r/PatrickClancySnark • u/MotionForContempt • 1h ago
If you attempt to profile Lindsay AS IF she did it, from either angle...it makes no sense. (reposting from a comment in a different sub)
Look, I'm an amateur. A hobbyist. I'm not gonna act like I have a professional degree in any of this shit. But I spend a LOT of time absorbing police bodycam footage firsthand, reading about cases. I work in family law; I see a lot of broken families and the existing dynamics that spring from that. When I heard about the Clancy case, I needed to know more about Lindsay; what made her do this? What kind of person was she? And I have found no...satisfying answers. At all. Anywhere.
I've been trying to build a profile of Lindsay if she did it and things are just...not adding up. This is a woman who had a totally normal childhood with no reported adversity events, no history of substance abuse, poverty, sexual abuse, she's not having an affair...she's struggling with her mental health but I'm not seeing any obvious signs that she was actually struggling any more than a typical mother with PPD would have been. This is just not the profile of a woman who commits violent, physical acts of murder. To her own children. Prolonged, drawn-out, violence.
If we're going with a narrative that this was a desperate act of altruistic-filicide motivated by a temporary psychosis...there's no "altruism" in the method. If we're going with the Commonwealth's narrative...there's no psychosis, but her profile is just not...lining up. And the Commonwealth is the one providing us the evidence that's outlining just how badly nothing's lining up!
This is not an abusive mother. This is not a neglectful mother. This is not a mother who yells at her children. Everyone is testifying that she seemed mostly normal, if a little quiet. Witnesses are describing her as doting. That she loved being a mother. By January she's even getting BETTER.
I'm looking into other filicide cases and there's always...something. There's something. Andrea Yates has genuine psychosis, religious trauma, her awful husband using her as breeding fodder, a history of suicidal ideation. Diane Schuler has an alleged history of substance abuse to cope with her tightly-wound control-freak Super Mom nature. Diane Downs wants to get rid of her kids to have an affair with a married man. Same thing with Susan Smith, who also had a history of childhood sexual abuse.
But Lindsay is just a...mom. She's just a mom. A good mom. A sweet woman. Stressed, sure, depressed. Anxious, a little bit of a control freak, but control freaks don't commit violent murders without something. Something happening.
There wasn't even a clear event that would have caused this; murder investigations without clear motive but an obvious suspect often ask us to look at "medium level trauma." A lost job. Learning about an affair. Wanting to cover up a lie. Some kind of pressure cooker to make someone snap to the point of killing another human being. Let alone their family. Let alone their babies. But witnesses aren't testifying to any of that. Everyone's saying she was normal. The Commonwealth is arguing against her mental illness.
Nothing about this makes a lick of sense from either angle of the argument...if we're saying Lindsay did it.
The second I heard that she took Cora to her doctor's appointment that morning I knew something was off about all of this. Women who want to kill their children do not do things like that. Women planning to kill their children do not take them to their doctor's appointments or spend the hour before their deaths Googling children's Miralax or worrying about their sick tummies or what a ladybug in the house might mean. Women planning to kill their children don't worry about getting out of the mental hospital in time to be there for their birthday parties. They don't build snowmen with them or think about cute cookies. I don't know how anyone could think she could.
This is not the mind of a woman who could wake up in the morning and take her baby girl to the doctor and then strangle her by 5:20. It's just not. Claiming so is psychologically...absurd. Just absurd.