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

[KellyK2026]

Lindsay Clancy, what do we all think? Pure evil or mentally ill?

Oh, give it over. It's not a lie. It's something I read when I was looking for some other information. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It was reported, it was misinformation, I read something out of date, and I have been since told it isn't true. She didn't write she hated him in her diary.

She just acted as if she did, by murdering him first and most harshly. But we'll forget that as there are, apparently, worse things than murdering small children.

You really have got your knickers in a twist since I pointed out your complete misunderstanding of MA law.

I haven’t even read your other comments as I’ve been far too busy to keep up with this Thread. But I’ll take your acknowledgement that what you wrote was untrue as some sort of apology.

I know it's an extreme example but have you ever heard of Magda Goebbels?

I think it’s really difficult to compare cases across different time periods and contexts. We know Magda’s motive for killing the children as it’s been well documented. There’s nothing to suggest that Magda was experiencing postpartum depression or bipolar (in which case I’m not even sure there was a term for those conditions back then). It makes for an interesting comparison, but the links to the LC case are tenuous.

I agree, my comment was purely in response to the poster who said 'No one has three kids, spends years raising them then suddenly turns evil and kills them'.
Some people (men and women) really are 'just evil'.

Well she did kill her own children. And apparently had never before, not since, experienced psychosis.

Well I’m not sure Magda ‘loved’ her kids in the traditional sense. She had lots of children because her and Joseph wanted to be the picture perfect nazi family and photos of their large family were regular used as propaganda by the Nazi media. Joseph’s interactions with the family were documented to be ‘cold’ and he only really took an interest when there was a media opportunity. Magda was a political fanatic and, whatever she felt towards her kids, she loved Hitler a lot more. She even wrote that a world without Hitler would be a world where her children would not be worth living (I don’t think social services existed back then, but I’m pretty sure nowadays that would be seen that she had the capability to do something like murder her children if the Third Reich fell). It’s really hard to say if Magda was a loving mother as it does seem like the children were used more as political tools and they were denied a normal childhood.

I agree with you both. At the end of everything she cocked up her own suicide so her only hope for a more lenient sentence or to be found not guilty was to say she heard voices telling her to do it. So next time someone gets arrested for murder they can say I head a voice telling me to do it. Even if a voice is heard why does someone have to follow the instructions of said voice when it’s something so horrific!

Honestly if she was a man, no one would ever entertain any of her BS

Again, hard to compare as there’s not a case like this where a man has been put on trial. There’s been cases where men have killed their children but their actions after the crime, the core defence, the root cause of psychosis, etc. hasn’t been exactly the same. There was the Timothy Ray Jones Jr. Case where he strangled his five kids to death and then tried to claim insanity, but he didn’t have a documented history of mental health problems, he drove around with the bodies of the children for days afterwards before dumping them, and he seemed to almost brag about the killings to prison staff, recalling in detail what happened. He was sentenced to death.

But she isn’t a man so your point is invalid. Men and women are very different, and trying to pretend they’re not is just ignorant to science. Not least because it’s literally impossible for a man to experience PPP.

One of the prosecution rebutal psychologists (Kirk Heilbrun) testified that LC reported hearing a male voice for the first and only time during the roughly 18 minutes the killings of her three children occurred.

How very convenient. In his opinion “And to put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about.”

Heilbrun told the court that Clancy said the male voice told her, “This is your last chance. You have to kill the kids so you can kill yourself.” Heilbrun said the timing was unusual and said it could be a way to lessen her culpability.

How and why she took those words and then chose to commit the violent and brutal murders of her three children by strangling them has not been explained by anyone to a satisfactory degree. She did not seek help, call Patrick or her mother, she takes her children and slaughters them. Many people have histories of mental illness it is not uncommon. But in my mind her history of depression can in no way can be seen as a defence to her criminal culpability. It was either Kirk or another one who contrasted her against the case of Andrea Yates, and she suppressed the voices she heard for months before killing her children.

But LC acts on it the first and only time?

Well LC was never diagnosed with PPP so that assertion is completely irrelevnt in this instance. And men can suffer from psychosis.

But LC was formally diagnosed with PPP by multiple forensic psychiatrists who examined her after the killings. The diagnosis prior to the killings was bipolar 2 disorder with severe depression and postpartum onset. Bipolar can also cause hallucinations. So yes, LC has been formally diagnosed with PPP and many think that her symptoms weren’t properly diagnosed or treated prior to the killings.

You are citing the defence experts to support your view becuase for some reason you want to believe this to be the case. None of her treating psychiatrists diagnosed her with this, Drs who actually saw and treated her at the time. Do you think a retrospective diagnosis by paid expert witnesses whose views just happen to align with the defence theory carries equal or more weight to those who actually interacted with her in the month and days before the crime?

So no she has not been 'formally diagnosed' with PPP. She has had some defence experts assert in testimony that they think she had it to satisfy Kevin Reddington.

Equally she has had multiple prosection experts deny that she had PPP. But your desire to defend the child killer shows your inherent bias. Shameful.

Those defense experts are trained psychiatrists who have diagnosed LC with PPP. There’s been one doctor who has taken the stand who denies that LC had PPP and several others that said she did.

lol do you need to keep saying ‘shameful’ every time someone has a different opinion to you? Get a grip.

If it looks like a duck etc. To me, your conduct on this thread is reprehensible, seeking to blame Patrick and defend LC at all counts.

Again expert witnesses giving an opinion by the party who is payig them, is not the same as a diagnosis despite your desperation for it to be so.

She has said that she did not hear the voice before or since the killings, so was this mystery PPP diagnosis like a OTP (One Time Password) - valid only for 18 minutes (retrospectively)?

Agree, although i think the speculation stems from what seems to be a poor police investigation.

And your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired as not once have I said Patrick is to blame but I’ve said I think it could’ve been handled differently based on the information both him and LC’s mother knew. I’ve also said that what LC did was awful. Multiple things can be true at once.

LC has been formally diagnosed with PPP. That’s not up for debate. Yes in happened after the killings, but she was diagnosed with it.

I do think that the experts that are continuing to work with her know a lot more than you, and they continue to say that she is not mentally well and is still suffering from bipolar and suicidal thoughts. It didn't just switch off after she committed the killings.

You don't have to explicity state that you think PC is to blame for this inference to be made. It is not just me who has stated this on this thread. Speaking of which, you are having a laugh. You suggested that spouses could get their partners committed under an involuntary hold in MA.

Point me to where it says she has been diagnosed with PPP? Not that defence expert witnesses testified that she had this at the time of the deaths.

Furthermore, what was the basis for the diagnosis given that she has not heard the voice before or since?

Does it still apply now 3.5 years after the deaths or has it morphed into just a plain old psychosis for her to keep up the ruse.

Suffering from bipolar and suicidal thoughts is not psychosis. And this is nothing compared to the suffering she inflicted on her children. If I murdered my children I would not want to live.

Her initial diagnosis was "generalised anxiety disorder" and later a degree of depression, not PPP. Rather than stick with one psychiatrist, she ran all over the place, and did not inform the medical staff she saw or her original psychiatrist that she was (a) seeing multiple practitioners and (b) collecting multiple prescriptions - most of which were to manage her anxiety symptoms and insomnia.

At one point, she was on so many drugs (without Tufts knowledge, as I understand it) they were believed to be causing her depression. The week before Christmas she joined a day program for postpartum depression at Women & Infants, but the hospital discharged her after one day as the clinical team believed her symptoms were "more pharmacologically induced than purely depressive." Certainly not PPP.

At McLean, before she self-discharged, she was not diagnosed with PPP.

Alia Goodheart, a psychiatrist who treated Clancy during her 5 day in-patient stay at McLean Hospital, testified that she did not observe any signs of psychosis, saying she was a low-level risk patient.

“I did not have any concerns about her safety or a risk for anybody else,” Goodheart told the court. “She had never stated that she had any thoughts of harming anybody else.”

LC has been formally diagnosed with PPP. That’s not up for debate. Yes in happened after the killings, but she was diagnosed with it.

Where did you get that? Since the murders, I think she has been diagnosed with bipolar 2, not PPP.

If she'd been upfront at any point and if she'd stuck with one chosen psychiatrist rather than running about all over town collecting scripts, she may have been more accurately diagnosed sooner and her children might still be alive.

I think you have forgotten that everyone involved in this horror show seems to be culpable but the killer herself....

The killer who woke up asking about a lawyer. Funny kind of psychosis? Seems rather grounded in reality to me.

Well, I tell you what, instead of coming at me saying I’m ‘shameful’ why don’t you contact Patrick and let him know how shameful he is for defending his ex wife? After all, he explicitly blames the medical community, not LC, for the killings and has in fact sued the numerous medical ‘professionals’ who treated LC prior to the killings for malpractice. You know more than him, right? The man that lived with her, had children with her and witnessed her mental decline firsthand. Not once has he blamed LC and has told, in detail, how LC kept telling the medical professionals treating her how sick the medications she was taking was making her and they continuously refused to take it seriously. Not only that, but they prescribed medications that made other parts of her diagnosis worse. He’s testified to that under oath. He’s remarried and started a new life, he has absolutely nothing to gain from defending LC if he truly believes she’s culpable.

You keep talking about these people who treated her prior to the killings without even acknowledging the malpractice that went on which PC is suing them for. You’re also not taking into consideration the MASSIVE problem the US has with doctors overprescribing medications and they do that for financial gain. Giving a patient that many medications and deciding that they don’t need therapy (exactly what one doctor said although didn’t explain why) is a huge problem and more kids will die unless it’s resolved.

Malpractice!

I am again reminded of your earlier statement

I’m not a LC supporter, but I do acknowledge the legalities behind it.

You certainly are doing a good impression of a vehement LC supporter. Everyone is to blame (they should have known she was lying to them, and they should have guessed she was doctor shopping) except LC for the hideous, terrifying deaths of her three little children.

PC is not a qualified medical expert. I do not think his case will go anywhere as the opinions of the psychiatrists who saw her before at leading up the deaths all align. Jennifer Tufts did give her psychotherapy.

You stating that PC is suing for malpractice does not mean that malpractice has occurred. You have fallen for Reddington's theatrics by the sounds of it.

She was dishonest to her Drs about the treatment she sought, and seemed to think she was entitled to immediate effects from the medication despite the fact that she was told some of them take weeks to work.

Whatever PC's positioning on this, I could not state. The man has been through hell and he can feel how he wants.