A summary of Lindsay Clancy’s efforts to get help
One of the hallmarks of the Clancy case is that she made lengthy and repeated efforts to seek help. In case you haven’t seen much about that, and would like a summary, this is pretty thorough and relatively easy to understand:
I highly recommend the trial transcripts, easily found through any search engine. The problem with any summary is that someone has decided to tell a story and will weight or leave out facts accordingly. A video summary in particular is difficult to check for contradictions or other inconsistencies. The transcript is easy to search or go back and forth on.
First comes the grasping.
Then comes the coping.
Next is the seething.
This and the whole sorry affair reeks of desperation, apparently denial IS a very long river in Africa.
Attorney Andrew Branca argues that the timeline shows too much planning and preparation by Clancy to be consistent with a psychotic break. Just 14m.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd9fOr4o2ZI
It ain’t pretty.
TJ:
Branca is a expert in the law of self-defense, not psychosis. Some psychotics can plan quite well. He is simply wrong.
If we’re going to be guided by experts, the prosecution medical experts have also testified to what evidence there is against psychosis. For example, they testified that it’s very rare that command hallucinations only appear during the commission of a crime and are never experienced before or since.
They also testify to the difference between intrusive thoughts and actually hearing external voices.
Be that as it may, that she was sick is not really disputed; that she was seeking to get better is also not really disputed. What’s at issue really is, ought she to be held responsible?
Now those were prosecution experts, but there are of course others retained by the defense who say differently.
What strikes me, in the videos I’ve seen of the trial, is Clancy’s strikingly bland face, without any sign of sorrow, guilt or other emotion. That she lept out of a 2nd floor window and injured her spinal cord after strangling her three kids adds to the drama but does not lead me away from the fact that she was a cold-blooded murderer of her own children. Heilbrun’s testimony will be hard to counter.
Niketas:
If you’re familiar with trials, the prosecution can always find medical experts to support their case. That doesn’t mean the experts are correct.
My opinion is that the preponderance of evidence supports psychosis. The prosecution hasn’t even come close to proving she was not psychotic, much less proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.
@Cicero:Clancy’s strikingly bland face, without any sign of sorrow, guilt or other emotion.
She’s on a lot of medication right now, the day 18 transcript names 5 psychiatric drugs, quite aside from drugs for physical conditions, as of April 2026. I think she has been on a lot of things ever since she was admitted to Tewksbury Hospital in 2023. I don’t think she gets to not take her prescribed medication there.
One thing that I don’t see mentioned often is that according to the transcripts she refused to take some of her prescriptions, she said, because she was breastfeeding, and was concerned about the baby, even after being counseled that those medications don’t affect the baby. I don’t think most people would be too hard on her about that reason. But drugs she was prescribed and didn’t take didn’t make her psychotic, if she ever was.
@neo:If you’re familiar with trials, the prosecution can always find medical experts to support their case. That doesn’t mean the experts are correct.
My point exactly. The same is obviously true for the defense: they too can find medical experts to support their case, and that too doesn’t mean their experts are correct.
But in addition, defense counsel is putting DSM on trial as well as practically every medical professional Clancy ever saw in addition to the ones who testified for the prosecution, and is urging the jury to reject medical expertise when it favors his client to do so. That’s lawyers being lawyers, of course.
My opinion is that the preponderance of evidence supports psychosis.
I see that, but people who do have expert knowledge do not agree, and people like you and I who are not experts have to sift what they say as best we can. That’s why I quote from the trial transcripts and encourage others to look for themselves, so that they can see for themselves that there is evidence both ways. Which is what the jury will have to do, of course.
The prosecution hasn’t even come close to proving she was not psychotic…
Psychotic doesn’t mean not accountable for her actions.
defense counsel is putting DSM on trial as well as practically every medical professional Clancy ever saw
==
I’d be willing to wager that 3/4 of the mental health tradesmen in this country are ineffectual and shy of 10% injurious to their patients above and beyond the levy of out-of-pocket costs.
That’s certainly true of transgenderism. Most if not all the blame for its recent craze could be laid to that “profession’s” charge.
If I get this, the original issue was simply insomnia. Is that right? Cheap port works for me. I joke, so sort of. But I was prescribed Trazodone. One tab. Made no difference. Took two. Bad reaction. Quit. Know a woman taking, considering body weight, ten times my scrip and getting along fine. But nobody’s coming by the house to check if I’m taking my pills.
She and her husband should have told the pill dispensers to shove the stuff where the sun don’t shine. IT WAS MAKING THINGS WORSE! HELLO? Instead it was yassuh, boss, and gobble some more. Interesting speculation of what would have happened if she’d quit but it couldn’t be worse than this.
Sometimes you have to put up with insomnia. I think five hors sleep is really good. Don’t often get that far. But I manage with coffee and naps and I’m used to it, from the Army, walking around wondering if I just saluted a tree? On the other hand, I’m retired. Point is, sometimes–not necessarily hers but we don’t know–you can get by. And if the pills sequentially are screwing you up, you have a responsibility other than unquestioning obedience.
On the other hand, the meds might have–in addition to not working–loosed demons previously so far back she didn’t know she had them..
And yes, the prosecution can get any medical expertise they need. See George Floyd.
@Richard Aubrey:She and her husband should have told the pill dispensers to shove the stuff where the sun don’t shine. IT WAS MAKING THINGS WORSE! HELLO? Instead it was yassuh, boss, and gobble some more.
The court transcripts reveal this is about the opposite of what happened. This is why it is so important not to rely on someone else’s summary, which leave out information that contradicts their narrative.
She refused much of her medication due to concern about side effects or breastfeeding. Some of what she was prescribed she never took at all, some she only took one or two. Full and nearly full prescription bottles were introduced into evidence.
Some of her prescriptions were minimal doses that could be given to children. Some of her prescriptions had worked well for her before.
Now that she is in an inpatient psych setting she is taking much more medication, and if there ever was an incident of psychosis, it has not been seen again from what I can find. But I don’t think she gets to refuse medication where she is.
The defense is trying to put the docs at fault for not finding a magic bullet to solve her problems. Their story is when she tries this and refuses that and asks for the other thing, she’s just trying to help herself, but when the docs work with her to find her those other things they are at fault somehow for not immediately getting it right or when she doesn’t take whatever it is, and it doesn’t matter if they’re following DSM or whatever, they should be magical perfect docs who get it right the first time even if it’s not in their precious manual.
Of course lawyers defending a client don’t have to make sense, saying anything and everything that might help is part of what they do even if it’s a case of trying to have it both ways: what the docs wanted her to do wasn’t right, according to the defense, but she didn’t follow what the docs said to do, and so the outcome is still somehow their fault.
Niketas:
You are missing a lot.
She was almost certainly misdiagnosed, and each medication she took – and she did take some pills from most of the prescriptions – made her symptoms worse. This is well-documented in the approximately four months it was going on. Her family could see it as well, and they have testified on her behalf. Each time she tried a medication she got worse (her psychiatric symptoms, that is) and she would stop the medication and then they’d have her try another. She kept getting worse. This is not so unusual, especially because she was apparently misdiagnosed with depression and it was bipolar, which requires different meds. She really needed hospitalization for a lengthy time to stabilize her and this was not offered; she just had a few days and virtually no treatment while there except a change of meds and immediate release after that.
Her problems occurred late in 2022; the murders occurred in January of 2023. That is three and a half years ago. She’s been in hospitals (first to deal with her injuries and being a paraplegic) and mental hospitals since then. They’ve had plenty of time to stabilize her with the proper medication in the last three and a half years. We don’t have access to the details of her post-murder treatment, but it is highly likely they have treated her for bipolar disease.
@Neo:You are missing a lot.
I am presenting things that other people have left out, I am not trying to present a comprehensive overview of everything. I am also encouraging people to check for themselves, because not every story we are being told is compatible with what is available in the transcripts.
She was almost certainly misdiagnosed…
That could be, but diagnosis is not an exact science. Having had three years in an inpatient setting no doubt they’re very sure they’ve figured it out by now, and it’s easy to say they should have figured it out then; the same is as you note true for the five or so psychiatric meds she’s been on, they’ve had time to figure it out. I have no information about the side effects she’s been experiencing from them, or I’d contribute it.
each medication she took – and she did take some pills from most of the prescriptions – made her symptoms worse.
According to the transcript she sometimes responded positively to some medications.
This doesn’t hit home, but it does hit next door. When my sister had her first child, she got PPD. She’s otherwise the most sane member of the family. Mom (former RN) immediately flew over to take care of sister and baby (husband had 20 more years before sweet pension.) Medication can help, but Lindsay was so far over the map pharmaceutically that it probably hurt here.
What gets me is why was she left alone with kids? Sister is about to be a grandmother, so she’s renting an apartment near her daughter not explicitly in case daughter has PPD, but it’s a few states over, so why not be dutiful grandma?
No family member, church member (if that’s in the picture,) or friendly neighbor to step in?
Reminds me of Andrea Yates (Texas) who had the same thing. Don’t leave someone with psychological problems unattended with children.
So what to do? Locking her up in a jail cell doesn’t seem right. A psychiatric hospital, ok.
Whatever the name of the condition, if you know what you are doing, you’re guilty….unless you can show irresistible impulse.. She was irresistibly compelled to plan carefully to kill he r kids. Going to be tough for the jury to suss that one out.
@neo:You are missing a lot.
Comment monsters ate a few of my replies to this, so I’m not going to try to respond point by point again with cites from the transcript because that’s a lot of work to do over.
I’m not missing anything; I’m not trying to present every possible fact. I am presenting what I think is often being left out or minimized by people who have their own narrative already set. I am also encouraging people to read the court transcripts themselves.
The jury, if it finds in a way that surprises people, has seen everything in the transcripts. And there will be important clues in there about why the jury finds what it does that were left out of many summaries and think pieces.
Richard Aubrey: I think five hors sleep is really good. Don’t often get that far. But I manage with coffee and naps and I’m used to it, from the Army, walking around wondering if I just saluted a tree?
Richard, if you can put five hors to sleep, you _are_ really good. 😉
Forgive me, please, but this topic needs some humor.
Fredr-Nick is certainly self assured for some reason:
We don’t deserve him.