Beyond All Repair - The Clancy Trial | Ep. 2: The Reaction

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

A week after Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, WBUR's Deborah Becker reflects on the reaction online and in real life — inside as well as outside the courtroom. From TikTok influencers to international media outlets, the trial drew unprecedented crowds to the Plymouth courthouse. The attention on the Clancy trial is drawing attention to new mothers' mental health. But it has also sparked a national debate on gender, accountability, and women's mental health. Throughout the trial, we saw the darker side of social media virality and algorithmic bias, giving rise to multiple conspiracy theories online, especially about Lindsay Clancy's ex-husband, Patrick Clancy. Without a conviction, there's little closure for the Clancy family or the hordes of court watchers. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz will need to decide what charges to bring for a retrial.

I want to touch on some reaction. So the comment here says, why do the descriptions of both this podcast as a whole as well as this episode state definitively that Lindsay killed her children no use of allegedly at all? Lindsay Clancy has admitted to killing her children. Her defense attorneys say outright, she killed her children. The question is whether she should be held criminally responsible

for killing the children. She is charged with first-degree murder, and under Massachusetts law, there are very specific instructions that a jury must follow in order to return a conviction on first-degree murder. I'm Deborah Becker.

I'm a reporter and host here at WBUR. I think I'm drawn to report on mental health issues because they're not black and white. I think people want to be able to say this is what happened here and this is why. But we don't always get that in anything in life. I have been reporting on the Lindsay Clancy trial for the past several weeks, almost exclusively,

and we've been talking about this case and doing other reporting on it since the Clancy children were killed more than three years ago. If she is guilty, you shall say so. If she is not guilty, you shall say so and no more. Nams of the juror and Hocken to your evidence. The Commonwealth bears the burden

of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime with which she's charged. A person is not criminally responsible for her conduct if she has a mental disease or defect. Okay, and we have this comment when it comes out that Patrick did it,

all these podcasts going to have some big lawsuits on their hands. Well, that is one of the big conspiracy theories here that somehow Lindsay Clancy's ex-husband Patrick had some kind of involvement here. This has been a main theory pushed on social media. Patrick Clancy's attorneys are firing back. They're threatening legal action against people

who keep repeating these kinds of theories, and they say that the vitriol against Patrick Clancy and his family has gotten worse since the mistrial was declared. There are volumes of evidence showing that Patrick could not have done this. There is video surveillance showing him at a drugstore, for example, at the pharmacy, they're at the restaurant, there as his phone, just the timing of everything. There's, of course, that very harrowing 911 call he made when he found Lindsay Clancy. outside their home in Duxbury and then discovered his three children strangled in the basement.

And Lindsay Clancy admits that she killed the children. I think that people can always cherry pick certain things, certain facts, and they can say, well, Patrick remarried three years later, although some people made up to date about that to further emphasize their point and completely lied about when he remarried. As journalists, people have to try to look at the entire picture and verify and get documents and really look into something before it's repeated. Well, you say, wow, did that really happen? Wow, did he really get married just a month after the killings?

No, but all of us would react to that. Wow. You know, you need to really work to figure out where that's coming from, why? and see what you can verify and then decide, is it important or is it just shocking? I think the social media furor, and I'll call it furor, over this, has been unlike anything I've ever seen. There was so much commentary and discourse online

that just kept repeating itself and feeding into the algorithm. If you are online at all right now, you're probably seeing the name Lindsay Clancy. TikTokers think they've solved the Lindsay Clancy case. The problem is it's kind of, kind of already been solved. We're going to run through Lindsay Clancy's bedroom the way the prosecution alleges that it happened because it's the number one request I've had since coming out with the original Bratstall video.

As a TV writer, if I were writing this as a story, I know that some of you guys are going to say, how dare you sensationalize this as a TV show? Like, please, if you say that, you're literally not smart enough to engage in this conversation because that's not what I'm doing. Anyway, I digress. At one point, the defendant. since called in as a potential witness a woman who is a TikTok influencer and had posted on TikTok

that different things about staffing at McLean Hospital, the psychiatric hospital where Lindsay Clancy was admitted just three weeks before the killings. I'm a Massachusetts social worker and I also works on the exact inpatient unit at McLean for nearly eight years that Lindsay Clancy was a patient at. Very important. I was not there when she was there, but I literally worked there for eight years. And this woman, Emily Thorndyke, had said on TikTok that the staffing was subpar, basically, at McLean. And there wasn't often good attention there, particularly on holiday weekends, which was when Lindsay Clancy was there. The defense thought she might make a good witness to show that Lindsay was not getting the care that she was supposed to be getting at McLean Hospital.

But the judge did not allow Emily. Milly Thorndyck's testimony to be included. But the fact that it had risen to that level that someone on TikTok posting about staffing at McLean Hospital might actually be called into court as a witness, I think just shows sort of the momentum that social media has gotten in all of this.

And it was pretty astounding. It was very surreal. I've been in a lot of courtrooms. It was different because of the presence and the attention and the lines. to get in. As more and more people came, especially members of the public, there were times that they would really make remarks loudly during the trial, and the court officers would make them leave. And it became increasingly difficult for the court officers to keep order in the court.

There was also a reporter, an independent reporter who came when the trial started getting a lot of attention. And social media, she started posing for the cameras at one point, and social media jumped on her. And she left and never came back again. Well, geez, what did she do? She smiled. She winked at the wrong time. What was she thinking? Literally. There were all kinds of media, ABC News, CBS News, NBC, Dateline, all the big networks. were there. New York Times, the Guardian,

the BBC, international media, big media. I was told that folks were negotiating interviews with Diane Sawyer,

with Oprah, was a rumor, didn't confirm that. And then there were a lot of local folks, local TV stations. Then a lot

of folks who have their own YouTube channels and are on TikTok and have their own social media presence where they weigh in on different things. And if you wanted to do any recording, you had to do it outside the courtroom.

And so every day when the defense attorney Kevin Reddington would walk out, there would be this swarm of media. And it just got bigger and bigger with all of the folks from social media as well as all of the networks. At one point, people got hurt, trying to get to him. Everyone was trying to record him and put their microphone in front of his face or their camera in front of his face, and there were real fights that broke out, and people got, you know, trampled. Developments inside, tensions boiling over outside the courthouse. Lindsay Clancy's supporters and critics confronting each other under the watchful eye of state police, and at one point,

a trooper actually had to step in. So on various levels, I think social media influence this case and will likely continue to influence this case if we have another trial. Last week, the judge declared a missed trial. The defense tried to do an 11th hour, Hail Mary, if you will, and appealed to the state supreme judicial court and said we would like this juror removed. This juror is not following the law on reasonable doubt and should no longer be deliberating. a single justice of the state Supreme Judicial Court held an emergency hearing Friday afternoon and then decided no, the High Court is not going to get involved in this case, and the judge then declared a mistrial.

What that means is that the Plymouth County District Attorney will have to decide whether to retry this case and whether to retry it on the same charges or perhaps second-degree murder or manslaughter. The names of the jurors in the Clancy case have been impounded for two weeks, so they're not being released to the public. There have been many reporters trying to find out who the jurors are. They're not identified during the trial either. There are many reporters posting on social media asking jurors to reach out to them, and that appears to have happened in this case where three of the Clancy jurors, including the four-person, spoke with NBC. 10. I mean, he had reasonable doubt. He admitted he had reasonable doubt. The jurors basically backed up what the defense had claimed during the trial, and that is that there was one holdout

juror who would not go along with the other 11 and support a verdict that she was not guilty by reason of insanity. And they felt that this holdout juror was not following the law about beyond a reasonable doubt because the juror apparently admitted to them that he did have doubt but still would not go along with the other 11. I think if this case is retried, finding another jury, according to the legal experts that I've spoken with, will be an intense process and a much slower one, they think. They think jurors will have to be carefully questioned and not only questioned in voir dire, which is the process that is used where the judge and the lawyers question jurors before they're selected. But some of these legal experts that I spoke with

are thinking that the jurors should be questioned throughout a trial about their social media consumption and what they've learned about the particular case to make sure that their impartiality is maintained throughout the court proceedings. I think the courts are going to have to reckon with this and create some new ground rules. It used to be that we used to say pre-trial publicity, might prejudice a juror. Publicity almost seems like a quaint term when you look at what we're dealing with today. So I do think it's going to be up to the courts

and the legal experts to decide how things are handled when you've got this level of attention and dissemination of information going on. We'll be right back. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the Creative Studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader.

Recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. I think it's hard to generalize and categorize. in this particular case. I think there is real polarization. What I will say is that Lindsay Clancy is a sympathetic defendant to a lot of people. She's a white middle class woman who had a lot of resources and meticulously detailed her efforts to get mental health care, which I think a lot of people can empathize with. I think a lot of women have come to Lindsay Clancy's defense

because they can understand her difficulties getting treatment, especially mental health treatment, and they can understand some of the obstacles she faced as a new mother seeking mental health treatment, asking herself questions about how forthcoming she should be, because she might risk having her children taken away, if she admits to the depth of her struggles. And I think a lot of women don't feel heard overall in the health care system.

And here was a woman who clearly wasn't heard. And I think a lot of people responded to it. I think that every one of us women believe that it could be any one of us. Any one of us who have dealt with mental health, anxiety, depression, postpartum, I think we just know that any one of us could be sitting in her chair. And it should not take for it to get to tragedy. So as the trial continued to generate crowds, I guess, if you will, outside the courthouse, there were long lines to get in.

There were lines outside the courtroom. Sometimes people had to be turned away because they couldn't fit in the courtroom. It just became very crowded and sometimes unruly, quite frankly. But there was one large demonstration that was organized in the final weeks of the trial. and hundreds of women showed up outside the courthouse. Mr. Reddington has Lindsay's fight. He's her voice. He's our voice. So right now I think it's important that we just be still,

have a moment of silence, and know that God is working through us for Lindsay and for the rest of the world that are going through similar things that she's going through. They were trying to get her to see them because they also held a similar demonstration outside Tewksbury Hospital where she's being held, but they wanted to show her that she wasn't alone and that they sympathized with her and that they understood. I spoke with several of these women and they were

very impassioned about this trial and about what they would like to see as an outcome. The main organizer's name was Renee Kimball, she's a woman in Maine, and she said she was watching the trial at home because it was live streamed. It started at 1 o'clock in the morning on TikTok, and I just had to do something. And so I started this, but they finished it. And she got hundreds of women at the courthouse wearing pink, and they were all there that day. And Louise Saunders of Reading, Massachusetts, she was also another person who spoke. I've never felt more compelled to be in support of a woman and to stand.

up and fight for, to be heard. Valerie Martin from Boston, she's a 67-year-old woman, and she said that she felt that she had better support when she had her children more than 30 years ago than the support she was hearing about Lindsay Clancy receiving. And what was really interesting was that so many of these women would gather around the courthouse before or after this demonstration, not even related to the demonstration and they would just start sharing their own stories about what happened to them when they gave birth. And many of the women I spoke with said they didn't experience

postpartum psychosis, but they may have experienced other issues like depression or anxiety. All of these women said they could relate to, you know, the birth of a child having an effect on their mental health and some of the difficulties they had in getting the support they needed. I remember when I had my children and I was a very young mother. I was a young mother and, you know, it was hard. It was really hard. And I had three kids under the age of four. So I remember the time when I knew they had outnumbered me when I was going to the

pediatrician's office and I had diaper bags, car seats and three kids and trying to get them all in the car and I got everybody in, everybody's strapped in, we're going to the pediatrician. I scheduled all their visits at once, so to try to make it easier. And I got in the car and I started it and I looked down and I realized I didn't have my shoes on. And that's when I said they've won, right? I just, I give up. It's a difficult time. I thankfully did not suffer any postpartum issues. So I'm grateful for that, but I do know that it's a struggle. And it's a struggle for people, especially people who don't have a lot of support. And if someone is prone to having some mental health issues

and may not be able to handle it without additional support, then I think there's a real risk there. And it's hard for people to understand. I think if there's anything positive to come out of this, case, it's good that this is getting talked about because I don't think it has been. Especially in this prism of motherhood, where all mothers are supposed to be the all-nurturing, selfless being all the time, I think the discussion about what women might actually need as human beings, despite the fact that they're mothers, I think it's a really important

conversation to have. I don't think before this trial, I don't think I realized how, prevalent postpartum mental health issues were, I believe this statistic is something along lines of 80% of all women will get some form of baby blues, as they call it, mild depression. One in seven women get postpartum depression. One to two of every 1,000 births are expected to have some sort of postpartum psychosis, which obviously can be dangerous, but is also treatable. and is temporary, according to the experts. So I don't think I realized how big it was until this trial. And that's, again, largely due to the fact that we don't talk about it.

We're not educated about it. I was astonished to learn that there is more information given to new parents about sudden infant death syndrome, which everyone knows of, right? Everyone can talk about that. Then there is about postpartum mental health issues. and postpartum mental health issues are actually more common than sudden infant death syndrome.

Yet somehow they're taboo and I think that's largely because of our expectations of what mothers are supposed to do. It was really hard to report on this, yeah. It was hard to think about what the family is going through, watching her former husband testify,

watching the grandparents who lost their grandchildren testify. There was such a volume of information about medical issues and legal issues that it was difficult to try to sort them all out and then all the emotional issues. It was, yeah, it was very difficult

to try to stay even-toned and all of this and try to feel like you were being as comprehensive as you could be and tell people the story. Lindsay Clancy's attorney went on national television after the mistraw was declared

and said that perhaps President Trump could pardon Lindsay Clancy. Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she's been through, and consider a pardon. That's really not possible. The president would not be able to pardon in a state case.

So it was an interesting suggestion on the part of defense attorney Kevin Reddington. The president has commented on the case that it was a sad case. It's a terrible situation. Look, she did a horrible, horrible thing. Can't be worse. I'm sure that Kevin Reddington knows that the president is not able to pardon a defendant in a state murder case. That would be up to Governor

Mori Healy. It's in the middle of right now the court case, so there's no existing conviction. I don't have authority to consider anything. I think that if you can generalize it all,

I think that some of the right-wing activists and the more conservative activists very much believe that Lindsay Clancy should be convicted a first-degree murder. And they think that she admitted to killing her children and she should go to prison.

I'm almost worried about mentioning this because I don't want to give them the oxygen, but the right-wing activist, Jake Lang, showed up outside the Plymouth Courthouse and with a sign saying, we used to burn witches at the stake in Salem. and he said that Lindsay Clancy was a possessed demon and should be burned at the stake.

More conservative commentators have said that there's nothing less than prison time that Lindsay Clancy should get and women should not, or anyone really, should not say that their mental health caused them to commit a crime so gruesome. So I do think that that is a big part of the debate. I think other people, those on the other side,

say that this is a woman who really was struggling to get care for her mental health, knew how to get care, understood that she was having a mental health crisis, and was not able to get appropriate care despite her best efforts. And so it's just polarized. It's incredibly divided. We're waiting for Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz to make a decision. I'm going to be meeting with our team, and we will address this case further at the appropriate time in the context of an official court proceeding.

It's quite interesting, you know, if you want to talk about him. He's the only Republican district attorney of the state's 11 district attorneys. He's running unopposed in November. He's been DA since 2001 for 25 years. He's a tough on crime prosecutor. All of those things are really interesting as we consider what he is likely to do in this case. And if the district attorney does go with lower charges, anything less than first degree, that would not require a jury. The case would only have to go before a judge who could mandate some kind of mental health treatment rather than prison time here.

So it's all up to the DA, and there's a status hearing on the case scheduled later this month. We'll talk more about the political landscape in which the case exists going forward and what might happen to Lindsay Clancy next. That's in our next episode. This episode was reported and voiced by me, Deborah Becker. It was produced by Ben Brock Johnson, Samata Joshi, and Amy Gorell, editing by Dave Shaw. Other editorial guidance from Elizabeth Harrison, sound design by Paul Vigas. Thank you.