The Letter Ken Urker Wrote Gypsy Rose After Her HBO Documentary

Tony Brueski (0:01)

This is HiddenKillers With Tony Brueski.

Tony Brueski (0:12)

I have a lot, a lot of feelings about what the hell is going on here in the Gypsy Rose Blanchard chaos train that continues to derail every so many years. You've been talking about this case forever. What is happening here? What is, what is all of this kerfuffle? Ken Urker dying? The baby daddy of Gypsy Rose's child? Well, it's the consequences of chaos. At the end of the day, it is the consequences of chaos. Now, I'm not cheering for anyone to be dead. I, I, this is a tragedy for everyone involved. But it's also not shocking. It's also not surprising for those of us living with reality on reality's terms, not watching reality television, but living in the real reality. Because when you take the reality television portion of life, which many of these folks have been living, and then try and apply it to the real world, reality on reality's terms, it turns out they're not very compatible. Turns out when you try to do that, things can sometimes go awry. And when you already have unhealthy people in unhealthy situations, making unhealthy decisions time and time again, and you add some cameras and a little spotlight and a little extra money to people who have never experienced any of these things before, or it's literally all they know once they've moved into a healthier portion of life for Gypsy that will be escaping DeeDee.

She went from one pile of chaotic mess to another, and the public's been all too easy and all too ready just to gobble that shit up. And so is lifetime, and so is everybody else who said, let's do a TV show, to be a star. We're not going to make you healthy or better. We're probably going to actually ruin your life in the end because can you look at any of the people we followed around on our television shows and they've worked out well, John and Kate Plus 8, the Duggars, anybody who has a show on these networks.

They might as well just call those channels Circus Freak 1, Circus Freak 2 and Circus Freak 3 Which channel would you like to watch today? It's no longer TLC or Lifetime or whatever the fuck it is. It's the Circus Freak channel. But we're going to take other people's pain and misery and chaos and shit they've been born into and the trauma that they've experienced and turn it into television and tell America, this is good wholesome viewing. And then when someone dies or something horrible happens, oh, that's nothing to do with us.

Let's get into it. I'd love to get your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube as we discuss. Links are in the description. QR code is right there. Press subscribe on the podcast. Press subscribe if you're watching us on YouTube right now. Please, we appreciate that. So back in 2017, let's go back, way back. Almost 10 years ago now, which I know, like 20, yeah. Shit, 2017 was 10 years ago.

Time flies when you're having fun, right? Ken Urker sat down, watched an HBO documentary about Gypsy Rose Blanchard and made a choice. Gypsy was serving 10 years in a Missouri prison for her role in her mother's murder. But Ken decided, not just watch the doc move on with life. You know what? I'm gonna write her. Picked up a pen, wrote her a letter. Looking back, nobody in his orbit could have seen this as a good idea. Fast forward nine years, deputies walk into his apartment in RacelandLouisiana, only to find Ken lying on his back in bed, cold to the touch. It was clear he'd been gone for a while. Sitting on his nightstand was a holstered handgun, a syringe and two shot glasses. In the bathroom, investigators found more syringes, a spoon and a trace of brown powder. He was only 34 years old. Even before the coroner could finish his work, Gypsy was already doing what she knows well. Get in front of it. Get in the spotlight. You're a star.

Gypsy was already on the phone with People Magazine and TMZ. Around the same time, Ken's sister Autumn went live on TikTok. Both scrambled to control the narrative and share their version of who Ken really was because Ken wasn't around to speak for himself anymore. The truth is, nobody in this story was doing okay. Not Gypsy, not Ken, not the television networks filming their every move, and certainly not the millions of online spectators who spent years obsessing over strangers they never actually knew. Nobody in the story was doing well. Not Gypsy, not Ken, not the network.