The Sexism in Not Believing Lindsay Clancy Could Be a Killer

Photo credit: Screenshot from CourtTV Live Trial Day 1

Lindsay Clancy stands trial in Massachusetts v. Lindsay Clancy for the deaths of her three young children in Duxbury, MA in January 2023. As the case stands, Clancy has been accused of killing her five year-old daughter, three year-old son, and seven month-old baby boy in their home while her husband was out running errands and picking up dinner.

Massachusetts v. Lindsay Clancy, In Brief

The prosecution alleges that Clancy strangled her own children using exercise bands in the basement of their home before cutting her wrists and throat and jumping from her second-story bedroom window.

“Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin J. Reddington, filed a formal notice of the lack of criminal responsibility defense on Friday. In the filing, Reddington wrote, “statements of the defendant as to her mental condition will be relied upon by defendant’s expert witnesses and the defendant does intend to present to the Court a defense of lack of criminal responsibility.”

By arguing a lack of criminal responsibility, Clancy is essentially conceding that she committed the crime she is accused of — killing her children — but could not understand the consequences of her actions because of her mental state at the time. If Clancy is ultimately acquitted at trial because jurors determine she is not criminally responsible for her actions, she would be committed to a mental health facility or to Bridgewater State Hospital.” (1)

Her Defense Attorney is One of the Best For This Type of Case

Reddington is not new to defending women’s rights. He had a landmark case in 1989 where he successfully won a case on behalf of a client of his who was accused of murdering her boyfriend by plunging knives into his eyes while he was sleeping. His argument was that his client had been abused for years, which led to a temporary insanity known as battered woman’s syndrome. (2)

The Online Discourse is Harmful

For this article, I’ll preface that the case is still ongoing and I am going off her own statements and the statements of her lawyers. Yes, cases do occasionally develop in unexpected ways. I am watching the case to listen and learn, but I have become exhausted with the discourse on social media by those who are not watching for the same reasons. Many are treating this like entertainment, excited for the next episode and some “big twist”. I’d like to take a moment to remind us all of the gravity of what this case is about and that these are real people’s lives involved.

People Are Claiming Patrick Clancy Killed Their Kids, Not Lindsay

In the furore of social media discourse around this case, many have begun speculating that, in fact, it was not Lindsay Clancy that killed her kids, and instead, her husband, Patrick Clancy killed her kids, attempted to kill her, then called 911 before he succeeded in her murder, and a week later, implanted memories in her head of murdering their kids, herself.

People have fabricated stories of Patrick Clancy somehow faking a call from Lindsay to himself while he is on CCTV in a CVS store. I’ve had people tell me that on the 911 call where people in the courtroom said they heard Lindsay speak that, in reality, Patrick had somehow trained his voice to sound like her and had faked her speech. People believe that he changed shoes in CVS, despite that not being caught on camera or the receipt from his trip. People have claimed that he drugged her, locked her in the bedroom, was abusive and gaslit her into believing she was crazy, etc.

None of that is founded in actual evidence from the trial.

Sexism in This Case

I have taken time to correct and also examine some of the claims spreading on social media in one of our Weekly Fact Checks. Since attempting to correct the pervasive misinformation that’s spreading rapidly across all social media platforms, I’ve been called sexist and a shill for the patriarchy for believing Lindsay’s own defense, that she killed her children due to postpartum psychosis, instead of believing that the man in the relationship did it.

And that is not how I see this at all — quite the opposite. I see everyone dismissing her own admission of killing her children and her defense argument that she was not well as the ones perpetuating sexist, patriarchal behaviors that mirror treatment I’ve seen and experienced myself, as a woman.

Instead of listening and learning from what her and her defense have to say about her experience struggling with mental health and postpartum psychosis, people are, metaphorically, speaking over her to tell her that they know better than her and her attorney, and they’ll fix this situation for her in the way they see fit.

In this way, we are missing out on the very important lessons we should be learning from this case.

There are a few specific ways that I see sexism being expressed in the dismissal of Lindsay Clancy’s admission. I’ll go over just three of them here.

We Don’t Believe Women

We love to chant “believe women” until what women are saying makes us uncomfortable.

People have taken and twisted every element of this case to try and fit their narratives that Lindsay Clancy did not kill her children, but she is not arguing that. She is saying she did, but that she was not well and no one was listening to her. (It is still on the prosecution to prove that she did beyond a reasonable doubt, and they may not, seeing as how they have truly done a terrible job with this case thus far, in my opinion).

By continuing to not listen to her, as she’s telling us she’s still not well and asking for help, we are no better than the doctors who her lawyers are suing for malpractice.

People have claimed that when she says she felt like she was “watching herself do it”, in reference to the killings, that she’s trying to express that she was watching Patrick Clancy’s mistress kill her kids. I hope that reading that sentence sounds as wild and off-the-wall as it is, as there’s no evidence and it’s not based on anything besides this statement of hers, according to people on social media.

Instead, we should be listening to Lindsay Clancy’s clear cries for help. Her statement clearly aligns with her journal entries. In her journals that were submitted into evidence, she says things like “I’m drowning every day,” and that she felt “completely disconnected with my baby”. In another entry read by Reddington in court, she said she began to “feel disconnected with myself.”

It’s so important that we, as a society, collectively work on listening to women better when they bring us their problems. So often, women are dismissed as “hysterical”, too emotional, irrational, or unable to fully understand themselves. So similarly, people are taking her statement of feeling like she was watching herself kill her children, and trying to ascribe literal meaning to it, instead of trying to understand the out-of-body ill feeling she is trying to describe.

We, as women, are used to dealing with this with abusive partners, medical professionals, coworkers, bosses, and more. As a society, we should do better. When women tell us something is wrong, we should stop and listen first, before trying to fabricate what we think is wrong without her input.

People Love to Infantilize Women

Many people are quick to come to her rescue in the comments of social media posts, to tell people that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about when she claims she killed her children in her civil suit or over the phone to Patrick.

They claim she was coerced by her husband, Patrick in 2023 to believe that she did it and 3 years later when this case was filed by her experienced defense attorney, she is still gaslit by her ex-husband and doesn’t know what she’s doing.

This is infantilizing her, taking the control of her situation away from her, based on a speculation or projection about her mental state with no evidence.

“Infantilization is when an adult is being treated like a child, even though nothing about their mental, physical, social, or intellectual well-being requires such treatment. This behavior often stems from a desire for control…” (3)

In all of her journal entries entered into court, none of them express any issues with Patrick other than her own worries that she’s not an attentive or good enough partner. There is no evidence that she was abused or gaslit by him. The only evidence people seem to be able to point to comes from misinformation around a video entered as evidence into court. They say that he was a stand-offish, inattentive parent, when the reality is that he was standing off… in line for an exhibit for his child. You can read more about that claim in our Weekly Fact Check from last week.

She does not need you to defend her by coming up with theories that she’s been gaslit or tricked or didn’t know better when she confessed; she has one of the best defense attorneys in Massachusetts. Let her speak for herself.

It Is Dismissing the Important Discourse Needed Around the Medical Problems Women Face

By dismissing her own admission of what she did, we are removing the weight of why she’s saying it happened. She’s claiming, among other things, that postpartum psychosis led her to kill her children, and whether or not you believe her, we should be listening to what her defense has to say to her doctors who potentially failed her.

Her own civil lawsuit against her doctor reads, “Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do. She recognized something was wrong with her. She sought medical treatment. She went to the emergency rooms. She called crisis hotlines. She admitted herself to hospitals. She took the medications prescribed to her. She communicated her worsening symptoms to her providers. […] Her husband advocated for her. Her family drove from out of state to help care for her children. And still, the medical system failed her completely.”

This is not as uncommon as we would like. Women, their mental health, and their general medical care falls through the cracks so much more often than I think any of us are truly aware. I have my own devastating experiences I could share, where a doctor’s dismissal was not only wrong, but life-threatening.

We need to be listening to this case and what Reddington has to say about the care she received, because he’s been landing devastating blows during the cross-examinations of her medical team.

We should be taking this time to openly talk about postpartum depression and the consequences. So many don’t receive proper care for this known and common disorder, and we could all do better by being aware and discussing the effects and need for better care.

And while I’m not sure how strongly I believe that any one doctor was fully responsible for what led to Lindsay Clancy’s actions, I do wholly believe that our medical system is responsible. It may be too much to wish that it would be held responsible for even an ounce of the heavy weight its cost women in our country.

This Case Makes People Uncomfortable, So They Want to Take Back Control

By taking away her own defense from her, people are trying to take back control of the narrative, because her narrative that she’s sharing makes them uncomfortable.

A woman who was struggling with depression and intrusive thoughts is alleged to have killed her own kids in a brutal and traumatic fashion, and it makes sense that we are all wrestling with this as a reality. It is a devastating story, and it should make us uncomfortable.

And yet so many do not want to accept that this could have happened exactly as it seems to have happened, and instead work hard to fabricate cinema-level true crime plot twists to explain away the uncomfortable claims.

Maybe they are projecting their own abuse from an ex onto Patrick Clancy; maybe they are scared to face the reality that some otherwise normal people can mentally snap due to things outside of their control; maybe they don’t want to face their own hard feelings they experience occasionally so they’re trying to control hers.

Whatever it may be, this is not our story to rewrite. This is her story to share, and ours to listen right now.

I encourage you to take a pause in spreading speculation about this case on social media, check your own motivations for why you’re so interested in this case, and approach this week’s trial with empathy, curiosity, and most of all, with openness to hear Lindsay’s story.

Sources

1. McKenna, Charlie. (2024, Dec 16). “Lindsay Clancy pursues insanity defense in trial over her children’s deaths”. Mass Live. https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/12/lindsay-clancy-pursues-insanity-defense-in-trial-over-her-childrens-deaths.html
2. Downing, Vicki-Ann. (2011, Jul 17). “Lawyer Kevin Reddington takes on another high-profile case in defending ‘Whitey’ Bulger girlfriend”. Wicked Local. https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/journal-news-independent/2011/07/17/lawyer-kevin-reddington-takes-on/39599972007/
3. Loggins, Brittany. (2026, Jun 28). “The Psychological Toll of Infantilizing a Loved One”. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-infantilization-5194849