Lindsay Clancy case: was it evil, or severe mental illness?

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She was deeply unwell. I however feel bad that will either spend her life in jail or in a mental hospital and I’m not sure which is worse. Bless her she was failed so much

I keep seeing "she was failed". She did not mention to any of the doctors she saw or spoke to that she had had any thoughts of harming her children.

She was a nurse, she knew that she needed to take prescribed medication as prescribed for a length of time for there to be benefits - she did not. She was not taking any of the pills for any length of time, and the pill bottles were substantially full at the time of her children's horrific deaths.

She was in her right mind enough to plot the time it would take her husband to get to the location and looked that up on google.

She took those little children down to the basement where no-one would hear their screams and strangled them one by one - which does not take a few minutes, so they would have been aware of what mummy was doing before each of them died. She managed to have a conversation on the phone with her husband mid-murdering their three little kids.

She was a nurse and would know kinder ways to kill them, and also all the ways to actually kill herself, but here she is.

Yes she killed the kids but managed not to kill herself. She had all those pills!

But your family member is schizophrenic as well so stands to reason she’d be more unwell?

This would be like me saying that I’ve known 2 people with postpartum psychosis but neither of them thought they were a cat therefore your family member can’t have had postpartum psychosis.

Different people will be affected differently. Still doesn’t mean they were in control/had a choice.

They’d hardly have time to work would they? Even if she took them on a different day when maybe Patrick was out the house for longer it’s not a statistically good method of suicide. Research shows that when people are serious about suicide they choose acute, violent methods (such as slashing their wrists or jumping out of buildings) rather than overdose. Sure she wasn’t successful but she had a better chance of being successful than if she’d taken an overdose.

For anyone interested in the data, here’s a very interesting study from Manchester University Filicide: Mental Illness in Those Who Kill Their Children

http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058981

Summary article here

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/findings-from-most-in-depth-study-into-uk-parents-who-kill-their-children/

You certainly cannot know what was going on in her head when she became convinced that she had to do this.

This is the crux of the issue, isn’t it? Those who are convinced LC is not guilty by reason of insanity ARE saying we can know what was going on in her head. And how do we know “she became convinced that she had to do this” if we cannot know what was going on in her head?

There’s such a level of wordplay and bad faith arguing from some pp on this thread that it’s probably not worth trying to have a reasoned discussion with these posters.

Research shows that when people are serious about suicide they choose acute, violent methods (such as slashing their wrists or jumping out of buildings)

but not jumping out of first floor windows.

(As I understand it LC jumped out of a “second storey” window which is what Americans call a first floor window. Please correct me if I’m wrong.)

It was on court TV on youtube

Ok so why are some posters talking about LC not having committed the crime at all

Have they just misunderstood what the jury was deciding?

There is a certain trend online to say the husband actually did it, and framed her. The same thing happened on the Erin Patterson/Mushroom Murderer threads here.

Yes the second storey is a weird US thing. It means first floor in ( I think) the rest of the world. They don't seem to have ground floors! As I said she sure made certain with her kids but not so much herself.

It’s hard to recognise when you’re unwell.

However, she did but no one helped. The doctor prescribed her loads of meds over a zoom call.

i am a bit surprised her family left her alone with the children knowing how she was feeling.

"People" is working hard here. Men usually choose more violent means; women more often choose pills, or lately sometimes hanging themselves.

She’d also attempted to slash her own wrists and throat

I guess I'm saying she made sure that her kids would die, but left herself as having a posssibilty of surviving. Strange.

There wasn't a doctor, singular. There were multiple doctors. Unlike many people in the States, she was able to afford all those many appointments, and the medications, which she did not take as per instructions.

Thanks. It’s conspiracy online stuff surely. Ik things grow legs and get bedded in, but the posts below show how it all spreads even though there’s no facts under it.

You are all misunderstanding what the jury were deciding. They had 5 options. Only 2 were gbri and guilty. Yet some people are confidently acting like there were only 2 and hypocritically insulting other posters who’ve actually followed the trial 🙄 the 11 wanted to acquit based on reasonable doubt. I have no idea why this poster feels he can so confidently share wrong info

I think there are records of her saying certain a meds made her feel worse, I think those with mental illness often don’t take meds as they should.

I really query what support she had from her family

"They had 5 options. Only 2 were gbri and guilty."
"I have no idea why this poster feels he can so confidently share wrong info"

Because of those 5 only 1 involved a finding that she didn't kill them.

And the only evidence against Patrick seems to be statistics and the fact the has a penis. Even the defence was not so callous as to imply he did it.

I really query what support she had from her family

She was a wealthy woman with a nanny, access to daycare, and a mother who was very worried about her.

I don't know how much support she had from her husband, but he was out picking up takeaway and a child laxative on her directions (a trip she googled the timing of prior to the murders of her defenceless children).

There was an option for the jury to find her not guilty, aquitting her completely.

For those who haven’t watched the trial there are many many inconsistencies to Patrick’s story.

Firstly she would have had a very short time period to kill all 3 children, take them all individually down to basement, come up again, find a knife, cut her wrists, cut her throat (which was done in the way of a left handed person btw which her husband is, Lindsay is right handed) put the knife neatly down on the table, then whilst heavily bleeding from those wounds move a very heavy bed and nightstand and jump headfirst out the window, then once on the ground hose herself down (she was soaking wet all over her body more than could be accounted for from the snow) then her body temperature dropped to 27degrees (it’s been shown that this 10 degree drop in temperature usually takes hours even with the spinal injuries) Her thyroid was crushed and her injuries so severe she couldn’t speak. This all happened in about 25 minutes or less.

Then when Patrick came home she ‘told him’ the kids were in the basement and she had tried to kill herself. This was impossible as she couldn’t speak as demonstrated by the 999 call and all testimony from medical professionals. He waited 10 minutes to go and look for the kids.

When Lindsay woke up she was told by everyone that she had killed the kids.

Googke searches on ways to commit suicide and where is the carotid artery were done when Lindsay was at a GP appointment with one of the kids.

There were high levels of quetiapine in her system which she had stopped a month before and Patrick was keeping in her truck, the cocktail of other medication would have highly likely rendered her extremely sleepy. Her Apple Watch recorded her heart rate tailing from 117 to 57 throughout the day and 57 just before the children were killed.

The baby was able to be resuscitated, this means if she strangled him before jumping out the window he would have been in the basement for at least 30-40 minutes. Unusual to get a heart beat back after this time (he didn’t have one initially)

There are lots more than this too, all the ‘evidence’ came from what Patrick told everyone. There was no investigation.

She was profoundly failed by a lot of people, it’s very sad. Did she actually do it? I don’t know but there should have been far more investigation rather than just taking the word of the only person who wasn’t injured….