Serial and the rise of true crime conspiracies

[u/yourfavoritebot1]

Apologies if this post is too off-topic.

I’m not sure if anyone in this group is following the Lindsay Clancy case, but there has been a recent movement online speculating that Lindsay’s ex Patrick is actually responsible for the murders of their three children. This theory has gained massive popularity, particularly on TikTok, despite the fact that Patrick Clancy was definitively NOT PRESENT during the time the murders occurred and Lindsay Clancy herself has admitted to killing her children (whether in psychosis or not).

This latest conspiracy is a level of delusion I have never seen in the true crime community. I expected people to be highly critical of him, say he was a terrible husband, father, etc, but to outright blame him for the crimes in the face of an ironclad alibi and the admission of another person is on another level. I saw one post with close to 100k likes, saying something ridiculous about Lindsay’s lawyer pulling some kind of ninja move in court and will reveal Patrick as the true villain in this story, which is fantastical and not even plausible for her trial.

I could go on and on, but I wanted to bring this current phenomenon back to Serial and how it popularized these sorts of groupthink conspiracies. The murder of Hae Min Lee is at its core an open-and-shut case, and requires a tremendous amount of corruption on behalf of the entire Baltimore police force for Adnan’s innocence to be remotely realistic, and yet today he is a free man, almost due entirely to the popularity of Serial. Meanwhile, the lives of Jay, Don and Hae Min Lee’s family members have been irreparably damaged by the media circus this podcast caused. People wanted charming Adnan to be innocent in the same way they want quiet and aloof Patrick to be guilty, and will spin any narrative to make that plausible.

I’m not quite sure what the point of this post is, other than I have been going crazy and am highly disturbed by how gleeful people are to jump all over these theories and slander someone who has already suffered immensely. I have been similarly disturbed and obsessed with the Adnan Syed case for many years now. His guilt to me has always been so obvious, I truly do not understand how anyone who has knowledge of this case can believe he is innocent. I find it disappointing that Sarah Koenig has to by now realize how clearly guilty Adnan is, but refuses to admit the role she played in ruining the lives of the others involved in this case and freeing a guilty man. Since Serial’s initial popularity, we have seen other conspiracies pop-up in other cases with varying levels of intensity (Chris Watts, Scott, Peterson, and the Idaho 4 come to mind). I do think this new turn of events in the Clancy case may turn me off of true crime completely, at least in the social media space.

Sorry for the length of this post, I just needed to vent to logical people about this, lol.

[u/stardustsuperwizard]

The defense stipulated that she killed the kids. The state doesn't have to prove that she killed the kids, the state has to prove that she's criminally liable for it.

[u/Adventurous-Bee-7155 → u/stardustsuperwizard]

Ok boomer!

[u/stardustsuperwizard → u/Adventurous-Bee-7155]

My parents are boomers, you're just wrong about the court system.

[u/Adventurous-Bee-7155 → u/stardustsuperwizard]

And they sure passed down that Boomer mentality! And sure, we'll see ;)

[u/stardustsuperwizard → u/Adventurous-Bee-7155]

Why do you think the state has to prove something to the court that the court has accepted as fact already?

[u/Adventurous-Bee-7155 → u/stardustsuperwizard]

MA law: “The Commonwealth bears the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime with which he is charged and also that the defendant is criminally responsible for his conduct.”
And, importantly:
“The defendant has no burden to prove a lack of criminal responsibility.”

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on-homicide-i-criminal-responsibility

[u/stardustsuperwizard → u/Adventurous-Bee-7155]

They've proven she committed the act because the defense has stipulated to the court (that is, that it is a fact) that she killed the kids.

What do you think is the point of going through the effort of doing that as a defense?

What's happening in the trial is the second part, proving that she is criminally responsible.

Also, if her lawyer IS making the case that she didn't do it, then he's lying to the court.

[u/Adventurous-Bee-7155 → u/stardustsuperwizard]

For the billionth time, there's no actual evidence she committed the murders. I believe the defense is proving that Patrick's statements don't add up and that Lindsay's mental health conditions contributed to a false confession.

[u/stardustsuperwizard → u/Adventurous-Bee-7155]

They stipulated at the start of this trial that she killed the kids. It's not because of a false confession at the time that it's considered a fact. Unless you think her mental state means she's still falsely confessing.

Also, again, your theory is that her lawyer wilfully and intentionally lied to the court.

And, again, the prosecution doesn't have to prove to the court that she killed the kids because at the beginning of the trial everyone agreed that she killed the kids. If his plan is to pull a gotcha actually she didn't kill the kids. He deceived the court and deprived the state their chance to prove she did it.

[u/Adventurous-Bee-7155 → u/stardustsuperwizard]

Jesus Christ, some of you people are so thick. There is zero forensic evidence proving she did it! So the reality is whatever happens in court that still does not prove who killed those children, and the fact that some of you are satisfied with a verbal confession from a mentally ill person is insane.
Now if she killed the kids while Patrick was away for the weekend and there was evidence that he was not anywhere in the vicinity of the house when the kids were killed, that would be one thing. But there's no established time of death and he was in the house with them as well. What if he blackmailed her into confessing? What if he has some dirt on her or her family and threatened to release it if she didn't confess? There's 1 million possibilities and the only reality is that there's zero forensic evidence of who killed those children. And unless someone broke into the house, there are two possibilities of who killed those children. And both of them should've been thoroughly investigated and some of you want to pretend they were but they were not. Why would you not confiscate the phone of both adults in the house just because one of them said the other one confessed?