‘I Didn’t Think I Would Live’: Patrick Clancy Speaks Out in First Interview Since Lindsay Clancy Mistrial

The 38-year-old is the former husband of Lindsay Clancy , a Duxbury, Massachusetts nurse at the center of a national trial and debate over postpartum mental health . In 2023, Lindsay allegedly asked Patrick to leave the home to pick up takeout for dinner and medication from a local pharmacy. While he was gone, she is accused of taking her three children — Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan — down to the basement in their family home and using exercise bands to strangle them. Clancy then jumped from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed upon impact. Patrick then returned home to discover Lindsay and his children’s bodies. Earlier this month, Lindsay’s triple murder trial ended in a mistrial (Lindsay did not deny killing the children; the trial was set to determine whether she was legally responsible for her actions). Prosecutors have not announced whether they plan to retry Lindsay.

Now, Patrick is speaking out for the first time since the mistrial in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes about the tragic deaths of his children and how he’s rebuilt his life in the years since — including the public scrutiny during the trial that left hundreds of TikTok sleuths accusing him of committing the murders and framing his ex-wife.

“I saw headlines that said ‘Killer Mom,’ and ‘Baby Murderer,’ ‘Monster.’ And none of [them] were accurate. I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that,” Patrick said, defending Lindsay. “When it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn’t get there, I would be eaten up inside forever.”

According to Patrick, he only began to notice that Lindsay was struggling with her mental health in the fall of 2022. At the time, Lindsay said she had been struggling to sleep and eventually began trying to seek help for postpartum depression. Lindsay suffered from intense dark periods and intrusive thoughts, and by December 2022, she checked herself into McLean Psychiatric Hospital. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

“I could piece together what it was like to be really, really anxious or depressed, but I didn’t know how to manage a postpartum illness,” Patrick said. “I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive. So I’m sure there are things that I didn’t see.”

When he returned home that January 2023 day to find his children strangled, Patrick told 60 Minutes he originally believed his youngest would survive. First responders didn’t give him the full details of Callan’s injuries, so when he arrived at the hospital, he thought there might be a chance the infant could recover. “I remember thinking, ‘Just gimme one kid, and I would raise him as best I could, and I would give him the best life I possibly could. I’d tell him about his brother and sister.’ I was holding out hope for that,” he said, through tears. “When I got to the hospital, I saw the doctor.