Ken Urker, the partner of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who became the subject of intense media attention for her role in killing her abusive mother, has died.
Urker was found dead at a residence in Raceland, Louisiana, on Thursday evening — his 34th birthday — after police responded to a call at 6:15 p.m., the Lafourche Sheriff’s Office confirmed to CNN Friday. An investigation is underway.
“I’m in disbelief. I can’t think,” Blanchard told People magazine Friday. “I’ve screamed until my throat burns.”
“There are no words that can express the depth of this loss,” she added. “I ask for privacy and compassion for our daughter, our families, and everyone grieving Ken during this incredibly painful time.”
Blanchard met Urker while she was in prison serving eight and a half years for helping in 2015 to kill her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. Dee Dee had convinced doctors and those around her that her daughter was afflicted with ailments that she did not have, including leukemia, muscular dystrophy and asthma.
A victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy — a form of abuse in which a caregiver fakes, exaggerates or induces illness in a child to gain attention — Blanchard became the subject of documentaries such as HBO’s “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” “Gypsy’s Revenge,” and “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard,” during her time in prison and after her December 2023 release.
Urker had written a “supportive letter, not on any kind of romantic level” to Blanchard, and included his phone number, after watching “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” which was released in 2017, Blanchard said on the “We Need to Talk” podcast in June.
She added that she gave Urker a call and “within five minutes of talking on the phone, I felt like we had known each other our whole lives.” After two years of dating, the couple got engaged while she was in prison, but Urker split up with her months later, she said.
Blanchard went on to marry Louisiana teacher Ryan Anderson in a prison wedding ceremony in July 2022, but they parted ways in 2023, and she rekindled her romance with Urker.
The couple welcomed a child at the end of 2024, and Urker described the baby girl on Instagram days after her birth as “the greatest gift of all.”
Their child, Aurora, was born exactly a year after Blanchard was released from prison, Blanchard said on the “We Need to Talk” podcast, adding that holding her baby made her feel like “I wanted to give her everything that I wasn’t.”
Asked about her dreams, the 35-year-old added that in her personal life she wanted “to have another child, get married.”