Marybeth Tinning

In 1971, Marybeth’s eight-day-old baby, Jennifer, died of spinal meningitis which began a journey of death for the following eight babies born to Marybeth. When her first child died, Marybeth was the object of great pity. Who is a sadder sight than a mother who has lost her child?

 After Marybeth lost Jennifer, she collected herself and focused on her two remaining children. But less than a month later, Marybeth returned to the hospital; this time with her son Joseph Jr. Marybeth said he had had a seizure. He was released to the loving arms of his mother, but just a few hours later, she returned to the hospital with a lifeless Joseph Jr., claiming she found him dead in his crib. A few weeks later, it was her daughter Barbara’s turn to be taken to the hospital with convulsions. She died the next day, making Marybeth childless.

Marybeth continued to have more children. A month after he was born, her son Timothy died of seizures, just like his brother Joseph Jr. He was followed by Nathan, Mary Frances, Jonathan, and her adopted child, Michael. Why did no one see a pattern here and stop her?

Her ninth child, Tami Lynn, was born in August 1985. She was no luckier than her prior

siblings. But after her death, the authorities became suspicious. I guess nine deaths was her limit. When she was questioned, Marybeth immediately confessed to suffocating Timothy, Nathan, and Tami Lynn. One must wonder if the lives of innocent children could have been saved if Marybeth had been questioned earlier.

Because of lack of evidence, Marybeth was only tried for Tami Lynn’s death, receiving 20 years to life. All her requests for parole have been denied.

Dee Dee Blancharde

This story is a little different. In this one, the victim survived to her teens, and she found a way to get out of the hell that is Munchausen by Proxy…she killed her mother.

Just like the other mothers we have been exploring, Dee Dee loved the attention she received as the mother of a very sick child. She convinced the world and her daughter Gypsy Rose that she was fatally ill by feeding Gypsy seizure medication, shaving her tiny head, and confining the growing child to a wheelchair for years, so that Gypsy would appear ill.

Rod Blanchard, Daisy’s father says the abuse started as an infant when Dee Dee told him that their daughter needed a breathing machine and was probably not going to live until she was 18. He didn’t really ask for any details and divorced Dee Dee in 1991. In many ways, he just abandoned her to her mother’s whims.

Dee Dee shaved her daughter’s head to convince people that she had cancer and forced a doctor to give her daughter a painful feeding tube. The insertion of a feeding tube seems to also be a staple of the Munchausen mother. My issues are the lack of testing on the part of the medical community. How does a mother “insist” on a feeding tube and just get it.  She even lied to her daughter about how old she was. An aging victim is not what the people what to see and Gypsy was Dee Dee’s cash cow, and it would not do to have her grow up.

For most of her life, Gypsy never went out of the house unless she was in her wheelchair, even though she knew she could walk. She did it in the confines of her home all the time.  Allowing anyone to see her walking would bring down her mother’s carefully crafted con.

In 2011, Gypsy had her first taste of freedom when she escaped to track down an older man she had met at a sci-fi convention. But her mother tracked her down in Arkansas and dragged her home saying, “"If you ever try to do that again, I'm going to smash your fingers with a hammer."

            Gypsy’s access to the outside world was limited to the internet; how could that go wrong? In a Christian dating site, Gypsy met Nicholas Godejohn, and soon he was her “boyfriend.” This relationship and how Gypsy managed it showed that she had learned her lessons in manipulation well from her mother. Nicholas had his own issues with mental health and the police.

Nicholas claimed to have multiple personalities and insisted Gypsy create multiple personalities for herself to match his. There was Kitty the little girl, and Ruby, the evil vixen. She would send him photos of her in various costumes for each persona. This allowed Gypsy to explore her sexuality and start to develop feelings more suited to her actual age, not the little girl she was forced to play.

            Soon, Gypsy wants her adult life to be more than just a fantasy, but she knew that nothing could happen unless her mother was gone. So, the conversation with Nicholas eventually got around to how they could kill her mother.

            The plot took wings and eventually, Nicholas was at Dee Dee’s house and Gypsy was hiding in the bathroom hearing her mother scream, “Help me! Help me!”

            They fled the scene and eventually ended up at Nicholas’ parent's house in Wisconsin. Both are arrested. Nicholas has yet to go to trial, but Dee Dee resides now in what she calls a better place.

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