RedHanded - Lindsay Clancy - Part 1: The Killing of the Clancy Children | #466

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

According to her husband Patrick, Lindsay Clancy was found laying on the ground, semi-conscious, having cut her neck and wrists, and thrown herself from a second story window in an apparent attempt to take her own life. Just minutes later, Patrick found all three of their young children barely clinging to life in the basement. They had been strangled at the hands of their own mother. None of the children would survive.In part one of this two-part dive into the horrific deaths of Cora, Dawson and Callan, we discuss Lindsay Clancy’s multiple attempts to get help, the response of those she reached out to, and the public’s reaction to struggles with postpartum psychosis.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

The story of Lindsay Clancy and what happened in the basement of 47 Summer Street on the 24th of January, 2023, is anything but straightforward. At the heart of it, three children. Cora, age five, Dawson, age three, and eight-month-old Callan were brutally murdered in their own home by the woman they trusted the most, their mother. From the moment of her arrest, Lindsay Clancy has never disputed that fact. And I know there are people out there who question this. And we'll deal with that later in this episode. That was going to be my first question for you because I, you know, haven't written this one. I'm quite glad I haven't written this one, actually.

I think it might have had quite a irreversible effect on my mental health. Yeah, can confirm. What I have been served on the TikToks is quite a lot of people talking about the husband. So I want to know where you stand before we even. Okay. Before we even do anything. Before we even do it, if I mean, like, yeah, if it wasn't clear from my introduction, Lindsay Clancy killed her children.

Patrick Clancy did not kill his children and frame Lindsay Clancy. Like I said, we will deal with that at the end of the episode. And, you know, maybe it's refreshing to get that out there now, because all the people who are going to vehemently disagree with me and don't want to hear why that's not the case can just stop listening now if that's what they choose to do. but like I just

I don't know I literally don't know well I do know what to say because it's in this episode but no Lindsay Clancy killed her children let's get it all out on the table let's go for it

because absolutely like Lindsay Clancy has never disputed that fact and from the police and the prosecution to the defence Lindsay Clancy's own defence and everyone who knew

Lindsay Clancy and Lindsay Clancy herself they are all in total agreement that Lindsay killed her children. The question isn't who, the question is why. And why? Hmm. So, is Lindsay Clancy a cold-blooded killer who was sick of her three children? Did she murder them to be free of the burdens of motherhood and to start again? Or was Lindsay Clancy

a victim of medical malpractice, struggling with severe postpartum psychosis and and perhaps even undiagnosed bipolar to desperately and repeatedly seeking help for her deteriorating mental health, only to be shunted from one pill to another and seemingly failed by every professional she encountered. And in the end, killing her children in the psychotic break. Or was it something else altogether? This was the quandary at the centre of the trial that has just played out in Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts. And with the trial now finished, let's talk about it. But before we do, it's worth mentioning, if we haven't already skirted around that topic,

that this case got a lot of attention online. More than I honestly think I have seen for a case in a very, very, very long time. So I know that people have their opinions, very, very strong ones. All I can say is that I, over the month of August, have watched every day, of this trial with an open mind. And I have changed my mind repeatedly on certain things. And we're going to talk about it all over the next two weeks. This does have to be a two-parter. There is so much. I've never had so many notes for a case before. I think I had like about 150 pages of notes at one point. Oh, I know. I was monitoring you.

It's all going on. And like, literally, I was in bed last night. I felt like I was fizzing. I felt like I was fizzing with having too much information in my head. I needed like what Dumbledore's got in Harry Potter where he can just like pull things out of his brain and put it into that like sphere. And that sphere for me was this Google Doc sheet. Like it's just, there's a lot of information. There's a lot of information. So yes, we're going to talk about it over the next two weeks. And we're not all going to agree at the end.

Like I think that is pretty much evident based on the discourse that's going on online. we're not all going to agree at the end. And also, that's fine. Yes, that's absolutely fine. And it's fine to also change your mind. And all of those other things, we don't have to, you know, plot each other's demises, you know. No. So please, like, you know, don't murder each other in the comments section.

Like, don't fight about it. Like, it's just a lot of, like, anger and vitriol and, like, toxicity. And I'm just like, what do people care what I say? They're going to do what they want. I'm just saying, guys, don't do it. Don't do it. But I think the thing that I have thought about with this case, that it really feels like the reason I think it invokes so much like passion,

various reasons. But one of them is it kind of feels like the ultimate Rorschach test. Like the ultimate Rorschach test. Because to me, I feel like every piece of evidence when examined is like an inkblot. That to some looks like insanity, to some looks like cold-blooded murder. And to some looks like a. totally unhinged conspiracy theory. But I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red-Handed, where this week it's part one of the Lindsay Clancy case. On Tuesday, the 24th of January, 2023, it had seemed like a pleasant day at the Clancy household. Patrick, Lindsay's husband, was working from home in his office, down in the basement, and Lindsay had been looking after the kids.

She had taken Cora to a doctor's appointment earlier in the day, It was her five-year health check-up, and Cora was thriving. The only issue was that the little girl had been struggling with a bit of a dodgy tummy, so the doctor prescribed some medication. While Lindsay and Cora were out, three-year-old Dawson had got dressed all by himself for the first time ever, and Patrick had sent Lindsay a picture of their son proudly punching the air. When Lindsay and Cora got home, together with Dawson, they played outside in the snow.

The kids built a snowman and Lindsay sent pictures of them, beaming next to their very impressive, tall creation, to Patrick and also to her mum. At 4.02pm, Lindsay did a Google search on her phone for Mirralax for kids, the over-the-counter laxative that the doctor had recommended for Cora. 11 minutes later, at 4.13pm, she googled a place called 3V. It's a restaurant in nearby Plymouth. Immediately after this, Lindsay went on Apple Maps to check the route from the Clancy family home in Duxbury to the restaurant 3V. Who uses Apple Maps? That's the real fucking question.

I mean, I did wonder. Someone who's probably, someone who's maybe not doing so well. But you know what? That is a real indicator of poor mental health is using Apple Maps. I would be concerned. I am concerned every time I see someone do it. I'm like, do you want to talk? Do it. Why have even got that app?

Can you not just delete it? So yes, she does this search, and then 30 minutes later, at 4.47pm, Lindsay called the CVS pharmacy in Kingston, not far from 3V, to see if they had Mirralax in stock. They did. So six minutes later, at 4.53pm,

Lindsay texts Patrick, who, as we said, was working downstairs, saying that she hadn't cooked anything for dinner, as it had been a long day, and was he okay if they just got a take away from me? 3V. Patrick was happy with that. And the couple text over the next few minutes about the menu and what they each wanted to eat. And at 5.10pm, Lindsay called the restaurant to place their order. Patrick wrapped up work and left the house just before 5.15pm. And as he left, Lindsay asked him if he

could also stop off at the nearby CVS to pick up some medicine for Cora. Patrick asked her to text him the details, which Lindsay did within minutes. And Patrick decided to make this his first stop. CCTV shows that Patrick arrived at the CVS at 530pm. From here, Patrick phoned Lindsay at 533pm. At first she didn't answer. But she called him back a couple of minutes later. This call lasted just 14 seconds. According to Patrick, the CVS didn't have any more of the Mirralax,

so he was checking with Lindsay if another brand was okay, and Lindsay had told him that it was fine. So, with the medicine in hand, Patrick then drove to 3V, where he picked up their food order just before 6pm, and he arrived back home at around 609. But as soon as he was inside, Patrick says he knew that something was wrong. The house was way too quiet. He called out for Lindsay and the kids, but no one replied.

Patrick said he then went room by room, and when he got upstairs, he noticed that the door to the master bedroom was locked, which was weird. He forced it open and saw blood on the floor and a bloody knife on the bedside table. The window was also open and there was blood on the frame. He ran downstairs and into the garden and there was Lindsay, lying in the snow

with her wrists and her throat, slashed. But she was still conscious. Patrick says that he asked her, What did you do? To which Lindsay told him, she tried to kill herself. He immediately called 911 and asked Lindsay where the children were. She told him in the basement. Patrick stayed with Lindsay until the first responders got to the scene,

which was about four to six minutes after he had placed the emergency call. And yes, let's talk about this now because I know later this whole scene, this whole situation will become a major point of contention, with people saying, well, Lindsay couldn't speak for weeks after this incident. So how did she supposedly tell Patrick where to go that night? How did Patrick know that the kids were in the basement? And honestly, the 911 call has not been released publicly. And at first I was like, good.

Fucking good. We don't need to hear it. If it was out there publicly and I'm researching this case, I would have listened to it and I don't need that in my brain right now. I really don't. But having thought about it and seen all of the like shit that's happened on the internet since, I kind of feel like it is a mistake that it's not being made public. If for nothing else than Patrick Clancy's sake,

because some people who have heard the 911 call, who heard it in court like, you know, podcasters or people who went to court like reporters and things like that, have said, some of them have said, that you could hear Lindsay speaking to Patrick on the 911 call and you can hear her say the word basement. But Kevin Redington, Lindsay's defense attorney, who you'll meet in one,

much more detail next week, said in court that you can't hear Lindsay at all. And I don't know for sure because I haven't heard the 911 call so we can only go on like these secondhand sources, right? But just in case you've been living under a rock and you don't know, there is, as we talked about at the start of this episode, a contingent of people online mainly on TikTok who think that Patrick is the real killer. And basically that he set this whole thing up, killed his kids and then framed his wife, Lindsay. And they claim that if Lindsay couldn't speak and she couldn't speak for weeks afterwards, how did he know where the kids were? Well, we know that she was definitely conscious when Patrick got there, or at least when the EMTs got there because they back it up. So in my mind,

I'm like, so what even if she couldn't speak? So what even if you can't hear her say the word basement? Are you really telling me that she couldn't have, for example, mouthed the word basement to Patrick when he asked her, where are the kids? Because obviously, after what? What's happened here, that's going to be his next question is, where are the three fucking kids? One of them is eight months old. And he's already searched the whole house, according to him. So he is like, where are the kids? She couldn't have said the word basement?

Like, I don't feel like using your words vocally isn't the only way that you can communicate with someone. And also, just because Lindsay didn't speak for weeks after this to anyone else, it doesn't mean that she couldn't. Like, not speaking is a good way to get out of answering any questions immediately. And I'm not saying that's because I think she's lying about anything. I'm just saying either because you're guilty or because you're coming out of psychosis and you're in a state of shock. Like, yes, she had a spinal injury. But like, I don't know. I don't think there's any evidence that's clear enough for me.

And people are like, well, if she couldn't speak and she couldn't say the word basement to him, how did he know they were in the basement? He must be lying because he put them in there. She could have literally just mouthed the word basement. And the EMTs were like she was moaning, she was groaning. She was like responding to things they were saying, even if she wasn't. using her words. Yeah, and I feel like you can do all sorts of things when you're in shock. Yeah.

I don't know. It's not enough of a like, this is the thing. It's like, I haven't seen anything that's a smoking gun. And I know I keep saying this. We'll talk about it at the end of the episode where I kind of have gone through all of the main points that people bring up from people who are in the Patrick is the real killer camp. But like this is one of their big ones, right, is that how did you know they were in the basement? And I really don't think it's that big a stretch to say Lindsay told him or she mouthed it or somehow indicated to him that they were in the basement. And if we believe Patrick that Lindsay was able to communicate with him, she didn't tell him that she had hurt the kids.

So I suppose we have to believe that she was still in a psychotic state at this point. If she had snapped and killed the children, had she not snapped out of it at this point? to tell Patrick, oh, I've hurt the kids go and help them. Yeah, Patrick never says, and the EMTs never say that there's any urgency from her to go get the kids, go get the kids. So one of the things that people say is, if she killed the kids in a psychotic state, are we then to believe that when she's out of the window on the floor, the EMTs are there, she's still in a psychotic state or she's still in that state because she never alerts anybody to the urgency of the situation that's going on in the basement, if you see what I mean. Yeah, yeah, I get you. Again, like, I really don't want people to jump on individual things we're saying. Please, let's go through it all.

As we always say on the show, it's the totality of the evidence. And people can also be like, well, you're interpreting too much here or there, but this is what the jury had to do. Like I said, I watched every day of the trial. These are the bits of information that we're given to the jury that they are going to have to make an assessment on. So, you know, this is a thought process. This is a work in progress. Maybe by the end of it will all change our minds. but we have to go on this journey.

So let's get back to our timeline. Once EMTs began working on Lindsay, Patrick, who was still on the phone with 911, headed into the house to find the kids. He headed down into the basement, presumably expecting to find his three scared children locked up in his office. I guess thinking that Lindsay had shut them away

while she attempted to take her own life. But horrifically, Patrick discovered in the basement the bodies of Cora, Dawson and Callan. Each of his children had been strangled with a separate exercise band, bands that were still tied around their necks. And I think I don't want people to imagine like those kind of flimsy, rubber, stretchy bands. These are much more substantial.

These are much more substantial because the Commonwealth get it out and show people at trial, so we've seen them. They're pretty hardcore. So Patrick, who was still on the phone with 911 at this point, is heard screaming. That's what we've heard from people who have heard the 911 call. And then he begs the operators to send more help as he unties the exercise bands from around his children's throats. The EMTs who are outside also hear him screaming and head into the house. Where Patrick tells them, she's killed the fucking kids.

And another thing I do want to say here for how Patrick, about the whole basement situation, is that the EMTs, when they hear screaming, they don't know where it's coming from. And they obviously have radios that are connected to dispatch. And when they're like, where is that screaming coming from? Dispatch tell them he's in the basement. And Patrick says later that he forgot at first that he was even on the phone with 911. So maybe we are to believe the people that said they heard Lindsay say basement on the 911 call. Is that how the dispatcher knew?

Again, I don't know. I don't know. Paramedics found that the kids, like Lindsay, weren't actually dead yet, but they were in a very serious state. Five-year-old Cora and three-year-old Dawson were taken to Beth Israel Hospital in Plymouth, while eight-month-old Callon was airlifted to Boston Children's Hospital. Tragically, both Cora and Dawson died that evening. Baby Callan held on for three more days, but on the 27th of January, he died too. Meanwhile, Lindsay was being treated at South Shore Hospital.

She had a fractured spine and every one of her ribs was broken. The fall from the window had left the 33-year-old permanently paralysed from the sternum down. So, she had to remain in hospital under armed guard and handcuffed to her bed. It would be weeks before she would speak. Communicating in the meantime with the help of a whiteboard. According to hospital staff, her first question upon gaining consciousness was, Do I need an attorney? On the 27th of February, 2003, nearly a month after the killings,

Lindsay joined her first arraignment hearing via Zoom from her hospital bed. She was charged with three counts of murder and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Lindsay admitted to killing her children, but pleaded not guilty by reason of insist. sanity. And it's important to point out that the laws in Massachusetts, with regards to this defence, are different to the majority of other states in the US. And this is obviously very important, but we're going to save that explanation and that comparison for the end of this episode before we get into the trial next week. So if anyone's listened to like our Andrea Yates episode or is aware of that case, which is probably the most infamous, most sort of similar case, and people

are obviously making a lot of comparisons between the two, the way in the way we're going to be able to, the way which the justice system will deal with both of those cases is very different because Andrea Yates was tried in Texas and Lindley Clancy was tried in Massachusetts under very different laws. For now we're going to go through the investigation and the months leading up to the murders. Using CCTV cell phone data and text messages, the police were able to piece together the timeline we just walked you through for the day in question. And investigators interviews with Patrick and Lindsay's wider family revealed a difficult four-month-long struggle with Lindsay's mental health following the birth of her youngest child, Callan.

Even the couple's friends told the police that Patrick and Lindsay had openly discussed with them how hard things had been for Lindsay and how difficult it had been for them to get her the right help. Lindsay's phone also showed that for months she had been tracking her mood, symptoms, medications, feelings and thoughts. And they seemed to line up with, with what Patrick, her friends and her family were all saying. Lindsay had been in the throes of a very difficult postpartum period. And she had also been to see multiple doctors, nurses and psychologists trying to get help for whatever was going on.

Lindsay Clancy had even called a suicide hotline on multiple occasions and voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. Over the course of those four months, Lindsay Clancy had been prescribed 13. different medications by a variety of mental health professionals. And her diaries and text messages showed a woman increasingly paranoid and increasingly frustrated. So paranoid that she didn't seem to, in her own words, follow the plan laid out for her by her doctors. And so paranoid that she apparently didn't tell them how bad the situation really was.

Because it was only after the murders of the children that Lindsay mentioned hearing a voice. And look, that is in itself a bit of a minefield because at trial the defence will claim that Lindsay actually only heard the voice telling her to kill her children and herself at the time of the murders, never before. So there's a lot of people online saying, well, she never told anybody she was hearing voices before. Her whole defence, her whole like story is that she never heard them before. She only heard them that day, that night, that specific moment when she was killing the children.

But we're jumping ahead. Before we get into all the ins and outs of Lindsay's treatment, what she disclosed and what she allegedly didn't disclose, the possible condition she was suffering from, and most crucially of all, her state of mind on the 24th of January, 2023. Let's rewind. Lindsay and Patrick Clancy met in 2013.

They'd been introduced by Patrick's cousin, and for him, it was love at first sight. Three years later in December 2016 the pair got married and the next year they had their first child, a little girl they named Cora. In 2019 they welcomed their first son, Dawson, and in May 2022 they had another baby, Callan. During that time the family had moved to Duxbury, a picturesque little town by the sea, 35 miles southeast of Boston. They bought a big house with a big garden and life looked good. Patrick worked in tech sales for Microsoft, and Lindsay was a labour and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital.

When Cora was born, no one was surprised that Lindsay was a loving and committed mum. She had always wanted children, lots of children. And according to those who knew her, she was excited, present and totally engaged. Lindsay had struggled, apparently, after Cora was born, with a touch of the baby blues, or perhaps even a bit of postpartum depression. or postpartum anxiety, but it had quickly resolved itself. After the birth of their son, Dawson, again, Lindsay had a difficult postpartum period. This time she even went to see a psychologist.

And those who knew Lindsay noted that she seemed a bit frantic, which wasn't really like her. But Lindsay didn't really get on with the therapy. She didn't find it that helpful, and so instead she committed to a pretty rigorous exercise program and bounce back. The problem was that after baby Callan was born in 2022, Lindsay had an even worse time postpartum. Again, she threw herself into exercise, but her symptoms began to escalate as the end of her maternity leave approached. Lindsay had had three kids in five years and was seriously worried about how she was going to manage when she went back to work. The anxiety built and she started not sleeping and struggling with racing thoughts. According to Lindsay, these soon snowballed into suicidal thoughts, and she knew she needed help.

So, in September 2022, Lindsay went to see a psychiatrist, Dr Jennifer Tufts. Dr. Tufts diagnosed Lindsay with severe depression and prescribed her Zoloft, an SSRI, which is a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. At first, Lindsay was really, really reluctant to take the medication. She was still breastfeeding Callan, and while Zoloff is considered to be safe for breastfeeding mothers to take, understandably, Lindsay was very cautious. However, after a few more weeks, without the situation improving,

Lindsay started taking the medication and began the process of weaning Callan off breast milk, something that she writes down saying she feels incredibly guilty about. So, again, I really want to make it clear. I have no thoughts at all that Lindsay is a bad mother, that she hates these kids or anything like that. She wants to be a mother and she always wants to do what's right for them. That's definitely the feeling you get like throughout the entirety of when she's having these children. She is just crippled with anxiety and with depression and it's taking its toll.

And I feel like it's one of the things that has never ever made sense to me. But I think as her eyes are sort of chucked around a lot more freely and easily than they should be. And one of the strongest side effects is suicidal ideation. Like that's the number one. So it's always seemed completely bizarre to me that you can go to a doctor and be like, hi, I think I'm going to kill myself. And then they give you something that's supposed to help you that makes those thoughts stronger, louder and more frequent.

It's really, really terrifying. And look, I really don't want to create a situation or say something that makes it sound like if you're struggling with these things, please be scared. don't go see your doctor, don't trust the medication they're giving you. I don't want to say that. If you are struggling, please go and see a mental health professional and get the help because you deserve it and you don't deserve to feel like that. I want to make that very clear. But at the same time, can we have a conversation around hardcore pharmaceuticals being handed out mental health like

diagnoses is not easy. That's like one of the clearest things that came out of this for me. because the other thing was Zoloff, which I really do think is like a real tipping point into like why this goes the way it does, is because at this point, Jennifer Tufts, Dr. Jennifer Tufts says that she thinks she has depression and anxiety, not even postpartum, just regular depression and anxiety. Very, very bad, very, very severe. But that's what she diagnoses her with. Later on, multiple doctors who see Lindsay will diagnose her with bipolar 2. and before everyone's like, you can have SSRIs with bipolar 2. Like, you literally, every one of them says, if I had a patient with bipolar 2, I would avoid, avoid, avoid SSRIs.

And yes, some people are like, you can give SSRIs as long as you also add in a mood stabilizer, but it would never be your first choice. Again, I'm not a professional. I'm just telling you what the experts are saying. And if she did have undiagnosed bipolar 2 and Zoloff is basically the first thing she's given, that could absolutely have exacerbated her symptoms.

And that's not guesswork, because as we're going to find out, it absolutely did exacerbate her symptoms. That's exactly what happened, because she starts taking them and everything gets worse. Yeah, on the 20th of October, 2023, Lindsay went back to Dr Tufts and told her that her anxiety and racing thoughts had severely intensified and that she hadn't slept for days. Another thing that Zoloft will do to you, I know, because I've taken it, mad, restless legs, that you can't sleep because your legs are twitching. all the time. And that's like one of the number one things that Lindsay complains about consistently is not being able to sleep, not being able to sleep, not being able to sleep. So whatever was going on with her, her not sleeping on top of that, it's just a recipe for disaster. Like it really is.

And again, I really don't want to make it sound like I'm just like, oh, these, these doctors, all these doctors, like I'm not, I'm not there yet. Like we can get there and we can talk about the medical treatment that Lindsay Clancy received. I appreciate it's really difficult to treat mental health conditions. It's not the same as like taking a blood test and figuring out what's wrong with somebody. I get that. Yes, I agree. And I don't want to be sort of, I'm sure, like, there are loads of people out there who take S to the S or S&R's and that helps them. I think the point is that like they so often, in lots of anecdotal experiences and also personal experience of mine and my family, like they seem to be always the first thing that gets prescribed. And I think that is what I

find quite difficult. Anyway, Dr Tufts took Lindsay off the Zoloft and now prescribed her with Ativan, or you can call that La Razepam as well, and told her to take Benadryl to help with her sleep. But that didn't help either. Lindsay couldn't sleep and her anxiety was just getting worse and worse. On the 16th of November, Lindsay went to the emergency room at South Shore Hospital, where she reported having insomnia and extreme anxiety. The physicians there prescribed her were tracadone, a sleep aid.

But again, this didn't help. And Lindsay felt that it made her worse. Four days later, Patrick's mum, Susan, who was also a labour and delivery nurse, called South Shore's perinatal department herself. She was worried about her daughter-in-law. And Patrick was so concerned that he had arranged for his parents and Lindsay's parents to take it in turns to come and stay at their house. He had to keep working, and he knew that Lindsay needed as much support as possible.

And that is another thing I want to point out. At no point is there like Patrick trying to cut Lindsay off from like friends or family. Like he's constantly like to his parents and her parents, please come stay with us. Please come help us. Like we need this help and this support. And they do. They do. They are an incredibly like tight knit supportive family. Lindsay writes repeatedly in her journals how much she is grateful for her mother-in-law, how close she is to her mother-in-law. Like this isn't like, I just keep thinking. about Andrea Yates on that fucking bus? I was just going to say that. It's quite literally the opposite of what Andrea Yates' husband did. It's really, really not the same thing. It's really not the same thing. So yes.

Days later, on the recommendation of her mother-in-law, Lindsay went to see Julie Paul, a psychiatric nurse practitioner at South Shore Health's perinatal behavioral health program. Nurse Paul gave Lindsay the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Test

test, and she scored a staggering 23 out of 30. which points to severe depression. At this time, Lindsay was prescribed Prozac, another antidepressant and SSRI. But again, it just made Lindsay even worse. Her thoughts were racing, her anxiety was through the roof and she still wasn't sleeping. So Nurse Paul took her off the drug. And I think they tried Prozac here because it turned out that Lindsay had taken Prozac before

when she was at university. And she had been fine. She had been fine when she had taken it then. obviously said this and was open to taking it again. I think something I've seen a lot of people talk about is, and I don't have this experience necessarily, is a lot of people talking about how a drug taken pre-pregnancy versus post-childbirth can affect a person mentally in a completely different way because of how much brain chemistry and things like that change. So just because she took it in university and was fine, as a 33-year-old woman now who's had three children,

it's not guaranteed that it's going to be the same thing. But like a said, Nurse Paul takes her off the drug. She takes her off Prozac. My mom completely lost the ability to eat any spicy food after she had children. It was just like a light switch. She just couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's bizarre. But then also kind of not because like, your brain just like completely rebuilds itself. And like, I think it's something insane, like years before it like even gets back to like the capacity you had before. Not that you're like stupid, but you lose like certain functions because your brain is like, right, we have to hyper focus on like keeping this baby alive.

Crucially, after all of these visits to doctors and clinicians, there still was no change to Lindsay's diagnosis. It was still all being put down as severe depression and anxiety. And a lot has been made about the fact that no one took Lindsay's bloods to check if she was metabolising the drugs that she was being prescribed properly, which could have explained why her symptoms kept getting worse. But medical expert, who testified at trial have said that these tests wouldn't really have proven much. There were also repeated claims that Lindsay's thyroid was never checked. But again, we found out at trial that that's just not true.

Lindsay's thyroid function was checked in November 22 and it was completely normal. So with things not getting better, the medications kept coming. Next, Lindsay was given Ambien, a sedative hypnotic medication, then Remeron, another antidepressant. and then clonopin, a benzodiazepine. After Lindsay took the remor on, she actually reported that she had started to dissociate. She felt like she was disconnecting from herself and the world.

The only drug that seemed to make Lindsay feel any better at all was a drug named Ativan. But Lindsay was expressing a lot of concern that she was worried that she was growing addicted to it, even though she hadn't been taking it for long. And look, Lindsay is a nurse, and I'm sure she has witnessed addiction firsthand. So I don't like blame her for being cautious. Like I've seen a lot of people just being like, she finds something that works and then immediately

that's a problem. Like she's, she's already not like feeling great. Like she's, she's severely depressed and severely anxious and she's not sleeping. And also, come on, like you only have to take a look at like the addiction problems that are like rife throughout the US because of a medication. Of course she's going to be concerned. And I would say also that I have definitely experienced similar fears or concerns around medication addiction. But Lindsay was told by the prescriber, please, if it's working, keep taking it. And she was given assurances that she would be monitored and not to worry about dependency because they had to get her better first. Well, it's a cost-benefit analysis, isn't it? Like, it's, and I don't want to, to sound like

I'm being dismissive of, like, addiction concerns or whatever because, like, Atavan is fucking delicious. I can see why, I've also seen like criticism of this doctor online, but like, I can see why a doctor would be like, why don't we just get you a bit more level and then we can deal with other things? But what we need to happen now is we need you to sleep because we're not going to be able to fix anything until that starts happening. Yeah. And I believe the person who prescribed her atavam was actually the person we're going to speak about next, who's the nurse practitioner, Rebecca Gillata. But you're right that there's been criticism of all of the doctors, all of the nurses, all of the practitioners. And I'm not saying that people didn't make mistakes. I'm not saying nothing went wrong. We're going to go into that. But I also think it's a very, very complicated situation. And yes, they're like, Lindsay is worried about addiction. I get that. I get it. But at the same time, they're like, we're going to watch you. Please, please keep taking it if this is what's going to help. It's a really, really complicated situation. It is a complicated situation. I think it also speaks to Lindsay's personality, which is also something that is worth talking about. From everything you understand about Lindsay, throughout her life, she's been a very disciplined. person. I think she has put in place systems. I think she has struggled with her mental health

for a long time without talking about it or without maybe even acknowledging it to herself. And her workarounds for how she was going to do that was to be incredibly disciplined, to be incredibly rigorous. She was obsessed with exercise and fitness. And I think that's how she managed her symptoms for a very long time. And then every time she got pregnant, I think it was like another blow, like another punch that like completely shook her. And the first two times she'd been able to bounce back. And I think the drugs are taking away her control, but at the same time her brain is losing control because she's spiraling. But it's also her brain standing in the way of maybe her getting better because she's resistant to some of the drugs. As we'll see, she was also resistant to some of the diagnoses that were maybe suggested to her.

It's a fucking mind field. And this is why mental health care is so difficult as well. Like, yeah, it's a really, really difficult thing. I think it's very, very apparent that she is trying so hard to get it under control. She's doing all of the things that you get told to do, like, exercise. And also the tracking your mood is like, it's a very difficult thing to do when you feel like shit because you can't be asked. But she's doing it.

And like it is so obvious that she is like giving this everything she has to try and get back. 100%. I think if there's anything I'm going to say about Lindsay Clancy, is that she tried. She tried everything. And yes, there's obviously people who were like, well, she was resistant to this, that and the other, and she didn't help herself. And, you know, we'll talk about that in a set. But I think, again, it's like, it's not that simple. It's not that simple to, like, just place the blame on her. And she's a nurse. She's not a moron. No, she's not at all. She knows what she's talking about. Definitely. And I think she is trying.

She's, again, she's a nurse. She knows I should track my symptoms. I should track my mood. I should journal. She speaks in very therapeutic language. She writes down affirmation. She's really trying to change her mindset. So on the 29th of November, Lindsay saw another professional, the one I just mentioned, and that psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, Rebecca Gillata,

again at South Shore Hospital. Lindsay told Gillata that she was terrified because she didn't understand why she was getting worse and worse. And I really think, again, that comes back to this frustration that Lindsay felt is how can I be doing everything right? I eat healthily, I exercise, I've stopped drinking, I take the medication, I go and see the therapist, I go and see, do everything everyone is telling me, why am I getting worse? And I can't imagine how terrifying that would be.

I can't imagine. If you feel like you're leaving nothing on the table and you're still getting worse, that must be a very, very dark place to be. And that's where Lindsay is. Now, Nurse Gelata prescribed Lindsay Serequil, which is an antipsychotic, used to treat bipolar, schizophrenia and major depressive disorders. Again, Lindsay's diagnosis wasn't actually changed. And again, Lindsay's symptoms heightened. Her appetite disappeared and she lost seven kilos in mere weeks. She started having panic attacks and described feeling completely emotionless, like a zombie. By early December, the Clancy family was in a state of crisis. And on the 6th of December, Patrick went with Lindsay to an appointment with nurse Jolata.

And he told her, in no uncertain terms, that Lindsay had become, quote, 10,000 times worse since she started taking the Seroquel. Patrick also asked if they could just stop all of the drugs and get it all out of Lindsay's system and start again from scratch. And Jalata said, maybe, but insisted she increased Lindsay's dosage of Seraquil. And again, that didn't help. And in the weeks after, Patrick called Nurse Gelata's office repeatedly to tell them that Lindsay was deteriorating. By now, his wife could barely get out of bed most days. Gelata suggested that perhaps they needed to look at a bipolar diagnosis. But both Lindsay and Patrick were adamant that this wasn't correct and they pushed back.

And look, I don't know if Lindsay has bipolar too or not. Still, to this day, experts are disagreeing on what was actually going on or what is actually going on with Lindsay Clancy. But it is worth saying that the majority of experts who have assessed Lindsay since the murders have diagnosed her with bipolar too. Some argue that late onset bipolar is incredibly rare and the vast majority of people with bipolar start showing signs before the age of 25. But, of course, undiagnosed bipolar disorder can also be severely exacerbated by pregnancy and childbirth. And I can understand why this is confusing. Why were the Clancy's unwilling to explore this diagnosis? And why did Nurse Gillotta drop the bipolar conversation once she received this like pushback from the Clancy's?

I think resistance to mental health diagnoses is not particularly uncommon. and I can see why you'd be like, well, if this is going to help you, why are you pushing back on it? But there's a huge stigma around it. And also, like, even I think a big misunderstanding is quite often when someone gets put on antipsychotics, they are resistant because they're like, but I'm not psychotic. But antipsychotics, lots of people who are depressed are put on antipsychotics and get better on them, even though they're not experiencing psychosis. I think people get like that quite mixed up.

So I can't really understand. understand the like, why people aren't understanding why Lindsay might have just been like, no, I'm not having that label. Absolutely. I completely think it's not that bizarre to me that she felt that way. I'm not saying it was the best idea, but I'm not shocked at all that she felt that way. And I think that, you know, people saying again, like, oh, like you said, late onset bipolar 2 is very rare. Usually it starts to show much earlier.

And like, sure, but what we know about Lindsay is, like I said, I think she always did struggle with her mental health. But because she had such a, like, a stripped and disciplined life, I think she was managing without medication and with like managing her symptoms herself until the childbirth. And then it pushed it. It made it harder. It made it harder. And each time it made it harder. And then I think, because she was thinking, I've always been fine. I've always controlled myself. I've always been good. Now you're telling me I've got bipolar too. Like, fuck off. Like, I have. I am not surprised. I think Lindsay and Patrick were convinced that Lindsay's plight was only to do with postpartum because it reared its head every time she had a child. And I think they didn't want a bipolar diagnosis because yes, we can all talk about mental health awareness and acceptance, but there is no denying there is still a lot of stigma that makes people scared and uncomfortable

with labels that they are just not willing to accept. And yeah, according to some sources as well, Lindsay is still today resisting the bipolar diagnosis. So I don't know. And as for why Nurse Gelata dropped it, because I understand people are like, so what, she just gets to say, or Patrick and her just get to say she doesn't have bipolar and then just like, oh, okay, then forget it. Well, the problem is that mental health treatment has a history of forcible treatment on non-consenting patients slash victims. And I think a lot of practitioners are therefore very careful to try and avoid that perception. Like, what are they going to do? She's saying, I don't have bipolar too. Yeah, again, another one of the challenges of treating mental health challenges, because you can't just be like, well, I think you do and you're going to take this medication. Do you know what I mean? Like, what can she do? And also she, the last thing that Nurse Gillata needs to happen is for Lindsay to stop cooperating with her. Because what is what is what is positive in this situation is Lindsay and Patrick are going and they are laying it all out on the table because, you know, a lot of people lie, a lot of people lie and don't say, you know, what's

really going on. But they're not doing that. So I can understand. why she is like, at least she's talking to me. Like I can't lose that element of this treatment program or I'm really fucked, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And mental health treatment these days is heavily based on trial and error because a blood test or an MRI can't just provide a clear diagnosis of what the fuck's wrong with you. And if you add that to how many of these conditions can be comorbid or overlap in their presentation and symptoms, it just really is not that easy.

diagnosis of mental health conditions also requires trust and willingness from the patient. Like I was just saying, you cannot force people to comply unless you're willing to section them. But if you section someone, you have changed their life forever. Like if you're sectioned and you're not a US citizen, you can't go to the US ever again. Like you can't. Like there are countries you cannot go to if you are sectioned. Like it is a real fork in the road. If you do that to someone, it's not something to be done lightly at all.

But the problem is, if Lindsay does have bipolar, some of the medications that she was being prescribed like Zoloft or any of the other SSRIs just would not have been advisable for her to take and could in fact have made her much, much worse, which is pretty demonstrably what happened. And if Lindsay does have bipolar too, it could absolutely also have made her postpartum experience worse. While I was researching this case, I remembered years ago, years ago. EastEnders actually tackled this in a storyline. I don't know if you were an EastEnders girl.

I was an EastEnders girl. I did use to watch EastEnders. Really? And back in 2015, 2015, 11 years ago, Stacey Slater's character on the show developed postpartum psychosis after giving birth to her son Arthur. She did! Yes, it was a huge storyline.

And like, I think back to that now and I think how groundbreaking that they actually talked about such a difficult topic. And I thought Lacey Turner did a fantastic job acting in that. She did such a good job. I love Lacey Turner. Oh, she's fantastic. She did so much research into it. She really, really understood what she was doing. And so did the writers.

So did the writers. And basically in the storyline, her postpartum psychosis was triggered by her existing bipolar disorder, which caused her to experience terrifying, which caused her to experience terrifying, which caused her to experience terrifying. which caused her to experience terrifying hallucinations and delusions, including the belief that her baby was the son of God. And yeah, a real moment in British TV history that I remembered. I just remember, so Katie, one of our producers, Katie, you can take this out if you don't want it in the show. She used to be a storyline on Holyoaks, which is another soap here.

And in her interview process, like one of the like needling questions from us was like, but you haven't done nonfiction. And she was like, well, actually, funny you say that. on soaps, we quite often are given something like, you know, the topic of postpartum psychosos or eating disorders or whatever. And then we have to go away, research it and come back with a storyline. And I was like, you are hired. Yeah. Absolutely. I remember like this was the golden age of soaps and TV shows. And I actually did when I was having a bit of a like crisis at my old, old job. And I was like, oh my God.

Like, do I want to be doing this? Do I want to do something else? I actually did apply for and was very unsuccessful. I didn't even hear back from them in applying for a job as like a researcher into current affairs topics to feed into like it was silent witness. Oh cool. To be like what's like a current crimey thing going on that you can research and then the scriptors can add into the storyline. And I was actually drawn to because again, silent witness grand fucking dog shit now but used to be so good. And I remember they did a whole plot line on the fucking grooming gangs like years and years and years ago when people weren't even talking about it.

And yeah, I just think good work Eastenders for all that time ago. So let's leave Eastenders where it belongs in our hearts. In the past. In our hearts, in our past our hearts. Right. Most women, I think this is important to preface. Most women will feel a touch of the baby blues. after you've had a baby, you're exhausted, you're full of fatigue, your stress, also like racing full of hormones.

And also your entire life has changed. That is so difficult, even without all of your hormones like going fucking nuts. Like it's difficult even moving house. You're unsettled. You're untethered. And nothing is more like your life will not change more. Like it's so, it's such a transition. But most women, if they are feeling a bit blue, do get better.

It does go away. as you're sleeping more and your breastfeeding that can improve it too. It is hard to imagine how this wouldn't happen. Post-birth, a woman's body goes through a hormonal drop that's unprecedented in the human experience, way more than during adolescence or menopause, and then there's sleep deprivation on top of that, and it's okay to not be okay.

One in seven women will experience postpartum depression, which usually requires therapy or perhaps medication, but it can resolve itself. One in 2000 women will experience postpartum psychosis. And I have seen a lot of people online not differentiating the two things, which I think is really dangerous. And we need to be very careful in the way we word things because they are different things. Thank you. Absolutely.

Postpartum psychosis is incredibly serious and results in mothers having a break with reality, sometimes making them a danger to themselves and their children. Important to say as well with postpartum psychosis, it won't get better on its own. Like you need to go and see a doctor if you are experiencing postpartum psychosis. And it's also very, very important to say that postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are not on a continuum. Like, can we just repeat this a million times? They are not on a continuum.

They are totally, as Hannah just said, separate conditions. And while I have seen a lot of women online talking about their experiences with postpartum depression, and yes, of course, women sharing stories about this condition is something we should all absolutely encourage to destigmatize mothers from seeking help if they need it. But I have also seen and agree with a lot of medical and psychiatric professionals and advocates asking people to not say that they relate with Lindsay Clancy, saying that we must not conflate PPD and PPP. Or. or whatever was going on with Lindsay Clancy, because like I said, we still don't even know, that led her to kill her kids. Because that could just inadvertently lead to more stigma. If people think, like, at any point, you're just on the brink of, like, murdering your children. Like, it's a very, very dangerous precedent to set. And look, I think the reaction online to this, the, like, over-relating to Lindsay Clancy,

which, like, I'm a bit like, you can have empathy for her and I have empathy for her. I see how hard she worked. but like this we are all Lindsay Clancy making Lindsay Clancy a martyr like it makes me feel really uncomfortable because she murdered her three children like I don't understand and I've also seen a lot and I really you know toad and fro about whether to even say it but like I've seen a lot of women like in a very like ha ha ha like positive way like hey who else we're like walking around with their babies and I saw this one where she's like walking past a woodchipper and she's like has anybody just thought about like throwing their baby in a woodchip up because they've been feeling so like, you know,

stressed out and anxious. And I'm like, maybe that's an inside thought. Maybe that's not something we put on the internet. And again, people would be like, why, that's her experience. My point is, right, is a lot of things, suicide included or a lot of mental health conditions, a lot of mental conditions can be exacerbated by social contagion. We know that's true with eating disorders. We know it's true as suicide. These things occur in space because they are socially contagious. So is it great that women are talking about their responses? Sure, but is it good that women are gleefully talking about or jokingly talking about how they've thought about killing their children? I'm sure that every mother has felt that way at some point. But it really makes me feel very uncomfortable

because it's like we're trivializing it. And I'm just like, I honestly, we've been doing this. for 10 years next year, right? And I don't think there's many cases that have like really got to either of us, like really got their hooks in. But the thought to me, of those three children, Cora Dawson and Callan, who have all been but forgotten in the discourse around this case, they were just at home with their mum. They were just at home with their mum. Their dad had just popped out to get some food. And then something happens in that house and their mother is killing them with exercise bans, not something that would have happened quickly. And I'm like, why are we trivialising this and making jokes about killing our children?

It's really deeply disturbing. And it's honestly, it's also like the discourse around this has also made me come the closest I've come to to just hating true crime and being like, I don't like this. I don't like the way people are speaking about this. But yeah, I think it's just, it's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah, no, I'm with you. I think by conflating PPD and PPP and saying their continuum

and also being flippant when you're talking about the most terrifying thing that can happen to a woman, right? It can just completely change who you are at a very, very fundamental cellular level and that isn't funny. And it is rare, but it can happen to anybody. And it's not because you're a bad person or because of anything you've done. It can just happen. but to conflate it with postpartum depression, which is more common,

or even just like, I'm a bit tired because I've had a baby. Yeah, absolutely. What that means is that somebody who might really, really, really need help might not go to a doctor because they don't want the like assumption to be that she's going to chuck her baby in a woodshipper, you know, and then they won't get their help and they will get worse. Or this sort of normalising in society of that would be an okay thing. to do when because you're having a difficult time which is also kind of what it it feels like

and it's the worst thing that can happen to these women and it's the worst thing that can happen to these children that are in these positions so I don't know a lot of it is very strange to me and I've really tried to stay away from it for my own mental health let's just be careful how we're discussing all this I think postpartum psychosis is rare but it is so dangerous and Shockingly, it's not in the DSM-5. That is shocking. I was shocked by that. I was like, it's not in the DSM-5.

Like, I don't know, weird. Very, very, very weird. Hmm. DSM-5 is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 5, which is the Bible, so to speak, for mental health clinicians when it comes to diagnosing patients. To be clear, you can still be diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. It just isn't in that book.

even though we've recognized PPP for thousands of years. Hippocrates wrote about it in 400 BC. And this is the other thing actually that I wanted to talk about because it's again very dangerous, I think, to just conflate like, oh well, you know, women, women in their hormones, they could just go crazy at any point and kill anybody, including their own fucking children. Like hysteria, that literally came from like wandering womb,

saying the womb was making this woman crazy. Like, I just think we need to be so careful about how we're talking about, because it's, you know, philicide isn't unheard of. Of course it's not, but it is not an everyday occurrence. And I think conflating ordinary levels of like anxiety and stress that are naturally going to occur when you have a baby with postpartum psychosis. Yeah, dangerous. But anyway, I think we've made our point. Sticking with PPP for a sec, though, it also sadly seems to be the case, at least in the US, that there is no standardised training and no clean insurance pathway for the condition either, which no doubt adds to the fact that PPP is often very hard to get a diagnosis for,

and because it's rare, doctors are probably also going to be quite hesitant to diagnose it, and they may not even have much experience with the condition. So many of the medical professionals in this, they were asked at trial, like, how many women have you treated with PPP? And they're like, not many, because even in a long career, you might just not experience that. Also, the woman suffering from PPP won't necessarily divulge or disclose what's really going on with them. One of the symptoms of PPP is obviously paranoia and it can be hearing voices. And those voices could absolutely be telling them to not tell anyone.

And disclosures in therapy obviously take a foundation of trust. Speaking of disclosures, it was around this time that Lindsay made a disturbing revelation at home. One day in December 2023, less than a month before the murders, Lindsay confessed to Patrick and her mother, Paula, that she was having thoughts about hurting the kids, which is a very brave thing to do. Absolutely, and Paula and Patrick say, she came in, she looked very scared,

and then she said it to us. Can you even imagine saying those words out of your mouth? I can't, I can't. So, yes, very brave for her to do this. It doesn't seem that Patrick or Paula told anyone else about this at the time. They just asked Lindsay, if she felt she couldn't be around the kids. To which she told them no.

She was just scared. And she also kind of says, maybe it's not me that's going to do it, but something bad is going to happen to the kids. So it kind of like, I think people also like reframe and hear what they want to. Like I don't think anyone wants to believe that she actually would hurt the kids. So they're like, oh, she's just being paranoid that something bad is going to happen to them.

Oh, totally. Yeah. Nobody wants to believe that. And there has been a lot of. judgment on Patrick and on Paula for not doing more after this statement from Lindsay, and I get it, I also understand their fears. They would definitely have been scared that something like that could have meant that the kids were taken away from them by CPS. And they may have been concerned that a revelation like that could have also been detrimental to Lindsay's life and career, which it would have been had it ended up on her record, because she's literally a labour and

delivery nurse. And there are plenty of people online who reckon that Lindsay really could have lost her license over something like that. I mean, are you really going to take a risk? Again, I know it would be like, stigmatizing mental health, but are you really going to take a risk with a woman whose children has been taken away from her after she revealed she was scared about hurting them to be like, yeah, come on back to your job as a labor and delivery nurse.

Like, she would have easily lost her job. So I understand why people are scared. Again, I'm not saying that they shouldn't have told the doctors or nurses treating Lindsay about this. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I understand why they were hesitant. And we can live in this perfect world of like black and white and right or wrong. Or we can deal with the reality of like people's motivations and people's fears in the

real world, which is not that clear cut. And I also think all the people saying I would have definitely done this. Like, sure, maybe. but like, you don't really know until you're in that situation. And I also get that if they had been honest, that practitioners may have escalated the situation and taken Lindsay's case more seriously, because at the moment they're just saying,

you know, depression, anxiety, take these drugs, go to them therapy, you'll be fine, you'll be fine, try a different drug. Had this revelation been made, I think it would have been an absolute, like, game changer in the way that they would have, like, handled this situation. And, yes, I also, I guess my only, my, my, my, My thing here is, even if they didn't tell authorities, which I can understand the reason, why didn't they do more to separate Lindsay from the kids themselves?

Again, I guess they're thinking she wouldn't really do anything. But like, is that a risk worth taking? There are four grandparents involved. Patrick's there. Like, they do hire a nanny. Like, I don't know. I don't know. That's for me, though.

That's tough, man. It's very tough. And, like, I think the thing is they really, it doesn't really seem like they took Lindsay's confession to them that. Seriously. Lindsay also never told any of her clinicians. But again, if she's not well, can she really be relied upon to be totally honest with them? It's a tricky situation. And she did tell, very bravely tell two people that she loved, her husband and her mum. And I'm not here to like sit and point fingers or blame or be like they should have done this, that and the other. Everyone can have their opinions on that. And they're probably, they're definitely never going to forgive themselves

for not doing something. And it does feel like a really sad missed opportunity in this case where she came forward and made that disclosure to them. With things still not improving, on the 20th of December, Lindsay went to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital. Here she told them that her suicidal ideation was becoming more intense and she was scared something awful was going to happen.

Lindsay also reported that she was completely exhausted from just forcing herself to make it through the day, every day. and she also said that she couldn't feel any emotions at all. They assessed Lindsay but decided that she didn't meet the threshold for a higher level of care. So they weren't going to admit her for an inpatient psychiatric treatment. Instead, they offered Lindsay two options. The Women and Infants Hospital and their Postpartum Psychiatric Program in Rhode Island, or McLean, a world-renowned psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Lindsay chose women and infants for the partial hospitalisation programme. So she would be in hospital all day, but she would go home every night. And the family must have felt such relief. Lindsay was finally going to be in the best possible place to get the care that she so desperately needed. But at women and infants, Lindsay's condition was evaluated and the clinicians stuck with the original diagnosis of severe depression and anxiety. And they didn't admit her onto their post-term. partom treatment program.

Again, they were reluctant to diagnose Lindsay with postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis because according to them, she had no history of any such conditions. Even though she did go and see a therapist after Dawson was born, and given the fact that these conditions typically get worse with each successive baby, that's very odd that they dismissed it. Yeah, they basically say that one of the key reasons, they're going nowhere near postpartum psychosis because she hasn't. told them she's hearing voices, she hasn't told them, she's worried about hurting the kids.

Like, the closest they would have got to, I think, is postpartum depression. But the reason they say that they don't think it's postpartum depression is because they said that the symptoms that Lindsay was experiencing had started much later than they'd expect. So four months after the birth of her last child, Callan, is when she first starts reporting these symptoms. And they said, typically, PPD or PPP start to show signs much sooner than that, usually within the first few weeks of the child being born. Now there's a lot of controversy over this with people pointing out that the World Health Organization's guidelines say that they can appear much later in line with what happened to Lindsay. But the point is, again, even the major players in this space can't agree.

And women and infants decided to go with not the World Health Organization's rules or like guidelines on this and they're like, no, it's shown up far too late. But I do think given that Lindsay's flare-ups with mental health do seem to coincide with the birth of each of her children. I think it does stand to reason that postpartum is definitely playing a role in this. And again, if there was an undiagnosed bipolar situation in the mix, then she's also missing possibly a much bigger diagnosis, if you know what I mean. I don't think necessarily if they'd have diagnosed her with postpartum depression put her on to this course, that that would have solved all the problems because she still wasn't diagnosed with bipolar two at this point, which

could probably be a much bigger problem. I feel like there's quite a lot of like, oh well, like typically it's X, Y, Z and like, yeah, but that doesn't mean every single time world over. Totally, yeah. Also, who knows when the symptoms really started for Lindsay? As we'll see, she isn't always totally open and honest with her medical providers. And I do get the feeling that she likely thought that she could resolve things on her own like she had done before. And she only got help when she was completely overwhelmed. So just because it was four months after Callan's birth that Lindsay first went to a doctor,

I really don't think that means that's when her symptoms definitely, definitely started. People lie to doctors all the time, me included. Like it's just, it's not a rare thing to like just soften the edges a bit, you know? I don't think that's unreasonable at all. And looking at Lindsay's personality, I don't think she'd have been like the first second she felt anxious or when she would have gone to a doctor. I think from everything we know, I think she would have tried everything and then only gone when she, She was desperate. And postpartum psychosis, unlike postpartum depression,

does not resolve on its own without treatment. In any case, the doctors who assess Lindsay at the specialist women and infant center didn't put Lindsay into their PPD program. Instead, they agreed with Lindsay and Patrick that she was overmedicated and told Lindsay that she needed to first be put on a medical stabilization program to taper off the drugs. So, yeah, people are just like, they turned her away, they turned her. They didn't accept her onto the program, but they don't.

They're just like, fuck off. They're like, this is what you need to do next. And they actually do call Nurse Gelata. And then there's all this controversy that Nurse Gelata was like, didn't call them back. And she's like, I never got that call. And it's just such a lack of like joined up care, which again, like, how many times do we have to say this is such a common occurrence? That leads to really, really big problems. So after this, Lindsay went back to being treated by Nurse Gelata and Dr. Tufts.

And it seems that at least at first, the two practitioners didn't know that Lindsay was seeing both of them at the same time. And at this point, it seems that she was taking about four pills a day as prescribed. But she still wasn't getting any better. During this period, Lindsay Clancy actually called a suicide hotline twice as well. But they didn't recommend her for a higher level of care because Lindsay didn't have a plan as to how she was going to kill herself. And that, again, I just is a big, big talking point and one that I do agree with. Like, why is it that it's only if the person has a plan that she would be recommended for higher level care? If she's calling the hotline twice and like, I am feeling suicidal, I am going to kill myself.

And they're like, would you have a plan? No. Oh, okay, well, then we can't really like do much for you. We can't really escalate this or give you a higher level of care. I'm like, firstly, she could be lying. And secondly, why is the plan such like a big differentiator in whether this person needs desperate, urgent help or not? I think it's a bit of a, like, I don't think myth is quite the right word. I think I agree with you.

I think there is too much emphasis put on that. But you do hear medical practitioners talk about it. That like the only time you need to be really, really worried is if they've got a plan. And I just, I don't, I don't think so. No. I don't think so. People can lie. People can lie. And someone who doesn't want you to stop their suicide attempt is not going to tell you that they've got a plan because they know that you're going to try stop them. So I don't know. I don't get it. It's a really sad part of the story because she reaches out for help again in another way and doesn't get any. So, Lindsay admitted herself to McLean Hospital on the 1st of January 2023. Here it took three days for Lindsay to even see a doctor because they were operating with a skeleton staff over the holiday.

day period. When Lindsay was eventually seen, the doctor noted that her insight and judgment did seem limited. Lindsay was suffering from suicidal ideation, hopelessness, depression, she had no appetite, no motivation, racing thoughts and inability to organise thoughts and insomnia. Lindsay was even kept in a locked unit with 15-minute suicide checks. But the doctors ruled out postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis and bipolar. They had pretty much just told her to stop taking the serriquil and the benzos and prescribed her trazodone, yet another type of antidepressant, for sleep.

On the 4th of January, Lindsay asked if she could go home. It was Cora's birthday and she wanted to be there. And the doctors released her. Lindsay had one 10-minute follow-up appointment after that. It's just so bad. Because again, she's still seeing Dr. Tufts, she's still seeing Nurse Chilata. She's not getting better.

She calls a suicide hotline. She doesn't tell either of them, by the way, that she's called the suicide hotline. She gets turned down. She goes to McLean's. They take her off some of the drugs that gelata has got her on and puts her on something else. Like, it's just, and nobody is looking at medical records. Nobody has any idea who else is treating her, what drugs she's taking. She also doesn't tell them.

It's just like, what's happening? It's, and I get it in the US. The system is obviously different. They don't have universal healthcare, so it's not like one place. You can just check a person's like medical records. But in some of these places, the units are connected. They could have pulled her medical records and they don't. Yeah, but she's bonkers.

Like, you can't rely. Yes, this is what I mean. She's not a reliable narrator. On someone who is so unwell that they, like... She's trying everything. Yes, and to feel that shit, to have all of those things going on and to be able to identify them and say, this is a problem, I'm going to hospital.

Like, that in itself is... fucking admirable. Because like if you're feeling completely hopeless, like, why would you bother? You know, like, but she does. And I think that's, it's not to be dismissed, I don't think. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And again, I don't know. Maybe this is just me speculating. But a lot of people being like, oh, Patrick was very abusive and it was an abusive household. There's things that people are even saying that I don't even really want to say because they're so unfounded in reality. Maybe I'll say them, but I don't know.

They're even saying that he was sexually abusing Cora. I'm like, where's your evidence for any of this? They're like, he was sexually abusing Cora. That's why she was taking Cora to the doctors because Cora kept getting UTIs because she was being sexually abused by Patrick. I'm like, the doctor literally says Cora was thriving. All of the children were happy. All of the

children were thriving. The biggest problem Cora had was she wasn't going to the toilet. Like, what planet are you living on? And again, the fact that Lindsay is trying so desperately to get better feels to me she's got something to fight for she is in a happy marriage with happy children she has got something to fight for that's why she's taking herself to hospital like i don't buy this thing that she's just like she was always in this horrible situation but anyway on the 10th of january 23 Lindsay went back to dr tuffs who now put her on valium

but by the 16th of January Lindsay was still suffering with debilitating depression and intrusive thoughts. And she said she felt like a zombie. Now, Lindsay never tells anybody that she had thoughts of hurting the children and she never tells any of, like other than Patrick and her mum, and she never tells any of the clinicians that she's hearing voices, but she does tell them repeatedly that she's suicidal and she has intrusive thoughts. She says those two things again and again and again. And she tells Tafts that she feels like a zombie, so Tafts prescribes her another antidepressant. On the 20th of January, Lindsay reported feeling numb and emotionless. And she googles, and she googles. what is a sociopath and is there a cure?

Which I just think is so sad. Now a lot of people have jumped on this and been like, oh my God, she's a psychopath, she's a sociopath. I'm like, no, she isn't. Firstly, next week we'll talk about how at the trial one of the experts actually gave her the psychopath test, the hair psychopath test, and said, no, she doesn't have fucking psychopathy. She's not a psychopath.

She is like, what is wrong with me? Why do I not have any feelings anymore? and she is like, maybe I'm a sociopath. And again, though, look at the next part of that question. Is there a cure? She wants to get better. On the 23rd of January, Lindsay had another appointment with Dr. Tufts, telling her that she felt more anxious.

Tufts noted that Lindsay's general psychiatric condition remained unchanged, and she increased Lindsay's antidepressant dose. That night, Lindsay Clancy did not sleep. and the next day she killed her three children and tried to kill herself. Following the murders and Lindsay's arrest, she and Patrick divorced quickly. He sold the house and moved to New York, where he had maintained a relatively private life until the start of the trial. Patrick has never spoken against Lindsay.

In fact, in the aftermath of the killings, Patrick wrote an open letter in which he told the world that he had forgiven Lindsay and implored everyone else to do the same. Because yes, when this first happened, I know everyone, like the narrative has changed, but when this first happened, Lindsay Clancy was hated woman number one. She was getting so much hate online for murdering these children. And Patrick defends her, which I think everyone's forgotten. Here's what he said.

I want to ask all of you to find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay, as I have. The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring toward everyone. me, our kids, family, friends, and her patients. The very fibres of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace. I wasn't married to a monster, but to someone who was sick. He's also filed a civil suit against the professionals who treated Lindsay, and he also agreed to testify for the defence at trial.

I honestly can't really think of a way in which Patrick Clancy could have been there for Lindsay more than he was after these horrific killings, given the unbelievable grief and devastation that he was also enduring, having lost his three children and lost his wife as well. But none of this has saved Patrick from the ire of the internet and the TikTok sleuths, who are convinced that he is the one who actually killed Cora Dawson, Callan, and then tried to kill Lindsay and frame her for these murders. and then also somehow managed to convince her that she did it and get her to confess to these crimes. Honestly, it's just like, as if this case isn't depressing enough, it just made me very miserable to read. I think the whole Patrick Clancy is the real killer started to rear its ugly head I noticed around day eight of this trial.

And it sort of like popped up and at first I just thought it was going to remain this weird sort of fringe theory that no one really pay any attention to. But alas, I underestimated the internet. Because why let something as simple as, you know, something making a lick of fucking sense stand in the way of a good plot twist? Why would we do that? And I really feel like what it is here is, as everybody knows, I've talked about this before, I love a good, trashy thriller book. I am not ashamed to say it.

I'll read them all. I devour them. And the key staple of any such book like this, any self-respecting book. like this, if you are a reader of them like me, you will know is a bizarre twist that nobody saw coming, right? And it's always some evil person who thought they could get away with all if it wasn't for those meddling kids. And they're always so like dastardly and so evil. And there's never any evidence of what they've done and they'll secretly mock their victim like behind closed doors and like, ah, you know, I'll never be caught because I thought of everything.

and there's never any evidence because they're so, so cunning and so good at what they're doing. And I really think that this like obsession with fantastical twisty crime fiction is now spilling over into the world of true crime. And suddenly everyone's like, Occam's razor, what, who? Evidence? What? Like, what? It's like, they're just so sure that this is what happened. And I'm like, Lindsay can't confess. She's never said she didn't do it. Like, I, I just find it so strange. I find the whole thing very strange. But yeah.

I read, because of what I'm writing at the moment, I've been thinking a lot about conspiracy theory and what that means and what we mean when we call someone a conspiracy theorist and I'm not going to spunk my load, you'll have to wait. But I read a really interesting article. There's a book coming out called Lots of People Are Saying or something like that.

And it's about this new conspiracyism that we live in where anybody, can tweet anything and then the retweets themselves make it the truth. That's absolutely what happened here on TikTok. Absolutely what happened. Yes. And when we're also living in a world where sort of top level government are telling us not to believe the news, it feeds itself, you know? Yep. A total breakdown in lack of like trust of institutions. So it doesn't matter the prosecution and the defense and the police and everyone and I like Lindsay Clancy did it because all of the evidence matches what she says happened.

And Lindsay Clancy says it and they're like, no, she must have been tricked into this whole thing. And I think it's really sad because I have a lot of empathy for Lindsay Clancy. I understand why people are filled with rage. Three children are dead. I understand that also. But Lindsay Clancy, whatever you want to say about her, she's doing the right thing now. She is taking accountability for what she did. she isn't hiding away from it

she isn't saying I didn't do it something else happened she could say anything because there's fucking people out there who believe her she's taking accountability right and you can say she's not criminally responsible she's not guilty by reason and insanity okay I hear you but she is trying to do the right thing

and then for the internet to be like well no Lindsay you've been tricked and manipulated and that isn't really what happened and you're a victim she can be a victim and also the perpetrator of these murders because that's what she's saying So I got the name of the book wrong. It's called a lot of people are saying the new conspiracism and the assault on democracy. And you don't have to read the book there, but if you

Google it, there is a really good summary article that comes up that has interviews with the authors who are both political scientists. And I think it's a very succinct and comprehensive explanation. I found it really helpful. Yeah. And I think absolutely with that kind of conspiracy-mindedness, when this popped up on like, you know, on the internet, I really thought it will just go away. But it was like, it was just feeding itself. And like the more. people that were sharing it and talking about it and talking about it. It's like you said, it became the truth because of the number of people that were talking about it. And I'm like, the number of people that believe something or are talking about something doesn't equate to

truth. And I was like, I'm not going to lie to you. Like I was like, I'm worried about doing this episode if I'm honest with you because I'm like, people are so convinced they know the truth. And yesterday I was looking at other podcasts that I respect and have they covered this? What's been going on on their social media on the comments of if they've covered this. I just had a little look. Last podcast on the left. Talking about it, went into the comments. My mouth was on the floor.

My mouth was on the floor. The number of people were like, you need to do your research. You don't know what you're talking about. Patrick Clancy did this. Patrick Clancy did this. Patrick Clancy did this. And the same with crime junkie. And basically I was just trying to be like,

who's a reputable source in the world of true crime? And like, what are they saying? No, no one reputable is saying this. No one credible is saying this. And I think it was. was just like, it was shocking to me that that, I don't know if that's just the vocal, like, minority of people screaming about it, but it was shocking. It was shocking that was like, it's scary. It's really scary. And they have no evidence. This is the thing that I was going to say,

sorry, in the comment, no one is like, because of these reasons, these bits of evidence. They're just like, you haven't done your research. There's so many inconsistencies in his storyline. And I'm like, there's so many inconsistencies in Lindsay storyline. There's so many fucking inconsistency. Because as we've said so many times, true crime stories, unlike a fucking book or a TV show, don't perfectly wrap up into a little bow. They just don't. People forget things. People misremember things. And also, I think it's this weird thing of like fixating on inconsistencies that don't mean anything, but because there was an inconsistency insisting that that means that person is lying and it must mean something bigger.

And I'm like, okay, you're saying that about the fucking chicken nuggets, but what does that prove? Anyway, we'll talk about that next week. Let me, let's get back to this. And also with conspiracy theory, sorry, just to end on this. It makes people feel important. It makes people feel powerful, right? Makes people feel like they're looking at the rest of us who are like accepting the government line that Lindsay Clancy did this. And they're like, you're stupid, you stupid fucking sheeple.

Like, you don't know. I know something and I've spotted something in the timeline and I know that Patrick actually did it. Like, it's powerful. It's a powerful feeling to feel that way. I think it is, as you said, it is encouraging that it's not true crime content creators that are making these comments. That is at least something. Let's go through it point by point. No one, not a soul, is saying that Lindsay Clancy didn't do it, including Lindsay Clancy herself, her parents, Patrick's parents, her friends, her colleagues, her doctors, and her defence attorney, Kevin Rehncy.

Reddington, who we will meet in lots of detail next week. And you'll see exactly what a bulldog he is. I know we've just been slagging off social media, but I have found it very funny. They are all referring to him as Big Red. I think that's fucking incredible. Big Red. Big Red. Red. Yeah.

And with some, like, with a defence council, like Big Red on her team, it seems obvious if there was a whip. of evidence that Patrick or someone else had killed those kids, he would be all over it. In fact, he started his closing statements at trial firmly stating that Lindsay Clancy killed her kids. Lindsay Clancy also does not report having blackouts or not remembering what happened that night. She says that at some point, but she's also given very, very detailed explanations about what happened that evening in her police interviews. And also, very importantly,

written down in her civil suit. So, you know, Patrick and her are suing the medical practitioners, right? In that civil suit, you can read in detail Lindsay's own words about what she did that night. More on that next week. But this really flies in the face of the idea that somehow Patrick drugged her into oblivion, killed the kids, and then framed her. The idea that you could just plant memories in someone's head, in Lindsay's head, of murdering her own children, just feels frankly like sci-fi-ish. Like it feels very, very implausible to me. And I've seen online, I literally saw online somebody just saying, well, maybe he gave her scopolamine. And I'm like, sure, maybe, maybe he gave her scopolamine. Where's your fucking evidence? Yes, if someone

had given someone's scopulamine, it would make them more suggestible. But where is your evidence? Lindsay's blood was taken in hospital immediately after she was admitted. on that night. They took it straight away for the toxicology report. Guess what? They didn't find any fucking scopolamine. They also didn't find any at the house. They also have no evidence or proof or paper trail or even fucking crack dealer way in which Patrick Clancy

got his hands on some. So you're just saying maybe he gave us scopolamine. Well, maybe. But like, you have to have evidence for the things you're saying. Then we've got the question of why Patrick would let Lindsay live if this was his plan. because presumably because presumably he wanted to murder his kids

and frame his wife so he could be free of them if that's the case the best thing would have been to let Lindsay die make sure you finish the job on your stage to suicide why would he call 911 and save her she was paralysed and near death thanks to hypothermia when the EMTs got there it wouldn't have taken much longer there are even questions at trial

about why the cuts on Lindsay's wrists and neck weren't deeper, why would Patrick not do a better job if he was the one that did it? Then there's the fact that the timelines don't make sense. Patrick left the house at around 5.15pm and he arrived at CVS at 532pm, where he's seen on CCTV. Now yes, there is a 15-minute-ish gap from when he left the house to when he's seen in the CVS. And that drive from his house to CVS should have only taken about three minutes. There's an email that was sent by Patrick at around this time. Does it make more sense that Patrick drove to CVS, sat in the car park, checked his emails, replied to one of his emails, and then went in rather than he killed his family and lied about

what time he left to create a window of doubt, especially when Lindsay texts him the name of the medicine after he leaves because he's like, yes, text me the name of the medicine and I'm going to leave. Like, it just, it's just so like, yes, you can just. You can just. You can just say whatever you want, but like this is the actual evidence. Now, yes, at trial, he's asked about this and he said, maybe, maybe I sent an email. He can't really remember. But to my point, because people are like, he's lying about the email. He set it up as a timed email to go out. Why would he then sit in trial and be like, I don't remember. Maybe I sent an email. Why wouldn't he say, yes, I did? Yes, I absolutely did. That explains this 15 minute gap that everybody on the

internet is saying I used to murder my family. He would say, yes, I absolutely did. But he's like, I don't remember. I don't know. And also, Lindsay called Patrick while he was in CVS and she was at home. Presumably, while she was still alive. So I'm guessing Lindsay Clancy was still alive when Patrick was seen on CCTV in CVS because she's fucking calling him. And I'm so glad she called him because he calls her, she doesn't pick up and she phones him back. And yes, there are people on the internet saying that he planned that call using her Apple Watch to call his phone. and set it up like an alibi to try and prove that Lindsay was still alive at home.

And like I said, they also tried to say that he set up this timed email to set it up as an alibi. And sure, maybe, but the number of mental hoops you have to jump through to keep finding a way in which Patrick really did this just doesn't make loads of sense in reality. Especially when you have someone else who's like, hey, I did it. I did this, I did this, I did this, me. Also, this is the other thing. Lindsay's Apple Watch was recording movement at the house when Lindsay was at home and Patrick was on CCTV at CVS. So someone, presumably Lindsay, given that it's her watch, was walking around at home while he was at CVS.

So again, presumably she's still alive if she's doing that. Then there's the question of why Patrick was wearing a different coat and shoes when he was spotted on CCTV at 3V. So like we said, he drives from the house to CVS, he gets out, he's seen on CCTV, he comes back to the car, he gets in the car, and then he drives to the restaurant 3V. He goes inside and when he's caught on CCTV, he's wearing a different coat. And people also say he's wearing different shoes. I've seen the CCTV from 3V. I'm not convinced they're different shoes. I'm not convinced there's different shoes.

Like the CCTV, like, I don't know. But yes, he is very obviously wearing a bigger coat. But I'm like, what does that prove? It's January in Massachusetts. Maybe he just had it in the car, as you probably would if you live in a very cold climate like that. Maybe put it on because he was cold. Like, I don't get how that proves anything. No, and also the great thing about a car is it's just a giant handbag.

Exactly. Like, what's the big thing about him wearing a bigger coat? Like, basically the drive time from CVS to 3V should have been about eight minutes. It takes him about 15. I'm also like, it's snowing. It's snowing in January in Massachusetts. Like, I don't know. Is it that bizarre?

Yeah, that's no joke, man. That he would have driven five minutes more slowly to get to the restaurant 3B. And even if you're like, fine, there's a gap. There's an unaccounted for seven minutes. What are people implying? What are people implying? Are you saying that after he left CVS, because we know Lindsay is most likely still alive because our Apple Watch is moving around and she phoned him,

that he then went back, killed the kids and then came back to 3V and what changed his clothes because they had blood on him? In seven minutes? Like, it just doesn't make any sense. And this is what I mean. People are just like, well, there are inconsistencies. But so what? They're not necessarily indicative of him lying about murder.

And then there's the point that Patrick's DNA and fingerprints were found on the exercise bands used to kill the kids. but Lindsay's weren't. The bands belong to the family, all of them. Everybody used them. And forensics found mixed DNA samples that were difficult to separate. They literally say that at trial.

They're like, yeah, there was just DNA from all of them like it was very hard to separate the samples. But people are like, aha! Everything in your house where you live has your shit on it. Like, this drives me nuts, man. It would be more suspicious if it wasn't there. It's just like, if Patrick did it, like, I just... Oh my God, I literally, I can't cope. I can't cope. I'm just like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, they're not saying Lindsay's, they're not saying, oh, we just found mixed samples. We found mixed samples, but we found Patrick's samples on there in, in more of like a primary, like, you know, it was like the leading DNA sample. But I'm like, there's a very clear reason for why that is, which you're going to explain to us, Hannah. Because, as investigators explained, pulling fingerprints off the exercise bands.

Wasn't an easy thing, but also Patrick took the bands off the children's necks. So obviously his fingerprints are going to be the most recent ones on there. Yes, that would make sense for why they're the primary fucking DNA sample that's on there, because he fucking pulled the bands off his children's necks. Another thing that I forgot to mention here, so I'm going to add it in, is that there's been a lot of conversation online about how there were no fingerprints found on the knife. So, if Lindsay Clancy cut her own wrists and neck before jumping out of the window, how come the knife that they found in the master bedroom had no fingerprints on it?

Surely that looks pretty suspicious. Surely that means that Patrick did it and then wipe the knife down. But again, the way that this is being spouted online is so misleading. The forensic expert who processed the knife took the stand at the trial and said that he could not pull any fingerprints off the knife because of the ridges on the handle. Some surfaces make pulling prints very difficult. So he said,

I could not get any usable fingerprints off the knife, becomes, online, there were no fingerprints on the knife, when in reality they're two totally different situations. But if we must, let's say he did do it. Why then would Patrick support and defend Lindsay both online and after the killings and at trial. Surely it would be better for him, given that he'd been stupid enough to let her survive, to just let her be the ultimate villain and distance himself

and keep his head down, but he doesn't. He does the exact opposite. And also, why would Lindsay Clancy be covering for him? Was she so drugged into oblivion that she doesn't know what happened? Well, if that's true, how is she so clear on the details? And also, why doesn't the toxicology report support any of this. That report showed that Lindsay did have seven different medications in her system, all of the ones that she had been prescribed, but only one of them was at an elevated level. None were at a toxic one. And that's important. And we will come back to it next week when we get into the Commonwealth's case. But again, for the Patrick Did It, crowd, where is the evidence of him drugging her. I didn't want to bring this up at the beginning until I had a bit more

info, but one of the videos I saw against my will that was served to me was someone saying that Patrick Clancy is Chris Watts. And I was like, like literally. Well, they were using it as, this is where I think you're kind of spot on when you're talking about this like search for the plot twist thing is comparing cases that have happened at some point in history in the world and being like this is exactly that one. So they're saying like Patrick Clancy is another Chris Watts like all of the motives that Chris Wads had

for doing the despicable things he did including concealing bodies by the way which Patrick is obviously not doing like you cannot compare even if even in a world where Patrick Clancy did do it which is not the world that we live in but like even if

he's nothing like Chris Watts to just have these like totem whole cases that everyone's like, oh, well, it's exactly like that one. And therefore, all of the things happened that happened in the Chris Watts case is completely bizarre. Like, it doesn't make any logical sense. And this is what's making me feel like sad because true crime, Hannah, you and I have always said that true crime fans are some of the most discerning fans out there. Like, if you are going to plunge into this world and start talking about cases, you better fucking know your shit. And I'm sure there's thousands of people screaming in the comments that I haven't done my

research like, sure, whatever. Oh, yeah, but they say that every week. Oh, of course. Like, I know that I have. You know, there are a very discerning audience, which is what we've always said. I am hoping that this isn't the downgrading of real true crime knowledgeable fans who know their fucking shit. They know stuff like this about mixed DNA samples and how difficult it can be to pull those things apart about timelines, about inconsistencies, not necessarily being the be-all and end-all. Like, we know this about people.

And they wouldn't make comparisons to, if Patrick Clancy had done this, he's not the same profile of killer as Chris Watts, very fundamentally. So he's a very different type of killer. So even making those comparisons, it just feels like this kind of dumbing down and the lowest common denominator of true crime entering the conversation in this case.

And that is what's made me feel so, like, despondent about it because... No, it's really concerning. The level of analysis, the level of critical thinking, the level of, like, ability to understand evidence is really, really. In some place is great, fantastic. And I'm not saying that, you're saying, oh, because you agree with them. I'm saying because they're making reasoned arguments. And again, I'm so glad to see that reputable true crime podcasters, content creators that I follow are not going anywhere near this conspiracy theory.

But so many people are and it's really, it's really scary. It's really scary. But that's where we are. And another thing, I know we spoke earlier about the 911 call and how it hasn't been released to the public, but we do get at trial people who heard it talking about it. Because it was played at trial for the jury, but we don't get to hear that, but we have people who come and describe what was said. And I thought one of the really interesting things that were said in this 911 one call is how the way Patrick speaks and the things that he says, basically like are totally the polar opposite to other cases we see where that person who makes a 911 call ends up later becoming like the main suspect or even actually being.

convicted of the murder. And one of the things that stood out the most for me in the description is that when he phones 911, the first thing he says is not establishing an alibi, which is we've heard that so many times. He's like, I just got home from CVS and picking up some takeaway and I found my wife on the floor. He's straight away, send an ambulance. My wife has tried to kill herself. No, like trying to mitigate where he was, create a nerve, create like this, oh, look over here. None of that. Straight into it. I need help. Right fucking now. Which again, screams to me of truthfulness. And there are outright lies being hoiked around about Patrick. There's a widely circulated one that Patrick got remarried four months after the murders,

and that is just not true. He did get remarried three years later. And you can think that that's too quick, but like, what is normal after a trauma like this? And also, like, it's really not. it's like, statistically speaking... Is it not also a trauma response? It like... Like he's alone in the world now.

Like, is it that shocking that he would look for another person? No, I don't know. Even the, like, men, remarry faster the women do. They just do. It's a fact. Like, that's not... Three years is not an inconceivable amount of time, I don't think.

And there are people who are dragging Patrick's new wife into all of this, and there are people posting pictures of her, and people comparing her to Lindsay and asking, what sort of woman would marry Patrick after what had happened. So therefore she must have been in on the whole thing and they must have been having an affair behind Lindsay's back and then killed the kids and tried to kill her so they could be together. But there's just no evidence of that.

None. Not one single bit of an evidence of anything like that at all. But apparently Patrick's screaming, she's killed the fucking kids, is because he hated his children. What? Apparently him saying, killed the fucking kids.

It shows his contempt for his children. No, I understand. Yeah, sorry. Just in case anyone was lost. Oh my God. Actually, this happened to be, I've started baking pots, and I was making my little pot. And the girl next to me, I was,

everyone was talking about what their jobs are. And this one goes, oh my God, I love true crime. And then she started talking about the Idaho student murders, which obviously we've done, but that's your, like, that's really your wheelhouse, that case. Like, you spent so long, like, so I don't know off the top of my head the details, like, sleep paralysis demon. Quite. So I didn't have enough of a, like, I didn't have enough retaliation to what she said next.

But she was saying some, and I was like, hold on, do you think Brian Coburger didn't do it? And she was like, I think he was involved, but I think the girls in the house were in on it. And I was like, how? And she said, well, they were Googling, like, job vacancies in the morning and who does that when you found a body? And I was like, that, what? Who does that after they've committed a murder? Like, what a ridiculous thing to say? So, I mean, I just, I shut it down.

But, like, I was just like, it's exactly what you've been talking about. Hang on to one thing that you, for some reason, have decided just would be impossible in that scenario. And then ignoring literally everything else. I need to go lie down after this. I'm not even exaggerating the level of discourse on this. It's just making me sad. It's just like, oh, I just can't. I can't cope.

It's really bad. Oh, God. Okay, let's keep going because we just have to plow on. Because then there's the lie that Patrick Clancy showed absolutely no emotion when the 911 call was played at trial. They're like he just sat there. He didn't show her ounce of emotion. Well, guess what?

He wasn't in the room when they played the 911 call. And if you'd have watched the trial, you'd fucking know that. Because he left the room. He testified. And then as soon as he was done, he knew the next thing they were going to do because he would have been told is play the 911 call. And guess what? He fucking ran out of there.

So that he didn't have to listen to what was undoubtedly the worst moment of his entire fucking life. And then there's people saying, oh, you didn't seem upset enough when he was testifying either. And I'm like, well, I guess that's subjective. Like, what do you mean, upset enough? And I do also wonder if people, these people who are saying this were like watching a different man give testimony. Because I watched it. And we're going to watch bits of it next week. To me, Patrick Clancy looked like a man who was doing everything in his power to hold it together.

Yes, he has a very shallow affect. Yes, he's speaking very like. I don't know, like, very like, matric, like, okay, yeah, this I have to get through. Because I think it's a man who looks like he's sedated himself to get through this horrific situation that he's exposed with. Yes. I really, really didn't get the impression that it was emotionless. It seemed so sad. But, you know, I don't know.

And then there are people who talk about her Patrick being a shit husband. Apparently he went skiing and out to brunch and on a work trip during the four months that Lindsay was suffering. But let's be clear, Lindsay also went with him to friends' houses and family events. She went to the gym regularly. And she and Patrick even ran a marathon together after Callan was born. Yes, he did go on a two-day work trip and yes, he went skiing after he dropped Lindsay off at one of her hospital appointments. But he took Cora their daughter with him. So, you know, you can slice it however you want.

was this a father trying to give his daughter some semblance of normality while her mother was struggling and disconnected or is it a neglectful husband? I think for me, all the evidence I need that Patrick is a supportive husband is that he goes to Lindsay to the nurse and he's like, this is not working and he goes with her and he says it's 10,000 times worse. Like this also this is going on over a long period of time. You can't expect somebody, somebody who's got three kids to not go to work and to just shut themselves in a windowless turret and like rend garments about it. Like life has to happen. He's got children. I don't think any of that is. No, I don't think it is.

And they had an active life together. Like, like said, they ran a marathon. They go skiing. He took chorus skiing. It's like he was just off on a fucking jolly. He took his five-year-old daughter. Like, why would you begrudge her that? Like, it's just so strange to me. And I also think all of this stuff about him being a neglectful

husband ignores everything else Patrick tried to do to get Lindsay help. For example, he tells her that she didn't need to go back to work. When her anxiety was peaking around the time that she was meant to go back after maternity leave, he says, don't go back to work. He tells her, we can make it work on my salary. He also says, let's get a nanny to help you with the kids. And then he even told Lindsay, if the insurance won't cover a certain treatment, because Lindsay, and we know this from Google searches and things she was talking about and writing about, she wanted to look into things like ketamine therapy, which had been, you know, she'd done her research and she thought it could really help her. But it wasn't covered under insurance and Patrick was like, that's fine,

we'll find a way to pay for it. But even if, let's say none of that's true, and even if Patrick was a deadbeat husband, you still need evidence that he killed the kids. You can even blame him for what happened and say that, you know, he didn't do enough to get the kids away from her or anything like that. But that doesn't equate to him actually killing the kids and then trying to kill Lindsay and then framing her. And those people, there are people out there saying that they think Patrick should be charged with something because he didn't stop her from killing the kids, like manslaughter or something like that. I don't think you understand how the law works. Like that's not how someone would be charged in that case. Lindsay was seen repeatedly by medical professionals. She wasn't kept

under locking key at home and refused treatment or anything like that. Like this is not an Andrew Yates situation with that regard. She's not, even Andrew Yates or a doctor, but you know what I mean? She's not isolated in that way. Lindsay, Glancy, we're seeing doctor after doctor after doctor. This is not that kind of thing where Patrick was standing in the way of her getting medical treatment. Like, it's a very strange thing to say. I think there's a lot of anger. and a lot of projection that I see in the discourse around this case. And sure, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I haven't seen a fucking wink of it. And yes, there are also many people saying, well, Patrick Clancy just needs to be investigated. He was investigated. The police

investigated. Do you think the police wouldn't have investigated? Of course they fucking investigated him. And then they say, there are so many inconsistencies in his story. Yes, there are. But there are also, as I said, inconsistencies in Lindsay's story. There will always be inconsistency. in people's stories when they are talking about highly traumatic events. The point is, do those inconsistencies actually prove anything? To me, not really, and I haven't seen, as I said, a single credible person or source make a coherent argument that makes sense regarding Patrick's guilt. Even now, in hindsight, no one who actually knew the Clancy's was like, yeah, something

was a bit off. They were an ordinary, happy family who pulled together during a crisis. And that's what's even more sad and terrifying. Lindsay Clancy didn't slip through the cracks. She had access to healthcare at some of the best facilities in the US, and she had insurance. She had a husband who clearly loved and supported her, and a family who were there for her,

and remained there for her today. Even her ex-in-laws testified in her defence. Yet despite all of this, Lindsay Clancy fell off the deep end and ended up killing her three children. I really thought this case would end up being about big farmer, over-medicalisation, the mental health system, and women's care in general, particularly around postpartum.

I thought it would put all of those topics under the spotlight and that's what we'd be talking about. But it's all just been derailed by these crazy conspiracy theories that are rooted in absolutely nothing. And also, as I said, what's also been completely forgotten about this is the three children who were fucking murdered.

I guess I must have so much contempt for these children, sorry, these children who were murdered. And also I think what I don't think anybody, bar you, obviously, has taken into account is that having three kids, stressful enough, having three kids and a wife, you're concerned at any moments could top herself is an incredibly high pressure environment to be in. And he's still working as well. He's still working. He's not drinking himself to death. Like he's not doing any, like, this period of time would also have been impossibly hard for Patrick as well. well. And I don't think that can be just struck from the record, you know. And you're right. There was no signs of any destructive behavior. Like he's spending time with his kids, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Whatever. But before we get into the trial next week, let's finish off

today's episode by talking about not guilty by reason of insanity in Massachusetts, where it is actually called lack of criminal responsibility. Most states in the US use the McNaughton rule for claims of not guilty by reason of insanity. God, I'd forgotten about that. Bloody hell. The McNaughton rule, our old friend, is also called the right wrong test. And it requires that the defendant at the time of committing the act of which they are accused was laboring under such a defective reason from disease of the mind that they did not understand the nature and quality of the act they were doing. or did. Or they didn't know what they were doing was wrong. Richard Chase is the best example of that. So the questions we have to look at are did the killer know what they were doing full stop? Or did they know what they were doing was wrong?

And by wrong, under McNaughton, it means legally or morally. So did the accused know that what they were doing was illegal? so against the law, or did they know that what they were doing was something that society views as immoral? So morally wrong. Though there are, of course, also distinctions in place under the McNaughton rule that would allow for a defendant to argue that while they knew what they did was legally wrong, they thought what they were doing was morally right due to the delusions they were suffering under at the time. For example, Andrea Gates was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity after she killed her five children because she believed that she had to kill them to save them from going to hell. She knew it was legally wrong, but she thought it was morally right.

Crucially with the McNaughton rule, the defendant is presumed to be sane, and the burden of proof is on the defence. The defence must actively prove that the accused was legally insane at the time of the offence. only on the balance of probabilities, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but still. Yeah, it's very important that under McNaughton, the defence has to prove on the balance of probabilities that the person was insane.

Under the law in Massachusetts, where Lindsay Clancy's trial took place, it is honestly much softer on the defendant. There is no burden of proof at all on the defence to prove insanity. They just have to produce some evidence to create some reasonable doubt about Lindsay's criminal responsibility. The burden of proof in Massachusetts is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lindsay Clancy is criminally responsible, i.e. that she was not insane. That is quite tough. Proving a negative is quite tough. But that's the standard. And basically the way in which the prosecution would do this is either by showing at the time of the crime, the accused did not suffer from a mental defect or disease at all.

And bizarrely the Commonwealth in this case do actually try that a bit. It's very strange. I don't think anyone, even Lindsay's harshest critics could say that she wasn't mentally ill at the time. Like, I think it's pretty well established. And they do abandon this notion by the end because it's a lot. such a wild stretch to ask the jury to believe that she wasn't mentally ill. And they didn't need to anyway, because they could still get a guilty verdict if the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that despite Lindsay Clancy's mental disease or defect,

she nonetheless retained the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness or criminality of her conduct or the ability to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law. Yeah, and that's like a big, big difference here other than who has the burden of proof in Massachusetts. So basically they have to prove that the mental disease or defect that she had didn't stop her knowing that killing her kids was wrong or criminal, so morally wrong or illegal. Or, and this is the added bit in Massachusetts that's also different, that even if she did know it was morally and legally wrong, her mental disease prevented her from being able to stop herself from killing them anyway. So she knows it's wrong, but she's still doing it because she cannot stop her.

herself because of the mental defect. And for example, that would be like hearing a voice that is so overpowering and controlling that she couldn't ignore it without acting on it. And there are a lot of people online asking why this even went to trial in the first place, because Lindsay was so obviously suffering from postpartum psychosis. But she doesn't have the diagnosis that's meaningless. And even if she had been, that only meets the first requirement of the law, which is that she had a mental disorder, doesn't automatically give her a not guilty. Someone can be in psychosis, but still appreciate right from wrong, morally or legally, and someone could still be hearing voices and choose to ignore them, i.e. conforming their behavior

to the law. Mental illness doesn't remove all agency, and it's a really dangerous idea to suggest otherwise. And even psychosis doesn't. It doesn't automatically mean that you weren't able to control yourself or didn't know it was right or wrong. Because again, that's a very dangerous thing to say for anyone who's suffering with psychosis that, oh, well, you know, you can't possibly know what you're doing. Like, it's just not true. So next week, we will get into the trial, and it is an eventful one, as you can imagine. We'll hear from Patrick Clancy, his parents, Lindsay's mother, the doctors who treated Lindsay and experts on both sides. And of course, we'll also be taking a look at all the notes that Lindsay wrote in her own words about what transpired in the months

leading up to these brutal killings. And we'll finish off with what we think happened next week in the second and final episode of our case on Lindsay Clancy. Thank you for listening. That was a big one. We'll see you next week and then we will never talk about us again. Goodbye. Goodbye.