Mommy Dead and Dearest Page #5

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getting the Habitat for Humanity home."

You know, those are innocuously

happy occasions,

but they were also occasions

where Dee Dee

reasserted her mastery over Gypsy.

My mom had cake...

Gypsy:
If we were in a group of friends,

you know, if I said something

that I wasn't supposed to,

she'd squeeze my hand, and

I'd know, "Zip it."

I was just afraid, just too afraid.

Dr. Feldman:
I have a strong feeling

that the extent of the control over her,

heavily psychological as it was,

would've involved physical punishment

as well.

She'd hit me with a coat hanger...

or her-- or her palm.

And I'd have to take so many slaps

for-- depending on what,

how severe it was, I did.

- Carr:
Did you ever try to hit back?

- Never.

Never.

It's like if you have a baby

and you, like, get in its face

and the baby starts to struggle

and get away from you.

Now picture that happening

for your whole life, right?

Your mother is just in your face

and will not get away.

That's basically what Gypsy's whole

life was like.

It's snowing.

I'm not joking.

[Dee Dee at home in Missouri]

They said it's snowing,

so I'm staying under my heating blankie.

And I'm not getting out, mm-mm.

She wants to get out.

Ain't gonna happen.

Let her doll take care of her.

Gypsy:
Oh!

Her mother was so suffocating,

so powerful, so manipulative

that Gypsy may have felt any

efforts to escape

were bound to fail.

The first time I ran away from home,

I had met a friend.

We both went to this sci-fi

fantasy convention called Visioncon.

I told him vaguely

about what was going on at home.

And he told me, you know,

"You just pack your stuff

and you can come live with me

in Arkansas."

And I said, "Okay."

I stepped out, got a ride from

a stranger,

and went over to his place.

And then within, like, four hours,

my mom found me at his place

because we had mutual friends in common.

So she was threatening

to call the cops on him.

And she took me back home

and smashed my computer with a hammer,

smashed my cell phone

with a hammer and said,

"If you ever try to do that again,

I'm going to smash your fingers

with a hammer."

It was a rough year.

I call that "the bad times."

She had taken this dog leash

and clipped it to a pair of handcuffs,

and clipped the handcuffs to the bed

and kept-- it was like that for

about two weeks.

My mom had actually convinced a lawyer

to draw up some papers

saying that I was incompetent.

So I thought if I had tried

to go to the police,

they'd look at these papers

and say, "She's retarded.

She doesn't know what

she's talking about."

Gypsy has essentially fallen

through every crack there is

in the system.

The Greene County Sheriff's deputies

came out to the house on

an anonymous report

that Gypsy was potentially being abused.

And they came to the house,

they spoke with Dee Dee,

and Dee Dee did exactly

what she does all the time--

she manipulated the police officers,

showed them a few things, and they left.

And at that point,

Gypsy has absolutely nowhere

else to turn.

Literally everyone failed her.

Literally.

The doctors who were positioned

as there to help her didn't help her.

Her father,

who I think was in a

very difficult position,

couldn't help her.

How was she supposed to think

anybody could?

I was just kind of at that point

where you're like,

"I'm angry at the world

and this is unfair."

Why couldn't anybody figure this out

before it got this bad?

- Woman:
Gypsy.

- Dee Dee:
Over here, baby.

We all kind of did see how Gypsy was

being treated by Dee Dee,

not that it was like horrible,

beating the sh*t out of her

in the back room with a freaking cable,

you know?

She would just-- she put her

in a wheelchair and told her,

"Your leg's messed up.

You can't walk."

Her sister told me once,

"Rod, you know,

Gypsy can walk."

And I asked Dee Dee about it.

She's like, "Yeah, well,

with her muscular dystrophy

or with her disease,

her muscles hurt sometimes.

So sometimes she can walk

when she's feeling okay,

but it's progressive.

It's going to get worse."

And it wasn't long after that

that they were--

they started moving further and

further away.

And there was nobody there

to question--

question that anymore, you know?

After all of the doors had been closed--

family, friends, the police--

I think that Gypsy felt she had

no other--

no other avenue.

Gypsy:
I met Nick through

a Christian dating website.

He was one of the profiles

that I had saw.

Thought he was cute,

so I checked him out, sent him a wink.

He sent me one back.

Once you met on there, what happened?

We got closer on there,

and we connected more and more.

Godejohn:
The way that we clicked,

we somehow just knew

we were right for each other.

Four days later, we started

a relationship together.

Dean:
Gypsy had no template for romance

that wasn't this sort of heightened

Prince Charming narrative.

And Nick just happened to be there.

His background equipped him

with a bad narrative in different ways.

So, it was like two bad narratives

collided with each other.

What kind of person--

if somebody never met him,

what kind of person is Nick?

He's pretty quiet, kept to himself,

you know.

We always tell him he's got to get out

and mingle, you know.

- Sure.

- But he's like, "I'm afraid

of getting backstabbed,

because everybody backstabs you,"

and all that stuff.

He has autism, you know, Asperger's.

Has he been diagnosed

with autism and Asperger's?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Stephanie:
Last doctor he talked to,

they said his mind is probably

always going to be 15, 16,

right around there.

At first, it was all lighthearted,

you know.

"If you got married,

where would you like to have

your honeymoon?"

You know, "Where would you like

to get married?

Where are all the places

you want to travel?"

Different things like that, normal stuff.

And as it progressed, things got weird.

He started talking about

something called BDSM.

Gypsy:
And at first, I didn't

know what it was,

so I looked it up.

And once I looked it up, I was like,

"I don't want to do this."

And then he kind of

just talked me into it

and was like, "It'll be fine,"

you know?

"Try this with me."

And so, I agreed to it.

I was taught that a woman's role

is to be submissive

and the man is dominant,

so I didn't think

it was that outlandish.

Then his ex had messaged me.

She told me, you know,

he's a really bad guy.

He thinks he's a vampire

and he's into all this

dominant/submissive stuff.

And I was thinking, it's just an ex.

You know, she's just badmouthing him.

She doesn't know anything.

She's jealous, blah, blah, blah.

She was right.

Godejohn also has a criminal past.

In 2013 he was arrested

after investigators say

he was watching pornography

and fondling himself

in a McDonald's restaurant

for nine hours,

police finding a large knife

during the arrest.

I really don't know what's

wrong with him,

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