opened up about her life post-prison in her new memoir, My Time to Stand — and reflected on some of the darker periods in her past.
The book, which hit shelves on Tuesday, December 10, details her relationship with , who is currently serving life in prison for his role in the murder of Gypsy Rose’s mother, . In June 2015, Dee Dee was found dead at age 48 in her and Gypsy’s Mississippi home with multiple stab wounds. Gypsy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Godejohn, now 35, was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In her memoir, Gypsy, now 33, recalled meeting Godejohn in 2012 on a Christian dating website, but their relationship soon turned explicit.
“Nick exposed me to a lot of sexually perverse things and ideas, but 10 years later, knowing now what I know about sex, he taught me all wrong,” she wrote. “From what I’ve read, he didn’t have an accurate idea of BDSM (bondage, discipline, submission, and masochism), and he made it up as we went along.”
Godejohn and Gypsy’s relationship was initially long-distance, but once they met in person, they began discussing the possibility of Gypsy moving to Wisconsin to be with him. At that point, the idea of killing Dee Dee began to come up in conversation.
“We felt like our relationship was on the brink of collapse,” Gypsy recalled. “We believed we’d tried everything to be together, and now it was a matter of taking extreme measures.”
Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations about Gypsy’s relationship with Godejohn from My Time to Stand:
A Quick Escalation
Soon after meeting Godejohn online, Gypsy began recording sexually explicit videos at his direction. “The more he praised me for a ‘good job,’ after sucking on a dildo he had ordered from Japan, the more I believed he loved me,” she recalled. “Of course, when I would do the videos ‘wrong,’ e.g., forgetting to call him ‘master’ or not being a dirty enough girl, he’d threaten to pull that love away.”
Godejohn also detailed an elaborate fantasy world in which he “lived amongst 12 alien soulmates of different species.” This world included a villain named Victor, a 3,000-year-old vampire that thirsted “for rape and murder.” Gypsy also claimed that Godejohn had an interest in necrophilia and told her about a fantasy of murdering and then raping his ex-girlfriend.
According to Gypsy, Godejohn’s other demands included things like slathering her breasts with peanut butter or barbecue sauce and asking her to act out “unusual sexual behaviors with phallic objects.”
Their 1st Meeting
In March 2015, the duo arranged their first in-person at a movie theater where Gypsy and her mother were planning to see the live-action Cinderella. Godejohn would meet them there and Gypsy would try to convince Dee Dee to let her sit with Godejohn, but Dee Dee quickly caught on to the plan. Still, Gypsy and her then-boyfriend managed to sneak off to the bathroom, where they attempted to have sex. They didn’t go through with it, but Gypsy claimed “Nick said we were married now, because what we just did, according to him, was sex.”
No ‘Master Plan’
According to Gypsy, she and Godejohn’s discussions about Dee Dee were initially about how to get Gypsy away from her. “It wasn’t one discussion like, ‘OK, how do we get rid of your mom?’ They were gradual conversations that were baked into an elaborate fantasy world Nick created,” she recalled. “He shared with me that he got sexually aroused when he fantasized about murdering and then raping his ex-girlfriend, but our plot was more reminiscent of a soap opera.”
One of their first ideas involved Gypsy getting pregnant, which she believed would force Dee Dee to let her go live with Godejohn, but they soon agreed that wouldn’t work.
Making a Pact
Finally, Godejohn and Gypsy discussed a plan where he would come get her and take her to Wisconsin to live with him and his family, but they eventually decided this wouldn’t work either. “And then I made the suggestion [of murder], to which Nick said, ‘Victor can do it. But you need to be the one to beg him,’” Gypsy wrote, referring to the vampire villain from Godejohn’s fantasy world.
They then agreed upon a “contract” where Godejohn as Victor would kill Dee Dee and then rape Gypsy. “What was in Nick’s brain? I don’t know for sure, but it felt like I was being used to help him live out this fantasy as if he was playing around with characters that he created in his mind or in a video game,” Gypsy wrote. “And some of them were evil killers, and maybe it might be fun for him to play around with that darker side of life. Were we using each other?”
The Night It Happened
When Godejohn arrived at Gypsy and Dee Dee’s house the night of the murder, he told Gypsy to leave the room while he carried out the murder. “I went to the bathroom, sat on the floor, and covered my ears,” she recalled. “Except I heard. I heard everything.”
Afterward, Godejohn allegedly ordered Gypsy to go to her bedroom, where he raped her and told her to say “thank you” for killing Dee Dee. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to let Nick rape me, but I know I didn’t believe it was going to be a real rape,” Gypsy wrote. “I thought, at worst, Nick would just pronounce aloud over and over that he was raping me or something. Like dirty talk or kink. But I was feeling pressure and sharp pains, like he was trying to stuff himself inside me just like he had tried to in the movie theater bathroom.”
Gypsy noted at the trial that she said Godejohn hadn’t raped her because she felt like that’s what she “had to say” when the defense asked her that question. “So, regretfully, I said, no; he didn’t rape me,” she explained. “But to me, it was rape. I said no. I said stop. I cried for my mom, my mom who was dead.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
