A Florida true-crime influencer has been criminally charged over a secretly recorded phone call she allegedly posted involving the father of Patrick Clancy.
Shawna Gramkow, 46, of Sanford, Florida, faces one count of unlawful wiretapping in Massachusetts after investigators say she published audio of Christopher Clancy to her Instagram page, saltylunatics, on Aug. 30. Court papers show Christopher, Patrick Clancy’s father, filed a police report Sept. 7 after recognizing his own voice in the recording.
The alleged wiretap unfolded while Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial was already deep in proceedings. Christopher told investigators he remembered receiving a call from an unknown number while driving on Aug. 6, according to the filing. “Instead of declining the incoming call; he believes he accidentally answered, creating an open line of communication for the unknown calling party who proceeded to record [Christopher] Clancy’s comments without his knowledge or consent,” the court papers alleged.
The recording itself was “mostly unintelligible,” investigators noted, though Christopher recognized some of his own remarks as being about his eldest son, Brian. The court papers did not identify who placed the call, who recorded it, or what else was discussed.
Gramkow allegedly framed the audio in her Instagram post as the product of a leak from Lindsay’s legal team. “Now on this particular call, Patrick’s dad was still on the line, he was kind of mumbling still on the phone, I guess he didn’t know that the phone was still going,” she said in the video, according to the court filing. She also claimed in the post that Lindsay’s lawyer “released Patrick’s phone number and one of y’all decided to give him a call.”
The saltylunatics account, which investigators said had 886 followers and was filled with conspiracy theories about Lindsay’s trial, appears to have removed the post in question. Gramkow’s total social-media following exceeds 50,000 across platforms.
Gramkow has not stayed silent about the case against her. In a Facebook post, she declared the “allegations are false and easy to prove.” She escalated her public pushback on Oct. 27, linking to a GoFundMe fundraiser and telling supporters she needed to take steps “to protect myself right away.”
“Thank you for your support and continued support as we navigate the rough waters,” she wrote in the same post.
The fundraiser had collected more than $13,000 as of Friday, with the page stating Gramkow needed to secure legal counsel. She has been summoned to appear in Scituate criminal court in Massachusetts on Nov. 20.
The charge lands in the aftermath of one of the most closely watched trials in recent memory. Lindsay Clancy, a former nurse, stood accused of carefully planning and carrying out the strangulation deaths of her three young children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — on Jan. 24, 2023. Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity, telling jurors she suffered severe postpartum psychosis and heard a male voice commanding her to kill the children and attempt her own suicide. The trial ended with a hung jury on Sept. 4, and prosecutors have announced plans to retry her. She is due in court Monday as both sides continue fighting over whether a second trial will proceed.
Patrick Clancy divorced Lindsay after her arrest and has since remarried to Rachel Danis, who is pregnant with his child. The case has spawned relentless online speculation and baseless conspiracy theories targeting Patrick, much of it amplified by accounts like Gramkow’s.
Gramkow’s legal representation and working contact information were not available.