Why the Lindsay Clancy filicide trial has captured global attention

The case of Lindsay Clancy in the United States has captured international attention due to its horrific and complex nature, with one expert telling SBS News that the intrigue reflects a "call to change society".

The 36-year-old mother of three claimed to be suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled her three young children to death in their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023.

She then cut her wrists and jumped from a second-story window, leaving her paralysed from the waist down and using a wheelchair.

Clancy has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, saying she heard a voice ordering her to kill her children.

Prosecutors have rejected her argument, saying she had planned to murder her children and was able to understand the consequences of her actions.

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The five-week trial has come down to five days and nearly 30 hours of deliberation, with the case currently deadlocked as jurors say they cannot reach a unanimous decision.

The labour and delivery nurse faces a mandatory life sentence if found guilty, and could be committed to a psychiatric facility indefinitely if acquitted on mental health grounds.

Internet sleuths, TikTok detectives, and social media discussions have pored over every aspect of the case, with both defenders and critics staking out their own various theories about exactly what happened.

Such ongoing digital scrutiny is reminiscent of other murder trials involving female perpetrators and, in some cases, family members.

In the same year Clancy strangled her children, Australian Erin Patterson laced beef Wellington with lethal death cap mushrooms and served it to her estranged husband's parents, his aunt, and his aunt's husband.

In the 2010s, nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven babies at the neonatal unit where she worked in Britain .

Decades prior, Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of murdering her own child and spent years behind bars before a royal commission and a final coroner's validated that a dingo had taken her baby, as she had always said.

Rachel Franks, honorary associate lecturer at the University of Newcastle and expert in true crime and crime fiction, told SBS News that such cases draw public attention because they upend our perception of violent perpetrators.