Patrick Clancy’s deleted Reddit posts map weeks of insomnia, hospital turnaways, and bipolar fears before Lindsay Clancy strangled their three children and jumped from a window.
On Jan. 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy sent her husband on errands, then used exercise resistance bands to strangle Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months. She cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a bedroom window in a failed suicide attempt. Two of the children died that night; the infant died three days later. The New York Post later examined Patrick’s since-deleted Reddit account, which had been active since 2017 and left a raw record of the couple’s scramble for answers in the weeks before the killings.
Those posts do not excuse what happened. They do show a mother in freefall, a husband posting for help online, doctors switching drugs and turning her away, and a criminal case that still cannot produce a finished verdict for three dead children.
Lindsay, a former labor and delivery nurse, was 36 when she faced three counts of first-degree murder. Patrick testified that after her release from hospital care she seemed much better, and that on the day of the killings he had no inkling anything was wrong.
After their third child, mild return-to-work anxiety led to a Zoloft prescription. Patrick later wrote that the drug had been his own idea. Within a week, the posts say, severe insomnia hit.
One post described going 48 hours without sleep. Others said she was lucky to get three or four hours a night and, oddly, did not feel tired even as the deficit piled up. She lost 15 pounds in two months and dropped to 115 pounds.
On Dec. 6, 2022, a post in an “Ask Psychiatry” forum sought another perspective on mild anxiety, prior pregnancies, and therapy versus medication. The next day, seven weeks before the children’s deaths, Patrick posted in “Ask Docs,” writing as if for his wife:
"I suspect this medication was never needed in the first place (Zoloft was my own idea), but my psychiatrist is saying I’m exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder."
He added that after a week on Zoloft she developed severe insomnia, and that she had been eating well, sleeping normally, dancing at a wedding, and socializing before the slide. He stressed that her anxiety had been very mild going in, and that similar trouble after the first two children had been handled with therapy and coping skills.
By Dec. 9 the questions darkened. A post asked whether others’ medication experiences had ever involved thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones, and whether anyone had come close to acting on them.
“I can’t stress enough that her anxiety was very mild going into this,” one post said. Another argued she was overwhelmed with the kids, but that more time to decompress had worked before.
On Dec. 15, Patrick took Lindsay to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room. Posts from that stretch described her as severely depressed, numb, not caring about anything, and even having suicidal thoughts.
Five days later, a postpartum treatment program in Rhode Island turned her away. Doctors there judged that she needed more general psychiatric care than the program offered.
From Dec. 30 to Jan. 5 she was admitted to McLean Hospital. Treating psychiatrists later testified about that stay. Medication changes in the broader course included Ativan and other benzodiazepines and sleeping pills, then a switch to Prozac. Medical experts on both sides of the later trial pointed to possible bipolar disorder. The defense argued a manic phase spiraled into psychosis. Lindsay and Patrick both sued doctors for missing a bipolar diagnosis. Patrick’s lawyer did not return a request for comment.
On Jan. 23, the day before the killings, Patrick’s last Reddit post before the deaths was mundane: tech advice about an app for a real estate open house. The account was later deleted. At trial in Plymouth court, cell phone forensics expert Timothy Chiappini read aloud the same email address that had appeared in one of the Reddit posts, tying the online trail to the case file.
Defense experts cast the killings as the product of severe postpartum psychosis. Fox News reported forensic psychologist Dr. Paul Zeizel’s testimony that Lindsay told her then-husband she heard a male voice ordering her to kill the children and herself, that she had no choice, and that Zeizel found no evidence of malingering and saw her as presenting honestly.
Prosecutors refused to treat the children as a footnote. Medical testimony laid out how ligature strangulation works: unconsciousness in roughly 10 to 30 seconds and death in about five to ten minutes of sustained pressure. That timeline undercuts any story of a momentary snap. Reporting also held that she told the children to “go to God,” language the state used to argue control and deliberation rather than pure break from reality.
After a six-week trial, the jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on Sept. 4. The mistrial after repeated deadlocks left the murders without a completed verdict.
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz put the stakes in plain words. The Washington Examiner recorded his insistence that court was in session because the children were not, and that the priority remained Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Cruz said the facts showed Lindsay killed her three children and that the evidence suggested she was in control when she did it.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington described the split differently, saying it was 11-1 for acquittal and casting the holdout as the juror who would not apply the law as the defense saw it. Separate coverage later tracked the holdout juror’s account of never wavering on guilt.
Pressure around that juror did not stay inside the jury room. Reporting followed claims that the holdout juror faced death threats after the mistrial, a reminder of how quickly public sympathy can turn ugly when a case becomes a cause.
Public rallies and fundraising for Lindsay turned a triple child homicide into a mental-health morality play. That reflex treats the defendant as the main character and the dead children as background. Cruz’s office kept repeating the opposite hierarchy: the victims come first.
Strangling three children with exercise bands is not a paperwork error. It is sustained violence against a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a baby. The Reddit trail shows real suffering, real insomnia, real hospital visits, and real fear inside the marriage. It also shows a system that prescribed, adjusted, referred, admitted, discharged, and still left three children alone with a mother who then killed them.
Patrick’s posts pleaded for perspective and described a woman who had gotten through earlier postpartum trouble with therapy. They asked strangers whether intrusive thoughts of harm had ever edged toward action. Those are desperate questions from a husband trying to manage a crisis in public view on “Ask Docs” and “Ask Psychiatry.” They are not a verdict.
The couple’s lawsuits against treating doctors keep another fight alive over the missed bipolar claim. That civil track may sort medical duty. It cannot restore Cora, Dawson, or Callan, and it cannot replace a finished criminal judgment.
Defense lawyers have moved to block another trial, including double jeopardy arguments after the 11-1 mistrial. The legal chess continues. The children’s graves do not move.
Political noise followed the juror fight as well, including offers of support from outside Massachusetts. None of that noise changes the core sequence the posts and the trial record already show: warning signs, fragmented care, a husband sent out on errands, and three children killed in their home.
When a culture spends more energy humanizing the adult who tightened the bands than remembering the children who died in them, it is not mercy. It is moral confusion with a body count.
