretends everything's well and she's a new person and she's going to go on with her life as if nothing happened and there's no anger over the past, I'd be very concerned that things could go wrong quickly anywhere in a marriage and a job. I wouldn't be surprised to see her impulsively get angry at her husband for a very small thing. I don't know. And that type of thing over time can tear a marriage apart. So I don't know. That would be my second recommendation is to really kind of explore that issue in some depth and to start acknowledging it if it's there. Because to me, you know, there has to be something there around anger.

And she's just not going there at all. Get angry. I like that you say that too. At the Eternal Core Conference that I've talked about, with Jody Hilderbrand, they always talk about not getting angry. You're saying, get angry. Thank you. Get in rage.

As Daniel the Tiger says, it's okay to get angry, but it's not, not, not okay to hurt someone. I always sing that with my little boy. And I think that Daniel Tiger says it best, right? Well, I, you know, I wish she had watched more Daniel Tiger because she got angry and hurt someone. So hopefully she won't get angry again and hurt someone else. That's the goal. That's the hope. She doesn't know that it's okay to get angry and thus.

She hurts someone. Right. Listen to more Daniel Tigers. Put her down in front of Daniel Tiger. Start with the basics. Daniel Tiger, Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. All right. Yeah, that's right.

The first step is to know that it's okay to get angry. exactly. It's okay. It's okay to feel any emotions. So that's probably... It's okay to be angry. Right. Or to feel sad or, you know, I think she needs to, she needs to really, you know, delve deeply into all of her emotions. Yes. I agree, Tamson. Mr. Rogers did leave a beautiful legacy of life lessons. So, all right. And I left a beautiful quote of Johns that I love on this description of this video, I just decided on a whim to put it, but you always say, John, that a better understanding of crime is a better understanding of ourselves. And I added that quote tonight because I knew it was going to be a heavy conversation. And I knew you're preparing and I threw that in as well as

your bio. And I also added the video, the study as well. That's also in the description of our video. For those of you watching tonight, if you appreciated the research that goes into these, you can see just how much John puts into these. He was taking notes all day. We was re-watching documentaries. If you could like our video and share it with your friends, it would mean so much. For those that disagreed with some of the things we said tonight, that's okay. You're in a good place because we're not looking for everyone to agree with us.

for healthy discussions in an incredible community where we can discuss and debate and disagree and maybe get angry as long as we don't hurt each other. And so we also appreciate your support over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash hidden true crime. These shows do take a lot of time to prepare and your support and your monthly support means so much as well as thank you for your memberships here on YouTube tonight. I just want to say thank you so much. We really are amazed and appreciative of this community that we're building here at hidden true crime.

Anything else, babe? Yeah, I do. So I was called out on our last show for not having a quote. So I want to end with one of my favorite quotes. It's by the philosopher Blaine Pascal. Pascal said, quote, all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. I love that quote because, you know, here you have, in Gypsy Rose, you have someone who doesn't want to sit quietly in a room alone.

And I mean, even though the purpose of prison is to do precisely that, part of the purpose of prison is rehabilitation is to get people to sit in a room, often with a cellmate, but in a room and reflect. on what they did and to feel some remorse and in guilt from their behavior. I don't know if Gypsy Rose did that because she's constantly talking about developing relationships. She's constantly talking about how she can't be alone in that room. But sitting quietly in a room alone with ourselves means that we're forced to look at our thoughts, our feelings, our sensations, our past, our stories, right? which by the way is sort of a big tenet of meditation and mindfulness.

I think that's really important. I think perhaps most of us or all of us need some capacity to sit alone in a room by ourselves with our own thoughts and feelings and really kind of figure out who we are without the imposition or the expectation that other people are going to heal us or save us or rescue us, right? And I think that's one of the fundamental problems that happened in this particular case. Thank you, Dr. Babe. I will rest up. I am still not feeling well, but I am on the up and up.

And thank you to everyone that is watching tonight. Thank you so much. And have a great night and a great next week. We'll see you. Good night. Thank you. Hello, Hidden Jems. It's Lauren with Hidden a True Crime podcast.

As a TV reporter, I learned the art of visual storytelling. So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime, to watch these interviews. Hit the subscribe button for surprise lives and breaking news. And for exclusive content, things Dr. John and I only dare say behind a paywall, become a Patreon member at patreon.com slash hidden true crime. You'll find bonus episodes, early releases, and insider info. Thank you for your endless support.

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