The Lindsay Clancy Defense Has a Major Problem: Forensic Expert Analysis

The Lindsay Clancy Defense Has a Major Problem: Forensic Expert Analysis

Hey everybody, Dr. G here. I’m a clinical and forensic psychologist as well as a body language expert, and today we’re going to be doing a deep dive into Lindsay Clancy’s defense. Before we get started with this, couple of quick things. One, I wanted to make sure you know this is not a psychological evaluation of any kind.

These are just my opinions. In addition to that, I do want to remind you to like and subscribe if you want to see more content just like this. All right, let’s go. Lindsay Clancy is currently on trial for the murder of her three young children, and today we’re going to be doing a deep dive into the defense’s argument.

 Now, I recently did a video analyzing the behavior, psychology, and body language of some aspects of this case, but I thought I needed to do a follow-up video because I see so many people completely confused by her motive, by her behavior, and seem to think that the husband was involved. We’re going to talk about all of these things today.

 I’m going to try to give you as much clarity as possible because there is so much that people do not seem to understand about this case, particularly the psychological aspects of it. All right, let’s just jump right in. For whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of questions from people about whether or not Lindsay Clancy did this at all.

 I’m going to show you a little bit of her civil suit so you can see in her own words exactly what she did to eliminate any question whether or not she was actually involved with the murders of her children. Then after I read this, I’m going to help you understand why this argument right here creates a lot of problems for the defense.

 Now, this is an excerpt from a civil suit that was filed against some of the doctors involved with her treatment. I’m going to read it to you. I’m going to explain what the problems are. Lindsay experienced command auditory hallucinations. A demanding, powerful male voice explicitly ordered her. She felt an overwhelming, irresistible compulsion to comply.

 Entering a dissociative, dream-like state where her physical actions felt utterly disconnected from her conscious volition. She perceived her body was just acting, and she was merely watching herself do it. She reported she had no choice but to follow these compelling directives. Lindsay described, “I lost all control.

 My body started acting without any control on my part. I was just following commands. All action. This voice demanded action.” Lindsay proceeded to strangle each of her children uttering go to God, baby. She then jumped out a second floor window and suffered catastrophic injuries as a result. So, to me, it is crystal clear that she acknowledges that she is the one who did this.

 Now, I know there are as I said before, there are a lot of questions about the husband. There questions about the timeline and what where emails were sent from. I’ve seen all of these questions. But until the question is answered of why did she claim to do this if she didn’t? Until she recants this or says none of this is true, then why would we truly question whether or not Patrick Clancy was involved? I get there may be some weird things that should be looked into and law enforcement, if they so choose to look into it, so be it. But why is it that

people are dismissing this? She gives explicit detail about what she did. These are her own words saying that she was strangling them, saying literally quote, go to God, baby. That is exactly what she claims she said. So, as people continue to have issues with Patrick Clancy, keep in mind she has in detail explained this.

 And just to be extremely clear, there is a 0% chance that Patrick Clancy could have somehow convinced her that she did this when she did not. I don’t care how many medications she was on, that is not possible. That’s not at all how the psychology of the brain works. I feel very definitive about that.

 There are other things about this where I might not be so definitive, but I am 100% clear on the fact that Patrick Clancy did not hypnotize her and make her think she did this if that’s what people are theorizing. Because I don’t know how you can reconcile this claim with the idea that he’s the one who did it unless you think they did it together and she’s just the fall guy.

 You want to try to make that argument, go for it. But there’s no chance that she was not involved and she thinks that she’s the one who did it. That makes no sense. This picture right here is a great example of some of the evidence people are talking about related to Patrick Clancy. They’re saying that he’s wearing different shoes here and here.

 And while I can certainly acknowledge the shoes do look different and people are saying because he changed the shoes that must mean something nefarious. The quality of these videos is so bad. I’m not convinced that you can actually distinguish whether or not these are the same or different shoes. His hair looks like it got changed as well, which obviously it didn’t.

 His face also looks quite different because the quality of these cameras is so different. So, is there something to him changing shoes? Are these the same shoes? That will be worth exploring if she ever recants the fact that she actually committed these murders. Now, on my last video, I distinguished between hallucinations and delusions because it’s extremely important that you understand those if you’re going to make sense of all of this because I have seen over and over again people do not seem to understand psychosis.

 Even professionals I’ve seen talking about it do not seem to understand psychosis. And just to be clear, many years of my training were at an inner-city hospital dealing with people that had persistent mental illness. I have a lot of experience working with people with serious mental illness, psychosis, and so forth.

 So, this is an area that I have worked in extensively. Now, I do want to be very clear. I have not evaluated Lindsay Clancy. This is not an evaluation of Lindsay Clancy. I’m not providing a diagnosis, but I’m going to tell you about other people that have committed similar acts, and I’m going to help you better understand why they did it because it might give you some clarity on the type of motivations people would have to do acts just like this so it can maybe make a little bit more sense.

Mothers killing their children, while quite rare, has been studied for decades. Now, the number one reason for mothers killing their children is what we refer to as altruistic filicide. This accounts for 56% of mothers who murdered their children. At least according to one study, it was 56%. Altruism is acting on what you believe is the best for somebody else rather than yourself.

Filicide is when someone murders their own child. So, altruistic filicide is when somebody murders their own child believing that they are protecting them, that they are saving them. For some reason, they believe that that is the right choice. Now, the problem with this case is that they have not tried to make this claim, but it is, in my opinion, the one that certainly makes the most sense.

 and that would be a clearly delusional way of seeing the world. A normal delusion might be, but the defense has not made this claim, that the children could not survive without her. That if she was to die, the children would be miserable. They could never survive. They would never feel love. They would They are better off with her killing them rather than them living a life where their mother has died.

 That can be a delusional way of seeing the world. So, when you look at a case like this, and this is part of her journal that they had published, when you look at a case like this and she’s making statements like, “I am strong. I am brave. I will get through this. I am a great mom. I love my kids. I love my family. I love my life.” That somebody can make these claims and then make the choice to murder their children, it seems incompatible.

 Because this is someone who is saying they love their children. She also talked about the fact that she didn’t like sleep training. That she wasn’t able to rescue her children. That she couldn’t save her child from being upset when they were waking up alone and so on and so forth. That may sound like it’s incompatible with somebody who murders their child, but through a distorted enough lens, that’s actually exactly why they would be doing it.

 Because they believe they’re rescuing their children. Let’s go back to the claims that were made in the in the civil lawsuit. Now, I’m going to take a second to help you understand what psychosis is. I know we’re talking about postpartum psychosis, but let’s just talk about psychosis in general. It comes in a variety of different forms, but the cornerstone of psychosis is delusion.

 It is believing that the world is different than it really is. It’s having beliefs that are not based in reality. Now, hallucinations can come with that. There’s all sorts of other symptoms that can come with it, but true psychosis is building a world, a mental world around yourself that is not consistent with the real world.

 That is what really matters when it comes to psychosis, and people have not fo- focused on that anywhere near enough in this trial, in my opinion. And just to clarify the difference between a hallucination and a delusion, a hallucination is a sensory experience that is not based in the real world. Hearing, seeing, feeling something.

 There’s a variety of different ways people can hallucinate, but it is not based on real-world stimuli around you. And a delusion is a fixed false belief. It is a belief that is fully ingrained, fully resistant to you challenging it. So, you go up to somebody with a delusion and you say, “You know what? That’s not based in reality at all, and I have proof.

” Doesn’t matter. That will be impenetrable. No amount of proof that you have will affect a delusion. So, that’s what’s important to understand about this. In the lawsuit, it says, “Lindsay proceeded to strangle each of her children uttering, ‘Go to God, baby.'” Now, does that sound more like somebody who believes they are being altruistic or somebody who has no control over what they are doing at that time? Now, once again, only she can say what her belief was, but if her belief was she’s no longer going to be there

for them, and she was distorted enough to believe that this was rescuing them, then there might be some sort of case to be made. But, this isn’t what the defense is claiming. They’re claiming that she had command hallucinations that forced her to do it. And psychologically, that just isn’t really consistent with what we know about command hallucinations, that what we know about volition, what we know about choice.

To me, that just doesn’t make sense. To me, one of the most unfortunate aspects of the claims being made in this case is that it affects people that have real mental health issues. When you have people that are afraid that they might do something like this, that they’re going to lose control, you have to understand people can have a delusional belief system where they make bad choices, but people do not lose control of their own bodies and do things that are entirely against their will.

 That’s just not how the human mind works. At least not without something like PCP, not without some sort of serious traumatic brain injury, or something else external. Internally, this is not going to happen. You are not going to force your body to do things that you don’t want to do. So, cases like this with claims like this make anxious people more anxious because then they think, “Oh, it’s a possibility this could happen.” When it truly is not.

 So, can somebody commit murder or do something equally tragic based on a distorted worldview, based on delusions they have? Absolutely, they can. Can they be forced to do that? Can their body force them to do it while they are not behind the wheel and they’re just along for the ride? No, that is really not how that works.

So, there is a claim in this filing that really doesn’t fully make sense to me, and it fully affects the way that everything else is seen throughout this filing. So, I’m going to read this to you, and I’m going to show you what I’m talking about. After starting Seroquel, I won’t get into what all these medications do.

 I feel like that’s a whole other video. Lindsay’s condition took a dramatic turn for the worse. She began experiencing what she described as intrusive thoughts, which were actually auditory hallucinations. Now, that right there makes no sense to me. Even people who are dealing with psychosis can distinguish the difference between what is an external auditory hallucination and and an intrusive thought.

 Those are can co-occur, but they are different phenomena. So, why they make the claim using her quotes that she had intrusive thoughts and then actually say, “Well, it was actually auditory hallucinations.” That needs more definitely needs more explaining. Because that all of a sudden changes how we’re going to see some of the rest of this.

 On December 15th, 2022, Patrick called Nurse Gillette’s office to report that Lindsay has had a devastating week, and it was the worst day for Lindsay. She had horrible thoughts all day. It then goes on to say, “Lindsay had auditory hallucinations all day, every day.” So, the quote, the literal statement was, “She had thoughts all day.” The filing says she had auditory hallucinations all day.

These are two entirely different phenomena. Where does it they come to the conclusion that you can just start replacing them talking about thoughts with hallucinations? I think that really weakens the overall coherence of all of this to make it all psychologically coherent. Because to me, that doesn’t make any sense.

 People can’t distinguish between those two. Now, a big problem with the defense, if they’re going to claim not guilty by reason of insanity, would be that she couldn’t know that what she was doing was wrong. That is a big part of the standard, at least in most states, for being not guilty by reason of insanity. But, there is a lot of evidence throughout this that she knows it’s wrong. She’s trying to stop herself.

 She talks about fears that she has of harming the kids. She goes out of her way to get treatment for this. She is trying to stop it. So, she knows that behavior is wrong. And that’s where this starts to get way more complicated. Because according to the defense, she did have hallucinations over and over again. That’s what they’re claiming.

They’re also claiming that she had fears of harming her kids before. So, how could she resist at that time and then not at the time when she actually did it? Now, the problem comes in here where it says, “As soon as Patrick left to pick up food, there was a loud demanding repetition’s voice, this is your last chance.

” And then she felt a force come over her. Now, based on other evidence they presented, it seems like this was planned, that there was some planning involved in this. So, for this to act for her to say that this was impulsive and that this was something that was spur of the moment and that she felt that she couldn’t control herself and it forced her to do this.

 That doesn’t really feel entirely consistent with the other evidence that’s been presented. So, when we look at this case, I do understand why people struggle so much to believe that she would do something like this. By all accounts, you have a report of someone who is dealing with an exhausting motherhood. She’s tired. She’s fatigued.

 She feels like it’s a thankless job at times, but she loves her kids. She really wants to help them. She hates the idea of sleep training cuz she can’t rescue them when they’re feeling upset. So, when people see all of this, they feel like it’s relatable because there are aspects of it that are. But, her the idea that she would even think about truly trying to murder her own children, much less actually going through with it, that’s what gets a lot more confusing to people.

 But, if there was a distorted or truly delusional belief system that my children will be devastated if I die, they’ll never recover, they can’t live without me, they’re a part of me. Maybe she had not truly separated herself from her own children. She may have had very enmeshed boundaries with her children. When she saw her life was over, she may have thought of their lives being over.

She may truly not have been able to distinguish the two, but they don’t make any of these claims. And to me, those are much more coherent claims than what they’re making right here. All right, let’s go and start to wrap things up. Hopefully, this is helping you make some sense of this completely horrible, despicable, and terrible tragedy.

 Now, whether or not medications played a a part in all of this, what all the factors were that played a part into this, I’m sure will be litigated for many years to come. But, what seems clear is that there are cases that happen that are very similar to this, and there are coherent reasons they happen.

 They’re tragic and they’re unfortunate reasons, but they’re reasons that we can at least make sense of. And when we look at all the pieces here, with exactly what the defense is presenting, it just doesn’t fully make sense. And I think that’s why people continue to try to make sense of this case. That’s why people are saying, “It had to have been the husband.

” Because often times it is the husband. That’s not unusual that people would think that, but there just isn’t any evidence in this case that that is what happened. There’s every bit of evidence that she is claiming herself that she did this. She’s not saying she made the choice to do it.

 She’s saying that something else made that choice for her, but she’s acknowledging that she was ultimately the one who did this. If you have any other thoughts about this, or if there’s anything else you want me to analyze, please let me know in the comments below. Last thing before we get finished up is I do want to remind you to like and subscribe if you want to see more content just like this.

 All right, thanks for watching.