Over the past few weeks, the Lindsay Clancy trial has been nearly impossible to avoid on social media. The crux of the case is this: Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse, admitted to strangling her three children before attempting suicide in January 2023. Her trial began in July 2026, and the central question was never whether Clancy committed the acts, but whether she was criminally responsible for them. Prosecutors argued that her actions were deliberate and clearheaded; her defense maintained that extensive mental health issues culminated in a psychotic break following the birth of her third child.
On September 4, the judge officially declared a mistrial. Eleven of the 12 jurors were prepared to find Clancy not criminally responsible, with one juror preventing a unanimous verdict. Her defense is now seeking an acquittal rather than a retrial.
I first learned of this case when I read a New Yorker profile of Lindsay’s husband, Patrick Clancy, published nearly two years ago. What stayed with me most was the empathy he was able to extend to his wife, even in the aftermath of such an unimaginable tragedy. It’s difficult to conceive of how anyone moves forward after something like this, but Patrick struck me as thoughtful, compassionate and highly measured—all in all, a good egg.
On social media, however, Patrick is not a grieving father and ex-husband (he filed for divorce from Lindsay a year after the killings). Instead, he’s cast as the real perpetrator: a monster who murdered his children and then framed his wife for the crime. (It’s unclear in these theories how he persuaded her to admit to it.)
But let’s take a step back.
True crime has been a social media obsession for years, but the fixation seems to have intensified. There are thousands of podcasts, documentaries, dramatized TV shows and movies, and YouTube channels dedicated to dissecting the most heinous crimes. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with a healthy interest in crime—humans have long been fascinated by violence and mystery. Maybe getting invested in a crime case is like microdosing adrenaline for your nervous system. It allows us to experience a thrill without actually being in danger, as unusual as that sounds. Or maybe people just find it exciting to hear about horrific tragedies.
The issue arises when that interest crosses into obsession, which, in my opinion, happened a long time ago.
True crime teaches people that the average criminal case is one of twists and turns, hidden suspects and witnesses, and a final puzzle piece that will tie everything together. Some of the most “popular” true crime cases reinforce that expectation. The murder of Dee Dee Blanchard by her daughter, Gypsy Rose, initially seemed relatively cut-and-dry until it emerged that Dee Dee had spent years convincing others that her healthy daughter was gravely ill (a case of Munchausen by Proxy). Then there are famous unsolved cases that have inspired people to dig for evidence, qualifications be damned. I can’t count how many JonBenét Ramsey theories I’ve read on social media over the years, with people suspecting her mother, her father, her brother, even a man who had played Santa Claus and knew the Ramsey family, of killing her.
When we consume enough of these “crazier” cases, we start to expect every real life case to follow a similar structure. The most straightforward explanation is no longer satisfying. Surely, there has to be something that dozens of lawyers, detectives and experts missed. It’s not enough to be interested in a case anymore. True crime enthusiasts want to solve it.
This has been exasperating to watch unfold in the Clancy case. Internet sleuths have become convinced of Patrick’s guilt based on flimsy evidence. I’ve even seen comments pointing to his language during the initial 911 call as proof. Yes, the 911 call he made after discovering his three young children dead and his wife bleeding after a suicide attempt.
The overpolicing of individuals during the worst moments of their lives is one of the most maddening parts of this true crime craze. There’s a reason body language alone isn’t considered reliable evidence of guilt: there’s no one single way to react to tragedy. People do things you’d never expect when they’re grieving. They laugh when they’re nervous, or speak clinically when they’re in shock. Sometimes, they even phrase things strangely on the phone when they’re calling the cops about their dead kids. I’m not interested in overanalyzing Patrick Clancy’s behavior. As someone who’s never been in his shoes, what do I know about how I’d react? But I seem to be in the minority in that belief, at least from what I’ve read online.
Everyone thinks they’d be the perfect victim, or the perfect “last man standing,” but if any of us were the victims of a violent crime, we surely wouldn’t react perfectly either. Another infuriating example of this was the University of Idaho murders, where four college students were killed in their home while two roommates were left alive. The online policing of the two surviving roommates was horrifying. People believed they must have been involved because their behavior the night their four friends were murdered was “a bit off.”
Online, it can seem as though the only valid victim of a crime is a dead one.
Maybe part of the Clancy craze is that the reality is harder to stomach than the fabrication taking shape on social media. While a father killing his children and attempting to murder his wife is horrifying, it’s also, unfortunately, not unprecedented—see Scott Peterson and Chris Watts, both convicted of killing their wives and children. If the basic facts in the Clancy case are as they appear to be, there’s no perfect villain. It’s devastating to consider that a mother who adored her children could commit such an act. It’s equally devastating that a struggling woman could do everything “right” to try to treat her mental health and still reach the point of no return. It goes against the moral simplicity we want to trust. No wonder people don’t want to believe it.
It’s saddening that a criminal case that could have broadened our conversations about postpartum mental health and psychiatric care has instead been reduced to a sensationalized “whodunnit.” Social media’s desperation for a black-and-white villain has skewed public perception of this case so profoundly that it’s difficult to imagine how a fair retrial could unfold. There’s something deeply troubling about the way true crime consumption has evolved into participation, and I shudder to think of the next trial that will become social media’s collective obsession. The Clancy case is tragic enough. We shouldn’t feel the need to increase its entertainment value.