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

[Anonymous]

I posted above that I think LC likely had a history of abusing her kids prior to murdering them. Why do I think this? Because she has been in treatment for months for what seems to be severe mental illness and was heavily medicated for same. Yet throughout that time, as far as we know, she was also still one of the if not the primary caregivers for her kids while her husband worked. It’s not likely that she was this wonderful parent for 8 months+ and then one day just murdered her kids. What’s more likely unfortunately is that she was abusive toward her kids for a long time leading up to the murders. Of course I could be wrong and I hope I am. But I’ve been around enough cases of domestic violence and child abuse to recognize that typically homicidal people don’t become homicidal all of a sudden on a particularly “bad day” without any prior instances of abuse/violence. It’s much more likely that LC abused and mistreated her kids for awhile leading up to this. It’s not something any of us want to be true but it is the most likely scenario.

People who are imagining this normal, typical parent who had psychosis and snapped and killed her kids without any prior instances of abuse are not looking at this realistically.

[Anonymous]

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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.

You're basing this on one FB post unearthed from Reddit?

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.

You're basing this on one FB post unearthed from Reddit?

No I’m basing it on everything that we know about her plus common sense. People who horrifically murder their own children don’t typically do so completely out of the blue. Knowing that she was heavily medicated and in treatment for months prior to the murders leads me to believe that she was struggling w the same feelings that ultimately led her to murder her kids for months.

Are you a psychiatrist, forensic scientist, maternal health expert, or...?

[Anonymous]

Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

[Anonymous]

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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

She wasn't postpartum when she did it, which means there was only typical background risk of her having been psychotic when she did it. The point being made here is that that is not the case for Lindsay Clancy. She has a history of symptoms, hospitalizations and medication that mean that she was at significantly higher than background risk of having been psychotic. We'll see what comes out in the trial.

Being postpartum doesn't give LC a free pass to murder her children. LC should be treated the same way the woman in Naperville was.

Being postpartum does not have any role here. Having postpartum mood disorder, which raises the odds that she experienced postpartum psychosis, does.

"Psychosis" is not just another word for any old mental health diagnosis. There are specific aspects of it that affect ability to understand right from wrong and conform conduct to law. That is a difference between it and garden variety PPD, PPA, etc.

She didn't have PPD or PPA, how can we make the leap that she had PPP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

It’s against the terms of service. Can’t be used for legal defense of alleged violent crime.

https://medium.com/gofundme-stories/gofundme-policy-on-fundraisers-for-the-legal-defense-of-violent-crimes-975aff8ba5f6

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

It’s against the terms of service. Can’t be used for legal defense of alleged violent crime.

https://medium.com/gofundme-stories/gofundme-policy-on-fundraisers-for-the-legal-defense-of-violent-crimes-975aff8ba5f6

I wonder if it will be taken down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

It’s against the terms of service. Can’t be used for legal defense of alleged violent crime.

https://medium.com/gofundme-stories/gofundme-policy-on-fundraisers-for-the-legal-defense-of-violent-crimes-975aff8ba5f6

I wonder if it will be taken down.

As soon as it’s reported and reviewed it will be. It’s a clear violation of the TOS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

It’s against the terms of service. Can’t be used for legal defense of alleged violent crime.

https://medium.com/gofundme-stories/gofundme-policy-on-fundraisers-for-the-legal-defense-of-violent-crimes-975aff8ba5f6

Hopefully you reported it as I just did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

It’s against the terms of service. Can’t be used for legal defense of alleged violent crime.

https://medium.com/gofundme-stories/gofundme-policy-on-fundraisers-for-the-legal-defense-of-violent-crimes-975aff8ba5f6

I wonder if it will be taken down.

As soon as it’s reported and reviewed it will be. It’s a clear violation of the TOS.

Did you report it?

[Anonymous]

Stepping outside the issue of whether Clancy had PPP, it seems that PPP is a very specific psychosis that causes a mother to kill her own children - not her husband, not her parents, not randos on the street.

So I guess I don’t see how to compare it to, say, a school shooter who is randomly killing fellow students. Are there cases where a new mother opened fire in a mall or something? Seems like this post partum psychosis is a unique phenomenon that results only in the deaths of mothers/their children, no?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stepping outside the issue of whether Clancy had PPP, it seems that PPP is a very specific psychosis that causes a mother to kill her own children - not her husband, not her parents, not randos on the street.

So I guess I don’t see how to compare it to, say, a school shooter who is randomly killing fellow students. Are there cases where a new mother opened fire in a mall or something? Seems like this post partum psychosis is a unique phenomenon that results only in the deaths of mothers/their children, no?

I mean, does it matter that the victim profile is different? At the end of the day, they kill an innocent person, why would they be treated differently?

There is even another murder case in Duxbury where the perpetrator claims he was hearing voices and killed his father. Why is this any different?
https://www.masslive.com/boston/2021/11/19-year-old-jack-callahan-accused-of-drowning-his-father-in-duxbury-to-exorcise-demons-set-to-face-judge.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stepping outside the issue of whether Clancy had PPP, it seems that PPP is a very specific psychosis that causes a mother to kill her own children - not her husband, not her parents, not randos on the street.

So I guess I don’t see how to compare it to, say, a school shooter who is randomly killing fellow students. Are there cases where a new mother opened fire in a mall or something? Seems like this post partum psychosis is a unique phenomenon that results only in the deaths of mothers/their children, no?

Why does it matter if the victims are her kids versus someone else’s kids? Af the end of the day, there are still dead children because of a mental illness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stepping outside the issue of whether Clancy had PPP, it seems that PPP is a very specific psychosis that causes a mother to kill her own children - not her husband, not her parents, not randos on the street.

So I guess I don’t see how to compare it to, say, a school shooter who is randomly killing fellow students. Are there cases where a new mother opened fire in a mall or something? Seems like this post partum psychosis is a unique phenomenon that results only in the deaths of mothers/their children, no?

I mean, does it matter that the victim profile is different? At the end of the day, they kill an innocent person, why would they be treated differently?

There is even another murder case in Duxbury where the perpetrator claims he was hearing voices and killed his father. Why is this any different?
https://www.masslive.com/boston/2021/11/19-year-old-jack-callahan-accused-of-drowning-his-father-in-duxbury-to-exorcise-demons-set-to-face-judge.html

It’s different because so many of the sympathizers look like the killer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, now there is a GFM for Lindsay's legal fees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-lindsay-clancy

Unbelievable. I wonder if they were assuming they would get some of the husband’s $1 million but he has changed his tune.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stepping outside the issue of whether Clancy had PPP, it seems that PPP is a very specific psychosis that causes a mother to kill her own children - not her husband, not her parents, not randos on the street.

So I guess I don’t see how to compare it to, say, a school shooter who is randomly killing fellow students. Are there cases where a new mother opened fire in a mall or something? Seems like this post partum psychosis is a unique phenomenon that results only in the deaths of mothers/their children, no?

I mean, does it matter that the victim profile is different? At the end of the day, they kill an innocent person, why would they be treated differently?

There is even another murder case in Duxbury where the perpetrator claims he was hearing voices and killed his father. Why is this any different?
https://www.masslive.com/boston/2021/11/19-year-old-jack-callahan-accused-of-drowning-his-father-in-duxbury-to-exorcise-demons-set-to-face-judge.html

It’s different because so many of the sympathizers look like the killer.

Could you imagine if men formed #iamnikolascruz groups or #iamchriswatts groups? It would never happen, but it’s the same thing essentially. She wasn’t diagnosed with PPD or PPP, unless she’s actively psychotic it’s going to be an uphill battle trying to prove she was psychotic during the murders. She had GAD, not an excuse to kill either, but at least get the diagnosis straight.