Hidden True Crime - FILICIDE: Lindsay Clancy and Lori Vallow Daybell. What leads a mother to kill her children?

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Starting point is 00:02:21 See Verizon.com for details. We are going to be discussing a sensitive topic, so I want to tell people beforehand. we are going to be talking about philicide. I always have questions for Dr. John about filicide. Clearly, we have been covering the Daybell case from the very beginning and we plan to cover the trial in April. And that's also a case of filicide, a mother taking her children's lives. I want to say that up front.

Starting point is 00:02:49 The reason that this came up was because of a case many of you know about that happened just last month, where three young children were killed by their mother. Why don't I share the summary of this case? And we'll go from there. We have some great questions, and we'll start. For those that are not as familiar with the case out of Massachusetts, it was the evening of January 24th, and police arrived at a home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. It's about 30 miles outside of Boston.

Starting point is 00:03:26 Patrick Clancy called 911 because his wife had tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a second story window of their house. Some media reports implied that she had she had slashes on her wrists and neck, but I've only read that in a couple of places. 32-year-old Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse who was on leave from work and her husband Patrick was attending to her and their young children. He left only briefly to pick up some takeout for dinner. 32-year-old Lindsay Clancy, a mother of three, and this labor delivery nurse, survived the suicide attempt. When police arrived at their Cape Cod style home, they found the couple's three young children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan

Starting point is 00:04:12 unresponsive. Lindsay is now charged with strangling all three of her children before attempting to take her own life. She is charged with two counts of homicide. She's yet to have been charged in Callan's death, that's the youngest, the eight-month-old, but he survived for two days before is coming to his injuries, so she's been charged right now with two counts of homicide. While I was horrified when I learned about this, the day after, the morning after it happened, as the days went on and more has come out, this case started to affect me, and I had to ask Dr. John, Dr. Bade. I read the GoFundMe to John.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Was it last week, John? When was it? Earlier this week. It was earlier this week. It's been a long week. Yeah, it was earlier this week. And I got emotional reading it to John, reading the words of Lindsay's husband, Patrick.

Starting point is 00:05:11 It was written just days after losing his children. And I'm going to read some of that here. I feel like we need to share this before talking about this case. So this is written by Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's husband and the father of the three children he lost on January 28th. That would be four days after he lost his three children. A lot of people have said they can't imagine, and they're right, there's absolutely nothing that can prepare you. The shock and pain is excruciating and relentless. I'm constantly reminded of them, and with a little sleep I get, I dream about them on repeat. Any parent knows it's impossible to understand how much

Starting point is 00:05:52 you will love your kids until you have them. The same goes for the devastation of losing them. They were the essence of my life and I am lost without them. My family was the best thing that ever happened to me. I took so much pride in being Lindsay's husband and a dad to Cora, Dawson, and Callan. I always reminded myself that each day with them was a new gift. Callan usually woke up up first and would rest his head on my shoulder for a few minutes as he adjusted to morning. Dawson typically sing or spoke his thoughts out loud for a while before we'd go get him. Cora was a big girl and would simply walk downstairs. I can still vividly picture her coming into the living room each morning with her hair

Starting point is 00:06:34 a mess, smile on her face. We always started our days together reading books, cuddling up on the couch and playing with the magnet tiles. I loved taking them places. whether vacationing skiing out on a boat or at Duxbury Beach, one of our favorite places on earth, they gave me purpose and I never took it for granted. There is now a massive void where that purpose once was. I want to share some thoughts about Lindsay.

Starting point is 00:07:01 She's recently been portrayed largely by people who had never met her and never knew who the real Lindsay was. Our marriage was wonderful and grew stronger as her condition rapidly worsened. I took as much pride in being her husband as I did in being a father and felt persistently lucky to have her in my life. I still remember the very moment I first laid eyes on her and can recall how overcome I was with the kind of love at first sight you only see in movies. It really did not take long before I was certain I wanted to marry her. We said I love you to each other multiple times daily as if it were a reflex. We habitually started every morning with a passionate hug, yielding a sigh of relief like we had received each the perfect medicine.

Starting point is 00:07:49 If too much time passed without a hug, she looked at me and asked, did you forget? We mutually understood the reality that people can have bad days, but we stuck to the rule that when one of us got lost, the other was always there to bring them home. Always. She loved being a nurse, but nothing matched her intense love for our kids and dedication of being a mother.

Starting point is 00:08:14 It was all she ever wanted. Her passion taught me how to be a better father. I want to ask all of you that you find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay as I have. The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone, me, our kids, family, friends, and her patience. The very fiber of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find people. peace. I promise that I'll put all of my energy into healing and rediscovering my purpose. I owe that to all of you, Duxbury, Fire, and Police, our compassionate healthcare workers, our local faith leaders,

Starting point is 00:08:51 especially to Cora, Dawson, and Callan. I don't know how or when I'll be able to do it, but your love and generosity will help me get started. I know that love always wins. Cora Dawson and Callan, you gave me so much in your short time here. I don't know if the pain will ever go away, but I'll do my to carry on in your honor. Data loves you so much and will always remember you with love and endless gratitude. I've never read a GoFundMe like that. One thing, though, that I noticed in the GoFundMe or John and I both noticed was that he mentioned a condition she suffered from, Lindsay suffered from.

Starting point is 00:09:26 So we know today, though, now, news came down just today. According to Lindsay's defense attorney, Lindsay's defense attorney did interviews with both the Boston Globe as well as the Boston Herald. And the defense attorney for Lindsay states that she had been seeking help for a long time for postpartum mental health issues. The attorney says that she was overmedicated on 13 different psychiatric drugs since Callan's birth eight months previously. So October to 2022 until now 13 different psychiatric drugs. And a judge has officially granted a motion for a forensic psychologist to assess Lindsay before her. her arraignment, I believe, which is Tuesday. These are a few statements from her defense attorney.

Starting point is 00:10:12 The effects of those drugs and her fragile and emotional state after giving birth to her third child returning her into a zombie. It's over medication, absolutely over medication, possibly with a component of postpartum depression. That's what Kevin Redington, the defense attorney, stated. She has medical care and treatment on a regular basis. And her husband was very proactive in trying to protect her and help her with the doctor's medication she was prescribed. They went through hell and they did not come back. It is absolutely staggering. Reddington told the Herald, referring to the drug cocktails that he said rested impulse control away from Lindsay. She had homicidal and suicidal ideations. She was in a living hell and the husband did the best he could. End quote from Redington. I just felt like

Starting point is 00:11:07 We needed to set the stage with that summary and that recent news that came out today from the defense attorney. John and I did reach out to our hidden gems to let them know about tonight's discussion. And we have some questions. I have the first one from Millie. Millie's question for Dr. John concerns altruistic philicide. She asks, does altruistic filicide ever factor into postpartum cases? I think the short answer is yes. But in order to answer that question, I think we need to back up a little bit and talk about the different types of philicide and how researchers have seen philicide.

Starting point is 00:11:46 The predominant category, this is from, I'm referring to a textbook here that I think is one of the best textbooks on, it's called Domestic Homicide Patterns and Dynamics. It's by Liam and Conrad. It's an excellent textbook for all things related to essentially homicides. that revolve around families. So their first main category of philicide is what they call pathological. And then there's there's a few subtites under the pathological category. But pathological filicide is essentially driven by psychopathology. In other words, mental illness.

Starting point is 00:12:26 Their belief supported by their research is that most phyllisides are driven by severe psychopathology and more specifically by severe depression. and or psychosis, oftentimes the pathological category for philocyte, most of the philocides are committed by biological mothers in this category. In the category of pathological philicide, which again is related to severe mental illness, usually some type of depression, severe depression or severe psychosis is what they call the altruistic category. So this gets to Millie's question. What is altruistic filicide. Altruistic filicide is filicide that attempts to alleviate the real or imagine suffering of the victims or children, obviously, if we're talking about filicide. Altruistic suicide is an

Starting point is 00:13:18 interesting category because I think there's some overlap typically with some of the other categories, but they also mentioned, Liam and Kornstadt mentioned that they prefer not to call it altruistic philicide. They prefer not to call it that. They call it pseudo-altruistic filicide because obviously the victim benefits in no way whatsoever. It's the perception of the perpetrator that is perceived to be altruistic and not altruism towards the victim because the victim clearly would not perceive that act as being favorable. So they clarify that point.

Starting point is 00:13:53 I think it's interesting to think about altruistic suicide. If we talk about somebody like Lori Daybell, for example, who believed, I think, at some level that her children were going to go to the New Jerusalem, and she perceived her kids to be zombies. So since they were zombies, and since they were suffering a great deal of zombies, there's an altruistic component to that. She believes that they're going to be happier and safer in the afterlife and the New Jerusalem. So I think Lori Daybell tends to fit this category to some degree. And there's another interesting component. As long as we're talking about Lori Daybell, I should mention that in this category, there's actually an over-representation of males,

Starting point is 00:14:36 specifically boys that have disabilities and more specifically, sometimes males, boys with autism, and JJ was autistic. And we saw this with Lori in the sense that Lori was complaining about how busy, how energetic JJ was at the end. And he was climbing on cabinets and creating kind of behavioral problems. And you have to wonder if at some level that was a part of this. I think the altruism wasn't just geared towards this idea of sparing them from being zombies. I think there's always more to it. And I think at least in the case of JJ and Tiley even to some degree too, Tiley was perceived as being a bit of a rebel and causing problems for her. And so I think in some ways that could be part of this too,

Starting point is 00:15:27 that although, again, I would refer to it as pseudo-altruism, but perhaps Lori had the perception that JJ's behavioral issues would be resolved if she murdered him. Or Tiley's rebelliousness and anger towards life would somehow be resolved

Starting point is 00:15:44 if she murdered her. With Lori DeBell, this idea of altruism is complex, and there's multiple levels to it. So I'm throwing that out there to show that this idea of altruistic filicide can be fairly complex. And of course, there's a story of, there can also be, I think, a sacrificial component to altruistic filicide in the sense that you do it for a greater good.

Starting point is 00:16:08 So in other words, like the story of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac was never sacrificed, but the goal was to appease God and to show God that Abraham, we wanted to show God that his true alliance was with God and not with the material world. the physical world. So there's an altruistic component, I think, oftentimes to sacrifice. And we know Colby had talked to me many times about the fact that his mother would often talk about that story. And so you have to wonder, again, adding to the complexity of this category, I think there's a question here about whether there's a sacrificial component. When we talk about Lori now, I think there's this idea that she wanted to alleviate their pain because they were zombies that perhaps

Starting point is 00:16:55 she perceived her children as being unhappy because they were somewhat rebellious and or disabled. And finally, perhaps there's a sacrificial component that has some biblical roots, which is consistent with her religious beliefs. So I think this idea of altruistic philocyte is complex. And oftentimes it can go hand in hand with the other category we're going to talk about, which is also a form of pathological philocyte, but it's one of the subtypes, which is the psychotic category. Well, I have a lot of questions, especially when it comes to Lori Dayball, because, and I see that Kay's case here, Kay Woodcock, JJ's grandmother, those new to the Daybell case,

Starting point is 00:17:38 Kay Woodcock is the one who sounded the alarm that JJ was missing, and that's when people learned that JJ and Tiley were both missing and how the media heard word of this tragic case. She's here with us tonight. I definitely don't put Lori in the same category as I'm now putting Lindsay Clancy. And I want to talk about that. But before we do, I think this might be a good time if we're on that topic. We received an incredible comment on our Patreon, patreon.com slash hidden true crime,

Starting point is 00:18:10 one of our community members there. Could I share that, John? Sure. This is from Beth Weber. And she left this on one of our Patreon. podcast episodes about Matthew Coleman, a father who killed his children that we've also covered. And she writes about that. So this was a couple of months ago. She has given me permission to read this today. She wrote this back in July of last year. This reminds me of Andrea Yates and sadly of myself.

Starting point is 00:18:42 You ask, why does this keep happening? I can only share my own experience, but maybe this will shine a little light. I was a pastor's wife in a very high demand, fundamental version of Christianity. In these circles, there's a lot of pulpit time given to teaching how Christian mothers should raise godly children. I took notes, read books, listened to Christian teachers, but I failed. My children in no way resembled the image I was given of a godly child. I know now that I was not a failure, that there was nothing wrong with my children, but I was overwhelmed. I needed support. The only place I knew to turn for that support was my high demand religion. What I received was instruction and more instruction, and I never found the peace and joy what was promised to me as a Christian mother.

Starting point is 00:19:37 And then horrifying thoughts started. Maybe it would be better to send my children to heaven while they were still innocent. If I continued to fail them in such a huge way, I would be duming them to hell. I love them too much to ever let my children be tormented for eternity in hell. Thankfully, I was horrified at my thoughts. I never harmed my children or myself, but I did live with a deep-seeded belief of failure for a long, long time. I received treatment for anxiety and depression, and I slowly moved out from under the high demands of my religion. I know my account is similar to Andrea Yates. When I hear of parents killing their young children,

Starting point is 00:20:22 I wonder how many are suffering from unrealistic expectations of themselves and their children. I wonder in searching for how to deal with the overwhelm that sometimes is parenting, they turn to sources that only feed their anxieties. Per-fringed teaching and even not so fringe with deeply troubled parents, I believe that's a dangerous recipe. I just felt the wispy fingertips of this darkness and it greatly, greatly scared me. And I want to thank Beth for that comment when she left it in July. Both John and I were very grateful for her story.

Starting point is 00:21:01 Just when you were talking about sacrifice, she literally mentions this idea of sacrificing her children so they wouldn't suffer in hell. Yeah, and I think that gets into, that story gets into maybe multiple types of philicide or potential philocyte. Thankfully, she didn't harm her children. But having a child is very stressful. And I think it can upend, sometimes it can upend their expectations of how we are as parents. And this idea of perfectionism, I think, comes into play too. That if parents have this idea that they have to be perfect parents, then they're probably going to be deeply disappointed at some point because it's whatever those expectations were prior to children

Starting point is 00:21:46 often get challenged once we have kids. And in addition to all the other stressors of work and spouses and whatever else is going on our lives, just having a child in and of itself is very stressful. And so I think for some parents, they're just not prepared for. that there are a lot of questions and include mine in this though about how again lindsay is is not lorry valo i think in some ways lorry valetabell this seems like a completely separate thing to me we've we've heard things about lorry's past and the way she mothered and and the way that she just didn't seem to have emotion in a lot of places how she manipulated people while there are some similarities tell me how they're different

Starting point is 00:22:34 I'm not trying to compare Lori Valo-Daybell to Lindsay Clancy. In fact, the reason why we're talking about Lindsay Clancy is to show the differences in phyllicide, types of phyllisides. So I haven't gotten there yet, but so I was going to jump into the psychotic category. And this is the category where psychosis drives behavior. So this would be postpartum depression. This would be more severely postpartum depression. This is the category that Lindsay Clancy seems to land in much more than Lori Daybell.

Starting point is 00:23:11 Lori Daybell, that's why I talked about her in terms of the altruistic category of Philicide because she seems to fit that category. Lindsay Clancy seems more clearly to fall into this other category of psychotic filicide. So what are some of the underlying elements that lead to postpartum psychosis? typically or postpartum depression, both of those. Typically those would be a mood disorder with psychosis, possibly some previous history of schizophrenia, and the final one is drug-induced psychosis.

Starting point is 00:23:48 You just mentioned that the attorney said that she was taking 13 different medications for suicidal and homicidal ideation. It's certainly not hard to imagine that there's drug-induced psychosis going on. Is this a postpartum? Is this a drug-induced psychosis? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:24:06 There's so many elements here to try to tease out. It's really hard to know. It could be that it started as some type of postpartum depression, and then she was medicated and over-medicated, and she had some suicidal and homicidal ideation. So they threw more meds at her, and now she's in a drug-induced psychosis

Starting point is 00:24:25 in addition to a postpartum psychosis, and I think that's what the attorney is really suggesting, here is that this is a mess. This is a mess that wasn't a mess initially, but because of over-medication and because of underlying postpartum issues, this becomes a real problem, and it eventually leads unfortunately to the tragic outcome. So I'm not suggesting that Lori Daybell is in any way similar to Lindsay Clancy. In fact, I'm saying the opposite. I think it's fair to say that Lori Daybell did not have postpartum depression. So whatever is going on with her, did she have mental health issues? Yeah. Or was she on medications because she thought she was a superior

Starting point is 00:25:12 bean, right, that she had translated bean. So she wasn't taking medication either. So right, no postpartum, no medication for Lori Valo Daybilt. Right. Exactly. So I'm, I think, and when we talk about, if we talk about somebody like Andrew Yeh, actually that's interesting. She's a very interesting case in the sense that I think you have both the altruistic component and the postpartum component. So I think with Andrew Yeats, you actually see some combination there that there was a psychiatrist, a forensic psychiatrist, who actually testified for her defense, who pointed out essentially that she was, she was killing the children because she didn't want to be, she didn't want to be condemned to

Starting point is 00:26:00 how forever and experience eternal damnation for her children. And so the psychiatrist that was testifying, his name was Resnick, Philip Resnick, he saw those as delusional. And he saw that delusion as being driven by psychosis. So he essentially, he didn't say why. I would interpret that a little bit and say that sometimes religious beliefs, especially extreme religious beliefs, they help. explain the psychosis. So when people are experiencing psychosis, sometimes they don't know what's going on.

Starting point is 00:26:36 They're lost. And they have to grab onto something. They want to grab something that grounds them. And so religion becomes a possible way to ground them. So what's going on is the psychosis is creating a fractured cell. The self is falling apart. It's disintegrating. And so instead of saying, oh, I'm experiencing psychosis, what happens is, in cases like Andrew Yeats, somebody will latch on to religious beliefs to feel grounded and to say, see, this isn't psychosis, this is God talking to me. The religious beliefs, in other way, in other words, become a way to minimize the psychosis and to help the person feel more grounded.

Starting point is 00:27:20 Unfortunately, it's still psychosis in the sense that they're becoming more divorce from reality. So those religious beliefs don't really help in terms of stemming or preventing the violence. They're not going to do it. In fact, they might contribute more to it because in Andrea Yates' case, by becoming more extreme in her beliefs, she's more likely to harm the children because she thinks the children are going to be condemned to eternal damnation. Okay. Which is what Beth, our, our gem also stated was that she kept seeking help in her high demand religion, which was making it even worse, rather than seeking help with mental health experts or seeing it as a mental health issue. She thought that she needed to become a better mother and kept turning.

Starting point is 00:28:18 Right. I don't think that, right. I don't think that Beth experienced psychosis in the sense that Andrew Yates did or Lindsay Clancy. So I think, I don't, you know, it seems like there's a little bit of religion in Lindsay Clancy's beliefs, but it's not clear. We just don't know enough about her at this point. But the psychosis is definitely prominent. It's a salient feature of what was going on there. And, you know, the attorney makes it clear that this is, it appears to be some combination of drug-inducing.

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Starting point is 00:30:01 There was a story about how a priest sat with Patrick Clancy the following morning, and they do seem to have a close-knit religious community. So we do know that they were faithful people, but right, that's all we know right now, as far as their religious background goes. There's a forensic psychologist. His last name is McKee. He wrote a book called Why Mother's Kill. And he has, he also has a series of categories for philocyte that he's used.

Starting point is 00:30:30 I've talked about him in our podcast before when we were talking about the Dayball case. You can read his book if you want to get into the minutia of, he made these arguments. These categories are much more detailed than I'm going to talk about. But I think it might be helpful, too, to talk about some of his ideas. to make distinctions between Lori Daybell and Lindsay Clancy. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving.

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Starting point is 00:33:45 Males who tend to kill their children tend to often have some antisocial qualities, not surprisingly. They also tend to be step-parents more than biological parents, and they tend to harm older kids. It's much less likely that a male committing suicide will harm a younger child. So a child typically under the age of 10 or 8, usually the male will not, men will not kill younger kids as much as women and specifically biological parents or biological mothers. But McKee's categories are, his first category is the detached mother here. He sees this as a bonding issue. He sees this is related to probably some type of insecure attachment or maybe even a rejection of the child. So mothers in this case are just, they're just not bonding with the child.

Starting point is 00:34:39 They're very detached. So there's no investment in the child, and they're more likely in that sense to harm them. Then he has the category of what he calls the abusive slash neglectful mother. These are mothers that are either excessively violent towards their kids. So in other words, they're stern disciplinarians that use a great deal of force to discipline their children or they're their opposite. They use no, they're completely neglectful. They have, there's no discipline. They don't look after their kids at all.

Starting point is 00:35:07 they don't feed their kids. So like this is extreme neglect. They just don't care about their kids that much. The third category is what he calls the psychotic depressed category. This is the category that involves mental illness. So this is the category we just talked about where it could be postpartum depression, psychosis. It could be, it's the mental illness category.

Starting point is 00:35:29 So typically these mothers are severely mentally ill in some way. His fourth category is what he calls the retaliatory category. The goal here is to punish other people for interfering in the relationship. So this category is not as prominent. There's not as many mothers that fit this category, but the goal is to retaliate against others if they're perceived to interfere with the relationship. And this would be a classic example of this would be the famous story of Medea who murdered her two children because her husband, Jason, was unfaithful.

Starting point is 00:36:07 she wanted to get back in him. She wanted to punish him. That's sometimes called the Medea complex. It's not super common, by the way. Usually you'll see men. You'll see males engage in the Medea complex more than women. And the final category that McKee talks about is the psychopathic category. And the goal here, as the word implies, he's not talking about mothers that are straight psychopaths,

Starting point is 00:36:32 but he's talking about mothers that are more exploitative and they're more self-absorbed and they're more narselytive. and they're more narcissistic, and so therefore, they're more focused on themselves and their needs than their children. If you look at McKee's categories, again, I think there's big distinctions there between Lori DeBow and Lindsay Clancy that I think Lindsay Clancy more clearly fits the mental health or the psychotic slash depressed category. And Lori, Lori DeBow would tend to fit the fifth category, which is more psychopathic, that she's more exploitative, she's more manipulative.

Starting point is 00:37:06 So again, I think these categories that McKee talks about are useful in terms of understanding how to really make sense of philicide. That does help me better understand the differences. It's an important point, too, that there's no one specific way of assessing filicide. There's different typologies, there's different research, and that's typically true in social sciences in general, that filicide, like so many human problems and so many issues around criminality, is kind of. complex and there's no one specific way of assessing it that's the absolute truth or the way that it should be assessed. There's multiple ways of perceiving it. One of our listeners, Angie writes, are there warning signs to where you know this is likely? And what can you do or who would you call if you are concerned of a possible problem?

Starting point is 00:37:59 I have to say that the biggest warning sign is always going to be some type of suicidal or homicidal ideation. In the case of Lindsay Clancy, it appears, and again, we don't know, but it appears that there was some type of suicidal or homicidal ideation before any of this occurred. And before, as the drugs were increased, as their medication was escalating, it appears that that continued. And so that was obviously a big red flag. That's a massive warning sign. If somebody's having homicidal ideation about harming their kids, we need to take that. obviously we need to take that really seriously. I don't know why somebody didn't intervene. I mean, I don't know who knew that information and I don't know how severe it was. And obviously somebody assessed

Starting point is 00:38:44 the risk of that and decided that there wasn't sufficient risk that she needed to be hospitalized, but somebody definitely could have intervened, I think, at some point. And I will probably learn more about that as this case develops. But yes, the warning signs. Another warning sign would be psychosis that's overly severe. So Andrea Yates, after her fourth child, she attempted suicide and she fell into a very significant, a very severe psychosis after her fourth child. And she was put on anti-sacotic. She did well with that. Her risk was mitigated to some degree, which is, by the way, why she felt like it would be okay to have a fifth child. Andrew Yeats is an example of someone who did well with treatment and was able to effectively reverse

Starting point is 00:39:29 or at least improve her suicidal idea. I don't know where she was in the end with that, but she did better. And, you know, another important point about postpartum depression is once you've had it, your risk of having it again go up dramatically. There's about a 25 to 50 percent relapse rate or reoccurrence rate. So if you've had it once, you're more than likely going to have it again, and oftentimes you're going to get it worse. I know with Andrew Yates, she had a history of it, and it was especially bad after her

Starting point is 00:39:58 fourth child, but she still decided to have a fifth child in spite of that, in spite of the risks, and we obviously know what happened there. It was after her fifth child that she fell into postpartum psychosis and ended up killing her kids. Lindsay had postpartum psychosis was going to a five-day inpatient. She wanted to do it, and her patient's insurance denied it. She knew something was wrong and asked for help. Lisa Byers, I saw your comment too. She said she tries to get help for her son, and it's difficult, and the system is broken.

Starting point is 00:40:30 It's hard. You know, on that issue, so if somebody is talking about harming their children or harming themselves and it's taken seriously, insurance really shouldn't matter. I mean, I know it does. I know the reality of the world is that people don't want to admit someone in inpatient treatment without insurance. But I don't know Boston that well, but there have to be other options. That if that's taken seriously, it's not about insurance. There's going to be ways to get the state involved or there's going to be other. avenues, I think, to find inpatient treatment that may not be the treatment that she anticipated,

Starting point is 00:41:06 but I've been in the mental health field for many years, and I don't know of any mental health providers that when they hear a mother is seriously going to harm their children, that they're not going to do something about that. Now, they may not, they may assess the risk as being lower, that perhaps she just has ideation and she's not going to act on it. She had no history of violence. She had, as far as I know, she had no history of suicidal. attempts. You know, I don't, I don't know the details, but I do think that it's possible someone in that scenario miscalculated. Let's just say that. And as some people have mentioned, her husband was only gone 25 minutes too, which is just heartbreaking. Right. There was a very small window. That indicates

Starting point is 00:41:51 that she was very intent upon carrying out those actions. Another question we have, Becky, Sheet asks, would you please ask the knowledgeable Dr. Matthias, what is the difference in postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis? I think it's a good question. There's something called postpartum blues. And the way mental health folks call it or providers I know, they call it the baby blues. There's something called the postpartum blues, which you had. And most women, 80%.

Starting point is 00:42:21 So by most estimates, the prevalence rate of postpartum blues or baby blues, is about 80% of mothers experiencing it after some time in a reasonably small window after getting birth. The vast majority of women who give birth have this. They have the baby blues. And typically symptoms will abate fairly quickly. They won't last for more than a few days. But some will go on.

Starting point is 00:42:48 In the women who continue to have symptoms for, let's say, up to four months, which is roughly 10% of those 10%, they will, then experience postpartum depression. The 80% then goes down to roughly 10%. I believe, by the way, that to get to postpartum depression, it's more than just hormonal. There's some evidence indicating that there might be some past history of depression or past history of anxiety or mental illness that contributes to postpartum depression. The numbers drop dramatically as time goes by, but roughly 10% will experience postpartum depression. And then if things get really severe, you can move into postpartum psychosis. And the numbers there are roughly one or two women out of a thousand.

Starting point is 00:43:31 Postpartum psychosis is fairly rare. It can be the final stop from baby blues to something very severe on the continuum. Another question is from Lisa Anderson. And she asks, Dr. John, do you think that someone who is mentally ill with psychosis can knowingly commit a crime? Do they know what they are doing is wrong when it is happening? That is a great question. Thank you, Lisa, for that question. Can someone who is mentally ill with psychosis knowingly commit a crime?

Starting point is 00:44:05 Do they know what they are doing is wrong when it's happening? The short answer is yes. You can be psychotic and still know and still be held responsible for the crime. This gets into the insanity plea a little bit. To qualify for the insanity plea, essentially, you have to be unaware of the consequences of your action and you have to be, you have to lack an understanding that your actions are wrong. So in other words, you don't really understand the moral consequences of what you're doing, essentially. There's different levels of psychosis

Starting point is 00:44:36 and psychosis oscillates too. It's not a, it's not just one level. It has ups and downs and there's different types of psychosis. So you can be psychotic and still have some awareness that what you're doing is wrong. you still have some capacity with psychosis to plan. Again, Andrew Yates might be a good example of that, you know, that she was considered to be psychotic. And actually the, she was initially convicted of murder and then that, that conviction was overturned on appeal. And then she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. And she's now in a mental institution or state hospital, I should say. So that's dealing with her mental health issues and not, she's not being treated as a murderer per se anymore.

Starting point is 00:45:20 She, I think, is an example of someone who could be psychotic, and at least initially, a jury believed that she understood the legal ramifications of what she was doing. She was able to plan her actions. She knew she was going to strangle her kids. You know, there's different types of psychosis. And so it's a case-by-case situation. You can be psychotic and still, I think, be held accountable for your crimes. Which, getting back to Lori Daybell, you know, that's an interesting issue, right? that the defense is trying to figure out, I think, what to do with her mental health issues and how to address them.

Starting point is 00:45:55 And actually, it seems now like based upon the recent motion that there will not be an expert witness testifying on her behalf for her mental health issues. So that's an interesting development. The motion seems to indicate that they're not going to argue that these crimes had anything to do with her mental illness. We'll see, right. The state doesn't want the defense to include her mental illness. or her religious beliefs in the defense's argument, the defense is arguing that it's relevant for issues as simple as sentencing or maybe avoiding the death penalty.

Starting point is 00:46:34 But who knows how else they might use that? And again, it's too early, but it seems like they're trying to jump ahead, that it's relevant to mitigation, which is sentencing. You're right. Seems like maybe they want to argue that her mental health issues should disqualify her from the death penalty. they say in their motion that, you know, they believe she's going to be acquitted on all charges.

Starting point is 00:46:53 So maybe it's her relevant if she has mental health issues. But that remains to be seen. Here's a question that jumps into Daybell, Lori Daybell. It's a big question. I'll think he's on these bold questions. And then he's like, let's do a whole podcast episode on this. But we have talked about this a lot in our podcast. She asks, do you think Lori's beliefs were legitimate to her?

Starting point is 00:47:16 or do you think she had plans and pinned her actions on her religious ideas? So she's talking about, let's be, let's clarify too, Lori's religious beliefs, her extreme religious beliefs. Do you think Lori's extreme religious beliefs were and are legitimate because I believe she is still standing by them today? Or did she simply have these plans and did she pin her actions on these religious beliefs? From what I can gather and from understanding her family culture and her upbringing, it definitely seems like she saw her religious beliefs as being legitimate and real.

Starting point is 00:47:56 And she subscribed to those beliefs. She acted on those beliefs. She still seems to adhere to them. Seems to me like her beliefs were pretty solid in her mind and they tended to drive her behavior. However, you know, as I talked about earlier, there does seem to be. potentially some maybe psychotic features to Lori. And I, you know, I haven't seen the, nobody's seen the mental health evaluations,

Starting point is 00:48:23 and we probably won't because they're confidential. But some of the diagnoses have been disclosed. And they might indicate there could be some psychoses, although she has been found competent to stand trial. So that would tend to undermine that belief. But let's assume that there are some delusions or psychotic features. to Lori Daybell. Again, I think there's this, there's this complicated relationship between clinging on to certain beliefs to feel more grounded and to shore up kind of this fractured

Starting point is 00:48:57 self. And I've talked, I've speculated that she might meet criteria for borderline personality disorder, which was also in the psych report well before the murders that's been made public. And in the psych report, the provider talked about was borderline personality disorder or histrionic personality disorder. So again, that would complicate matters because maybe there's some underlying personality issues that, especially borderline, where she feels really fractured and chaotic

Starting point is 00:49:28 and doesn't have a strong sense of self. And again, those religious beliefs would tend to shore that up. They would tend to strengthen her sense of self. Even though her sense of self is in many ways difficult for her to find or to she doesn't have a coherent sense of herself. The religious beliefs give her more of that sense of coherence.

Starting point is 00:49:51 Thank you for that because I do believe that Lori believed her religious beliefs. It's the question that comes up again and again and again. And what's the difference between believing something in delusions? And is she mentally ill? And is she not? But there's a lot more going on. There's a lot more going on with Lori Daybell than simply religious beliefs. and we talk a lot about that in our original podcast, our first season.

Starting point is 00:50:19 We delve deep into Lori Valo-Dabell and deep into Chad Daybell for those who are interested. I mean, we did 17 episodes on digging deep into both of them and their histories. In that sense, too, I think Lori Daibel is much more complex in terms of understanding phylliside than Lindsay Clancy is, although we don't, In fairness, we don't know a huge amount about Lindsay Clancy, so maybe we're jumping the gun here. But it does seem like the postpartum psychosis played a massive role in Lindsay Clancy's in her behavior. And the number of medications she was taking probably played a major role in that as well. And we can't say the same with Lori Bells.

Starting point is 00:51:04 So Lori DeBow is more strictly about beliefs and her extreme beliefs, I think, and this whole idea of altruistic felicide than Lindsay Clancy than her behaviors, then her homicides. Haley Manigold also is asking a great question that we are still figuring out. Hidden True Crime, are you going with

Starting point is 00:51:24 the seasons format? Because we just talked about our first season, the day-bell case. Like a release schedule with a break for a couple months during summer or something. And that's a great question because what we've been doing is we did this first season. And at this time, we haven't labeled it a season, but we've been putting our hidden our lives and making them podcasts, editing them. We are figuring out what to call our seasons. And we definitely, though, are going to be continuing our day bell season. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:51:54 Maybe John has some, maybe John has more of an idea. I don't think there's going to be a lot of breaks. I think we're a little behind on content. We're working on a season with the BTK murders. We're talking about a season with murders around dating apps, and we have a few other ideas we're also working on, and we still have to finish up Daybell. So we have a few episodes that we have sort of left open because of the trial, and ideally we want to complete our last Daybill episode after the trial. We're talking about doing a couple, one on Chad, one on Lori, before the trial,

Starting point is 00:52:35 just to solidify some of our thoughts around the daybell case. So we have more episodes coming on daybell. We have some episodes coming on BTK. And of course, we'll be talking about Kohlberger as we learn more. We're also considering revisiting some of the interviews that I did when it comes to the daybell case, especially as we gear up towards trial season, just revisit those. And I've written an episode, so I guess that's a solid way to say it. Haley, we can't answer all of your questions, but there will be no breaks.

Starting point is 00:53:11 That we can say. We are here. No breaks. We're just, we're trying to get as much content completed as we can. Question from Patrice. She asks, how does it differ when a man commits philicide and a woman commits philicide? Can a man get postpartum depression?

Starting point is 00:53:34 And let's bring up this. case of Matthew Coleman. Matthew Coleman was a surf teacher in California. He taught children. He had two children. A wife took his two young children across the border into Mexico, killed them with a spearfishing gun because of paranoia, and then returned or attempted to return home.

Starting point is 00:53:59 But he was stopped at the border because they were looking for him. Just heartbreaking. So that's a good example, perhaps, of a case where the father. Right. So Matthew Coleman is interesting in the sense that he's a male. So he's a little bit of an outlier in terms of his kids were young. So typically younger children are, they tend to be killed by their mothers. Most men who engage in suicide are usually harming older kids. And most of them have typically, they'll have some antisocial or psychopathic traits. They tend to be violent. some degree, usually, whereas Matthew Coleman didn't have any of that. Matthew Coleman was a surf teacher. He engaged in both types of philosophize that we've talked about tonight, altruistic

Starting point is 00:54:48 and psychotic, I think. Altruistic in the sense that he believed he was killing his children to save the world. He believes his children were alien human hybrids and they were going to destroy the world. So he believed he had to kill them because he was saving the world. So there was an altruistic component. And then there was, I think there was probably, although I don't know, I assume he's going to have some type of mental health evaluation. There does seem to be some psychotic component in the sense that he was laboring under these delusions about his children being these alien human hybrids, and he believed it, and he was committed to it. He's an example of someone who sort of fits both categories and doesn't fit the typical pattern for males who harm their children.

Starting point is 00:55:36 Question. What is the difference between psychosis and schizophrenia type symptoms? A couple people ask this. Kizzerania is a diagnosis in the DSM. Psychosis is just more of a, it's a broad category describing someone who has a break with reality. Psychosis is not a diagnosis per se. it's more of a descriptive category, which suggests that someone who's psychotic is breaking with reality. It's a broader explanation, whereas schizophrenia is a specific diagnosis that has criteria,

Starting point is 00:56:11 five criteria that need to be met, or at least five possible criteria that need to be met in order to receive the diagnosis. We had our first successful book club meeting this week. Thank you, Dr. John. We've had a big week. We had your first book club for January. And for those wondering, you joined that through Patreon, any tier or a YouTube membership, Amethyst and Above. It was a successful, wonderful time.

Starting point is 00:56:41 John talked to everyone. The questions and the discussion in there was really great and it was a really high level. But it's a great place to really interact with some of our listeners. And our community is so smart and so intelligent. and we're just we love our community because I think our community is is really unusual. Let's let's end with this question. Christina asks Dr. John, a forensic psychologist like you, you would testify in a case like this, right, Lindsay Clancy.

Starting point is 00:57:10 You do this in court. So I'm curious. Postpartum, psychosis could go under the insanity plea. This is a tragic case. And maybe we can end with this, John, sharing your thoughts. So the answer is, yes, what I do would allow me to testify in a case. case like this. And postpartum psychosis could, it could qualify for an insanity plea depending on the situation and how severe it is. It certainly helped Andrea Yates. It didn't help her initially,

Starting point is 00:57:38 but on appeal it did. So in the end, it helped her. In terms of Lindsay Clancy, I just don't know enough. My job is always to get as much information as possible. And we're not privy to a lot of insight information on Lindsay Clancy because none has been released and we don't have a lot of sources. We have a ton of sources with Daybell that are confidential sources, but we don't have the same luxury with Lindsay Clancy. So I don't really know enough to know if she would qualify for an insanity plea. I would guess that her attorney is already starting to do some lobbying publicly with talk about the over-medication and seems to me like he's moving in that direction. I think the thing about Philicide that's so difficult to understand is that it's so

Starting point is 00:58:24 counterintuitive that most of us can't imagine harming a child, harming someone who's innocent, and yet these cases are the complete opposite. They involve people that are harming, helpless, innocent children. And it's just, it's so, so difficult from a rational standpoint to understand and to make sense of. And I think, I think that's why there's so much fascination with those side, because it's, in some ways, in terms of, you know, a normal person, it's just, it's just mind-boggling that people could do that. And it's so, counterintuitive. It's important to try to understand it because of the huge ramifications of harming children. I guess maybe that's a plea for more research or more investment on the part of

Starting point is 00:59:09 psychologists into this matter. I mean, we're doing it to some degree, but I think there's room for more knowledge and more research in this area. Thanks, everyone, for being with us tonight. For those that enjoy our podcast. This will be edited in the next few days and we'll share it on our podcast format as well as ad free on patreon.com slash hidden true crime. And for those on our Patreon and YouTube memberships, Amethyst and above, for those that we stated we'd have the book club stream that we did, we haven't shared it yet. It was such a big file. We're having a hard time transferring it over I can edit it. So what should be a fairly simple thing has turned out to be a lot more complicated,

Starting point is 00:59:54 but we are learning and we'll be posting the book club stream, January's book club stream soon. The next book club meeting, somebody asked, is scheduled for February 28th. That's a Tuesday at 6 p.m. Pacific. And do you want to tell them the book? We're reading, John. The book is going to be the examined life by, Stephen Gross. That's G-R-O-S-Z. I may be pronouncing his last name incorrectly. He was an American train psychologist, but he practices in London, and he tends to reflect, to a large degree, my own

Starting point is 01:00:34 approach to clinical work. And I think his book is very readable and accessible and insightful. So it doesn't directly have anything to do with forensic work, but it definitely does indirectly in the sense that a lot of forensic work involves a broader understanding of why human beings do what they do. And he gets to that. So I'm really looking forward to discussing that book with our listeners. And hopefully you guys can get busy reading it before the meeting. Yes. So February 28th, 6 p.m. And we hope to see many of you there. All right, everyone, Have a great Friday night. Thanks for joining us tonight. And we'll see you next week. Good night.

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Hidden True Crime - FILICIDE: Lindsay Clancy and Lori Vallow Daybell. What leads a mother to kill her children?

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