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You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamy killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good evening in Mummy Dead and Dearest, Provocative documentarian Aaron Lee Carr HBO's Thought Crimes. The Case of the cannibal cop explores a
grizzly tale where nothing is quite what it seems. Following Dete's brutal murder, a mysterious status end up on her Facebook page announcing the bitch is Dead, which investigators used to track her daughter, Gypsy, to a house in Wisconsin. Gypsy had been ill and confined to a wheelchair for nearly.
Her entire life was a subject of much concern in their community, but once she was brought into the courthouse, everybody was shocked to discover that she could walk after all. The inspiring tale of a mother and her sick daughter turned into something much darker than anybody anticipated. With Gipsy a victim of one of psychology's most controversial conditions, Munchausen by proxy. Car digs deeper into this rabbit hole of deception with unprecedented access and weaves a tale that proves
that truth really is stranger than fiction. The subject tonight is the documentary documentary Mummy, Dead and Dearest, with my special guest, Aaron Lee Carr, director and writer Aaron Lee Carr. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Aaron Lee Carr, wonderful, so happy to be talking with you.
Thank you very much, very very congratulations of just a start on a very very powerful and very provocative and very very unique and interesting documentary. Now let's get to how this came about. You talk about your co producer, one of your co producers, Alison Burne. So tell us how and when this came to be that you were interested in this story. How you came to be interested in this story. Tell us about that.
Yeah, of course.
So I made my first film for HBO called Thought Cremes, and it was, you know, it was this case about this guy that was was convicted of conspiring to kidnap, rape, torturing women. He did it online, and so it was this really weird, kind of unique intersection between crime and the internet. And following the release of that film, you know, I wanted to stay in that space. I thought, you know, this is what's interesting to me and I think that I think there's a.
Lot more to sort of uncover and investigate. And so I basically was working with Alison, as you.
Said, and she was researching stories where people confessed online and Gypsy Rose blanchert this case came up.
But when she started telling me about it. I thought it was sort of a joke.
It didn't make sense. I had never heard of anything like it, And you know, we just kind of sat and talked about it for an hour, and we saw it on a thought catalog piece, an article written by a writer named Megan Pack and we started the very very slow, painful but ultimately successful process of trying to get people to speak with us.
Now, when Alison spoke to you, and you're and your producer Andrew Rossi as well, when you discussed this, what did you know? What was the outline of the story? You said you learned much more, obviously, and obviously that's what this film is about. So tell us what you knew. What was that initial outline that said this is fascinating, I've got to do this.
That's a good question.
I think that it just was the pure The question that loomed for me was how could you, as a human being, day in a wheelchair for fourteen years?
Like, what does that even mean?
If you're psychologically sort of stuck in a chair, you know, confined, like you don't even have access to your you know, access to your body. So I just I just didn't know really what to make of it, and I didn't know who Gypsy was.
She was sort of this cipher. Nobody knew how she sort of felt about it.
And you know, because I was able to work with HBO, I had the confidence to reach out directly to her.
Now, talk about that you corresponded with her in prison, but she didn't immediately was not able to work with you. So tell us about this process, how long this took, and what was that process to be able to get access to her and be able to interview her.
So basically we started.
I started out and I wrote her a letter in prison, and I sort of introduced myself and talked about the things that I'm interested in her case. And I remember I was at my apartment in Brooklyn and I got a letter.
Back, and I was so excited.
And I have a like a sort of a tradition of like how I open.
These letters, these access letters. I'm a little bit superstitious.
And I opened it, and you know, in this this very sort of unique handwriting, she wrote to me and she said, hello, miss miss Aaron, thank you so much for your interest. I really want to talk to you. And I'm paraphrasing, by the way, and and she just said, you know, I'm going to talk to Mike Stanfield and see, you know how best to do this. And I was so excited. I was like, could it be this easy? I mean, like, you know that that was so quick.
And then, of course, a couple of days later I received another letter from that in that similar handwriting, and she said, you know, I spoke with my lawyer, Mike Stanfield, and now is not the right time to talk. You know, at the time, she was facing a potential death penalty. It was a death penalty case that they were deciding. And you know I understood, you know, filmmaking and making television, even you know, if it's for HBO, can't get in
the way of a legal case. And so I had to be I had to be patient and figure out other ways to tell the story while waiting to see if I.
Could get access to her.
Now, let's go back for our audience that knows nothing about this story, and you're introducing this story. It's going to be debuting May fifteenth on HBO on Monday, on Monday, so very very soon. Now take us back to Springfield, Missouri and the crime itself. What was initially reported Before we talk about the relationship that people saw the mother and daughter and what they thought of that relationship, and what that those two people, the mother and daughter presented
as the sick child and the reasons for that. So take us back to Springfield, Missouri and the crime scene itself before we go backwards for any kind of reasoning for some of this.
Of course.
So the crime scene was a very graphic one. It was so basically they had this pink habitat for humanity, a habitat for humanity house, and it was small, but queint.
There were five wheelchairs.
In the house. There was you know, their Gypsy had her own room, Dedie had her own room, but they often slept in the same bed and that just you know, and they're their crime scenes that opened this film.
It's it's kind of hard for me to you know, even think about.
But in the dead of night, a co conspirator of Gypsy snuck in, was handed a large, very large knife, and he went into Beattie's room and stabbed her back, slashed her neck.
She woke up and said.
Gypsy's name, and you know she she was, you know, murdered.
In cold blood.
They piled the blankets on top of her Nicholas had ordered Gypsy to be in the bathroom.
Naked, and when the deed.
Was done, he said, come out here. And it was her job to, you know, to scrub the bathroom for evidence because there were drops of blood.
Wow, now, how was it that Let's let's go backwards here, because we're going to talk about a relationship and how this ever came to be, So we might as well go backwards and talk about you as you do. You have an interview with a friend who a neighbor who believes she's a good friend of Gypsy Rose, and so she understands, or at least at that time, believed that
she had certain ailments. What are some of the ailments that people around her, people at school, people in the community believe that Gypsy has.
So Gypsy and.
Dda were well known in the community for being this this lovely, polite, super youthful mother daughter duo. You know, they were often wearing plush slippers or sweatpants. Gypsy always had like a knitted cap on. She was she was sort of balding, but well her mother had like actually shaved her head. And you know, you mentioned Aliyah. So this was a neighbor somebody that lived in the same community that Dedie and Gypsy lived in, and you know, she just said they were the kind of the best
people around. And you know, Aliyah, being a good person, would offer to help Dedy and Gypsy with things. And you know, it always seemed weird to her that Gypsy and her never had alone time. Her mom was always always next to her, and you know, I think that, you know, it just it was this very strange thing, but Aliyah didn't really think about it because she was just helping this young handicapped girl who was also mentally challenged.
Around the community.
It was thought that Gypsy had muscular dystrophe. She was a keemia survivor. She was mentally incapacitated a case, she was slow, She was taken out of school when she was in the second grade.
She had epilepsy.
Her she would take a drug called tegritol and her heith would fall out. She wore these giant glasses because she or her vision was terrible. She had hearing problems, and oh yeah, she had a feeding tube put in her body because she was underweight. You know, it was it is remarkable how many illnesses or ailments, as you say, that Deedy sort of placed upon Gypsy.
Now in this documentary, you truly do go the extra yard and investigate and have access to all these players in this incredible story. So where is the father of Gypsy Rose? And how is it that he doesn't see any of this?
Yeah, I mean that's what a lot of people have sort of wondered. So like, you know, this is his child, how did he not know that she could walk? And you know, would had to go back to the beginning, which was, you know, they lived in a small rural part of Louisiana.
Rod left d D before Gypsy was born.
Uh, Dede immediately implied that Gypsy was a sick baby, and you know, it just it just sort of escalated from there, and you know, they they got divorced. There was you know sort of like child support and custody issues and d D harassed you know, Rod in the
court system. And so after Hurricane Katrina, uh, you know, Gypsy and d D you know, left Louisiana and moved to Missouri and they were given this this this really this habitat for Humanity House and Dee Dee realized this was like the perfect this was the perfect ruse, like she could make over her life.
Now with this you talk about this ruse, what did this include in terms of perks for d D What was the motivation in terms of at least at least superficially, what did it look like? What kind of perks did they get besides a home?
Yeah, of course, so they they were given.
You know, it ranged from as small as tickets to the movie theater to uh, you know, to trips flying to Disney World, private uh private, private flights to hospitals in Kansas City, thousands of dollars from celebrities that had met them at concerts, uh, you know, cash donations coming in from the internet fundraisers.
I mean, it just you know this.
I mean, it wasn't a giant amount of money. Like they weren't living off the hogs, you know what I mean. But you know, they got disability benefits from the government, they got donations. Uh, you know, DEDI did not have to work, they.
Got child support. It's it's you know, they were living comfortably.
Now, let's also talk about, as you do this Munchausen by proxy syndrome. Just briefly, not again not to give too much away, but explain for an audience that doesn't know what this is. What this is.
So Munchausen by proxy is a psychological disorder where a caregiver or a parent stands illness in a child to garner attention or financial benefit. Sometimes it's Munchausen is just when you're feigning illnesses in yourself. Like you know, there's been a couple of, you know, really intense cases where people saying that they have cancer, they shave their heads, they take you know, they go to doctors for medication.
You know, it is a mental illness.
But I do believe that participants know what it, you know, like the difference between right and wrong. I mean, actually maybe I know this this is a live interview, but it is my consideration that I think Dede knew what she was.
Doing was wrong.
But that might not be all the you know, the case with everyone.
Right now, let's get to how police are alerted in what manner are they alerted to d D's death. Tell us about the discovery. Well, we talked about the crime scene itself, but what alerts police specifically, and we mentioned it in the introduction about Facebook, So tell us about that Facebook post? What was said in there and what was the reaction and what did it all lead to?
Yeah, of course there was a Facebook post that was that was posted on DDE and Gypsy's joint Facebook page. The first the first post that that bitch is dead, and the second post is and I fucking slashed that fat pig and raped her sweet innocent daughter. Her scream was so fucking loud lol, And people were like on the Facebook, they were like, what, like, you know, its just they had never heard any of these women ever talk like that. Gypsy was a child, Beatie would never
never swore. Nobody ever heard her swear in her life. So people thought that Facebook was hacked, you know.
It wasn't.
It was Gypsy admitting, you know, she said she told me that she wanted people to find her mom's body quicker. I don't know that that does not seem I don't I don't know if that that sort of reasoning holds up.
Doesn't sound like it to me. So with these posts continue, how I mean, obviously that's how all of these stories were hew. Police track everything cell phone analysis and posts, and so what did they discover?
So they traced the IP address of the Facebook post back to a town called Big Ben Wisconsin, and Aliah was actually one of the first to tell authorities that she knew that Gypsy had a boyfriend. How she knew Gypsy had a boyfriend was that they talked on Facebook in a secret account that Gypsy had and Gypsy, in a very sort of girly fashion, was just like, you know, I have a boyfriend. His name is Nicholas.
We want to get married.
We both love Disney. And she said, you know, I think he was from Wisconsin, so it's you know, they said they thought potentially that that Nick had killed the mom and kidnapped Gypsy, right, so.
Obviously they realize with some questioning. And you talk about because you have again the incredible access to have the interrogation interviews of this Nick go to John and it is fascinating. I gotta say it is when we I don't want to give too much away, but he does.
Have it's close to air day, I said, careful, yeah, they're so close to the air day.
And I hope people, well, no, I'm going to say, I'm just gonna want to give too much. I want to say just alert people to say that this is some of the most fascinating footage I've seen and you say he's confirmed artistic and has uh As Burgers. So we'll just yes again, we we can say that anyway, that it's a very interesting interview to say the least, totally.
I felt the same way. I you know, when we got access to that, that was very lead in our edit process, and I just I watched it over and over again, you know, looking for clues about this man that had murdered his online girlfriends mother. You know, that is a very drastic action.
Why would somebody do that?
You know, what were the signs that led up to this? And you know, he had this very heightened prince charming gentleman thing where he thought it was his job to protect Gypsy and the only way that he could protect Gypsy was if the mom was gone. And it's just you know, it's it's he to me, in those interviews, in the police interrogation tapes, he seems severely mentally ill.
He seems mentally ill in a way that Gypsy does not sort of look or sound or act like, you know, they feel like very different people to me.
I agree. And the other thing is what we didn't talk about is and this is this is amazing to me too. How childlike this girl was made to be much younger. I don't know if we mentioned that she was meant to act much younger. She was told, as you about that she was retalkdar so, but she does. The most profound thing is how childlike she sounds. Almost baby.
Yeah, I mean before I met her, I thought if I wondered if the voice was a put on.
It's not.
That's her real voice, her mother.
So she when she when the murder happened.
I believe she was twenty three, and she thought she was about sixteen or seventeen, So that's a huge different in age. You know, she does not look like she was in her early twenties.
I mean, she could pass for thirteen.
Sure, seemed like it. And what do you also have is this access to of course the texts and some of the video of these people. We won't say when, but incredible video footage of these people interacting this couple. Again, I can't even I don't even know how to describe it except bizarre, very bizarre, and but very immature to And that's the understatement of the week for sure. Now let's talk about you know, one thing that you do cover in the movie too, Is that that the mother
herself is a master of manipulation? You do have you do really present that in this documentary, don't you?
Yeah?
I mean I did. Is endlessly fascinating, you know, I don't. I don't think any of I don't. I think very few people could understand why someone would do that to their child, you know, bring a child to a doctor hundreds of times when you know there's nothing wrong with her. You know, I I looked for clues for the whole time I was making this movie about you know, what were what were the science that she would be, that she would lead to to becoming this person that could do that? Was their abuse?
Was there?
Was their psychopathy?
Did you know?
We were there sort of murderous traits that arose earlier in her life. And so you know, talking with her family members and talking with the community, who would go on.
And off the record.
You know, it's just it's hard because Dedie isn't here to tell us her side of the story, and to tell like basically, I mean, you know, she could be very potentially mentally ill, which I'm sure she is, but that's not really an excuse. I mean, all the big you know, the the you know, I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts, and just because you're mentally ill, it's not gold be a license to to act violent towards other people. And the majority of people that that
survive with mental illness do not act out violently. So like, what made this case so much different and the fact that she was a woman and just doing all these things that she was implicated by her family and the death of her mother, and there's a you know, there's a couple other stories that you'll hear in the film. It's just this was not the first time that she had done something criminal, right, right.
You also talk and this as well of just the nature of I guess it's not not the biggest issue, but just the nature of the internet. What is real and what isn't real, what's the plan and what isn't. What's somebody's word and what isn't. And when you're talking about young people, teens or people like this that have disabilities, we'll say, is that did I get that from this?
That yeah?
Thing?
No, definitely, I mean you see that in my first film.
There's this questioning about the.
Role of social media plays and our thought processes, and like how we how we think and project our innermost desires with with Gypsy, one of my sort of points of fascination was that she was taken out of school, as I said, when she was in second grade, and she just would just watch Disney movies and she would go online, she would go on Facebook. These were her
outlets for curiosity. And what does it mean when you grow up and you're the only things that you have to really learn from are these certain of archetypal Disney movies with these heightened Prince charming narratives, or Facebook where it's it's attention, it's about you know, about projecting her mental and physical disabilities for people to be supportive of it. Just it's just the Internet always plays a huge role in things that I'm interested in.
It's interesting too that you actually have this incredible example of what would happen if she did run off? What if would happen if she told incredibly as much as she wasn't told the truth about her own illness as her own age, that she still was, like you say, never alone to be able to tell anybody anything. And when she did and so this is another profound example in this movie where you know we don't have to take anybody's word for it. That's a very profound moment.
To reinforce that. I don't want to give anything away, but to reinforce this the helplessness that this woman felt that no one, no one understood at the time previous to this, if there ever was a surprise, I mean,
I don't care what anyone says. This is the definition of surprise for this community and for people around them, wasn't it totally Yeah, Now you talk about this year or how this certain amount of length of time that it took, just tell us a little bit about how you managed to get access to Gypsy Rows for these interviews, and including that you did contact the defense attorney, which is unusual for a defense attorney to say anything except never ever talked to a journalist.
Well, I mean, I think that's potentially a little bit of the old guard that, you know, media can't be helpful. You know, I think Mike Stanfield is a really rational, really smart person, and you know, he knew that the optics of the situation were favorable towards him. He was dealing with someone who was battling abuse her whole life, and you know, I come from I'm working on for HBO, and he knew it was real, and so in terms of the access, I could not talk to her until
a plea deal was reached. And I don't really want to go and the specifics of that because that it'll it'll kind of break the tension of a seeing we have in the film. But you know, it just was a really slow, long process of checking with the family,
not being pushy, but still being present. There were, of course, other outlets that wanted the to get the story, and you have to sort of balance this competitive side with really sort of thinking about like these this is the story about human beings, and like, you know, what purpose would this film serve in Gypsy's life? And so it was phone calls at first, it was letters with her. I flew down to.
Go meet her in person.
You know, we did a non camera interview where I learned more that would inform my actual interview.
You know, in a perfect world, that's.
What I would always do. I think it's really really good to to go and spend time with someone without cameras.
So they feel comfortable with you and you can get a feel.
For them, and like, you know, it might take some of the surprise out of it, the elements surprise, but I think that you know, it's important for interviews to feel conversational, for the subject to feel safe, and those are things that I really hope to bring to documentary filmmaking. You know, in a long tradition of amazing HBO documentary filmmakers that have done it.
Yes, and you've got the confidence from HBO to do this, and yes, that's the unique element of it. You've just explained it in that you've prepared these people instead of surprised these people. And there is a lot of documentary I was just watching one not so long ago and the person was asking if the camera was rolling, so you know, you know there was no preparation if they're
asking that question and you're using that footage. So an incredible idea to really make people comfortable because as you've probably known, and you do not want people so nervous in front of that camera, regardless of what reaction they might have. Now with this, you also debuted this at the south By Southwest Festival Film Festival in March. Tell us a little bit more about the HBO debut. This
is HBO is finding this very important. They have a lot of confidence in you just tell us about the debut on May fifteenth, Sure, so.
It is going to be at ten pm. We have done a great amount of press. You know, it's in People magazine today, the issue came out. We're going to be on Good Morning America. Like it's important, you know, I'm on this podcast. It's like very important to speak to the certain.
Sects of people that are going to be interested in this.
And you know, I think that a lot of networks would have maybe a difficult time telling the story making it feel non exploitative. HBO always gave us the room and ability to to sort of sus sus it out and see how best to to to do it. And I you know, a lot of the if when people call it sort of non exploitative, it feels balanced, it
feels human. That's due in large part to our editor Andrew Kaufman, who cut the film, who's the writer of the film, And you know, he he really thought about it, and he didn't it didn't take him a super long time to cut it. He's a really fast editor. But you know, I think there was a lot of thoughtfulness put in about how to construct the story. And you know, when do you reveal that she doesn't need the wheelchair? You know, there's many different ways to make this.
Movie, right certainly now with this uh, with this filmmaking, who else was involved? You talked about your editor Kaufman, But who else was involved with this that you found in the integral part of your team?
Sure?
So. The cinematographer, his name is Brian Starkanen. He would do two or three cameras and sound.
We roll with the very small.
Crew because it's it's cost productive, but also it just keeps our crews intimate. You know. He's amazing, and he works largely with my producer on the project.
His name is Andrew Rossi. He's my producing partner.
For the HBO films that we work on. We're working on a third one right now. And Andrew Rossi is a prolific, amazing documentary filmmaker and director. And he made page one a year in the New York Times Every tower, first Monday in May. Eat this New York le cirque. You know, he is just he does a lot of different sort of things. He's not a true crime guy, so this is sort of a little bit unusual that
he produces these films. But I think it shows the length and you know, the variety that he can employ as a as a producer and as director and as a you know, a mentor of sorts.
Just tell us about some of the exclusive interviews that may we may have not spoken about that are going to be that are featured in Mommy, Dead and Dearest. Some of the interrogation interviews and exclusions.
Yeah, you're gonna be never seen before interrogation footage. I worked with and excuse me, I worked with Mike Stanfield to gain access to those materials.
It is all.
Because of him, the defense attorney, and it was also You're going to see archival VHS tapes of home movies between d D and Gypsy that have never been seen before. There's interviews with Dede's parents, Dede's nephew who's amazing. There's Christie and Rod Blanchert. There's a Leah, there's doctors that treated Gypsy. There is there's a journalists who wrote an incredible article in BuzzFeed that got four million hits due in large part to the strength of the writing but
also the craziness of the story. And you are going to speak, you know, directly to Gypsy and hear her talk.
Incredible. You talk about in this documentary too, that very incredibly that because of d D's constant bringing to the various doctors and complaining about certain elements, even gets to the point that she's operated on unnecessarily. At least you seem to hint at.
That I, I, yes, I do believe that. I am sorry, I'm feeling a little saint. I basically that she was.
She was, she was brought to the hospital.
Gypsy was brought to the hospital over a hundred times while she was in Missouri, and you know, there are a series of operations that were done that you know, I believe we're not necessary. You know, it just it was.
It was constant.
This was an illness. It does not make rational sense.
Now you talk about there there's many sides of this as well, in terms of you know, we just talked about there was only one doctor that noticed anything was amiss, and you have that person interviewed. But you also talk about that this seems to be where things coincide. Tell us what you think are the elements that coincide here that the viewer is going to see with this documentary just much more than this incredible story.
Well, I think it's up for the viewer to tell that. I don't want to put my perspective on it.
You know.
I think that what I do as a filmmaker is create a package and a film where people can sort of they can experience it and react how they see fit. I don't.
I don't have a.
Preconceived notion how people how people will react to things.
Well, what I meant was this, this is a you speak to abuse, and you speak to mental illness. But these are just a couple of issues that are involved in this film, right.
Yeah, I mean it.
It runs the gambit, you know, It's just it's mental illness, it's abuse, it's on social media, it's Disney, it's the burgeoning of sexuality, it's mattricide, it's you know why this happened, you know, to all of these in a very tight eighty.
Two minute film.
Now, for those that are listening to this as well, we talked about Nicholas Goldiejohn. This film doesn't have as much to do with him and his case as Gypsy Rose Blanchard's case. Is that correct, right?
Right?
Yeah?
I think that you know, Nicholas was the co conspira that Gypsy, you know, was an online boyfriend that she had met on a Christian dating site, and you know, they talked for a year and a half before they met. And you know, I reached out to Nick. I sent him a letter much in the same way that I spoke with Gypsy, and it was returned back to me unopened. And you know, I emailed his lawyer several times.
I did not receive a response back.
And you know, like you said, potentially he might be part of the older Guard and just you know, this is not for me. We don't want to get involved. But I never received any.
Sort of comment.
I reached out to the family only once, I believe Nicholas's family and did not receive comments.
Now, is there other than that? Is there any other reason why you would not in the future, or is there any plan to because this story is a is a documentary, not a series, not part of a series. Is there any interest whatsoever of Again, I don't want to give anything away, but is there any talk of following what happens with Godie John?
No? Not for me. I mean, maybe there is another filmmaker out there, you know, I think there's incredible cases that are happening in real time. And you know, I think Nicholas's case, although interesting because he you know, was it was not a victim of sorts, but he did get it was a difficult.
Ending for him, you know.
I just I think Gypsy was, for me personally, was the far more interesting case. And so the access that I got, and that's the access that I worked on. So that's what I chose to follow.
What was the most surprising thing. The surprising element of your interviews with Gypsy rose something that you had not anticipated whatsoever.
Yeah, I mean, every time we talk, something sort of interesting happens. You know, she is a keeper of secrets and a lot of her life has been kept a secret. And so one of the more interesting things for me that I wasn't able to actually include in the film was that Gypsy and Ddie shared the same bed every night. Gypsy had her own room in the house, had her own bed, but Dede liked for her to sleep close, and so they spent you know, most of their time together and they slept in the same bed.
I found that completely and totally shocking.
Yeah, yeah, you talk about something else which interesting and you supported it too, which is that you said that we talked about she was always around, even matter of his friend or someone else. But you show in the
footage something a little more even disturbing and interesting. Once you know that fact that seems to be in all the video footage, say that one more time, we talked about her being constantly around Gypsy rows the mother, Right, but you also highlight something where it's a little even more disturbing in that you highlight even the closer contact we'll.
Say, right, Yeah, I mean the.
Footage showed that they were always together and that you know, Dede was had her eye on her, and you know, even when they are alone, even when they're alone, you know, Gypsy was saying that her you know, like that her legs weren't working. She would be shown like moving her legs around in a way that she that showed that she was immobile.
Yeah. And the other thing what I was trying to get at was that she always seemed to have contact with the hand holding a hand, but holding a hand, oh yeah, broad manner as well.
Yeah, I mean it's just I'm just I'm getting into two weird subjects because it's like I don't really want to give all of it away. You know, it's like maybe we should have planned it for after the screen, like the when it goes on HBO. But yeah, there was a there was a very sort of manipulative behavior that when they were in front of cameras, you know, Gypsy and DV would be holding hands and it was inferred that if something was said that Dane didn't like, she would grab her hand.
Right now, you say that this how long? How many hours or how long did you interview Gypsy Rose over what period of time? How long was that period?
It was two and a.
Half hours and it was one day. Typically I would like to do that a lot more, but she's in prison, and you know, that was the time.
That I was given right.
And it's and and as you people will see in this movie, she is is more than a fascinating subject in that two and a half hours.
Yeah, definitely, I mean we use a lot of it. You know, it's for me. For me, it felt so captivating.
Mm hmm.
Now, what was your trip like to Springfield, Missouri? Just tell us a little bit about your impression there, not of what exactly you did. Pardon me that you did there, because those are some more exclusive interviews with the relatives, but what was sort of the mood by the time you got there filmmakers poking around in their little town.
So, yeah, Springfield, Missouri is a you know, is an unusual is an unusual place in that it's in the Ozark Mountain range, but it's still like kind of a big city. There's around two hundred thousand people, if I'm not mistaken. And this grewsome graphic murder had happened there that most people knew about, but outside of Springfield, people
people didn't know didn't know about it. So it was just like a lot of members of the community felt some antagonism towards the reporters for coming in and painting their town like this. You know.
My story it was that people were.
Really friendly, except you know, not a lot of the neighbors wanted to go on the record, sure or any No, none of the neighbors wanted to go on the record beside Deliah.
Right and the story nationally from there. The information that was had by Springfield, Missouri at that time, by the police and the media. Again, there was just a fraction of the information that you have on this documentary that was and that's part of this most fascinating part of the story is that what you thought you would find and then what you actually discovered by speaking to the principles,
there was no other way to get this story. This is one of those very unique stories where there is only one There is really only one side here, and there's not too many people to speak to, Like you say, DD's gone and you have access to everyone. So what was the national story and how lacking was it in sort of details, and what was the optics of it at that time?
You know, I think that people didn't know people didn't know about this story. It just didn't break into the national consciousness until the BuzzFeed piece came. And you know, I don't really have a good idea as to why. Maybe it's because it happened in the South. Maybe it's because it happened to people that weren't famous, you know, I I that's such a cool question, Like, I don't
I don't know how people felt about it. I just knew it was There was a Gawker piece about it, there was, you know, a couple of sort of local papers that were covering it. But that's also what made it so exciting for me was that there wasn't these like giant, huge outlets later Nightline and twenty twenty I believe were interested in the story and in Doctor phil and and Doctor Oz, but like they have these incredibly talented, sort of ferocious producers that know about crime stories all over.
But yeah, it was.
It was sort of interesting, like how people in the town felt about it. But then when I would go back home and sort of you know, maybe talk to a couple of New Yorkers and tell them what I was working on, they'd be like, oh, I've never heard of that.
Yeah, I think it's a fascinating story without some of the elements that seemed to be popular in the last few years, that seemed to for that reason, captivate an audience, the Casey Anthony and a couple of the cases, which are attractive to people for much different reasons than this. This is a in comparison, a very very sensitive story.
And so I congratulate you for bringing a story that might not be so popular, like you say, with the national press, because it doesn't fit all those salacious highlights. I guess we'll.
Say, yeah, thank you so much for saying that.
That's really that's really thoughtful.
Now, how long was this entire process for this film? And now that you have the HBO debut on May fifteenth, what's next after that for this film? Just more promotion for this film? Tell us about that.
Yeah, so the film comes out on Monday, you know, not.
Too much more promotion.
We've done.
We've done quite a bit of press. Now it's in the hands of audiences. People are going to interact with it, and you know, I just I think we're just going.
To wait to hear how it's how it goes.
I'm all in. I started working on it.
August twenty fifteen, so it's about.
A year and a half a little bit over that. And you know, it was it was a difficult process. We weren't sure if we were going to get the access. But you know, that's what makes doc filmmaking so fun. It's kind of on the edge of your seat.
Right And what was south By Southwest like you debuted Cannibal Cop Thought Crimes in Tribeca in twenty fifteen, What was south By Southwest?
Like south By Southwest was totally fantastic. I recommend anybody going. They had an incredible lineup of amazing films there this year. Janet Pearson, who runs the festival, is a total taste maker and she knows how to pick films that are going to really generate sort of discussion. And uh, you know when we got there, you know, when I excuse me, when I was making this film, I immediately thought of it as a South Buy film because it's it's it's
a documentary, it's it's a crime story. But there is there is you know, there are elements that just make it a little bit sort of funny, and so it just felt like a really unique, really special mix for South Buy. And then when we got in it was just you know, it was kismet.
It was amazing.
And with Cannibal Cop Tribecca was also a good fit. This was a New York story. You know, we got a lot of coverage and papers and it just sort of made sense. So with these two films, I would say they've been pretty kind of tailor made for the festivals that they that they showed at, and we've had fantastic experiences working.
With the festivals.
Yes, and I think too that I think this audience can attest to this that there is a growing sophistication. And of course you see the resurgence in true crime on cable, HBO, Netflix, original series, Making of a Murderer, Vice, all kinds of things on This is in line with
the tastes that the people have for true crime. They need something much better than I don't want to slag investigation, discovery, but there is a new level, a new standard, and I think and Mummy Dead and Dearest is right up there. Very I think people are going to be very, very very surprised and excited and interested in this Mummy Dead and Dearest. I want to thank you for all the work you've done on this and for coming on and
talking about Mummy Dead and Dearest. So maybe just before we go, if you could just briefly describe what people will see May fifteenth on Mommy Dead and Dearest.
Yeah, of course. So, Mommy Dead and Dearest is a true true story about a case that a stranger than fiction. It deals with a you know, as you talked about beginning, a young woman who is confined to a wheelchair, and instead of making it this sort of like you know, this linear story, it is about you know, going back in history, going to Louisiana and talking to talking to the perpetrator of the abuse scam of you know, her family and getting and trying to figure out who this
woman was and then who Gypsy is. And there's archival VHS tapes, there's interrogation footage, there's text messages between Gypsy and boyfriend Nick. There are you know, their interviews with her parents where you know, excuse me or her stepmom and her dad, where we see pictures of her and at the hospital. I mean, it's just it is just this totally you know, archival but new material driven film that I hope Lee's you know, you're at the edge of your seat.
You're not sure what goes into what happens next.
You know, that's you know, because of our editor, you did a fantastic job.
You just don't know what's going to.
Happen next in the story. And you know that was my experience when I was making it.
Yes, and thank you very much again a very powerful film, and we hadn't mentioned and we didn't I didn't go for it, so there's a surprise ending. So we just wanted to tell people tune in to Mommy Dead and dearest. Thank you very much Aaron Lee Carr.
For this, and I hope that I wasn't too coy about my answers. I think that I'm you know, I'm just trying to keep a couple of things sort of under my hat. But I hope that that was okay for you, Dan and for the oh people that are listening.
Well, absolutely, I'm just the most curious person out of a whole case I can tell. So we'll be tuning in because if we have any one detail that we didn't get, we got to tune in. And so I don't think we gave anything away. We just really really hyped people about viewing Mummy Dead and Dearest on May fifteenth on HBO. So thank you very much, Aaron Lee Carr. You have a great evening. Thank you very much once.
Again, spectacular. Thank you, Dan, thank you.
Goodnight,