'Mommy Dead and Dearest': Why HBO zeroed in on the bizarre true-crime tale
![Gypsy Rose Blanchard, forced by her mother to undergo unnecessary medical procedures and later convicted in connection with her murder, is featured in the HBO documentary, 'Mommy Dead and Dearest.'](/https/www.usatoday.com/gcdn/-mm-/9a10d18443197ab9a2a837953a60ea6375b5467c/c=4-0-1916-1080/local/-/media/2017/05/12/USATODAY/USATODAY/636301828018917419-Mommy-Dead-Gypsy-Rose-Blanchard.jpg?width=660&height=373&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
The sad story of the mother/daughter relationship at the center of Mommy Dead and Dearest is almost unimaginable.
For the new true-crime documentary that premiered Monday night on HBO, director Erin Lee Carr looks at a Missouri murder connected to Munchausen by Proxy, a syndrome in which caregivers induce or foster health problems for someone in their care to gain sympathy or attention.
Carr secured an exclusive prison interview with Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a young woman who was forced to undergo unnecessary medical treatments by her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, and is now serving time in connection with her 2015 murder.
“I am a proud and happy participant in the true-crime genre," Carr says. "In some documentary circles, it’s considered more lowbrow, but I don’t see it that way. I see it dealing with the most human and dramatic elements: life, liberty and murder."
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It's part of a true-crime wave that also includes Netflix's seven-part docuseries The Keepers (available Friday) and HBO's own The Jinx in 2015. Before Mommy Dead and Dearest, the Blanchard case itself had been covered in recent episodes of the podcasts My Favorite Murder and Sword and Scale.
HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins found Mommy’s Munchausen element riveting.
“It’s evil masquerading as love. It’s about the phoniness of a certain kind of mother’s love,” she says. "I think Dee Dee loved her (daughter) but thought the only way she could have her was to completely destroy and possess her. … And then there was retribution.”
Contributing: Alex Biese (in Asbury Park, N.J.) and Kim Willis