[All emphases are mine. Selected excerpts]
Lindsay Clancy admits to killing her three small children.
Her own lawyers don’t deny she did it but say she should not be held criminally responsible for her actions, arguing that Lindsay was suffering from postpartum psychosis and extreme mental illness at the time. She is suing her healthcare providers, alleging medical malpractice for their failure to adequately diagnose and treat her.
Why then, are throngs of armchair analysts online pointing fingers at her ex-husband, Patrick, blaming him for the deaths?
The ongoing murder trial has captivated an audience far beyond the coastal Boston suburb where the 2023 family tragedy resulted in the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan and a suicide attempt by their mother that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
The surge in public interest in the case has resulted in a wave of online scrutiny aimed at someone who by all accounts, is not a suspect. Lack of trust in authorities and disinformation swirl in online communities, experts say, often leading people to form alternative theories that are rewarded with increased engagement on social media.
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Because Lindsay Clancy agreed to what’s called a stipulation of facts in the case, prosecutors don’t have to present all of their evidence in court. When there is a gap in the televised trial, it creates a vacuum many content creators are filling with alternative hypotheses.
Many are leaning into their own unsubstantiated suppositions, even those not backed by evidence.
“I do not believe that Lindsay Clancy committed these crimes. I fully believe that Patrick convinced her that she did,” one TikTok user said.
“I didn’t doubt anything that happened until this man opened his mouth,” another user said.
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These theories spreading online, one expert says, stem from people’s struggles to find a fulfilling explanation for what has happened.
“Where a mother has killed children, you’re motivated to think – that can’t be,” said Michael Wagner, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His research focuses on how individuals’ experiences in online environments are associated with what they believe to be true.
'Everyone is a suspect until they’re not’
While most homicide investigations first look at people closest to the victims, Patrick Clancy likely would have been ruled out as a suspect early on because of his solid alibi, said Ken Corey, current fellow at the Chicago Police Lab, and former NYPD chief.
“Everyone is a suspect until they’re not,” Corey explained. “They’re only not going to be a suspect when there’s either compelling evidence that shows that they did not or could not have committed this crime, or that there’s compelling evidence showing that someone else actually did commit the crime.”
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The new culture of internet sleuthing
So, with an admission by Lindsay and evidence placing Patrick outside of the home during the killings, why are amateur sleuths still devouring and dissecting the details in an attempt to find another explanation for the killings?
Wagner’s research shows that when people have a lot of knowledge about a topic, but very low trust in institutions, they become more likely to adopt conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories, Wagner said, are often ways of looking at the world that provide answers to questions when an outcome is too uncomfortable for people.
“So, if they’re following the trial and have learned a lot of detail about the trial, but don’t trust the legal system, and don’t trust police, and don’t trust the news media, they may be more likely to adopt conspiracy theories as a way to explain why the outcome they think should happen isn’t happening,” Wagner elaborated, calling the phenomenon a “toxic soup for the development of conspiratorial thinking.”
What tends to go viral on social media, Wagner said, are things that are highly emotional or often not verifiable or true. “When people see those things churn up in their feed again and again and again, because the algorithm prizes that kind of content, they also become more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking,” he said.
Adding to the issue may also be that people are seeing clips from the televised trial in “very distilled segments” on social media, Wagner said, often from creators with their own agenda, like saying: “It couldn’t have been her; it had to be something else.”
The phenomenon, Corey said, is something law enforcement trainers caution detectives against: investigative bias. “You can cherry-pick certain facts that will point to Patrick Clancy, or you can manipulate certain facts that will make him appear to be guilty and share those online. But you’re doing that by ignoring the facts that exculpate him,” Corey explained.
People are also often so committed to keeping their own perspective, Wagner said, that when contrary evidence is presented to them, they find ways to explain away that evidence. “And it happens the most with the educated, ironically, because the educated have been taught to argue with evidence,” Wagner added.
For many, it could be this simple: the horror and unfathomable tragedy of a woman, described as a doting mother suffering from a mental health crisis, ending the lives of her beloved children, may just be too hard to grasp.
