On June 14, 2015, sheriff's deputies in Greene County, Missouri, United States, found the body of Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard (née Pitre; born May 3, 1967, in Chackbay, Louisiana) facedown in the bedroom of her house just outside Springfield, lying on the bed in a pool of blood from stab wounds inflicted several days earlier. There was no sign of her daughter, Gypsy Rose, who, according to Blanchard, suffered from chronic conditions including leukemia, asthma, and muscular dystrophy, and had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" she had suffered as a result of her premature birth.