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“It’s kind of a cultural obsession,” said Boston-based criminal defense attorney Peter Elikann.
The Massachusetts mother at the center of an ongoing murder trial for the killings of her three children is captivating the internet and social media.
Lindsay Clancy, 35, faces three counts of first-degree murder after her three children, Cora, Dawson and Callan – all under 6 years old – were found strangled to death in the family’s Duxbury home in 2023.
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She doesn’t deny killing them; Clancy and her defense team maintain she was suffering from ongoing postpartum psychosis at the time of their deaths. She entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
“This isn’t a case of having the blues, being down in the dumps and being depressed,” Elikann, who is not involved in the trial, told Fox News Digital.
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He explained that the world is just beginning to understand the impacts of postpartum psychosis – which differs from postpartum depression.
He referenced the Andrea Yates case from the early 2000s in Houston, Texas where the mother drowned her five children in a bathtub and was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
“This psychosis is really kind of an emerging field,” he says.
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Some TikTokers and social media sleuths are jumping to Clancy’s defense, developing conspiracy theories and claiming she did not have the support she needed.
Clancy’s attorney is hoping to have one TikToker testify, asking the judge to allow Emily Thorndike, a former McLean Hospital clinical social worker, to be added to the witness list. Thorndike had publicly accused witnesses of spreading “lies and misrepresentations” about the psychiatric facility where Clancy was treated weeks before she killed her three children.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, said he tracked down Thonrndike after she posted about the case on TikTok.
“I saw her video saying that she could not stand for, and I quote, ‘the lies and the misrepresentations from that witness stand about McLean Hospital’,” Reddington said.
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Speaking about the high interest on social media, Elikann said, “It’s kind of a cultural obsession and people feel that they’re part of some kind of community.”
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Elikann went on to say, “With the advent of not just the internet, but now social media, it’s like on steroids now, and everybody’s an expert.”
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While unsubstantiated claims and speculation circulate online about what led to the killings, Elikann emphasized the importance of following official facts over social media speculation.
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He mentioned one positive about the social media obsession.
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“The public is getting educated as to this issue of postpartum psychosis and trying to understand how a supposedly loving mother—who always indicated great interest in her children, was happy with her life, liked her job, liked her marriage, lived in this great community by the water south of Boston—why she would suddenly, out of the blue, commit this horrific, monstrous nightmare of an incident,” Elikann said.
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Clancy’s trial resumes on Monday.
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Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.
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