Lindsay Clancy and the plague of conspiratorial thinking

Being a “truther” was once a fringe activity. The pandemic put an end to that and now conspiratorial thinking is a runaway train.

From Kategate, to Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, to the man who was the only survivor of a plane crash, any inconsistency or event that defies logic quickly becomes fertile ground for “wait a second” skeptics, internet sleuths and online grifters.

The latest to be seized upon is the tragic case of three children - Cora, five, Dawson, three and eight-month-old Callan - who were strangled to death in the basement of their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury.

The children’s mother, Lindsay Clancy, has admitted on multiple occasions, and in paperwork filed in a civil case, that she killed her kids. Her defence attorney claims that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time. The disorder is extremely rare and estimated to affect as little as one in a thousand new mothers. Rarer still is infanticide as a result of psychosis, with an incident rate of around four per cent.

It’s an explanation that the district attorney’s office isn’t buying. They claim Lindsay is "criminally responsible", and that she sent her then-husband, Patrick, out to collect medicine and dinner from a local restaurant so that she could “intentionally, rationally, and swiftly” carry out the triple murder. They also allege that she faked a suicide attempt by jumping out of a second-floor window. She is partly paralysed from that fall.

The duelling narratives are currently being played out in front of a judge and jury in Plymouth, Massachusetts. And then there’s a third theory. The one that’s all over Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X and Threads — that Patrick Clancy killed his children and framed his wife…

The theory has gathered so much pace that rebuttals of it go viral because the comments section so quickly fills with claims that the fact-based reporting is misinformation.

Patrick Clancy truthers will point to a myriad of issues that back them up:

• The scant investigation carried out by cops into his possible role in the murders

• The sending of an email that could place him back at the house when prosecutors say the killings occurred

• Lindsay’s confession to Patrick as she lay on the ground as she slipped in and out of consciousness

• The apparent ‘different shoes’ he is wearing at the two locations he visited while out of his home which were captured on CCTV

• The low temperature of Lindsay’s body when emergency workers attended to her suggesting that she may have been outside longer than the official timeline suggests

And then there’s Patrick’s life after the killings, where he:

• Went on vacation to south America and Europe just weeks later

• Started a new relationship with another woman — Rachel Danis — a year on. The pair married earlier this year.

While all of this may be compelling, juicy stuff, for Patrick Clancy to kill his children, convince his wife that she did it and to fake his distress when he “discovered” their bodies, he would need to be a criminal mastermind.

What’s more likely is that Lindsay Clancy, like so many mothers, was struggling, and suffering from a severe mental illness. Indeed her problems and the help she sought for them is well documented.

In the months before the killings Lindsay saw multiple medical practitioners, including a psychiatrist and a psychiatric nurse. She called a suicide hotline, went to the emergency room and on another occasion was denied inpatient treatment. She was prescribed more than a dozen different drugs for anxiety and insomnia over the course of four months. Lindsay even told her mother and husband that she had thought about harming her children.

All the Patrick-did-it conspiracy theory does is detract from the much bigger conversation we should be having about:

• How Clancy was let down by the medics who treated her and the inadequate system they operate in

• The burden carried by mothers and how little support some get from their partners and family

• The unrealistic expectations placed on mums to raise kids AND work

• The cruelty of the prosecution brought by Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office given Lindsay’s history

• Why Lindsay’s case is catching so much attention when a similar case, that of Latarsha Sanders, a black woman, in the same district did not

It can feel thrilling for conspiracy theorists to think that they know the truth. But the only thing we know for sure is that there will be more Lindsay Clancys. More mothers let down by a health system woefully incapable of dealing with post natal issues. And more mothers overwhelmed by society’s expectations.

If we care at all about those three little kids then the best we can do is direct our energy towards helping mums not speculating over grainy images of shoes.

What do you think about the response to the Lindsay Clancy case? Let me know in the comments.

Previously on highly flammable…

highly flammable is produced and written by me, Rachel Richardson

I’m a content creator, commentator and a consultant for hire at Beginning, Middle and End

Say hello at rr@bmend.com