Warning: This story contains distressing details and discussion of attempted suicide Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of a US mother accused of murdering their three children, has said he would have been "eaten up inside forever" had he not forgiven her for their deaths. In an interview with CBS, he also said he did the best he could as his then-wife Lindsay Clancy struggled with mental illness in the months leading up to the day she strangled their children. Lindsay has not disputed that she killed them but her lawyers argued she should not be held legally responsible because she was suffering from severe mental illness.
A judge declared a mistrial in the case earlier this month after the jury said it could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether she was guilty of murder. The prosecution had alleged that on 24 January 2023, Clancy intentionally strangled all of her children - Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months - in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home. Clancy, now 36, was then left paralysed after jumping from a second-floor window.
She attended the trial in a wheelchair. Patrick Clancy testified during the trial about his ex-wife's declining mental health after giving birth. Clancy's team said she had postpartum psychosis, a rare condition in which postpartum women can experience mania, depression or a mixture of both.
"I didn't know how to manage a postpartum illness. I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive," he told CBS, the BBC's US news partner. It was her mental health that led to Patrick Clancy deciding later to forgive her.
"I saw headlines that said, you know, 'Killer Mom', and 'Baby Murderer', 'Monster'. And none of them were accurate," he said in the interview. "I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that.
And I think when it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn't get there, I would be eaten up inside forever." Asked if he felt he had failed in some way in this period leading up to the killings, he said: "I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome. I live with it every day." Living with his grief in the weeks after the tragedy became a struggle and he admitted having suicidal thoughts.
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