She did some abhorrent and pathological things in the days following her mother’s murder, and I wouldn’t be surprised if being raised, abused, and intentionally stunted in every realm of development by an obvious sociopath hadn’t instilled some of the same maladaptive behavior patterns in her. I don’t think anyone has argued that she isn’t likely to need a lot of support and mental health care to function well on the outside.

What I don’t see mentioned a whole lot was how the cocktail of unnecessary meds, which included psychotropic drugs, she was on at the time of the murder could have impacted her mental and emotional capacity. Gypsy herself said that, while the effects of the drugs don’t excuse her actions at all, her emotions were blunted and her mind felt empty of any substantive thoughts. She also didn’t participate in or witness the actual murder and seemed incapable of acting on her own in that regard regardless of her chemical or emotional state, meaning she might have remained under her mother’s control to this day if killing Dee Dee had in fact been her only way out.

She was a desperate, childlike, criminally overmedicated, lifelong abuse victim in an extremely novel and overwhelming situation — that alone could torpedo a person’s impulse control and psychosocial processing. The seeming impossibility of the situation would only add fuel to that fire. It’s a textbook recipe for clinically breaking from reality in and of itself. Then imagine how the presence of pharmacological agents used as “treatment” for physical and mental conditions she didn’t have (and later, possibly by abrupt withdrawal from those same meds) would exacerbate all of it.

Given the way all of her close family members have embraced her in the aftermath and have firmly stated that she’s been punished enough, I believe she’s paid any so-called debt to society and presents no threat to public safety at this point. There was zero reason to keep her locked up.