Why are people more sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy than Andrea Yates? (Child death mentioned)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if it was pre-meditated, couldn't her lawyers argue that the medications she was on contributed to irrational thinking? It's similar to when someone plans to kill themselves. They plan out the act and carry it out--it doesn't mean this was intentional. They were experiencing a psychotic episode that resulted in irrational thinking that led to suicide. This is a heartbreaking case. I do not think this woman intended to kill her children. If you took away the PPD and medications she was on, she would not have planned this murder.

You can say that for any murder…if you take away xyz they wouldn’t commit the murder.

Exactly. There is a series on Netflix called “I am a Killer” and a common theme of these killers was unimaginable childhood abuse, mental illness, and subsequent drug addiction. They are all serving their life sentences in jail. If she gets off a lot of old cases will need to be re-opened and tried.

Exactly, why is this so difficult to comprehend? Lindsay Clancy’s case is not unique, there are arguably more severely mentally ill murderers sitting in jail cells or dead via lethal injection right now. They weren’t ever placed in mental hospitals, they are in prison or dead. Even if Lindsay had PPD, I honestly believe she had preexisting anxiety and depression, but even if she had PPD, this doesn’t take precedence over other severe mental illness. Most of the other moms who murdered their kids are imprisoned. Just do a little research and you’ll see.

Maybe our entire national approach to mental health, which results in us having the highest proportion of mentally ill people in the country being “treated” via incarceration in a system that does not treat them at all, needs work.

Uh, yeah, well let’s start institutionalizing people early on, like they did prior to Reagan. This of course is a slippery slope though, but many of those prisoners would be living in mental hospitals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

This is my theory too. She had a girl first who was likely advanced and precocious and "easy." Then she had a boy who once a toddler was more energetic and stubborn and "boyish" for lack of a better term. By the time she realized how difficult parenting a (normal) child like that could be, she was already pregnant with #3 who was born right as the middle child was hitting that hellish 2.5/3 year old age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

I doubt this was the first/only time these kids were harmed. I don’t know what went on in their family and neither do you but I highly doubt she never lashed out at and hurt her kids before brutally, viciously murdering them. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she had abused them before. She had been undergoing treatment for anxiety/stress/depression/psychosis (we don’t know exactly what) for at least 8 months and from her FB posts about her middle child she was clearly feeling that stress going back years. I bet she has “snapped” before. Sadly, it’s really not hard to imagine that these kids had a history of being abused (at least emotionally and verbally and psychologically if not also physically) by their mother.

I think believing otherwise (that she never harmed them and then one day just snapped and murdered them in a horrific way) is just another example of people on this thread painting Lindsay Clancy as this wonderful mother who one day snapped. I don’t think that’s likely the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few other mothers who killed their children in the last few months. The Lindsay Clancy case will maybe highlight this issue.

Erin Merdy

Molly Cheng

Melissa Towne

Jellisa Baxter

Dimone Flemming

Launice Battle

Kari Lynn Beck

Tara Brook

Leticia Marie Pecina

Leilani Simon

Cynthia Enyeart

Glenda Agee

Lynn Egar

Angela Dawn Flores

Sonia Loja

Paulesha Alma Green-Pulliam

Janee Pedesclaux

Nicole Jackson

Shemene Cato

Ashley Palmer

Brittney Brady

Most are murder/ suicides

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

I doubt this was the first/only time these kids were harmed. I don’t know what went on in their family and neither do you but I highly doubt she never lashed out at and hurt her kids before brutally, viciously murdering them. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she had abused them before. She had been undergoing treatment for anxiety/stress/depression/psychosis (we don’t know exactly what) for at least 8 months and from her FB posts about her middle child she was clearly feeling that stress going back years. I bet she has “snapped” before. Sadly, it’s really not hard to imagine that these kids had a history of being abused (at least emotionally and verbally and psychologically if not also physically) by their mother.

I think believing otherwise (that she never harmed them and then one day just snapped and murdered them in a horrific way) is just another example of people on this thread painting Lindsay Clancy as this wonderful mother who one day snapped. I don’t think that’s likely the case.

I'm guessing she was pretty hard on the verbally. I don't know any mom with the "perfect" family appearance that isn't. Its a lot of pressure to maintain such high standards. I struggled with this in the beginning too but quickly realized I could be the kind of parent I wanted or have the kind of house that I wanted, but not both. So, my house doesn't look so great.

[Anonymous]

I just went through the list.

None of the others had a clean record prior, had received help, were living in a stable marriage, had a stable job, supportive family, etc etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

I agree based on what I’ve read too. She reads like a lot of people on this very site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

I doubt this was the first/only time these kids were harmed. I don’t know what went on in their family and neither do you but I highly doubt she never lashed out at and hurt her kids before brutally, viciously murdering them. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she had abused them before. She had been undergoing treatment for anxiety/stress/depression/psychosis (we don’t know exactly what) for at least 8 months and from her FB posts about her middle child she was clearly feeling that stress going back years. I bet she has “snapped” before. Sadly, it’s really not hard to imagine that these kids had a history of being abused (at least emotionally and verbally and psychologically if not also physically) by their mother.

I think believing otherwise (that she never harmed them and then one day just snapped and murdered them in a horrific way) is just another example of people on this thread painting Lindsay Clancy as this wonderful mother who one day snapped. I don’t think that’s likely the case.

+1. There may have been “few warning signs” to us/the general public, people who don’t actually know her. But I think it is more likely that she did have a history of mistreating the kids, that she tried to get help with that and tried to treat her anxiety to help minimize the amount of rage she felt toward her kids but it didn’t help or wasn’t the right mix of medicine and possibly made her feel even worse and eventually she gave up. People with anxiety often feel anger/rage when things are out of their control. With young kids, things are often out of control and parenthood rarely is exactly what we think it would be or would ideally want it to be. I think LC was a woman who was very anxious, a perfectionist, and prone to depression and that those things led to anger issues when things didn’t go as planned. Reading her posts about her middle son gives the impression she resented him and parenting in general for challenging her. I bet she was abusive toward the kids before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if it was pre-meditated, couldn't her lawyers argue that the medications she was on contributed to irrational thinking? It's similar to when someone plans to kill themselves. They plan out the act and carry it out--it doesn't mean this was intentional. They were experiencing a psychotic episode that resulted in irrational thinking that led to suicide. This is a heartbreaking case. I do not think this woman intended to kill her children. If you took away the PPD and medications she was on, she would not have planned this murder.

You can say that for any murder…if you take away xyz they wouldn’t commit the murder.

Exactly. There is a series on Netflix called “I am a Killer” and a common theme of these killers was unimaginable childhood abuse, mental illness, and subsequent drug addiction. They are all serving their life sentences in jail. If she gets off a lot of old cases will need to be re-opened and tried.

Exactly, why is this so difficult to comprehend? Lindsay Clancy’s case is not unique, there are arguably more severely mentally ill murderers sitting in jail cells or dead via lethal injection right now. They weren’t ever placed in mental hospitals, they are in prison or dead. Even if Lindsay had PPD, I honestly believe she had preexisting anxiety and depression, but even if she had PPD, this doesn’t take precedence over other severe mental illness. Most of the other moms who murdered their kids are imprisoned. Just do a little research and you’ll see.

Maybe our entire national approach to mental health, which results in us having the highest proportion of mentally ill people in the country being “treated” via incarceration in a system that does not treat them at all, needs work.

Uh, yeah, well let’s start institutionalizing people early on, like they did prior to Reagan. This of course is a slippery slope though, but many of those prisoners would be living in mental hospitals.

What if we used 21st century tools and ideas to guide a change like this instead of just reverting to stupid stuff that didn't work that well the first time? Might work. We wouldn't know; we haven't tried it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if it was pre-meditated, couldn't her lawyers argue that the medications she was on contributed to irrational thinking? It's similar to when someone plans to kill themselves. They plan out the act and carry it out--it doesn't mean this was intentional. They were experiencing a psychotic episode that resulted in irrational thinking that led to suicide. This is a heartbreaking case. I do not think this woman intended to kill her children. If you took away the PPD and medications she was on, she would not have planned this murder.

You can say that for any murder…if you take away xyz they wouldn’t commit the murder.

Exactly. There is a series on Netflix called “I am a Killer” and a common theme of these killers was unimaginable childhood abuse, mental illness, and subsequent drug addiction. They are all serving their life sentences in jail. If she gets off a lot of old cases will need to be re-opened and tried.

Exactly, why is this so difficult to comprehend? Lindsay Clancy’s case is not unique, there are arguably more severely mentally ill murderers sitting in jail cells or dead via lethal injection right now. They weren’t ever placed in mental hospitals, they are in prison or dead. Even if Lindsay had PPD, I honestly believe she had preexisting anxiety and depression, but even if she had PPD, this doesn’t take precedence over other severe mental illness. Most of the other moms who murdered their kids are imprisoned. Just do a little research and you’ll see.

Maybe our entire national approach to mental health, which results in us having the highest proportion of mentally ill people in the country being “treated” via incarceration in a system that does not treat them at all, needs work.

You can treat mental illness from jail, there's no cure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A few other mothers who killed their children in the last few months. The Lindsay Clancy case will maybe highlight this issue.

Erin Merdy

Molly Cheng

Melissa Towne

Jellisa Baxter

Dimone Flemming

Launice Battle

Kari Lynn Beck

Tara Brook

Leticia Marie Pecina

Leilani Simon

Cynthia Enyeart

Glenda Agee

Lynn Egar

Angela Dawn Flores

Sonia Loja

Paulesha Alma Green-Pulliam

Janee Pedesclaux

Nicole Jackson

Shemene Cato

Ashley Palmer

Brittney Brady

This is shocking to me. I had no idea. Why haven’t I heard about these other cases?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was the Ortega / Krim case with the nanny murdering the children. She used being mentally ill as a defense but was unsuccessful and sentenced to life in prison.

This story has gotten a lot of press but a quick google search led to me finding lots of other stories just from the past year of mothers murdering their children - variety of circumstances but with quite a few being mental health related. I was surprised that one phrase being searched brought up about 10 recent cases. You would think this one is in the news because it is so rare but it isn't that rare. Most of them had made national news. According to FBI stats there are ~ 500 deaths a year in the USA of children killed by their parents. 72% of the deaths are children under 6. Of the 500, 57% are killed by fathers and 43% killed by their mothers.

With Ortega, the prosecution had a really good narrative about why she killed those two kids. That case gutted me. There’s not a convincing motive in this case - yet.

I personally believe that even more infants are killed by their parents than reported because the deaths are attributed to SIDS when in reality the parent either intended to kill the baby or engaged in unsafe sleeping habits.

A lot of the children murdered by their parents suffered long term abuse prior to the murder and the parent just went too far. If the autopsies here show unhealed injuries consistent with child abuse, Lindsay Clancy is done. But I suspect these kids were not abused.

I think that is a big part of why this case has gotten so much national attention vs. other filicide cases. Sadly there are kids killed by their parents way too often. But generally there are warning signs so to speak. Drug addiction, history of domestic violence, custody disputes, parents are unmarried or there is a step parent/boyfriend involved, an affair comes to light, or there were hidden financial problems, etc.

Obviously we don’t know all the facts yet, it is entirely possible more will come to light. But by all accounts so far, these children were not in a high risk demographic to be murdered by their mother. It is highly unusual to go from never so much as hitting your child to horrifically strangling your children (a very aggressive/personal way to kill). She didn’t even just drive a car off the cliff in a moment of anger. She killed them one by one, over minutes each.

Every case of child abuse/murder breaks my heart. But this one is hard to even conceptualize because there seem to be no aggravating factors to lead up to this.

I think there were aggravating factors leading up to it but she kept a lot of her rage and thoughts in her head because that’s what a umc woman does. On Reddit, people found a bunch of her old FB posts. There’s one where she describes her middle son as “the most difficult person she ever met.” And the rest of the post was restrained seething. It was polite but it was obvious she was miserable and resented this poor child.

I don’t understand why such people have kids. She had a career and her own life. There’s no excuse for having kids only to cruelly snuff them out later.

Oh I definitely agree there were internal aggravating factors. I’ve also seen some of her online posts and she strikes me as someone uptight/anxious/rigid with feelings of rage when things don’t go according to her plans. I definitely think motherhood was not what she envisioned once her children were no longer babies, but that she tried hard to cling on to the image she wanted to project of herself as a mother.

But by “aggravating factors” I had more so meant external ones. I would wager a guess this case is a statistical anomaly in that there were no apparent stressors to add to whatever internally caused her to do this. As far as we know, she has never been abused nor abused her children. She is not housing or food insecure. The children were planned within a two parent marriage (e.g. no non-family adults in the house, custody battles, etc.). She does not appear to be a part of any religious extremist organization/cult. She does not appear to have addiction issues (although who knows what will come out about her prescriptions). We don’t know of any affairs. She is educated and able to hold down a professional job where she maintained good relationships with colleagues. It’s still early and more could come out, but on paper, she absolutely does not check any boxes one would expect from someone who murders their own child. In fact, I wonder how common it is for children murdered by a parent to have never been harmed on a prior occasion. This was like zero to 100 with very few warning signs.

I doubt this was the first/only time these kids were harmed. I don’t know what went on in their family and neither do you but I highly doubt she never lashed out at and hurt her kids before brutally, viciously murdering them. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she had abused them before. She had been undergoing treatment for anxiety/stress/depression/psychosis (we don’t know exactly what) for at least 8 months and from her FB posts about her middle child she was clearly feeling that stress going back years. I bet she has “snapped” before. Sadly, it’s really not hard to imagine that these kids had a history of being abused (at least emotionally and verbally and psychologically if not also physically) by their mother.

I think believing otherwise (that she never harmed them and then one day just snapped and murdered them in a horrific way) is just another example of people on this thread painting Lindsay Clancy as this wonderful mother who one day snapped. I don’t think that’s likely the case.

+1. There may have been “few warning signs” to us/the general public, people who don’t actually know her. But I think it is more likely that she did have a history of mistreating the kids, that she tried to get help with that and tried to treat her anxiety to help minimize the amount of rage she felt toward her kids but it didn’t help or wasn’t the right mix of medicine and possibly made her feel even worse and eventually she gave up. People with anxiety often feel anger/rage when things are out of their control. With young kids, things are often out of control and parenthood rarely is exactly what we think it would be or would ideally want it to be. I think LC was a woman who was very anxious, a perfectionist, and prone to depression and that those things led to anger issues when things didn’t go as planned. Reading her posts about her middle son gives the impression she resented him and parenting in general for challenging her. I bet she was abusive toward the kids before.

I bet her husband and family will torture themselves looking back for these warning signs. I feel so bad for them. The grief must be tremendous.

[Anonymous]

Add the naperville nurse to the list. She murdered her 3 kids and attempted suicide, but lived. Her husband was a doctor and seeing another woman, nurse. She's in prison. She didn't get special treatment. And they were more upper class than the clancy's. She got no white privilege that clancy is pinning for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Add the naperville nurse to the list. She murdered her 3 kids and attempted suicide, but lived. Her husband was a doctor and seeing another woman, nurse. She's in prison. She didn't get special treatment. And they were more upper class than the clancy's. She got no white privilege that clancy is pinning for.

She had been battling depression for 4 years. She had a prescription for Ativan. She want to jail and is still there. White, nurse, upper middle class.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/ct-nvs-marilyn-lemak-murders-anniversary-st-0303-story.html