Nick Godejohn Is Appealing His Life Sentence

Just days after her prison release on Dec. 28, Gypsy Rose Blanchard has already amassed millions of social media followers, appeared on a magazine cover, and teased a forthcoming book. And with Lifetime’s The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard kicking off on Jan. 5, too, her story — and that of her partner in crime, Nick Godejohn — will likely continue to dominate the conversation.

For those who need a quick refresher: In 2015, Blanchard and Godejohn conspired to kill Blanchard’s mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who had made Blanchard a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016. In 2018, a jury convicted Godejohn of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Now, Godejohn is appealing his sentence. Below, more on Godejohn’s involvement with Blanchard and the status of his appeal.

Love Turned Deadly

From the time she was an infant, Blanchard was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, with Dee Dee falsely portraying her daughter as having various illnesses, including cancer, and forcing her to use a wheelchair. Blanchard has also alleged her mother subjected her to emotional and physical abuse.

Blanchard met Godejohn on a Christian dating site in October 2012. But because Dee Dee “controlled every aspect” of her daughter’s life, as Blanchard puts it in The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, they couldn’t be together. “I started to feel like it was either her or me,” Blanchard says in a sneak peek at the Lifetime doc. “She never wanted me to find love or be happy.”

She adds that she ultimately “played a part in asking” Godejohn, who lived in Wisconsin, to travel to her Missouri home and kill her mother in June 2015. After police found Dee Dee stabbed to death in her bedroom, they tracked Blanchard to Godejohn’s Wisconsin home where they arrested them both on murder charges.

A Life Sentence

Though Blanchard accepted a plea deal for second-degree murder charges, carrying a 10-year prison sentence, in 2016, Godejohn refused a plea deal and went to trial. At his February 2019 sentencing, he reiterated that his motive was to save Blanchard, saying, “I was blindly in love. That was always very much the case.”

Godejohn is now serving his life sentence at the Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri.

He has filed several appeals following his conviction and sentencing. In August 2022, Godejohn requested a new trial, with a new attorney arguing he’d previously had ineffective assistance of counsel, and that Godejohn lacked understanding due to his mental capacity. However, a judge denied his motion. In December 2023, his public defender filed another appeal for a new trial, but there is reportedly no deadline for the court to deliver a ruling, according to a local NBC affiliate.

Godejohn Spoke Out

Godejohn granted Oxygen an interview for the network’s Snapped: Killer Couples series in 2019. He said he’d wrestled an “angel” and a “devil” on his shoulder before murdering Dee Dee. Godejohn also called Blanchard his “soulmate” and said he “will always have feelings for” her, adding, “I wanted to make sure her mom was not going to harm her anymore.”

Still, he also expressed regret for his crime. “If I had to change anything at all, of course, one of the obvious ones is that I would’ve ran away with Gypsy,” Godejohn said. “I want to let everyone know that I’m not this cold killer that doesn’t have any feelings. I’m a human being. Human beings make mistakes.”