Nearly two years after Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, strangled her three young children in their Massachusetts home, the case remains one of the most disturbing in recent memory. But according to a new analysis from The Daily Wire, the public conversation around it has taken a troubling turn — turning a confessed killer into the subject of amateur internet sleuthing.
The facts are not in dispute. In January 2023, Clancy sent her husband Patrick out of the house on an errand to CVS. With him gone, she took their children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — into the basement, where she methodically strangled each of them with exercise bands. She then slashed her wrists and jumped from a second-story window, leaving herself paralyzed from the waist down. When Patrick returned, she told him the children were in the basement. He found them dead.
Clancy later told her husband she had “heard a voice commanding her to kill the children and then herself,” according to his account.
Despite this, The Daily Wire reports that a segment of TikTok users are treating the case like a “whodunnit,” speculating about alternate theories and casting doubt on events that Clancy herself has confessed to. Her attorneys have stipulated to all forensic evidence — meaning they formally agree the evidence is real and legitimate. They are not arguing she didn’t do it, because she did.
The Real Question: Insanity vs. Justice
The actual legal battle is not about whether Clancy committed the murders. It’s about whether she should be found “not guilty by reason of insanity” — specifically, postpartum psychosis exacerbated by medications she was taking.
The Daily Wire’s analysis argues this defense should not exist as a matter of law, particularly in this case. The commentary points out that Clancy’s actions were not a sudden explosion of violence. She sent her husband away. She brought the children to the basement. She killed them one at a time with exercise bands. This was, the article argues, a planned, organized, systematic execution.
“Once a woman brutally murders her own children, it does not matter what a therapist says about why she did it,” the piece argues. “It does not matter how she felt. It does not matter if she was sad or anxious or indeed insane. She should be removed from society permanently as a matter of justice.”
A ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card?
The analysis also takes aim at the practical consequences of a successful insanity plea in Massachusetts. Contrary to popular belief, being found not guilty by reason of insanity does not guarantee a life behind institutional walls.
If Clancy’s defense succeeds, she would be placed in a mental health institution — but not necessarily permanently. The state would have to petition every year to keep her there, proving she remains mentally ill and a danger to society. If they fail to make that case, or decline to petition, she could be released back into society.
“This happens all the time,” the article warns. The only way to permanently remove Clancy from society, it argues, is a first-degree murder conviction with life in prison without parole.
Historical Precedent
The piece draws parallels to the Andrea Yates case from two decades ago. Yates drowned all five of her children in a bathtub. She was initially convicted of capital murder, but an appeals court threw out the conviction. At retrial, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Today, Yates lives in a low-security mental health facility with no bars on the windows, no razor wire, and no armed guards. The article notes she remains there largely because she chooses to be.
The analysis also cites a recent case in Miami where a woman was found not guilty of drowning her 15-month-old daughter and stabbing her husband — with her defense claiming COVID made her do it.
A Troubling Cultural Trend
The Daily Wire piece argues the reaction to the Clancy case — the TikTok theorizing, the cultural sympathy, and the legal system’s willingness to entertain the insanity defense for women who kill their children — says something troubling about our culture.
It notes that women who plead insanity are statistically 50% more likely to be found not guilty than men who enter the same plea. And it suggests that diagnoses like “postpartum psychosis” have become so broad in their diagnostic criteria that they could apply to nearly anyone under stress.
“The entire concept of an insanity defense, as I’ve argued before, is completely nonsensical and antithetical to the basic notions of justice and fairness,” the article concludes. “That is particularly true in this context.”
The piece stops short of denying that postpartum mental health struggles are real, acknowledging that postpartum depression and psychosis can occur. But it draws a hard line: even if hormones can trigger psychosis, the idea that it completely removes agency — up to and including slaughtering three children — is, in its view, ludicrous.
As the Clancy trial moves forward, the debate over her fate will continue. But The Daily Wire’s central argument is clear: this was not a mystery to be solved by internet amateurs. It was a planned murder of three children, and the law should treat it as such.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-lindsay-clancy-case-isnt-a-who-dun-it-why-are-tiktok-moms-pretending-it-is