Gypsy Rose Blanchard's partner Ken Urker has died aged 34

Ken Urker, the fiancé of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, has passed away. He was 34.

According to a statement shared with LADbible, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office confirmed Urker was found unresponsive at a home in Louisiana, on his birthday.

The statement confirmed that a call had come in at roughly 6.15pm on 1 October, and that by the time officers arrived, Urker was already "found dead upon arrival."

The couple have a daughter together, Aurora Raina, who turned one in December.

It was only a month before Aurora came into the world that Blanchard - jailed for her part in her mother's killing - put an end to speculation by naming Urker, rather than estranged husband Ryan Anderson, as the baby's biological father.

"There's been a lot of chatter around the paternity of our baby and while we've known for sure from the beginning, I feel that it's finally time to put all these theories to rest," she wrote in a since-deleted post at the time. "Ken is the father."

"Ken is going to be an incredible dad and we are so excited to welcome our baby girl into the world," she added.

The pair appeared very much in love on social media (gypsyrose.ig/Instagram)

Their story began back in 2017, when the two struck up a pen-pal correspondence while Gypsy Rose was incarcerated over her involvement in the 2015 killing of her mother, Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard.

An engagement followed in October 2018, though the relationship didn't survive — the pair called things off by August 2019. She'd go on to marry Anderson behind bars in July 2022, before the couple parted ways in March 2024, roughly three months after Gypsy Rose walked free. The divorce was made official before the year was out.

Not long after, Gypsy Rose and Urker rekindled their romance. Within weeks of her split from Anderson, the pair got matching husky dog tattoos to mark their reconciliation.

In an April 2025 episode of Life After Lock Up, Gypsy Rose made a candid confession about how "adventurous" things had become in the bedroom since getting back together with Urker.

"Our first weekend that we reconnected, it was like a floodgate," she shared on the Lifetime reality show. "And naturally, now there are times that I think is harder because of schedules and business and work and, like, I want that back for us," she added.

They shared a child together (gypsyrose.ig/Instagram)

Gypsy Rose Blanchard became a household name around the world because of her extraordinary and disturbing case.

For years, her mother Dee Dee convinced everyone around her that Blanchard was suffering from a string of serious illnesses, including leukaemia, muscular dystrophy and developmental delays — none of which were true.

Dee Dee is widely believed to have had Munchausen by proxy, now clinically known as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA) — a rare and severe form of abuse in which a caregiver, typically a parent, fabricates, exaggerates or even induces illness in someone under their care.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard became one of the most famous figures in modern true crime (Getty)

As a result, Blanchard spent much of her childhood confined to a wheelchair she didn't need, fitted with a feeding tube, and made to undergo surgeries that weren't medically necessary.

As a teenager, Blanchard began an online relationship with Nicholas Godejohn, and together the pair hatched a plan to kill her mother.

In June 2015, Godejohn fatally stabbed Dee Dee.

At trial, Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Godejohn, meanwhile, was found guilty of first-degree murder and handed a sentence of life in prison without parole, plus an additional 25 years for armed criminal action.