Ken Urker’s sister has launched a furious attack on his former fiancée, Gypsy-Rose Blanchard, after he was found dead at his Louisiana home on his 34th birthday.
Urker and Blanchard began their relationship in 2017, while Blanchard was serving a seven-year prison sentence for her role in the murder of her abusive mother, Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard.
Following Urker’s death on Thursday, Blanchard publicly suggested that he may have suffered an overdose. She also said he had been “relentlessly cyberbullied” before his death.
But in an exclusive interview with Our News Outlet on Friday, Urker’s sister Autumn accused Blanchard of placing her public image and media profile ahead of the grieving family.
“We are disgusted with her statements! She hasn’t even called my mother or any of us yet,” Autumn said.
Urker first contacted Blanchard in 2017 after watching an HBO documentary about her crime. He then wrote to her while she was in prison.
Ken Urker’s sister Autumn has condemned his former fiancée Gypsy-Rose Blanchard after he was found dead at his Louisiana home on his 34th birthday
An incident report said Urker was found with syringes, a spoon, a handgun and a “brown powdery substance”; he and Blanchard are pictured with their one-year-old daughter Aurora
Urker proposed to Blanchard in 2018 while she was still incarcerated, but the pair separated several months later. After Blanchard was released in December 2023 following an early parole decision, she and Urker reunited in 2024.
The couple welcomed their daughter, Aurora Raina, in December of that year. They officially ended their relationship again earlier this year.
Their relationship faced intense scrutiny on social media, which Autumn said had a damaging impact on her brother.
She alleged that Blanchard was “to blame for his death because all of this started because of her.”
“She had to be in the limelight. She had to be that girl. She didn’t care what it cost other people around her,” Autumn said. “She loved all the attention at the expense of everybody around her.”
“As much hate as she received, she would receive about two times more support and happy comments telling her to keep doing her and ignore the haters,” Autumn alleged. “Except ignoring the haters got everybody around her to receive death threats and to feel uncomfortable.”
Autumn also claimed that Urker told her during their final phone call that he was “terrified” Blanchard would not keep their daughter Aurora, now aged 21 months, “safe.” She said he also alleged that Blanchard had “humiliated him.”
According to Autumn, Urker hoped to take his daughter “back home” to his mother and believed he had “failed Aurora because of Gypsy.”
In a statement to TMZ, Blanchard said Urker had been “relentlessly cyberbullied” before his death
Autumn further alleged that Blanchard insisted on having things her own way and would scream at Urker when he tried to control her, comparing the behavior to that of her mother. “Gypsy is not this sweet person,” she said.
Autumn described her brother in starkly different terms, calling him a “great man” who “didn’t care if you were broken, he would still love you. He would still fight for you. He tried so hard for Gypsy because he was that person.”
She added: “My brother was a good father. A good brother. A good son and a good friend. And we were all lucky and blessed to have known him.”
Our News Outlet has contacted representatives for Blanchard but has yet to hear back.
Her remarks come after police revealed earlier on Friday that Urker was found dead with syringes, a spoon, a handgun and a ‘brown powdery substance’ nearby.
According to an incident report obtained by Our News Outlet, police discovered him on Thursday ‘cold to the touch,’ lying on his back in bed with ‘what appeared to be’ a blood-splotched paper towel on his left arm.
The handgun was sitting in its holster on Urker’s bedside table beside one syringe and two shot glasses, the document clarified.
Blanchard’s sister-in-law Anita went to church this past Wednesday with Urker. She later informed police that he ‘made comments of being depressed and upset.’
Anita and her husband arrived at Urker’s residence the following day, and called police for a welfare check when Urker failed to open the door.
Police responded to Anita’s call at Urker’s residence, which is located in the town of Raceland on Bayou Lafourche, about an hour’s drive from New Orleans. They discovered his body on a bed inside.
Urker’s arms and face were blue when he was found in bed, where he had evidently been ‘for extended period of time,’ according to the incident report.
Nothing in the bedroom ‘appeared to be disturbed or moved’ other than the items on the nightstand – the holstered gun, the shot glasses and another syringe.
Anita noted that Urker had gone live on TikTok at around 11pm Wednesday but ‘just had the video going while he was driving without him saying anything.’
Thursday evening, as news circulated of his death, Blanchard went public with her suspicion that he had succumbed to an overdose.
‘I don’t know if it was intentional or not. He was not in a good state of mind lately,’ she told People. ‘I’m in disbelief. I can’t think. I’ve screamed until my throat burns.’
Urker and Blanchard shared a 21-month-old daughter that they welcomed in December 2024
In a statement provided Thursday to TMZ, Blanchard said she texted her ex on the day of his death to wish him a happy birthday but never received a reply.
‘Ken was an amazing father and a man who was deeply loved,’ she began, adding that Urker would ‘forever be my soulmate and my red string, a connection that time, distance, and even death can never erase.’
Blanchard said that he went through an ‘unimaginable level of public scrutiny’ while being with her and that the ‘cruelty directed toward him was something no human being should have to endure.’
She noted that the online harassment had a ‘profound impact’ on Urker.
Regarding their daughter, Blanchard vowed to ‘make sure she grows up knowing how deeply her father loved her.’
Blanchard said that she would also ensure her daughter knew ‘who [Urker] was beyond what strangers on the internet chose to say about him.’
Blanchard was a victim as a child of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, after her mother Dee Dee (above) forced her to pose as an invalid by remaining in a wheelchair. Dee Dee kept Gypsy-Rose drugged to convince the world that her daughter had muscular dystrophy and leukemia
Their warped relationship came to an end in 2015, when Gypsy-Rose’s boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn (L), crept into their home in Springfield, Missouri, and stabbed Dee Dee, 48, to death. Blanchard (R) pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and spent nearly 10 years in prison
Blanchard became a household name back in 2015 after she was arrested over her involvement in her mother Dee Dee’s death.
Blanchard has been a victim of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, with Dee Dee forcing her to pose as an invalid by remaining in a wheelchair at all times in public.
Dee Dee shaved Blanchard’s head and kept her drugged to convince the world that her daughter had muscular dystrophy and was battling leukemia.
But the warped relationship between mother and daughter came to an end when Blanchard’s boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, crept into their home in Springfield, Missouri, and stabbed Dee Dee to death on June 10, 2015.
Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and spent nearly 10 years in prison before being released in December 2023 after being granted an early parole.
While in prison, she bonded with Urker after he sent her a letter, and they started corresponding.
After announcing her split from her husband, Ryan Anderson, in March 2024, Blanchard and Urker reunited the following month. She revealed in July of that year that they were expecting a child
Things soon turned romantic, and he went on to propose in 2018.
But after the Hulu miniseries The Act, which starred Joey King as Gypsy and Patricia Arquette as her mother, premiered a few months later and put an intense spotlight on Gypsy’s story, she admitted in her memoir that Ken couldn’t handle the sudden wave of attention.
Blanchard subsequently met and married another man, Ryan Anderson. They broke up after a short union and she reunited with Urker.
Following their reunion, Urker looked back on how they reconnected while speaking to People.
‘The very first weekend of April [2024] is when I came to visit her for the first time after she had gotten out. We spent that weekend together and had an incredible time,’ he said.
Their renewed connection was strong enough that they made plans to meet again a month later to attend a jazz festival together.
‘Then shortly after that, we realized we were going to have a baby,’ Urker added.
