Gypsy Rose Blanchard addresses ‘disgusting’ claims she was involved in Ken Urker’s death
Gypsy Rose Blanchard has hit out at the ‘disgusting’ claims that she was involved in the death of her partner Ken Urker.
Urker was found dead on 1 October - his 34th birthday - at his home in Raceland in Louisiana.
An official cause of death has not been announced, but Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office previously told LADbible its investigation had ‘found no evidence of foul play’.
Speaking out in her first interview since his death, Blanchard told 60 Minutes Australia recalled the horrific moment she was told that Urker had passed away.
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“I just kept saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn’t true,” she said.
“You’re lying. You’re making this up. I just hit the floor and I just remember screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, no, no, no.”
Blanchard also had a firm response when reporter Amelia Adams asked her if she had ‘anything to do with Ken’s death’.
"Absolutely not. No," she said.
Blanchard was over the other side of town at the time of Urker’s death but it didn’t stop the public from speculating.
Addressing the cruel rumours, Blanchard said: “[It was] disgusting to hear because that was the love of my life.
"That's the father of my child. I've known Ken for almost nine years. No other man, no other person had my heart like he did."
Blanchard and Urker met as pen pals while she was serving a 10-year-sentence after pleading guilty to the second-degree murder of her mother, Clauddine ‘Dee Dee’ Blanchard, in 2015.
Speaking to E! News in 2019, Blanchard said Urker reached out to her after seeing her story on TV.
She shared: "He wrote me a letter of support after watching the HBO documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest back in 2017.
"I wrote him back and pretty soon we just started writing on a weekly basis. We became fast friends."
But as time went on, the friendship grew into a romantic connection and the pair got engaged around a year after they first began speaking.
The relationship later broke down and Blanchard married Ryan Anderson while still incarcerated in 2022 - but later split up.
Blanchard and Urker rekindled their relationship following her 2023 release from prison and in December the following year, they welcomed a little girl, named Aurora Raina Urker.
He also appeared on the show Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up alongside Blanchard.
Speaking in her latest interview Blanchard said she and Urker ‘had a plan for everything’.
“We were going to do this, and we were going to do that, and everything was going to be okay because he was right by my side, I wouldn't have to do it alone,” she said, becoming emotional.
“And now that's changed and I feel lost.”
In the wake of his death last month, Blanchard launched a petition for ‘Kenan’s Law’, which she said would ‘hold social media platforms accountable for how they handle online harassment reports’.
In the petition, which was shared on Change.org, Blanchard wrote: “Ken was a public figure and experienced an enormous amount of public scrutiny.
“Across platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit, there was extensive content about him that we believed crossed the line from criticism into targeted harassment and cyberbullying.”
Who is Gypsy Rose Blanchard?
Blanchard became famous worldwide due to her unusual case.
Her mother Dee Dee had spent years pretending that Blanchard had various illnesses including leukaemia, muscular dystrophy and developmental issues.
Dee Dee is suspected of having Munchausen by proxy, which is now known as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), and is a serious and rare form of abuse in which a caregiver - often a parent - fabricates, exaggerates, or induces physical or mental illness in a person under their care.
Throughout Blanchard’s childhood, her mother would force her to use a wheelchair and had her fitted with a feeding tube and go through surgeries that she didn’t need
As a teen, Blanchard began an online relationship with Nicholas Godejohn and the pair hatched a plan to kill Dee Dee.
In June 2015, Godejohn fatally stabbed Dee Dee.
At trial, Blanchard pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was given a 10 year sentence. She was released from Chillicothe Correctional Center prison in December 2023.
Godejohn was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole and an additional 25 years for armed criminal action.
Topics: US News, Gypsy Rose Blanchard
Claire Reid
