- Gypsy Rose Blanchard was released from prison on Thursday after serving eight years for murder.
- She has already shared a photo of herself on Instagram, captioned, “First selfie of freedom!”
- Blanchard’s 2015 crime was featured in HBO’s “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and Hulu’s “The Act.”
Gypsy Rose Blanchard is celebrating her release from prison on social media.
Blanchard, 32, was recently granted parole after serving eight years. She pled guilty to second-degree murder after instructing her boyfriend to kill her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, in 2015. Prosecutors acknowledged at the time that the mother was abusive.
On Friday, one day after leaving the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri, she shared a photo of herself on Instagram. The caption reads, “First selfie of freedom!”
The comment section has been flooded with supportive messages, including from musician King Princess (“Yes!!!!!”) and celebrity photographer Petra Collins, who left a string of heart emojis.
Others were quick to notice Blanchard’s pink iPhone 15, which was just released in September.
Blanchard’s story is a point of pop-culture fascination, largely due to two popular on-screen adaptations: the 2017 HBO documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and the 2019 Hulu limited series “The Act.”
Blanchard has said that she spent her childhood being subjected to medical treatments at the behest of her mother, who forced her to use a wheelchair and told the public that her daughter had leukemia.
Experts believe that Blanchard’s mother had Munchausen by proxy, a rare behavioral disorder in which a caretaker seeks attention through the made-up illness of those in their care.
Following the murder, Blanchard, who was found guilty of conspiring to kill her mom, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Ahead of her release from prison, Blanchard became a sensation on social media like TikTok, where users began counting down the days until her release on Thursday. Users made cupcakes with her face on it and made signs welcoming Blanchard home, the Washington Post reported, to millions of likes and views.
A TikTok account reported by the Post to belong to Blanchard has over 770,000 followers and counting.
