Fresh off rave reviews from its premiere at last month’s South by Southwest Conference and Festivals, and an upcoming official selection at the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, HBO Canada presents the television premiere of Mommy Dead And Dearest, a chilling and provocative true-crime murder story exploring one of psychology’s most controversial conditions, Munchausen by proxy syndrome.
On June 15, 2015, Dee Dee Blanchard was found murdered in her Springfield, Missouri home, and her wheelchair-bound daughter, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, was reported missing. After Gypsy was tracked to Wisconsin and implicated in the murder, what started out as a grisly tale of matricide morphed into a bizarre story of deception and abuse.
Following the murder of Dee Dee, a disturbing Facebook post led investigators to implicate her daughter Gypsy Rose in her mother’s death. It was discovered she had been the victim of her mother’s abuse via Munchausen by proxy syndrome since early childhood. Mommy Dead And Dearest unravels this complicated tale of a mother whose deception subjected her daughter to decades of unnecessary medical treatment – until she reached her tragic breaking point.
From director Erin Lee Carr (HBO’s Thoughts Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop), the documentary features interrogation-room footage of Gypsy, her boyfriend, Nick Godejohn, and various family members, as well as intimate home videos and family photos, medical records, text messages, and courtroom video. In addition to candid interviews with Gypsy from prison, the film includes interviews with her father and stepmother, Rod and Kristy; Dee Dee’s father and stepmother, Claude and Laura; Dr. Bernardo Flasterstein, a pediatric neurologist who was one of the few to raise concerns about Dee Dee’s claims; Gypsy’s lawyer, Mike Stanfield; Greene County prosecutor Dan Patterson; Dr. Marc Feldman, an expert on Munchausen by proxy syndrome; and journalist Michelle Dean, who covered the story for BuzzFeed, among others.
The 82-minute documentary premieres Monday, May 15 at 10pm on HBO Canada, day-and-date with HBO in the U.S.
