Everyone Has An Opinion On Lindsay Clancy, Here Is What A Psychologist Actually Says

On the evening of January 24, 2023, Patrick Clancy called 911 from his home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. He told the dispatcher his wife had hurt their children and herself. First responders arrived to find her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, strangled with resistance bands. Clancy herself had jumped from a second-floor window and sustained severe spinal injuries that left her paralyzed.

But if you have spent any time on the internet lately, you know all of this. Hell, you might even have your own delicious theories about what happened. Because most of us have a gruesome fascination with such scandals – we’re either horrified, interested or both, but no matter what, we can’t look away. What we’re less fascinated with is digging a bit deeper, when we have to ask deeply difficult questions about mental illness, about accountability, and about motherhood.

The jury that sat through weeks of evidence could not agree on the answer. A mistrial was declared on September 4, 2026. But right on cue, the internet had no such difficulty reaching a verdict. Was Lindsay Clancy a mother in the grip of a psychiatric emergency she had no control over? Was she a woman who made a devastating and unforgivable choice? Can both of those things be true simultaneously, and if so, what does the law do with that?

Bored Panda spoke exclusively to registered psychologist Amberley Meredith and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Michael Kane to help us make sense of a case that has broken open some of the most uncomfortable conversations of the year, and found that the real failure happened long before the case ever reached a jury.