Lafourche sheriff reports no signs of foul play in death
Kenan “Ken” Urker, the 34-year-old on-and-off partner of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and the father of her young daughter, was found dead at his Louisiana home on his birthday Thursday in what authorities described as an apparent drug overdose, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
Deputies were called to Urker’s residence after relatives requested a welfare check. According to a sheriff’s office report obtained by the Guardian, Anita Blanchard and her husband — who is Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s half-brother — went to Urker’s home and saw him lying unconscious through an outside window. A man who was with the couple then entered through a window and found Urker unresponsive.
Urker was not breathing and was “cold to the touch,” the report stated. Authorities who arrived at the scene were “able to see Mr Urker from the living room area lying on his back in [a] bed,” according to the report, and deputies “located paraphernalia (syringes and spoon) in the bathroom next to a brown powdery substance.” A syringe and a handgun were found on the nightstand beside the bed. Urker “appeared to have been there for an extended period of time,” the report said.
In a statement to the news media on Friday, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Captain Brennan Matherne said Urker’s death remained “under investigation” and that investigators had not, as of Friday, discovered “any signs of foul play.” The sheriff’s office report on Urker’s death confirmed the case had been called in to the agency as an evident overdose.
In an interview with People published Friday, the 32-year-old Gypsy Rose Blanchard said she believed Urker died from an overdose but said she did not know whether the death was intentional. “I don’t know if it was intentional or not,” Blanchard said, adding that Urker “was not in a good state of mind lately.”
Blanchard previously spent eight years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in connection with the June 2015 stabbing death of her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, in Springfield, Missouri. Blanchard had provided her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, with a knife and hid in a bathroom while he killed her mother. Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Godejohn, whom Blanchard had met online, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The killing drew widespread attention after it was revealed that Dee Dee Blanchard had forced Gypsy Rose to pretend she was seriously ill and undergo medical procedures she did not need. Blanchard’s story was the subject of the 2017 documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest.”
Blanchard met Urker while serving her prison sentence, from which she was released in late December 2023. She said on the “We Need to Talk” podcast in June that Urker had contacted her after watching “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” sending what she described as a “supportive letter, not on any kind of romantic level” that included his phone number. Urker proposed in October 2018.
The pair ended their engagement before reuniting in August 2019, then split again. During the time apart, Blanchard married Ryan Anderson; she announced their separation four months after her release from prison. Blanchard and Urker rekindled their relationship in April 2024, and eight months later they welcomed their daughter, Aurora Raina Urker.