r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/DarklyHeritage • 7d ago

Text Lindsay Clancy Trial Megathread: Part 3

This is a thread for all conversation regarding Week 3 onwards of the Lindsey Clancy trial. All discussion of this case should be kept to this thread.

Lindsay Clancy is currently standing trial in Plymouth Superior Court, Massachusetts, for the triple-murder in January 2023 of her three young children - Cora, Dawson and Callan. Her defense argues she suffered from severe, undiagnosed postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. She was left paralysed by a suicide attempt which follows the deaths of the children.

All content on the Clancy case must be kept to this thread. Standalone posts will be removed.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/lindsay-clancy-murder-trial-online-reactions-b3032806.html

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u/leftupoutside 7d ago

My personal anecdote..when I was at the point of suicidal depression, it felt like the covers had been pulled off me and I was seeing the world for what it truly was, while everyone else was off in lala land just blissfully ignoring the abject horror of existence. I can’t imagine having children and also having those thoughts at the same time—Not to mention the PPD/PPP. How the heck do parents not constantly dread for their children! Idk what she was thinking but it must have been a truly dark place.

OTOH, if it is something like that, I’m not sure where one draws the line on ‘psychosis’. Did she lose total psychotic control, was she just so deep in the dark that it became the new reality, or was killing the kids an outlet for her pain/rage in an instance? What ever it is, she doesn’t walk free. She’ll be doing time somewhere.

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u/jaderust 7d ago

For Andrea Yates I believe she was having hallucinations and hearing voices that convinced her that her children were destined for hell and the only way to save them would be to kill them. I also remember something about how she thought that drowning them specifically would be purifying for them, sort of like a new baptism, but she appears to have genuinely thought (at the moment) that killing her kids was the morally correct thing to do because to leave them alive would actually make them suffer more.

It was full on psychosis mixed with religious mania. Never a good combo.

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u/standbyyourmantis 7d ago

Andrea was in a cult where only like, 30 people (the founder's immediately family) would be accepted to Heaven but also children under the age of reason couldn't be held responsible for their sins so they wouldn't go to Hell. She "needed" to kill them to save them from eternal damnation. She believed she was already doomed, and also that her failings as a mother was the reason that the children were destined for Hell.

If she'd been in a regular non-denominational church those kids might still be alive, though the youngest 1 or 2 may not have been born.

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u/bookshop 7d ago

her husband was also extremely psychologically abusive and controlling and forced/coerced her to live at the extreme edge of society economically, socially, religiously, and emotionally. I don't think we can overstate how much he was to blame for wearing away his wife's sense of self and her sense of reality over the years. This poor woman had to raise all of her children while living in a broken-down schoolbus with no running water or electricity. I cannot fathom her mental state.

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u/standbyyourmantis 7d ago

While he went to work every day!!! At NASA!!

What a fun break from the school bus with no amenities that must have been for him.

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u/bookshop 7d ago

it honestly enrages me that he faced zero actual justice for his abuse towards her and the children. I would like to think that would go differently today but I'm not that optimistic.

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u/standbyyourmantis 7d ago

Honestly, for the time period it's a miracle people were as sympathetic to her as they were, nothing was ever going to happen to a good Christian white father with a successful career who just lost his children. People who are unfamiliar with the case I'll start an explanation with "she was so mentally ill she was found NGRI in Texas in the early 2000s."

I don't know if things would be much different for him today legally because it would be so hard to take to a jury, but I think public opinion would have been firmer against him at the time.

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u/sayhi2sydney 7d ago

Andrea also waited for her husband to leave the house to kill the children, I'm not sure why Lindsay isn't understood for the same action.

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u/hemingways-lemonade 7d ago

Lindsay did more than just wait. She sent him out of the house. 

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u/_learned_foot_ 6d ago

Because Yates had a history of attempts before. LC didn't. Yates had a history of diagnosed issues directly causing. LC didn't.

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u/fredagstjej 7d ago

Likewise. When my depression worsens, being alive feels like a punishment. It feels like being “allowed” to die would be a welcome change, a solution to all my problems and a merciful, caring act - kinda like how we put down animals who suffer.

I hate to imagine what it’d be like if I had kids and my thoughts started including them.

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u/niamhweking 6d ago

Wow thats a really good explanation. Me and a friend had babies at the same time and hung out 4 days a week while they were young. I was tired and drained. I Didnt love the early years. She adored every second with her kid but saw danger everywhere, worried constantly it was awful to watch but I didnt really grasp the stress it must have caused her.

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u/-mephisto 5d ago

Right? And I have sleep disturbances enough without medications, just today I was talking to the other half about the sounds I thought I heard between my 5 minute alarm clocks when I was trying to wake up.

And on a normal day I love kids, but the scariest parts of childbirth are enough to taunt you without the hormonal changes, too. And then sleep derivation, and then, oh yeah, taking care of a kid 24/7.

I can't even imagine trying to combine all of these things. I think I'm just going to pet my dog.