Cora, Dawson and Callan Were the Victims
Candace Owens can fuck all the way off with this Lindsay Clancy bullshit.
I’m fucking disgusted.
Not because postpartum mental illness isn’t real. It absolutely fucking is.
Not because women experiencing psychiatric crises shouldn’t be taken seriously. They should.
I’m disgusted because three children are dead, a jury is sitting in a courtroom listening to weeks of medical evidence, and Candace Owens apparently decided none of that matters because she can fire up a microphone and announce Lindsay Clancy is “obviously not guilty.”
Obviously?
Based on fucking what?
Your podcast microphone and a Big Pharma conspiracy?
Lindsay Clancy killed her three children.
That fact isn’t even disputed by her defense.
The question at trial is whether she was criminally responsible for what she did because of her mental state at the time. That is an enormously complicated medical and legal question involving psychiatric records, medications, witness testimony, expert opinions and the actual events surrounding the deaths.
That is exactly why we have fucking trials.
The “13 medications” headline needs context
One of the loudest talking points surrounding this case is that Clancy was prescribed 13 psychiatric medications.
And yes, that number deserves scrutiny.
But context fucking matters.
Reporting based on court records shows those 13 different medications were prescribed over roughly four months by multiple providers. More than 30 individual prescriptions were issued as medications and dosages were changed, discontinued and restarted. It remains unclear exactly how many of those medications Clancy was actually taking simultaneously. (BostonGlobe.com)
That is very different from the picture people create when they scream “13 medications” as though somebody handed her thirteen psychiatric drugs every morning and said good fucking luck.
Could her psychiatric care have been fragmented?
Absolutely.
Could medication changes have contributed to her deterioration?
That is a legitimate medical question.
Could providers have missed something?
Also legitimate.
Those questions are being litigated right fucking now.
But “she was prescribed a lot of medications” does not automatically equal “the medications made her kill her children.”
That conclusion requires evidence.
Her doctors were actually evaluating her
This is another part of this story that gets conveniently bulldozed when people want a simple villain.
Clancy was not sitting alone in her house for months with nobody evaluating her mental state.
Psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Tufts treated her repeatedly from September 2022 through January 2023. During testimony, Tufts described roughly a dozen appointments and repeated medication adjustments as Clancy struggled with anxiety, depression and insomnia.
And then there is the part I cannot fucking ignore:
Tufts saw her virtually on January 23, 2023.
The day before the killings.
Clancy appeared depressed. She reported anxiety, numbness and lack of motivation.
But according to Tufts, she showed no signs of psychosis and denied suicidal or homicidal thoughts during that final appointment. Another psychiatrist who treated her during an inpatient hospitalization likewise testified that Clancy had not reported thoughts of harming others. (AP News)
That does not magically prove Clancy wasn’t psychotic the following day.
Psychiatry doesn’t work like a fucking blood glucose test.
But it matters.
Contemporaneous psychiatric evaluations matter.
Especially when the entire defense rests on what her mental state was when she killed three children.
And yes, Clancy was suicidal
This part shouldn’t be erased either.
Testimony and records describe significant suicidal ideation before the killings.
Her family testified that her mental health deteriorated substantially in the months beforehand and that she experienced suicidal thoughts. Her defense also confronted Tufts with evidence that Clancy had called a suicide hotline twice during that period. Tufts testified that she had not known about those calls. (AP News)
Clancy voluntarily entered McLean Hospital on New Year’s Eve and remained hospitalized until January 5.
Those facts matter.
They are evidence that she was profoundly psychiatrically unwell.
But being psychiatrically ill and being legally not responsible for killing three people are not automatically the same fucking thing.
That’s the question the jury has to answer.
After killing Cora, Dawson and Callan on January 24, Clancy cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window in what has been described as a suicide attempt. The fall caused catastrophic spinal injuries and left her paralyzed. Prosecutors have challenged aspects of that attempt, pointing to testimony describing the cutting wounds as superficial, while the defense disputes any suggestion that the attempt was staged. (People.com)
Again:
Evidence.
Competing interpretations.
A jury.
Not fucking Instagram.
Postpartum psychosis is real. That doesn’t mean we stop asking questions.
I want to be extremely clear because apparently nuance has died along with common fucking sense.
Postpartum psychosis is real.
It is rare, severe and potentially catastrophic. It can involve hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking and dangerous behavior.
Acknowledging that does not require me to automatically accept that every horrific act committed by a postpartum woman was caused by postpartum psychosis.
Clancy’s defense says that’s what happened here.
Prosecutors say it isn’t.
And I personally remain unconvinced by the postpartum-psychosis explanation based on the evidence presented so far.
Callan was nearly eight months old when he was killed.
The timing alone does not medically exclude postpartum psychosis. Symptoms can persist, relapse or evolve after an earlier postpartum onset, so “eight months postpartum” cannot honestly be treated as proof that psychosis was impossible.
But classic postpartum psychosis typically begins abruptly and early after delivery.
So if the defense argues that Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis eight months after Callan’s birth, then the longitudinal history becomes critically important.
When did psychotic symptoms begin?
What exactly were they?
Who observed them contemporaneously?
Were hallucinations or delusions documented before the killings?
How do those claims reconcile with repeated psychiatric encounters in which clinicians testified they did not observe psychosis?
Those aren’t attacks on postpartum women.
Those are fucking questions.
And when three children are dead, we should be allowed to ask every single one of them.
Stop erasing the children
This is where I completely lose my patience.
Cora was 5 years old.
Dawson was 3.
Callan was 8 months old.
They were strangled in their own home.
And somehow we’ve entered this sick upside-down circus where crowds rally for Lindsay, influencers declare her “obviously not guilty,” and three dead children increasingly feel like supporting characters in a national conversation about their mother’s suffering.
No.
Fuck that.
We can discuss Lindsay Clancy’s mental illness.
We can examine whether her doctors failed her.
We can scrutinize every prescription.
We can talk about postpartum psychiatric care and whether women receive enough of it.
We can acknowledge that she was suicidal and desperately seeking help.
We can even ultimately accept a jury’s conclusion that she lacked criminal responsibility if that is what the evidence establishes under Massachusetts law.
None of that requires turning Lindsay Clancy into the primary victim of the story.
Because she wasn’t.
Cora was.
Dawson was.
Callan was.
Three fucking babies who didn’t get another birthday.
They don’t get podcasts.
They don’t get rallies.
They don’t get to explain what happened to them.
They don’t get to grow up.
So watching people trip over themselves to explain why the person who killed them deserves compassion while barely mentioning the children makes me fucking sick.
And Candace Owens declaring “obviously not guilty” before a jury has even finished hearing the case is exactly the kind of bullshit that turns a complicated murder trial into content.
This isn’t a fucking podcast hypothetical.
There are medical records.
There are psychiatric evaluations.
There are competing experts.
There is physical evidence.
There is testimony.
And there is a jury whose actual fucking job is to weigh all of it.
Let them.
Then maybe everybody else can spend five fucking minutes remembering the three people who don’t have microphones, lawyers, rallies or millions of strangers arguing on their behalf.
Cora Clancy.
Dawson Clancy.
Callan Clancy.
They were the victims, motherfuckers.
Say their fucking names.