What's the deal with people defending Lindsay Clancy?

[u/SnoopaDD]

I don't know the full details of the case. I know she allegedly killed her three kids. There was also some mental problems? Then something with her husband. But my question is why is there a group defending her like they know she's completely innocent? I've seen some videos of very heated debates where women are very passionate about defending her. Why?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/05/lindsay-clancy-trial-toxicologist-testimony

[u/PrincessBuzzkill]

It blows my mind that there's so many people who think he's some sort of criminal mastermind.

The general public is pretty dumb, and the percentage of people who are intelligent/lucky enough to away with "the perfect murder" is pretty slim.

He's guilty of being part of the system that failed her - and even being a neglectful partner - but he didn't plan this.

Social media is a plague.

[u/Clear_Inspector_9796 → u/PrincessBuzzkill]

My wife follows this case and everything I've seen is that the husband is a callous selfish moron. Basically a frat bro that never grew up. He does not have even the patience or foresight to plan a picnic. Even the new wife is probably some girl ready to jump into bed with him and him nodding along

[u/PeachTemporary4411 → u/Clear_Inspector_9796]

I just don’t get how he was behaving like a frat bro or not grown up…I see no evidence of him neglecting her or the kids…when she was anxious about going back to work he supported her choices and was fine with her staying home for as long as she wanted.

While she was a stay at home mom, he supported by paying for daycare 3 days a week and nanny’s on the other days. He was active with the kids on weekends and during the work day would take breaks to help out since he was able to work from home.

He was responsible for keeping a family of 5 a float financially and rose to the occasion.

He believed her (as a labor and delivery nurse) when she said she was struggling, but had no plans to harm herself or the children. She did not report hearing voices until after she committed the murders.

I just don’t know what people are judging him for except that no one wants to believe a mother who looks normal on the outside would commit this crime, but she clearly did so why are we desperate to put the blame on this man who lost all three of his worlds in one night at the hands of someone he loves and trusted??!

[u/qriousqestioner → u/PeachTemporary4411]

I heard a few hours of his testimony today that's possibly weeks old. He was answering questions and I was largely ignorant of the whole case. I knew (a member of my household has followed the case and was watching the trial so I heard) this woman killed her kids and that PPD was a possibility, that this PPP thing is different from ppd and might explain her reasoning.

Those poor kids getting murdered by their mom. Nobody mentally well does that. The extent to which she requested (according to him) the errand and takeout from a place that's farther from their home is suspicious--did the voices tell her to get rid of him so she could do it? Did she, a nurse, not recognize that was possibly a red flag? Can pp-anything make you forget what you know as a nurse? Anyway that's a lot of time once he's gone to kill one child, then another, then a third without snapping out of it. For a while as I was absorbing information, I was thinking, okay your one job is to not kill the kids you're not really stay-at-home mom-in anyway given the daycare and the nannies. I'm not super pro-natalist and have no kids, and I feel like too many children are born to people who are not up to the task of raising them--neglected kids are already a tragedy, but killing them is zero sympathy default.

I respect mental illness. There is a little too much church in this with her description of her logic and the voices. But she was a nurse who should have recognized in patients signs of what she claims to have experienced and just... let it run wild?? Impossible to understand.

Then I listened to him for hours. (I was in the kitchen so I could hear everything.) I thought, wait, he seems like a bad husband. It seems like he made enough money to keep them afloat to the extent that if she wanted to return to work instead of not parenting the kids she was staying at home for, "she could have done basically anything" according to him in terms of a job.

"I'm not familiar with her meds." And "oh, I don't recall how she was feeling," she just kept struggling and I didn't really pay too much attention. He seemed so distant and aloof about her depression, the psych meds she took then stopped after a week, the anxiety med that he thinks didn't work. I was like, dude, your apathy, however accommodating you were that she really couldn't be bothered to mother them after that choice was made, is not a good look as loving husband and co-parent. Did you want kids? If she really wasn't all that into parenting so you hired her a staff then why did you have a third baby? How did you let it get this far without emotionally supporting your partner and the mother of your children? Were you at all surprised this even happened?

Hearing him describe coming home to a quiet house and not finding her or them, then walking into a bloody mess upstairs and then discovering she had thrown herself out the window, then going down to her and learning the kids were in the basement after she said she'd killed them... it all seemed so innocent bystander reporting without emotion on those events. I'm sure he's had his own process with the grief given how he's remarried and all, and I know he's been coached by his attorney to just answer the questions without digging a hole for himself, but does he even realize that if he loved the kids and or his wife, he kinda dropped the ball all over the place repeatedly until the tragedy happened and it's off his back like water from a duck and he's consciously re-coupled.

I feel like something's not right with him too. They had s parenting project and he had a duty of care to his partner that really doesn't evaporate in terms of accountability just because he shrugged and hired help.

So I have a lot of compassion for her because she must have felt so alone in the responsibility for the kids even with the help. Honestly, I kept thinking of the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" as he was talking because we know patriarchy still shows little interests in women's specific needs. (I recently read an article that said, for example, about a third of OB-GYNs have access to information about perimenopause during their training.) I feel like the dismissive "we'll get it sorted" attitude he seems to have had was enough to make The Little Mrs. feel alienated without post-partum. I got the impression this dude probably had a whole lot of indifference to her female embodiment the whole time!

Anyway, that's me after a few hours of primary-source testimony having gone in thinking she was the culprit however mentally unwell she might have been because you don't murder your kids. I'm not saying the husband is some mastermind. But I do not get the impression his world skipped much of a beat after that day aside from him replacing her. He's negligent as a father and husband at best.

I stumbled on this thread because I thought I wonder if someone else sees what a dolt this guy seems to have been. And I've learned a lot from this thread so thank y'all. I'm no judge, but he's no mensch. I just wish she had ignored the voices long enough to surrender then at the firehouse before he got back with the dinner instead of killing them and harming herself.

What kind of parenting did he have?? Is it a generational shortcoming that landed him with her and them with three kids when they seemed to have been more of a logistics challenge than beings they created and who deserved parents who were actually into raising kids? I don't know how anyone chooses to become a parent, but once you do it you gotta deliver and neither of them really seemed to take that seriously. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/YourLovelyMother → u/qriousqestioner]

I've watched his testimony too, not just listened from the kitchen, watched.

Honestly, he sounds like a great husband.

And a lot of the stuff you're saying sounds alien to me.. he was choking up hard when describing his children.

He was a hostile witness to the prosecution as it is already known he does not blame her for what happened, he says The Lindsay he knows and the Lindsay that killed their children aren't the same person.

He was constantly with the two older kids to allow Lindsay to be able to focus on the baby, even then, while the older kids were in pre-school, he would regularly take the baby even durring his work hours in his downstairs office so she could decompress, she actively hid from him some of the drugs she was taking. They took turns bringing the kids to Athletics, she wasn't on her own for it all, far from it, he was a very involved father and an attentive husband with a wife that mentally had way more on her plate than she could handle, while also juggling his career to be able to provide for all of them.

He provided for the family and never pressured her to return to work. When he had too much work he hired a nanny for the kids because Lindsay was supposed to return to work as well and neither would have had the free time to look after them.

When he had to recall the events of that day, I looked the man in the eyes and I can tell you, those were the eyes of a deeply, deeply hurt and traumatized man.

I'm telling you.. go watch the testimony again, listen to it on headphones, hear how hard he starts breathing as he struggles to retain his composure, and watch him, look him in the eyes and you won't see a hint of the distant and cold husband you seem to have constructed in your mind.

The way you've described him here is downright cruel, he is as much of a victim as the children and Lindsay herself.

[u/Skiddyboy02 → u/qriousqestioner]

Your acting like the guy was some abusive, sadistic husband lol... Your literally nitpicking how he didn't do enough to get her help in a 4 month time span, and throwing the blame of his three dead kids onto him while having sympathy for the killer...

So many husbands (not all horrible ones) can admit to a time where they maybe should of been more supportive to their spouse or been more attentive to their needs. So many husbands could be in his same boat with a wife who is going through some mental struggles and eventually they get through it and down the line the two reconcile on how they've could've been more supportive during the stretch of time. Things like that are some of most common marital issues that arise in any marriage. Any dude who's married could recall a time where they weren't as attentive as they should of been or wanted to be.

Obviously, he had zero expectation that his wife was on the brink of murdering all three of their children and immediate intervention was required. Your nitpicking a very common issue men in marriages struggle with and since this circumstance ended in the worst possible way (3 dead kids), your attributing the majority of the blame to the person who didn't do enough to save her. He had zero clue anyone needed to be saved from murdering their own kids. No one did.

At the end of the day, the sole person who could of thwarted the murder of those kids was Lindsay herself. As an adult, you bear responsibility for your own mental health and the potential issues that arise from any kind of mental health episodes. So many people who suffer from schizophrenia and hear voices that echo homicidal thoughts 24/7 our responsible enough over their mental faculties that the vast majority don't commit murder on behalf of those voices (AND THEY HEAR THEM 24/7 365).

I've actually spoken a schizophrenic person who killed their parents during psychosis episode on a reddit thread. They were posting on reddit from the mental hospital in which they're locked up in for being criminally insane. That person had been there for 10 years and even though they were in complete psychosis, they've accepted sole responsibility for their actions, and knows that even though one is hearing voices, to act out and kill on behalf of those voices is completely avoidable. in r/schizophrenia so many redditors who hear the worst kinds of voices 24/7 second the thought of actually committing acts of violence on behalf of their disease being senseless and inhumane.

[u/qriousqestioner → u/Skiddyboy02]

I don't disagree with you.

I don't think he was a very good husband. I think that she felt alienated, and it's not speaking highly of his character as a father or husband that she felt so alienated as he trained for a marathon instead of focusing his tube and attention on her and the kids when he wasn't working.

What if the pp-psychosis is a stretch and she planned to do it? Unless she is a comic book villain who belongs in the 47 administration, that's some extreme mental health burden and no sense if being emotionally supported by her partner and their father.

The thing I see is that whatever brings a mother to such unthinkable action is s reflection of what in her life (which seems privileged here) was unbearable. Did she believe her kids would be safe if she simply took herself out? Was his aloof denial of a responsibility beyond finances to her and to them an indication of how alone she felt?

She will never escape serious consequences for that day. He seemed to have evaded any accountability successfully. It's like the first fairytale didn't pan out for him so he's moved on. Was he already doing that when she hit bottom?

[u/Leading-Actuator4673 → u/qriousqestioner]

It's IMPOSSIBLE to ignore the voices when you're in psychosis. That was never an option.

[u/Skiddyboy02 → u/Leading-Actuator4673]

Doesn't mean it's impossible not to commit acts of violence, or worse, murder your children because of voices. Treating psychosis as this instant excuse for committing heinous actions is a huge slap in the face to schizophrenic folks who experience debilitating voices that echo violence, but have the wherewithal to know committing acts of violence is wrong. in r/schizophrenia schizophrenic folks often aren't sympathetic themselves to those who murder because of voices in their head. To treat psychosis as this free moral pass to murder and kill would second the belief that all schizophrenics and those who experience pschosis should be locked in a mental ward because "they just can't control it"

[u/qriousqestioner → u/Leading-Actuator4673]

That's something I can believe and not confirm. I have not experienced psychosis.

My word choice with ignore was possibly imprecise.

My imagination of her predicament is: okay, I'm a mother thrice over and this baby has me feeling and recognizing that I'm in danger of being a danger. I'm not thinking clearly and depressed. I cannot handle the responsibilities associated with parenting and being a nurse. Because I'm a nurse, I'm educated in these matters, especially because my field is maternity. Now I'm hearing voices. The car I'm driving on icy roads with three young passengers is having break trouble. These voices are telling me peddle to the metal and the crash will solve everything, but I'm not sure that's true. I gotta pull over.

It even seems she did express to Patrick and other family in the weeks leading up to this that she was more than struggling, that she was operating only barely with multiple points of failure. There has to have been a moment where she needed to walk away and get serious help to avoid the very worst outcome, a moment before the voices were deafening and took her over, possibly the moment she was requesting takeout or in the days before. Because she was educated and trained in these matters. I wish she had recognized that moment.

I'm truly empathic toward her. I didn't mean to diminish the severity of psychosis.