Gypsy Rose Blanchard's First Move After Ken Urker Died

Tony Brueski (0:02)

This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dreeke.

Tony Brueski (0:10)

Chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos. The consequences of the chaos are what we are seeing right now in the latest edition of the Gypsy Rose saga. And it's a sad one. On October 1st, Ken Urker was found dead in his Louisiana home on his 34th birthday. But what happened in the immediate aftermath is what's setting a lot of alarm bells off in the true crime world and the Twitter world and everybody's got an opinion about Gypsy Rose world. Before the parish police could even confirm a cause of death or run toxology, which we still don't know the answers to as of this recording, Gypsy Rose Blanchard had already given an exclusive interview to People magazine and TMZ, declaring it a suspected overdose and explicitly blaming the tragedy on cyberbullying.

Probably factors. Within 72 hours, she was also launching a public petition for Kenan's Law. Today we're looking past the PR spin to break down the psychology of why someone's first instinct in the face of a sudden tragic death is to immediately take control of the media narrative. Your thoughts in the comment section. As we work our way through this, we'd love for you to weigh in. Robin Dreeke, retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and Master Class Instructor with us as always to help break down another Gypsy Rose chapter, if you will. Let's start here. When someone goes to national media before an autopsy is even finished, before they even reach out to the grandparents, the family from what we understand, they didn't get a call from Gypsy. She's the mother of their grandchildren. No, she's not calling them with condolences or anything. She's on the phone with TMZ, with people allegedly.

What the hell is that? Is this just really par for the course? It's all she knows? So this is what she's doing?

Robin Dreeke (2:16)

Yeah, I think so. I did a deeper dive getting reacquainted with Gypsy Rose, which is never a fun weekend.

Tony Brueski (2:22)

I was hoping we would never have to do that.

Robin Dreeke (2:24)

People in the chat say, hey, what did you all do this weekend? My wife's sitting there watching me watch Gypsy Rose specials, and she's like, you need a life.

And as you're saying this, take control of the narrative is what you said during your opening monologue. And I think it's different than that. I actually think from what we've seen with her, she's just capitalizing on the narrative. And it's just part of her muscle memory, because when she was growing up, that's what Deedee did. They're using all these instances to garner sympathy, to garner things. And I was, I mean, just doing a deeper dive on her, I was completely shocked again about what I found on social media. She's got over 9 million followers on TikTok alone. I'm like, what the frigging hell? 9.3 million on TikTok, 8 million on Instagram, and so many of these specials that she's been this center of attention for. And yeah, she was a victim, victimized by her mother, but it made a messed up brain. You know, again, not a licensed clinician or anything like this, but it messed up in a sense of this is the only thing she knows. It's these extreme emotional reactions, these yaw yaw that goes on in her, yo-yo, I should say, that goes on in her life, because it's fast attachments. It's feeling unsafe all the time, because all the people in her life, when she was growing up, were that were supposed to make her feel safe while her son just sat here, you can see, sorry. It's every Halloween.

And so, it's just crazy that she'll get these attachments, she'll eb, she'll flow, she'll in, she's out, and it's just unhealthy to live in hell.

Tony Brueski (4:01)

And it shouldn't be, you know, honestly, all that surprising to anyone that this is how it works. The difference is she has cameras around her. People go through all these sort of situations in life. I mean, this is pretty extreme, obviously, but people go through traumas with families all the time. And when you don't have cameras around you, and then the general public coaching your every move and giving you their feedback and their opinion from millions of people, you can, when you don't have that, find a way, hopefully, to ground yourself, heal, find a path, figure out where you're at, where you're going.

Gypsy has never had that ever. And it's not necessarily because it was stolen from her either.

I mean, childhood, yes. But adulthood, she has made the choice to continue to be in the spotlight. I don't know that she would do anything different. But the argument that I hear from people, too, when I bring this up is, well, what else is she going to do? Nobody's going to hire her over at, you know, family video or whatever. You know, it's why wouldn't you take the dollar, the fame that it's going to come along with what she is because of the notoriety? All she has to do basically is let cameras follow her along and then she'll make millions of dollars. And that's really what she's been doing. It probably, though, is not the healthiest of choices.