Hidden True Crime - Was This Preventable? A Psychologist Breaks Down the Clancy Lawsuits

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

In January of 2023, Lindsay Clancy took the lives of her 3 young children, before attempting to take her own life. 3 years later, she is being held in a state psychiatric facility, awaiting trial, where her defense plans to argue insanity. Months ahead of her trial, both Lindsay and her husband Patrick have filed civil suits related to the deaths of the children and alleged medical malpractice. Clinical and Forensic Psychologist Dr. John Matthias is here to break down these suits, what they allege, and how they could change her case moving forward. Sponsors: Remi: Go to https://shopremi.com/hidden and use code HIDDEN at checkout for 50% off. Mint Mobile: Get 50% off Unlimited premium wireless—plans start at $15/month at https://mintmobile.com/hidden Miracle Brand: Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made—go to https://trymiracle.com/hidden and use code HIDDEN to claim your free 3-piece towel set and save over 40% off. About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. Hello, Hidden Gems. we have a major update in a very heartbreaking case that we have been following from the very beginning. And we, of course, for those of you watching, see that we have Dr. John with us here to help break down the latest development. So in January of 2023, which actually three years ago last week, Lindsay Clancy, a 34-year-old mother from Duxbury, Massachusetts, allegedly strangled her three young children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan

inside their home. And then after the killings, she cut herself and jumped from her home's second-story window, and that act left her paralyzed from the sternum down. Two of the children died immediately, and then the youngest died later in the hospital. Lindsay Clancy has been indicted on multiple accounts of murder and strangulation for each child's death. She has pleaded not guilty, and her legal team is preparing in insanity or lack of criminal responsibility defense based on her mental state at the time. Her attorneys and family describe a severe psychiatric breakdown, including postpartum mood disorder and psychotic symptoms. And in the months prior to the killings, they argue her actions were the result of

extreme mental illness, not deliberate criminal intent. But prosecutors, well, they say, Lindsay, planned the killings. And they say that because they point to her actions that day, like sending her husband on errands to pick up food, dinner, as well as prescriptions, before the murders, or during the murders, as evidence that she knew what she was doing and planned to kill her three children. Clancy, to this time, three years later, remains hospitalized and appears in court virtually because of her paralysis and ongoing medical and psychiatric needs. The start of a criminal trial has been delayed repeatedly and is currently expected to begin in July of 2026, so later this year. But earlier this month, in addition to criminal

proceedings. Civil lawsuits have now been filed, including a wrongful death suit by her husband, Patrick Clancy, and a lawsuit filed by Lindsay Clancy herself, just two days after Patrick filed his. Bullsuits allege medical negligence and misdiagnosis prior to the incident. And these suits claim that mental health providers misdiagnosed and improperly medicated Lindsay. And that, this is what contributed to her breakdown and this horrific tragedy. And it is such a tragedy. And for those that are interested in our other episodes following this case, you can find the playlist in the description of this episode or on YouTube in pinned comments. But John, you have gone over both suits by both Patrick and Lindsay. And I, I,

I am now curious what you think. This case has, this has affected me from the very beginning. And so when these lawsuits came down, I just felt we really ought to talk about this. Because from so many people have said that she was the best mother, including her husband. And then she did the unimaginable. And the way she did it was horrendous too. strangled them with an exercise band. But what are your thoughts?

Your initial thoughts on these lawsuits? I think I've got a lot of thoughts on this case, but the lawsuits give us a better picture, I think, of what was occurring with her specifically. We've heard the prosecution side, I think, to a large degree, but now we're getting a better picture of her perceptions and her experiences. Yeah. That's true. From a forensic standpoint, you know, I want to start.

I want to lead with something that her husband Patrick said repeatedly. So Patrick in 2024, a little more than a year after the murders, he met with a writer for the New Yorker. apparently he met with him he met with the writer several times and apparently one of the things he said repeatedly was quote i'm going to quote what he said because this really kind of gets to the heart of this case he said quote i wasn't married to a monster i was married to someone who got sick unquote and that view by the way really summarizes almost the entirety of what forensic psychologists try to to discern when they look at cases like this, which is there's this classic distinction between what we sometimes refer to as mad versus bad.

Mad meaning mentally ill, right? Madness, bad meaning basically personality disorders or psychopaths, right? It's kind of the classic distinction between someone who's potentially psychotic and someone who's psychopathic. So someone who has severe mental illness versus someone who has more ingrained personality disorders like antisocial personality disorder where somebody might like a conscience and they might like remorse, those types of things. And so Patrick is really telling you with that quote, this perception, which is he clearly thinks that his wife had mental illness and she was not a monster. And so that also, by the way, speaks to one of the difficulties I think the prosecution

is having with this case, which is they're having a hard time articulating motive. That's true. And the reason they're having a hard time articulating motive is precisely for the reasons that Patrick alludes to, which is that Lindsay was a nurse and she worked with nurses and nurses are for the most part known to be empathic. I mean, there's exceptions in charge. true crime. There's outliers in true crime where nurses are, you know, quite evil, but Lindsay Clancy doesn't appear to fit that category. Most of the people she worked with really respected her. They thought she was a wonderful nurse, very empathic, and a lot of the nurses she worked with actually rallied to her defense after this horrible incident occurred.

So if you're looking for a motive, if you're the prosecutor and you're looking for a motive, and all you have or what you have essentially is a mother who really was invested in her children and who seemed to love her children and she gave everything to her children, right? She seems like she's for the most part a very, very good mother. And the perceptions of all the people around her that surrounded her also believe she was a good mother. that presents a bit of a problem because a psychopath, unless you're just faking it, unless you're pretending,

unless you're putting on a facade, which many psychopaths can do, but a psychopath typically wouldn't be described as someone who would love their kids. So I think that really kind of gets to the heart of this case, that quote by Patrick, and I think that a lot of the forensic evaluators that are going to look at this case,

and by the way, in the lawsuits, in one of the lawsuits in particular, in Lindsay's lawsuits, they've already brought in several psychiatrists and psychologists to evaluate her at this point. So they've already begun the preliminary work of trying to figure out what happened. They're already starting to bring in experts. I'll talk about that a little bit later, but experts are already weighing in on this case and giving their opinions.

And I think that really is a precursor to what we're going to see with this case goes to trial. I think that's probably what this case is going to evolve into, which is experts on both side presenting their case. The prosecution, of course, will present evidence that they believe shows premeditation and planning and deliberation. And however, you know, it's very complicated. I mean, we can talk a little bit more about that, some of the circumstances surrounding this crime, but it's really ambiguous. Most people don't realize how much their personal information

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or just a VPN. Orra gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today atora.com slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. I already have many questions and I want to get into what the civil suits allege. It is interesting that she's had the support of her husband. I mean, I don't know to what extent. I, you know, he lost his whole family. But he's not saying she's a psychopath, you know. He's saying she's sick.

He forgave her fairly quickly. And imagine that for guy. Yeah, he, you know, he forgave her. In fact, why don't I, why don't I read? This is a statement. Yeah, yeah, we'll read that. And then I have question. I just have this question.

Yeah, I'm just trying to set the stage a little bit and present his perspective. I mean, you know, it's interesting because he releases this statement, then he does this interview for the New Yorker. And in that interview, I think he's a little more ambivalent. He's not, he still, he tells the interviewer, I wasn't married to a monster. I was married to someone who got sick. He tells the person that repeatedly, but then I think he's feeling a little more ambivalent in that interview, you know, compared to the statement he put out in the sense that it's becoming clear to him at that point after a year that his children are gone,

that his children were murdered, presumably by their mother. and he's struggling to accept that. And, you know, I think that too gets to the heart of this case in the sense that even if you feel, even if you believe that Lindsay Clancy has serious mental illness and she was in the throes of psychosis when she committed these murders, you still have to grapple with the fact that three children are deceased. Right. and three children were murdered, right? And I think... Innocent children.

Murdered by their mother. Yeah. And we'll talk more about that later. But I mean, this is one of the problems with philocyte is, even if there is the worst type of postpartum psychosis, and you could think of somebody like Andrew Yeats, right? She might be... Well, this is where I wanted to go with my question.

I wanted to pose this question. There's the Andrew Yates. Yates, who seems to get a lot of empathy from people and the majority of human beings seem to truly believe the Andrea Yates suffered from psychosis, postpartum psychosis, and killed her children. And then there are the Diane Downs and the Susan Smiths who, you know, feign love for their children and do the unfathomable. Right. So that's how do you know how do you know which one?

But go ahead with Andrea Yates because yeah, that's, I think the, when you say psychotic or psychosis, is that what we're saying? Psychotic would be affiliated with associated with mental health. Psychopathic would be affiliated with the personality disorder version. It would be a personality issue, right? that if you're, and by the way, that distinction applies to almost every criminal case that a forensic evaluator will confront, that they have to kind of figure out mental health issues versus personality issues. That's a discussion, a long discussion we had about Nick Reiner too, right? I mean, there's similar elements in play here.

So psychotic or psychopathic, right. We've definitely seen. both in the cases we've covered here. And it's also, by the way, a distinction. I was just on a webinar earlier today with Peter Langman, who is phenomenal. I really admire Peter Langman and his research on school shooters and mass attackers. And his research essentially boils down to something similar, too, trying to make that distinction between whether school shooters are more psychotic or more psychopathic. but in one of the that's interesting because in one of the first episodes we did on this case

of lindsay someone wrote in comments and said that school shooters also suffer from mental illness why is it that we give these months they're suffering from postpartum such empathy when we don't with school shooters so that's interesting you just brought that up but i didn't mean to well um I mean, Langman's position, I think Peter Langman's position has changed a little bit. I think Langman is now, at least based on the webinar today, he's moving more in the direction of personality disorders. For school shootings. Driving a lot of, yeah, a lot of school shootings and mass murders as opposed to, sure, there's mental health issues.

but I think he's definitely moved in the direction of personality disorders having a more prominent influence. And by the way, I mean, this would be important to point out, too, you know, that mass murderers and school shooters tend to be most primarily men, males. And with Philicide, which is someone who murders their children, most phyllisides are committed by women and of that group, most of those women are biological mothers. So which maybe we should talk about quickly in terms of the different types of philicide. We've talked,

I've talked about this a bit in the past, but there are different, you know, there's pathological philicide, which is the main type of philocyte. It's mainly biological mothers, killing their kids. Most pathological philocyte involves severe psychopathology.

So, in other words, severe mental illness that is typically either psychosis or major depression. And the categories of pathological philocyte are altruistic murders, which essentially come down to murdering children because, of the belief that there's suffering going on for whatever reasons. An example would be if a child has, say, severe brain damage. And the mother believes that the child's life is going to be negatively impacted and the child can't have a normal life, then they might consider harming the child. That would be considered an altruistic philicide.

There's another type of philicide called an extended suicide. And with, that type of filicide, the child is seen as an extension of the cell. And the child, then, the mother believes that the child is better off deceased. And so the idea there is that the parent typically believes that the child will be worse off without them. So as an extension of themselves, the mother typically wants to take the child with them into death. And so what happens with extended suicide is that the children are murdered and then suicide follows, which is, by the way, right, that's what happened with Lindsay Clancy.

Correct. She tried to harm herself. Yeah. She harms the children and then she tries to take her life. And there tends to be a belief. And I'll talk about that a little later in one of these lawsuits because there's a quote to that extent saying essentially from the medical records. that that's exactly what her goal was. She didn't want her children to suffer because she wasn't around for them.

That's what I was going to ask. Did the suit tell us any bit anymore of her motive? We'll get into motive in a little bit. And hidden true crime, one of our goals is to try to elucidate motive, right? But one of the difficulties of this case is motive is very, very difficult to determine. So, for example, if you say that someone is in the throes of psychosis, severe psychosis, and they don't understand their conduct and their behavior, right, and they can't determine right from wrong, it's hard to determine, under those circumstances,

it's hard to say there's a motive. You say that, I mean, the motive, I guess, yes, it approaches something like a motive in the sense that she believes that her children, if she's going to take her own life, she believes that taking her children with her is going to benefit them because they will have a according, apparently in her presumably psychotic state or delusional state. It seems like they're calling it more psychosis. But in a psychotic state, she has this belief. that her children are going to be worse off without her and therefore they need to follow her into death. But is that a pure motive? I mean, it's not a type of motive that the prosecution is laying out.

No. It's not a motive that's based on premeditation and planning and deliberation. I mean, the prosecution, for example, is saying that her side, Well, first of all, the children are found in the basement. They were killed sequentially, meaning that they were found in different places in the basement, different rooms, different parts of the basement, which seems to show that she took her time to go to each child and to strangle them with the exercise cord. those cords by the way were found still wrapped around their necks when the police entered the home and then she went upstairs and she she tried to harm herself she she cut herself she cut her neck

and her wrists and she threw herself out the window on the second floor which was about 20 feet from the ground she was paralyzed from that but the prosecution based on that the prosecution is arguing. One of their arguments, I think, is that because the, because the killings were sequential, it shows that she had to give this a lot of thought, that it was quite deliberate and that she had to make a decision with each child, with the harm to each child to continue. And then she seemed to have a plan in terms of how she was going to handle this. And then by attempting to harm herself, they presume there's some evidence of guilt because

they're saying perhaps that she did that because she realized or understood what she had done and that it was wrong, right, and immoral because she just took her kids' lives. And now she throws herself off the window because she's guilty or feeling guilty. Did the suit, though, say she heard voices? Yes. That's, we'll get to that. That's the heart of this case. Yeah.

I think that the heart of this case really is her possible diagnoses, the way the medical system handled her case, and whether she was psychotic. Okay. So let's get into the suit then because that was the thing I took away from it. That was for the voices. I'd love to talk about your thoughts on this. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's talk about, yeah, if you want to get into the suit, I'm just going to read her opening here because she kind of lays it out, what she thinks this is. This is from her suit, which was filed. Right. Two days after Patrick's, right? This was filed on January 22nd, 2026.

Okay. And I believe I don't have, Patrick's was filed on the 20th. Yes, so two days later. Her, by the way, her suit is much more detailed. It's much longer. It's more in depth. It's much more detailed. But I just want to pick out parts of it.

but on page one, just her intro, she kind of lays out what, you know, what her lawyer, what her attorney and what she believes. I think this is what you're going to see for a defense, by the way. Okay. She kind of lays out her view of what happened. So, quote, Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do. She recognized something was wrong with her. She sought medical treatment.

She went to emergency rooms. She called crisis hotlines. She admitted herself to hospitals. She took the medications prescribed to her. She communicated her worsening symptoms to her providers. She told them the medications were making her worse. Her husband advocated for her. Her family drove from out of state to help care for her children.

And still, the medical system failed her completely. The defendants, I'm not going to name them, but it's a number of doctors, including a psychiatrist, a nurse practitioner, who were involved in prescribing medication for her. She names them. The defendants each failed to properly diagnose Lindsay's bipolar disorder with postpartum onset and instead subjected her to a disorganized, uncoordinated course of polypharmacy that exacerbated her condition and precipitated a severe psychotic break. Lindsay's clinical course was significantly complicated by polypharmacy and the involvement of multiple prescribers, which, in effect, obscured and accurate diagnosis and appropriate intervention and treatment,

even though Lindsay did all she could to obtain the appropriate treatment. The psychotropic medications Lindsay received appear to have paradoxically exacerbated her underlying psychiatric vulnerability, precipitating a state of manic psychosis characterized by compelling command hallucinations. The tragedy that followed was the direct and proximate result of the defendants' collective negligence in failing to recognize obvious warning signs, coordinate care, properly diagnosed Lindsay's condition, and provide treatment that met the applicable standard of care. Lindsay now faces a lifetime of physical disability, psychological trauma, and the unbearable grief of waking up every day knowing she killed her children, all of which could have been prevented, have the defendants provided competent medical care. That's the heart of her argument. So essentially, she lays it out right there.

Essentially, she was experiencing postpartum anxiety and depression. She was having some problems. She sought as much help as she could possibly get. She hospitalized herself. She went to providers that she trusted. Keep in mind, she's a nurse. So she's putting her faith in a system that she works in. He's putting her faith in a system she's devoted to.

So of course she's going to trust that system. Yeah. And what happens is, They overprescribe all these medications. They don't really coordinate treatment. They don't particularly refer her for therapy. I think she wasn't therapy for a little bit. It wasn't particularly helpful.

She hospitalized herself for self-harming thoughts and behaviors, or at least thoughts, ideation. She sought so much help. She sought so much help. She was hospitalized briefly. and was discharged fairly quickly without really kind of, you know, taking a step backward and trying to evaluate everything that was going on with her. And in the end, according to her, the heart of this or the key to this is that they misdiagnosed her

that she really had, it wasn't postpartum depression, it was postpartum bipolar disorder, that the postpartum depression with the wrong medication triggered her bipeller disorder, which became severe and escalated to the point of psychosis. Also, presumably, some of the medication may have had some side effects related to psychosis. And that, by the way, that is in pathological philicide that I laid out just a little bit ago, the final category of that is called psychotic filicide. And that is that is philocyte that involves psychosis, particularly such as command hallucinations, telling someone to kill the children.

Typically that psychosis can be related to schizophrenia or it can be drug induced or it can be related to a mood disorder, such as bipolar, could be related to a mood disorder in particular with psychotic features, which when mood disorders are very severe, you do typically get or can get psychotic features. So here you have some combination of, they call it poly, polymedication, polypharmacy, right? You've got all these prescriptions she's taking just to list some of these. This is just a partial list of, I just wrote down and going through her lawsuit. some of, she was taking Zolok, Valium, Trazadone, Ativan, Clonopin, Prozac, Syracwell, Lomictal, on and on and on.

All at once? I mean, yes and no. I mean, that's part of the issue. I think that a lot of the prescribers, they weren't coordinating treatment. They weren't coordinating medications. And so it wasn't clear who was doing what, when, and how much she was supposed to take. it was very confusing. I think I think

at some point they reduced her medications down to a fairly lower number, but that's, but it's, this is where this gets very complicated. You don't take medications,

you don't take Prozac for a couple of weeks and then just go cold turkey. Right. And expect the Prozac to disappear the next day. It has a half-life that's much longer. Right. It's not instantaneously out of your system.

This is where the experts are going to come in because all the medication stuff, that's not really my wheelhouse. That's not my area of expertise. So I can't really speak specifically to the drug interactions. But I can speak to the fact that, you know, I always take psychopharmacology training every year. And I, you know, I know enough.

to know what these medications are and their impact. But, you know, how they interact, that's a different issue. But I know I'd have to know that if you're taking this much medication at the same time or around the same time or within a reasonable period of time related to one another, it's going to create problems. Well, you said Prozac. What are all these medications? Did you mention Ambien, too? Ambien.

Yeah, Ambien, right. Yes, I didn't list Ambien. but that was another one, yeah. So you have Ambien. Did you say Syracquel? Am I pronouncing that right? That's antipsychotic. Yeah, right.

Antisicotic. Prozac's for depression. Zoloft, depression, anxiety, valium, you know, tranquilizer, sedative. Cresidone, sleep. Limitil is a mood stabilizer, typically, you know, ironically, typically given for bipolar. But I mean, you can't. Yeah, I can't imagine what that would do to a normal person that was healthy. Yeah, I mean, just it seems to me that, again, I don't know who was talking to whom.

I'm right. This is where the experts are going to come into play. But it seems to me the goal here was just to sedate her. Huh. That's what you think. It seems to me the goal was to sedate her into oblivion so that she somehow wasn't. wasn't as dangerous or she wasn't, right? And, and, um, yeah, so.

So is that what it said, what they said they were trying to do? Or is that just your takeaway? No, they're not going to say that. They're, no, you know, so here, here's a, here's an interesting part of this case. That one of the things that comes out and this, this is emphasized a lot in Patrick's lawsuit. Okay. Is that she has during a lot of this period.

So I'd say it's like November. 2022 until the crime which occurs in January. It occurs on January 24th or 2023. So for a period of about three months, let's say, maybe a little more, maybe four months, but three months for sure, she has this terrible insomnia. She's getting two to three hours. Patrick says three hours. She's getting maximum three hours of sleep at night.

she can't sleep she's agitated she has anxiety right i mean right insomnia in and of itself is going to create a lot of problems if you're not sleeping and you're working and you're raising three kids right it's going to be it's going to be difficult but here here's an important point is that oftentimes insomnia is a red flag this type of insomnia that's persistent and it won't go away is a red flag to other deeper issues, mental health issues, or in this particular case, some type of postpartum psychosis maybe. That doesn't mean that it's, that doesn't mean that you're going to have larger or deeper problems, but typically the insomnia can be a warning sign.

Okay. And I think, you know, in the Patrick lawsuit, he talks about that a lot. And I think it's because some of the practitioners are seen that and they're aware of it. But I don't think they're, they know there's anxiety, they know there's depression, right? They, it seems like they're kind of on the fence with the postpartum part. Some think there is. Some think there's not. I mean, but they're all aware of the insomnia to some degree.

And they're all trying to deal with that. And I think, and the anxiety. And so I think, and when I say they're trying to sedate here, I think for the most part, it's because of those issues. Gotcha. But it's not, unfortunately, they're skipping over the potentially deeper issues going on, right? Which are. Postpartum, potential postpartum psychosis or bipolar disorder.

Right? that some of the experts that have evaluated Lindsay Clancy, I'll read those a little later, but that's where they're going. That's where they went. So I'll just, I'll read just quickly. So this is, again, this is in Lindsay's lawsuit. So she was evaluated by Dr. Spinelli, who is the, I think, a forensic psychiatrist. This is on page 20 in the lawsuit. quote, Dr. Spinelli diagnosed Lindsay with bipolar disorder one, severe with psychosis and anxious distress with postpartum onset. Dr. Spinelli concluded that Lindsay had a baseline bipolar disorder with minimal symptoms after

her second child birth and that her symptoms worsened after her third birth when she was prescribed in antidepressant. So in other words, this is in the lawsuit too. there were some previous postpartum issues. Okay. And one of the things the lawsuit alleges is that most of her providers glossed over that. But her third child, he's eight months old, is the one who really kind of, that's their final child, he's the one who really sparks this potential postpartum.

episode. I'll go on here with Dr. Spinelli's analysis, quote, Dr. Spinelli noted that an antidepressant medication can create manic or hypomanic symptoms and mood instability and one who has a bipolar illness. This is a well-known response for a person with underlying bipolar disorder. So in other words, antidepressants, if it's bipolar, antidepressants are not the correct medications. Dr. Spinelli, I quote, Dr. Spinelli opine that the providers, quote, never seemed to communicate with one another. And that no one ever asked her, Lindsay, to describe the content of her, quote, intrusive thoughts, which were in fact hallucinations, unquote. And that Lindsay was repeatedly given antidepressants instead of a mood stabilizer.

Although, as I pointed out, somebody did, I don't remember which provider, but somebody did apparently prescribe limictal. Another a forensic psychologist. I don't know him, but he's, he does, presumably he does some of what I do. His name is Dr. Paul Zaisal. He conducted extensive clinical interviews with Lindsay and her parents. Dr. Zaisal was the initial forensic expert to engage Lindsay in the immediate aftermath of the incident. On the aftermath. Yeah, apparently. So I don't know who hired him. I presume, I assume that Lindsay's defense team probably hired him.

Sure. So, page 21, quote, Dr. Zaisal concurred with the assessments of Dr. Spinelli and Dr. Philip Resnick. By the way, Dr. Resnick is one of the foremost experts on Philicide. They hired him as well. Dr. Zaiso opine to a reasonable degree of psychological certainty that, quote, Ms. Clancy's clinical course was significantly complicated by polypharmacy and the involvement of multiple prescribers, which, in effect, obscured an accurate diagnosis and appropriate intervention and treatment. Furthermore, the psychotropic medications she received appeared to have paradoxically

exacerbated her underlying psychiatric vulnerability, precipitating a state of manic psychosis characterized by compelling command hallucinations. That's what the experts were saying. Why so many prescribers? You know, as you've pointed out, she's a nurse. She should know, you know, she should actually know people in this,

in the medical field and have access maybe that, you know, some people don't understanding how it works. Why so many prescribers? I think you had a situation where, I think you had a situation where she was receiving medication and she wasn't improving and she was starting to get self-harming ideation. And so I think there was a certain degree of desperation. I think, and maybe there was some impatience on her part, but it seems like I think she just wanted help, I think.

And it's not uncommon that if somebody is helping you and you feel like you're not improving or you're getting worse, that you turn to other providers or you seek help elsewhere. and it's driven by a sense of desperation, a sense of, you know, feeling like you're, the ground under your feet is crumbling. It's falling away and you don't know what to do. And I mean, especially when you start having, if she's having command of hallucinations or self-harming ideation or ideation about harming her children, which she started having,

she tells that to Patrick. she's got to be feeling some desperation. If the thing that you value the most in the world is your family and your children, which by all account she did and does, then it must be really frustrating. It must create a sense of existential dread and frustration to have the thought, the ideation, that you want to harm the thing you love the most. Didn't she at some point self-admit herself to inpatient. Yes. So she's self-hospitalized herself.

Couldn't then they maybe sort of wean her off the medications, get her to a base. You know, and then introduce, you know, one thing, wouldn't that be the time to sort of assess that? I mean. Well, that's one of their complaints. Okay. That's one of their complaints is they didn't. take the time to to try to

coordinate all over care and all our providers and to try to find some common ground among them so that they can all provide input and it might be logical. You say that now. I mean, of course all of this is in hindsight.

Right. Yeah. It's easy to solve this problem in hindsight. That's called hindsight bias, by the way. Or, you know, more typically known as Monday, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking. Like after the game's over, it's easy to say what they should have done. It is. You're right.

But at the time, you know, I don't think it was clear cut. Let me, I'm going to read a little bit more from her lawsuit here. Maybe this will help a little bit with some of your questions. This is November 29th, 2022. Okay. She wants to see a nurse practitioner. Lindsay reported that she was, quote, anxious and frightened about what is happening and that she blamed herself. The nurse correctly considered a bipolar presentation and prescribed Syracill an antipsychotic and mood stabilizer.

After starting Syracille, Lindsay's condition took a dramatic turn for the worse. She developed suicidal ideation and began experiencing what she described as, quote, intrusive thoughts, which were actually auditory hallucinations. The voice said, quote, I will not be the same, I want to die. Lindsay openly communicated her escalating intertermil to her husband, her parents, and her providers. She described her as emotional state as emotionless

and like a zombie attributing this profound, affective blunting to Seroquel. So interestingly enough, I mean, and again, this isn't, you know, medication is not my area of expertise so I don't know what the correct combination here would have been but it's interesting that it appears and you know the trial will have to delve deeper into this issue because I you know but it appears that when the introduction of Syracille actually started it's

it's when she started having command hallucinations so interestingly enough right and antipsychotic or mood stabilizer is having the opposite effect on her. Antipsychotics typically should help blunt any of those auditory hallucinations. But here it seems like they actually initiate those auditory hallucinations. And so this is an example, by the way, is that because of drug interactions? I don't know. But what's interesting about that is when I talk about this sense of desperation, I think just this little passage here shows that.

That she's, right, she's taking medication that's supposed to help her, and it's getting worse. Now she's having command hallucinations telling her to harm herself, and then eventually, shortly after that, telling her to harm her children. So first to harm herself and then it was to harm her children. Yeah. That's so hard for me to. fathom when I haven't had hallucinations, right? So it's just a voice. Was it just a voice telling

her to do this? And why was the voice telling her to do it? There's different theories about what drives auditory hallucinations. Some of it just brain chemistry. Maybe it's brain chemistry, right? That could be a simple explanation. But it's probably more complicated. it might have to do with Freud called it the super ego or the conscience. Like it's it's sort of that that voice in our heads telling us to do things or not do things. Right. It's it's it's I don't know that it's a really complicated question. I think at some level maybe it's a combination of self-talk brain chemistry, right, conscience, all that.

Did she say though what the voice was telling her, Like, did she say, did she give the voice a why? Or did she just say the voice told her to? Let's continue with her. Let's continue. She talks about the voice. This is the heart of her complaint, of her lawsuit. So this is a couple weeks later on January, I'm sorry, this is much later.

This is January, not much later, but a month and a half later on January 16th, 2023. So from the moment she. starts hearing voices on November 29th, things start to escalate. Okay. And her sense of desperation seems to be increasing during this time. On January 16th, 2020, 3, Lindsay was still experiencing debilitating depression. She had to force herself to do anything. The hallucinations continued, quote, you should harm the children.

So this is the voice. quote, you should harm the children. You should give yourself. You will never be the same. The only option is to die. She felt like a zombie. On January 20th, 2023, because Lindsay was having such awful thoughts

and was so numb and emotional as she researched what is a psychopath to see if she was one and whether there was a cure. That's interesting too, by the way. The prosecution, she Googled what is a psychopath. The prosecution actually

said that she googled, she googled, can you treat a psychopath as well? She's literally wondering if she's a psychopathic mother, in other words. Correct. Because, I mean, so the prosecution is going to argue, I'm sure, that if you Google, can you treat a psychopath, the prosecution is to say, the only reason you would Google that is because you think you're our one and you want to know if you can get treatment. Lindsay Clancy, however, is arguing that she's, she's, she's. She's researching this because she's presumably her argument is that she's having these command hallucinations, which are telling her to harm herself and her children, which isn't normal. She recognizes that.

And she wants to know is that something a psychopath would think. Right. Well, isn't it true to actually most psychopaths might not even question if they're a psychopath. It's people that are healthier that may be questioned if they have personality disorder. Right. Yeah. If you're questioning whether you're a psychopath, you're probably not a psychopath. Because most psychopaths don't know their psychopaths and they just do psychopathic things without

knowing their psychopaths, which is to say they harm other people repeatedly. They don't take the time to self-reflect and wonder about themselves as much. Yeah. So this is, this is, this is, this is going to give you a better picture of the voice and what exactly it sounded like and what it said. So this is the day of the incident. On January 24th, 2023, Lindsay woke up severely depressed with suicidal thoughts. The suicidal hallucinations continued all day nonstop. Later in the afternoon, the voice began saying, quote, you should harm the children, unquote. Lindsay thought about dinner and realized she had not prepared anything. She asked Patrick

about takeout. She looked at a map to see how long it would take because she did not want to be alone and she needed help. As soon as Patrick left to pick up the food, there was a loud, demanding, repetitious voice. The voice, by the way, was male. That's interesting too. That is. There was a loud, demanding repetitious voice. Quote, this is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself. And in caps, so she's highlighting this part of the voice. In other words, I presume the caps mean the voice was really loud. In caps, this is your last chance.

You have to kill the kids so you can kill yourself. Lindsay felt a force come over her. Lindsay experienced command auditory hallucinations, a quote, demanding power male voice explicitly ordered her. She felt an overwhelming, irresistible compulsion to comply, entering a dissociative dreamlike state where her physical actions felt utterly disconnected from her conscious volition. She perceived her, quote, body was just acting, unquote, and she was merely, quote, watching herself do it. In other words, there was a dissociative element to this, according to her. She reported that she had, quote,

choice, unquote, but to follow these compelling directives. Lindsay described, quote, I lost all control. My body started acting without any control on my part. I was just following commands, all action. This voice demanded action. Lindsay proceeded to strangle each of her children, uttering, quote, go to God, baby. Following these acts, she undertook a severe suicide attempt. Lindsay consistently maintains her actions were compelled by a hallucinatory voice, not a conscious decision,

expresses profound enduring love for her children. In Patrick's lawsuit, why don't I read a similar version from his lawsuit? This too is from the Day of the Murders. This is on page 12 of Patrick's lawsuit. He says, quote, according to medical records, Lindsay did so. Lindsay, in other words, Lindsay, harmed the children because she, quote, started hearing a compelling,

unrecognizable singular male voice that told her, quote, this is your last chance, and that she had to, quote, take them, her children with her. She also reported that the voices indicated to her that she should die, that this was her last chance, and that her children would suffer if she was gone. Lindsay then cut her wrist and neck and jumped out of the second floor window in her home. she is now paralyzed below the sternum. So those are two accounts of the auditory hallucinations. What's interesting about Patrick's account,

and apparently this is taken for medical records, is the part about that her children would suffer as she was gone, which is a version of extended suicide in terms of looking at different types of philicide. So it seems like... That's sort of a different motive than what hers do to say. Yeah, her argument is that do you have this overwhelming singular male voice directing her to pro mer actions and that she became wrapped up in this voice. It was compelling.

She was in some type of dissociative state. She followed the commands and she followed through on the actions. In Patrick's account, he has a little bit to that, which is, the part about taking her children with her because she didn't want them to suffer. Without her, because she was going to take. Without her, yeah. He was going to self-harm. So that account, by the way, that account makes it slightly more interesting in the sense that that seems like there might be more planning.

Correct. Those are different accounts. Those are different accounts. One of them is a male voice is telling me I have to do this. and so I'm doing it. And the other is sort of murder suicide, which is, since I'm going to take my own life, I'm going to take them with me. So they don't suffer without.

Right. Right. And by the way, and so, yeah, this is, these are some of the, these are some of the contradictions in this case, I think, that make this complicated, right? that here's another example, right? That psychosis, when you have postpartum psychosis and you engage in violence, oftentimes that can be sudden. That tends to be more sudden and more dissociative and more impulsive,

which is what she describes. Yeah. However, philicides that involve more, let's say, major depression or even bipolar disorder, those tend to be more planful. So, you know, the part about taking her kids with her suggests that perhaps it was the depression. Perhaps there was an element of planning. Perhaps, right, she thought she would take her life. So she planned on taking the kids with her.

That would suggest more premeditation. Right. And I think the prosecution, I think the prosecution sees some of these inconsistencies. And they're trying to exploit these inconsistencies. also by the way I think the prosecution has said that she didn't you know obviously a big part of this case is going to be looking at the medical records carefully it's not clear if she told any of her providers that she was having command hallucinations or auditory hallucinations it seems like she may not have said anything about auditory hallucinations until after the incident

and professionals started becoming involved, right? Evaluators started stepping in. Defense lawyers started stepping in, right? Like now all of a sudden, and I don't know, I don't have access to the medical records, but now all of a sudden she's having auditory hallucinations, which she never mentioned of all these providers? Yeah, it'd be hard to get the right medications

if they don't know all of your symptoms. So in her lawsuit, on the date I mentioned, for example, which was the November, when she started taking Seraquil on November 29th, and that's when she says that the command hallucinations originated, did she tell that provider that she was having, she mentioned she was having intrusive thoughts, but intrusive thoughts, and they're saying here, those were actually auditory hallucinations, but okay. I mean, the prosecution is going to look at that and say, no, intrusive thoughts are different than auditory hallucinations. Intrusive thoughts would be more like obsessive thoughts that are unwanted that you can't get rid of. Auditorial hallucinations are going to be somewhat different than intrusive thoughts. And so did they then, did they merge those two ideas for this lawsuit after the fact, right? I don't know. Well, one interesting fact, though, is what you just said, that it's a male voice and both suits describe this as a male voice.

That's interesting because that would mean it's not her inner voice. It would mean it's not self-talk, right? It's an outside voice. It's a voice that doesn't belong to her. This isn't herself saying to do this. That's interesting to me. Even Patrick Clancy is saying that it's a male voice. What's your take on that?

Because that's really interesting to me. Well, I think that gets into, right. That probably gets into, so psychologists would call this identifications or interjections. So as children, maybe a simple way to think of this is that we all have. role models, right? Let's say one of our parents, let's say we look up to one of our parents and say, I look up to my dad, for example, there's very much a sense in which if a parent is a role model, even if they're not, even if they're a negative influence in our lives, we develop identifications with them. We internalize that figure that's called an interjection. Since we spend so much

time around, let's say a parent, negative or positive, we probably of necessity, we internalize and identify with that person and that person then becomes a part of ourselves in some sense. They become a part of our self-talk. They become a part of the voices that all of us kind of that Eagleman calls it the committee in our head, right? That we all internalize or identify with key figures in our lives and then those become a part of our committee and the voices in our brain in our brain that you know that we're the chatter that we're constantly kind of trying to deal with um i mean ideally we kind of we have a voice or maybe a few voices that kind of direct the committee a little bit um that we would identify with more but but it's it's not hard one way to think of it is

that if there's a predominant or dominant male figure in her life, perhaps it's her father. I don't know. I don't know a relationship with her father. But whoever that is, that that primary identification could perhaps show up later in this command hallucination. Huh. That's interesting.

Or it could be another male figure somewhere. And it might not even be any of that. It might not be an interjection. It might just be some. offshoot of brain chemistry. Is that where religious murder sort of happened? They hear the voice of a deity telling them to do something? Sorry, that's where my brain went when you're referring to identification.

Well, let's talk about... Sorry, that was probably way off. Let's talk about, let's talk about a little bit of the research on command of hallucinations, because that's a big part of this case. Please. Yeah, please. It's so hard for me to understand. So this is from an article.

It's from a journal called Schizophrenia Research. The title of the article is predicting compliance with command hallucinations, anger, impulsivity, and appraisals of voices, power, and intent. That's a mouthful. It's by Bucci, B, C, C, I. Bucci et al from this article was published in 2013 as I said volume 147 schizophrenia research so they looked at this issue with a number of patients that were engaged in various forms of treatment and they gave them a number of measures and I'm going to read their major finding.

And by the way, just as a quick aside, like obviously we, you know, none of the studies I always talk about, none of them are perfect. There's always issues with any social science research. Like, I simply don't have time to, you know, critique all of these articles in depth. We just kind of want to present kind of the major findings. But here's the major finding.

The current study, quote, the current study found voice omnipatimit to be significantly correlated with compliance and therefore lend support the cognitive approach to auditory hallucinations. Furthermore, of the significant factors associated with compliance, meaning that someone who has command hallucinations, why do they follow them? right why do they why why why would someone like Lindsay Clancy says in her lawsuit why would she just obey the command rather than ignore it of the factors associated with compliance impulsivity and voice power were the only two factors that independently predicted compliance with harmful commands So in other words, the two elements that are consistent with obeying command hallucinations are voice omnipotence and impulsivity.

And so voice omnipotence, which is exactly as you'd expect it, it means exactly what you'd expect, which is a voice that has godlike powers or omnipotent powers. In other words, it's a very powerful voice. that you can't disregard. And actually, the voice she describes here, it does, it does seem to fit. That quality. It does seem very close to this idea of voice omnipotence. But that's the example you give about a deity that if you hear say the voice of God, that would be a great example, a classic example of voice omnipotence. That's hard to disobey that. Right. And I would imagine that with somebody Here's the voice of God or a deity. It's probably some hybrid between mal voices in their past that have been particularly influential

and some version of how they would have, some fantasy of how they would imagine God would sound. So it's a combination of fantasy and reality to some degree, I would think, in most cases. And so both of those, however, would be associated with this idea of voice omnipotence. Lindsay Clancy, however, doesn't identify this voice as being a deity or a God. She identifies as a strong male. It's true. Yeah, she doesn't say that in her suit. But then she does say to her children, go to God.

Right? So there's this sort of religious element to it. I think that's where my mind went is there does seem to be this slight religious element to it where she's saying to her children, go to God. and she's hearing a male voice say to do this, but I guess she's not connecting that to God, that male voice to God. Right. And it's interesting too,

because in the New Yorker article, Patrick basically says that they're not particularly religious. So that was, when I read that, I thought, okay, that's interesting, but it's discrequent from what Patrick told the New Yorker,

which is that neither of them were really particularly religious. Yeah, that is interesting. So there is, by the way, another element, and they talk about in this research article, which is anger, and that is that people that experience command hallucinations that are able to regulate their anger more effectively are less likely to follow commands. So people that this is an indirect effect, not a direct effect,

the direct influences on following commands, especially harmful commands, are voice omnipotence and impulsivity, which I think are both present. Both of those exist in the lawsuit in terms of the voice she describes. But the other element is anger regulation, that people that have less anger

and can regulate their anger better tend not to obey commands as much as people that struggle with anger. And so that would be an interesting question here is whether Lindsay Clancy had some underlying repressed anger. Did people in her life identify her as being angry at times? Did she have a temper? Did people at work identify that?

All of that would be if she had problems with anger, and I don't see any evidence of that, but if she did, then there's more likelihood that that anger could then erupt when she hears these command hallucinations, that anger is more likely to come into play in terms of her behaviors. And so is the impulsivity. So, uh, did you talk about her being a perfectionist, not angry?

I mean, angry. I don't know. I don't know Lindsay Clancy, but I have heard people talk about her just sort of being perfect, you know. Well, that's, that would be consistent with anger because when you step out, If you're a perfectionist and things don't go the way that you want them to, in other words, if there's imperfections and you can't control those imperfections, that could lead to anger. There's more likelihood for a perfectionist to become angry because the world doesn't conform to your perfectionistic desires.

And when the world doesn't conform to your perfectionistic or narcissistic desires, anger often is a consequence of that. Here's another. I want to, this is an interesting article too. This is from a journal called Clinical Practice and Epidemiology and Mental Health. It's from 2024, so it's a recent article. The title of this article is, are you ready for this one? The role of verbal auditory hallucinations in influencing and retrospectively predicting physical harm prevalence in early psychosis. That's a really specific title, and it's exactly what we need right now.

So what does the research say? It's Hazel et al. This study occurred in the UK. They looked at, so there's a, there's a, in London, apparently, there's, there's, there's something called the early intervention and psychosis service. So there's a, apparently a program where, um, where patients who are having early signs of psychosis are getting help. They looked at 208 patients in this program that fit the criteria for the research study. And here's their major finding.

This is from page 6. Quote, patients were 20 times more likely to harm themselves if they heard self-harm commands and seven times more likely if they perceived their voice as omnipotent. patients were six times more likely to harm someone else if they heard violent commands. So in other words, what they're saying is that in the early stages of psychosis, which seems to be the case with Lindsay Clancy, the odds of self-harm and harming others and violence go up dramatically as much as from anywhere from six to 20 times as much as someone without command hallucinations.

And in particular, if there's, as I just talked about, if there's voice omnipotence. Wow. Wow. Their conclusions, quote, our findings, quote, our findings support the conclusions of previous studies that physical harm may be a common part of early course psychosis in patients.

And that's what we see here. if Lindsay Clancy is experiencing psychosis, which seems to be the case, especially if it's related to postpartum bipolar disorder, it does appear that some of that is driven by the fact that it's fairly early in her psychosis, and she has these omnipotent voice commands. So the research on this is, her descriptions, of what she's experiencing are very consistent with the research in terms of the likelihood, how command hallucinations in particular for people that are experiencing psychosis

increases the chances of harm of all sorts, the self and others, particularly when there's voice omnipotence. Voice omnipotence. You gave me a new term. I thought I'd only hear that at church, but it's something you hear in horrendous crimes. Yeah, we don't, command hallucinations are pretty rare. We don't talk about that that much, although we did speculate that perhaps Nick Reiner may have experienced possible command hallucinations. It's not clear cut.

It doesn't appear that he did, but he may have. And with him, I referenced a research article. I also have here the relationship between command hallucinations and violence by McNeil et al. This is from Psychiatric Services from 2000. And their conclusions essentially were that patients who experienced command hallucinations to harm others were more than twice as likely to be violent. So command hallucinations do significantly increase the. probability of violent behavior, which again would be true of Lindsay Clancy. So the heart, I think the heart of this lawsuit and this case for her is not only the

medical negligence, but the command of hallucinations and the psychosis that was brought on by the medications and, you know, this combination of poorly solaceousinations. and perhaps conflicting medications in terms of how they interact, right? And then a misdiagnosis in terms of this being related to bipolar disorder and not depression and trying to treat the depression rather than the bipolar disorder, especially with postpartum depression as kind of the underlying foundation. driving a lot of this. What are your overall thoughts on these lawsuits?

Because, well, let me be honest. My initial thoughts are, wow, this is horrendous. This is wrong. And she could have gotten the help she needed. And we could have saved three young lives. And a mother's life, too. I mean, she's paralyzed. What kind of life does she have now, even if they find her,

even if they find her not guilty because of insanity or, or post-partum. She's paralyzed. She wants to self-harm. She's on 24-7. You know. I know. So I,

this entire thing to me is just a travesty, a tragedy beginning to end. There's no one wins here, no matter whether you're pro-prosecution or pro-defense. It's just sad. And so I read these suits and I, I think, man, she could have been helped. Three lives could have been saved.

And essentially a family could have been saved, you know. A mother could have been saved. A mourning father could have continued to be a father. What are your thoughts overall? My thoughts are, yeah, my thoughts hurt. a horrible tragedy. And I do believe that, and again, I mean, you know, it's easy to, with hindsight by it's easy to look back and say these are the things that should have been done, right? Because, I mean, the sad truth is that in situations like this and with a medical system that's stressed,

that's resources are stressed and are limited, and providers are, you know, They have caseloads that are large and that they struggle to handle that most providers, you know, one of the examples that Patrick talks about in his lawsuit all the time is that she went in to see her primary psychiatrist and she only met with her psychiatrist for 17 minutes. That's hard to hear. Over and over, that her psychiatrist only gave her 17 minutes in spite of the severity of all her issues and her problems, right? And so in a medical system that's that's taxed and with limited resources, I think a lot of providers, when they're assessing these types of situations, they believe that there's a low probability of this type of thing

happening. They believe there's a very low probability of any type of self-harm or any type of homicide happening, even if there's postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. they know that the odds are still against that. So they think to some degree probably that even if they make some small mistakes or prescribe the wrong medications that they can correct it, that there's not going to be a major catastrophic event like this. They can't foresee this. And the odds are against it.

So I think a lot of providers, although they have good intentions and they want to do well because they're so. taxed for time and resources that they may not, right? They may not invest as much as they can. They may miss some cases. They may miss things. They may not. And if this bipolar thing is true, how could anyone necessarily know?

You'd have to go back. You'd have to go back to her previous history. They talk about that. You'd have to really do kind of a deeper dive during an intake or during a an initial visit to really understand that she did have some history of postpartum issues previously with her previous births. And there does seem to be, there do seem to be some hypomatic episodes previously that would have potentially given you the clues. But again, you know, if you only have 17 minutes per patient, because your caseload is so large and the hospital is putting so much

pressure on you to maximize the number of patients you're seeing, you're not going to necessarily take the time just to figure that out. You're not going to see those clues. And if you say, you know, you're hearing about a mother with severe postpartum who has insomnia, sedating her might feel like the right thing to do. I mean, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I don't know. I don't know. But. Well, anxiety. Yeah. Anxiety. And, I mean, I mean, the postpartum part isn't clear, by the way, because there's times where she would tell her providers that she was fine or that she wasn't having as much anxiety or that she wasn't experiencing postpartum anxiety or depression. There were times where she said she, you know, and that's where this gets complicated. All the medical records, of course, are going to be released and they're going to come out.

Right. You'll see. We'll see what she said. She'll see. We'll see what she told them. I mean, we know from her law asserts her perspective, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this matches the records of the providers, assuming that they kept detailed notes. Right. So it's not entirely clear cut.

And then you have, you know, you have this other issue here, which is people say, well, you know, she went in and said she was fine. and there were times where she said she wasn't experiencing any postpartum issues, right? But a lot of times there's pressure on mothers to come in with a mask, right, to present a facade that everything's fine. Like sometimes it's difficult. It's hard to go into a provider and say, hey, I'm having command hallucinations. And the voices are telling me to harm my kids. Or to even say you're a mother of three and you want to harm your kids. maybe.

Yeah. That can't be easy to say. I mean, as you say, hindsight bias, even mothers going through postpartum, they'll deny they're even going through it until after the fact. And then they'll look back and say, oh, you know, maybe I was and I couldn't admit it. In the hospital, though, when she admitted herself to the hospital. Right. As I recall, she didn't even really see a doctor that much within those five days.

Yeah, it appears that, again, the medical records are going to have to, you know, kind of provide some, provide the evidence for this. But because I don't know what happened. So it seems like she was in the hospital for five days and she didn't see a provider for three or four. four of those days. Yeah. So I'm not quite sure what was going on, but again, I can't verify that. You know, we don't have the medical records, so I'm not quite sure what happened. That's her argument.

That's her claim. Whether, you know, what happened exactly? I don't know. I mean, maybe it would be hard for me to imagine that she would be hospitalized and that they weren't somehow looking at or adjusting her medications. in some way or that a psychiatrist, at the very least, that a psychiatrist or at least a physician wasn't at least considering her, you know,

her medication regime, what she was taking. So I don't know. It's complicated, you know, like, I think one of the, there's larger issues here, I think, that really complicate this, you know, in the sense that if we want to, back up and think about some of the philosophical issues here. You know, I mean, one question is, can the state, if you, if you murder three children, can the state just give you a deal?

Yeah. Right. Can they, can they just let her, I mean, when I say deal. Because they decide that she's, because they decide she's sick and the other mother isn't. Yeah. Right. I mean, what's the state's obligation here? It seems to me at a minimum, I think the state feels like they need her to prove.

If she's going to be deemed not criminal responsible, then her defense team needs to prove that. That's true. Otherwise, they're not doing their job. Otherwise, they're letting someone murder three kids and walk away, or maybe not walk away, that I think the deal would probably be that she would be hospitalized. Right. But presumably postpartum psychosis, if that's what this is or bipolar, those things can be treated. Those things are temporary.

So even if she is put in a psychiatric hospital, if that's the plea deal, let's say hypothetically, that means that in theory, she can be discharged. Yeah, Patrick actually said in the New Yorker, this is a quote from the New Yorker. Now, I wish there was a plea deal and it was just done with. That's exactly what he said. But can they just do a plea deal and be done with it, as you point out? You know? They could.

But the question is, you know, I guess they could in theory, but like I think the state probably feels at a minimum that they have an obligation to make sure that this wasn't murder. And even though the onus is on them to prove their case, I think part of this is certainly saying to the prosecution, okay, let's see what you got. Let's see your experts. Let's make sure if we're going to give you a deal or if we're going to let you go, you know, if you're going to be deemed not responsible, we want to make sure that we're doing the right thing. And I think there's something even deeper here. And we talked about, we talk about this with Philicide a lot. And that is that, that, when a caregiver harms their children, there's something that I think

there's there's there's a there's an expectation I think that caregivers protect their children. And they're supposed to. They're supposed to. Right. They're supposed to. But my point is that that rule is seen as absolute.

That there's a, I think there's an unwritten, there's an unwritten communication here, which is that caregivers and in particular mothers protect their children, no matter what the cost. They protect those who are helpless, especially their kids. And that if you violate that rule, then it provokes outrage. And that's by the way, that is why some people will never accept an insanity play in a case like this.

because it challenges the very idea and ideal of being a good mother. Right. Right? And it's almost like, it's almost like if you see motherhood in a particular way, which is to protect and help your kids flourish, and then you violate that. In the most horrendous way possible. And the most, then you need to be held to account.

Because you essentially created a rupture in the moral fabric of the universe, right? And so the prosecution, part of this is the prosecution sees this as their job to repair that rift in the universe. Right. And the law is the law. Yeah. And I mean, I think it's, it goes even deeper than that in a sense, which is that most of us kind of see, if you really want to dig deep on this, like I think it goes deeper in the sense that most of us kind of see the mind and the psyche is something that's kind of a fixed. entity. It's not that mutable, right? And what you have here is a mind that's in disarray. You have a mind that's under strain and stress and it ruptures and a mind that murders,

it's, you know, her children. And that really threatens our sense of stability and it threatens our sense of certainty. And so there's no closure, right? I mean, part of the reason the prosecution is going to pursue this is because their job, in part, is to, to, to, find some closure and to get to to reassert that sense of stability and certainty in the universe, right? Justice is about that. I talk about Greek tragedy a lot. I talk about this idea that Greek chat tragedy occurs when there's an injustice,

and then the tragedy remedies that injustice, and now the universe is back to normal. But it raises a real problem, right? These types of cases raise a really deep philosophical issue. and that is when you look long and hard at this case, it's really hard to find a coherent motive or explanation. And in some existential level, as human beings, we want coherent explanations. We want things to be meaningful and to make sense, right?

Absolutely. And these types of cases disrupt that sense of meaning in that sense of coherence. So in that sense, they're deeply unsubbed. Fetting. Deeply. Deeply. Deeply.

Deeply unsettling. I mean, I think some people, I would be among these. You look at a case like this and you think, okay, Lindsay Clancy is this normal, loving mother, dooding, devoted loving mother. And then all of a sudden this happens, right? Three children. Yeah. She gets, she, she has his mental health issues and it raises the question, if this can happen to her, why can't it happen to anyone? Why can't, right?

The idea of what I would call predictable danger is threatened here. In other words, we can't control all the dangers and threats in our lives, right? We can't control that. And like this case also brings that into play. Yeah. If this can happen to her, then why can't it happen? to any mother. Right?

And so again, it really, it really kind of creates a clash with all those expectations of motherhood, danger, and the nature of the mind and the nature of psyche. Yeah. You know, the way I would describe that

is the complexity here, if you ask me like, to summarize this case and why it's so difficult. hard to kind of assess from a forensic standpoint or a legal standpoint or any standpoint, I would say that what you have here is you have this really strange blend of love, mental illness, and destruction, all coexisting together. So, love mental illness and what?

And destruction or violence, love mental illness and violence, love mental illness and just let's call it destruction that coexisting without any particular meaning, right? Like in other words, I think people think that those things can't coexist. And they can. And they can. And they do. And you see it here. And that, I think that is a real threat.

And by the way, like, interestingly enough, in this case early on, you know, in true crime, inevitably you're going to get people that are going to jump on conspiracies. There were all kinds of, all kinds of people that. we're forming conspiracies. I'll tell you what some of those were. And this speaks to what I'm talking about. Okay. Because of this combination of love, mental illness, and destruction,

which are things that probably shouldn't coexist, but do. Okay. People want to simplify that, right? That's why you get people jumping on conspiracies or jumping on these really simple, reductive, basal explanations for crimes like this, because they can't handle that complexity. So here, so some of the, so, okay, some of the, some of the internet forums and social media accounts that were circulating after this happened, they were, here's some of the things they were saying, that Pat and Lindsay had orchestrated the deaths of their children so that they could rake in all kinds of money from crowdsource funds like GoFundMe. So one of the things that happened was there was a GoFummi set up that, that actually, I don't know.

know the final number, but it grossed over a million dollars within a month, I think. And so that was the motive. That was the motive. The motive was. So one of the conspiracies was that Pat and Lindsay worked together to orchestrate these desks basically so they could get rich. So this was something that was put out there. Here's another one that apparently Lindsay Clancy.

And again, like, these are responses. So these are internet responses. to complexity. These are internet responses to this blending of love, mental illness, and destruction, which shouldn't coexist,

but they do. That's life. That's my world. Complexity. Complexity. So these are people... It's uncomfortable to put those three things together. It's uncomfortable.

You're presenting something that requires, a lot of thought and a lot of, you know, philosophical understanding, right? If you're going to understand that, it's probably going to challenge how you see the mind and how you see the community and how you see the justice system. So, hey, let's just say, let's say that they orchestrated these deaths, right? That's like Sandy Hook, that there were crisis actors, that the children in Sandy Hook weren't really murdered.

You had crisis actors who put on this performance, right? Right. I just looked it up, by the way, that GoFundMe did receive over $1 million in just a little over a week. Okay. So the total was $1,75,411. Okay. So just over a week. So anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So one of the conspiracies was a Sandy Hook-like, you know, look-alike in the sense that the certain elements of, you know, of people, conspiracist elements on the internet were arguing that Patrick and Lindsay colluded to orchestrate the deaths of their children

so that they could get rich, essentially. They could make over a million dollars, right? That was one. There was another one. Here's one that was also floated by the same groups that Lindsay had caught Patrick with a male lover and she killed the children.

to exact revenge. I've talked a lot about retaliating philocyte. You know that. Travis Decker, Chad Dorner, right? These are retaliating filicides where the spouse will typically kill the children

in order to exact revenge. So those are Medea. In Greek mythology, Medea murders the children because her husband at the time Jason is cheating on her. So that's that type of, so that theory was also put out there.

another another theory that is maybe easier for some to look at than the idea that love mental illness and destruction can all destruction can coexist right that this this in some ways a case like this really pushes kind of the it pushes logic to an extreme in terms of how you see the world and how how the world gets simplified right here's another one that apparently Lindsay Clancy had put out a post on social media somewhere in a parenting forum forum where when she wants to describe Dawson Dawson was her three-year-old at the time, her middle child,

she wants to describe Dawson as, quote, the most difficult human I have ever encountered. And you know, so they took that as evidence that she had homicidal intent. because she thought a child was difficult as a child. Well, not just difficult, but the most difficult human I ever encountered, right? I mean, never mind the fact that that particular post is taken out of context because almost every parent probably says that about their child at some point.

But hey, let's just pull something from social media. Let's pull one comment from social media out of context and then use that. let's weaponize that against Lindsay Clancy because, hey, that makes sense, right? So that was happening. They used that as evidence that she was deliberate, she had deliberate homicidal motivations. Yeah. But I mean, so this is the type of thing that was going on in addition to, so she was getting a lot of support from her colleagues and coworkers and fellow nurses. But then you have this other side.

And the reason that's important, as I said, is because this is a response to when you have a case like Lindsay Clancy's that's so complex. And again, like the example I gave about mixing love, mental illness, and destruction, when you have that kind of complexity and it really creates some confusion in terms of how to interpret it and confusion in terms of what the motives are. Yeah. Then you get this wave of, right, you get this wave of conspiracy-based stuff that tries to oversimplify. It tries to, you know, reduce it to its most simplistic, banal components, takes things out of context, right? So you had all of that going on here, too. And so if you asked me, part of your question was, what do I make of it? I make of it that this is very complex. It kind of, it pushes the mind. I think it can it pushes logical analysis to kind of the limit because it's not clear it's not clear cut no it's not it's not clear cut there's arguments to be made on both sides in fact the only thing this clear cut to me is that this is a tragedy either way you yeah an absolutely horrific tragedy so I want to on the complexity issue I I was going to read Patrick's quote earlier that his statement that he put out I want to read that.

Please, please. Because it's really important for this case. So this is, this is Lindsay's husband, obviously, right, that loves her, that stood by her, even though she did the most terrific thing a human being could do to his children and her children, to their family. Here's what he said, quote, she loved being a nurse, but nothing matched her intense love for our kids and dedication to being a mother. 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 fibers of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace. I think we should just end on that. That was profound. And yeah, and again, it,

you can't have this, you can't talk about this equation with Lindsay Clancy without talking about the peace that involves love. I think that's what's confusing to people. You can have mental illness, you can have violent ideation,

you can have command hallucinations that are omnipotent with that have voice omnipotence that are telling you to harm yourself and other in your children you can have all of that so you can have these destructive components but you also have an infusion of love that's undeniable in this case and no matter right and no matter how you try to spin it you can't get rid of that you can't expunge the love from this case Yeah, you can't. I hope for healing and peace for them too. I do.

Yeah. I, you know, I was trying, I always tried to think of like a literary equivalent for our cases. And, you know, it's interesting because I really struggle to think of a literary equivalent here because I, you know, and I couldn't. and I think that really, to me, that kind of speaks to the complexity of this case and how difficult it is and how there's no simple answer or solution. I would say that one thing about literature is that typically when literature talks about tragedy, there's usually a motive. Like literature tends to find, if not an explicit motive, than an implicit motive. So literature usually tries to find some motives for tragedy or for this type of this type of situation. And then I thought, but, you know, something like psychosis, which would be command hallucinations,

psychosis, I think, is tragedy without motive. Like, it's really hard to find a motive here. And I actually thought, instead of a literary equivalent, I actually thought of, you know, I have an interest in Zen, Zen Buddhism. And over the years, I've kind of read some Zen, some of the literature around Zen. And Zen, there's something called a koan. And a koan is, the best way to think of a koan is it's a riddle. It's a riddle that really doesn't have a simple answer. And I thought, you know, this case kind of reminds me of that.

It's like a Zen koan. That there's really no simple answer. And I actually was thinking of there's a book of Zen koans called The Gateless Gate. I'm going to read one of these koans because I think it's relevant here. This is from the Gateless Gate, which is a series of 48 Zen Coons from the 13th century. And, you know, for those that are familiar with, Zeng Kwan's, it's, in many ways, they're devised. In Zen, you don't find rationalogical answers to problems. You have to go, you have to dig deeper. If the goal is enlightenment or Sartori,

then you're not going to get that by thinking logically about the world. In other words, one of the purposes of Zen is to challenge our everyday concepts or our typical concepts of the world like good mother, bad mother, right? Here's the co-on. Quote, without thinking of good or evil at this very moment, what is your original face? Without thinking of good or evil at this very moment, what is your original face? That's the co-on. And again, there's no simple answer to that. But for me, one of my takeaways is because there's no simple answer because co-ons don't. tofy logic. So the answer will be different for every student who is given that type of koan. It'll be solved in a way that's more intuitive and more emotional. But for me,

when I think of that koan, my takeaway from that is sort of that love is, it transcends good and evil. And love is not really a moral performance, or it's not a category. It's not a category. It's it's something that's prior to the idea of good mother bad mother it's something that encompasses all of that it's something that is an envelopes this idea of good mother or bad mother right and I feel like for me at least I feel like that idea has a lot of applicability in this particular case I agree well said definitely something to think about yeah and so I don't know what None of us know what's going to happen here. I don't know what the right.

I don't even know what the right thing to do is, right? Like, I mean, should she be given a deal? Should she not? Is, you know, do I have a lot of empathy for her? Do I think she went through hell with this? Yes, she's 24-7 she's thinking about harming herself, right? Like she's, it's just. Yeah.

It's so difficult. She has no family left. I mean, she does, but no children. She wanted to be a mother more than anything of what Patrick. is saying is true. Her body's disarray. Her body's broken. Right.

Her body's broken. Her mind's broken. Her spirit's broken. Right. I don't, I mean, those are pretty severe punishments to me. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for talking this out with me. I've certainly been thinking about it.

It's a case that hasn't left me. The trial does keep getting pushed back. this civil suit or these civil suits, it's a complete game changer to me. As Patrick even said in the New Yorker, he wishes that there had been a plea deal by now. There's no plea deal, but now there are civil lawsuits and litigation

on the table, which definitely, you know, it's interesting. You know, claiming medical negligence. and that his wife, Lindsay, could have been helped, according to the lawsuits. That three children could still be alive according to the lawsuits, allegedly. We don't know, but that is what they believe. And of course, the lawsuits are strategic, too.

Absolutely. You're clearly seeing some version of her defense, I think. being floated. And so, and with experts, there's a bunch of experts weighing in on the case already without, you know, a trial even looming. Yeah, a forensic psychologist even. A lot to think about. We'll continue following this case.

And thank you, everyone for joining us for this episode. It's important one. Thanks, guys. We'll see, Amber. Good night. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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