The Patrick Clancy Conspiracy Theories Are Rooted in the Harsh Realities of Motherhood

Key Highlights

• 6 times as many childcare duties and household labor as full-time working fathers.
• A month prior to the killings, Lindsay had disclosed to him that she had thoughts of harming the children, but according to his own testimony he had waved them off after she’d assuaged his concerns.
• ”But a major driving force behind the antipathy toward Patrick appears to be that women recognize the broad contours of his alleged behavior toward his wife--and they are pissed as hell about it.
• )Many right-wing (male) pundits have been inclined to dismiss these comments as the ramblings of female hysterics, who are somehow using their own terrible experiences with new motherhood as an excuse to demonize men or exonerate Lindsay.
• One study found that anxiety levels in some new mothers were equivalent to that of combat soldiers; similar findings were found among mothers of older children with special needs.

For many watching Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial, the primary takeaway has been how the deaths of her three small children--Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callen, eight months--were tragically preventable.

Lawyers for the Massachusetts nurse are arguing that she’s not criminally responsible for strangling her children, because she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis, a rare mental health condition that causes new mothers to experience delusions and intrusive thoughts.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has put Lindsay’s health care providers on the stand, in an attempt to demonstrate how his client repeatedly sought help for her terrifying thoughts, only for her to be minimized, dismissed, and overmedicated at every turn.

For others, including a thriving community of TikTok armchair detectives and conspiracy theorists, the Clancy trial has resulted in a much different takeaway: Lindsay’s husband, Patrick Clancy, was responsible, either literally or by virtue of being a neglectful husband.

Many TikTokkers are convinced that he actually committed the murders and framed his mentally ill wife so she would take the fall.

To be clear, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest this is true.

Patrick is not on trial for the deaths of his children, and there has been no indication that he ever will be, or that he is anything other than a deeply grieving father.

(Clancy did not respond to a request for comment.

) But it’s hard to overstate just how popular this conspiracy theory is, and how rapidly it has overtaken discussion of the trial.

The tabloid media has obsessively focused on Patrick, constantly publishing headlines about his life with his new wife Rachel Danis in New York (Patrick remarried earlier this year), and there are countless Reddit threads parsing their social media posts and analyzing his testimony.

Much of the TikTok commentariat’s focus has been on Patrick’s behavior prior to the murders, especially as it pertained to his wife’s postpartum mental health struggles.

Per his own testimony, he was not always present at home, even at the height of her suffering.

He went to brunch with his friends amidst her struggles with suicidal ideation, and took his daughter on a skiing trip.

A month prior to the killings, Lindsay had disclosed to him that she had thoughts of harming the children, but according to his own testimony he had waved them off after she’d assuaged his concerns.

Some experts following the case say that while they understand the impulse to cast suspicion on Patrick, they caution against speculation or cruelly attacking the grieving father of three brutally slain children.

“It’s very easy to try to vilify the husband,” says Leslie Dobson, a forensic psychologist who covers the case on her social media platforms. “But the idea that he actually set her up, or drugged her, or actually killed the children--that’s very extreme.”