Patrick Clancy’s deleted Reddit posts have surfaced in court as a window into his wife Lindsay’s psychiatric collapse before she killed their three children.
The account, active from 2017 until last year, was traced through an email address Patrick included in one post — the same email read aloud in Plymouth court by cell phone forensics expert Timothy Chiappini during testimony. What jurors heard painted a timeline of escalating crisis that ended with the murders of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months.
The trouble began with what Patrick described as mild anxiety. Lindsay, a labor and delivery nurse, was worried about returning to work after their third child’s birth — something she had navigated twice before. “This happened with our previous two children and she was able to get through it fairly easy with some therapy and renewed coping skills,” he wrote in a Dec. 6, 2022 post to the “Ask Psychiatry” subreddit titled “I need another perspective.”
“Was she overwhelmed with the kids? Definitely, but I believe we could have solved that by giving her more time to herself to decompress as we have in the past,” he continued in the same post. “I can’t stress enough that her anxiety was very mild going into this. She was eating well, sleeping great at usual, dancing at the wedding we went to and socializing.”
Patrick’s own idea was Zoloft. The antidepressant, prescribed for that mild anxiety, quickly triggered what he documented as a manic state. In a Dec. 7, 2022 post to “Ask Docs” prefaced with “posting for my wife,” he relayed Lindsay’s experience: “After a week of taking Zoloft, I developed severe insomnia. At one point, I went 48 hours without sleeping. For weeks I have been lucky to get 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. Oddly, I don’t feel tired, but I know I need more sleep.”
The post also noted a 15-pound weight loss in two months, dropping her to 115 pounds — a classic mania symptom. “I suspect this medication was never needed in the first place (Zoloft was my own idea), but my psychiatrist is saying I’m exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder,” Patrick wrote, channeling Lindsay’s reported words.
By Dec. 9, the posts turned darker. “Has your [medication] experience ever involved thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones?” Patrick asked. “Did you ever feel like you came close to acting on them? Or were they just thoughts?”
Doctors responded to the insomnia not by stopping Zoloft but layering on more drugs — Ativan, various benzodiazepines, sleeping pills, then a switch to Prozac, another antidepressant. The regret that Lindsay ever started medication became a recurring theme across Patrick’s posts.
On Dec. 15, Patrick drove Lindsay to Massachusetts General Hospital’s emergency room — her first hospitalization. Five days later, a postpartum treatment program in Rhode Island turned her away, with doctors there judging she needed more general psychiatric care. She was admitted to McLean Hospital on Dec. 30 and discharged Jan. 5, according to testimony from her treating psychiatrists.
Her condition then was severe. “Severely depressed, numb, don’t really care about anything… Even had suicidal thoughts,” Patrick wrote on Dec. 15, capturing Lindsay’s state.
The last Reddit post before the murders, dated Jan. 23, was almost mundane — Patrick asking a tech subreddit for advice on creating a real estate open house app. The next day, Jan. 24, he sent Lindsay on errands. He testified he had no inkling anything was wrong. She sent him on errands before strangling their three children with exercise bands, then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a bedroom window in a failed suicide attempt.
At trial, psychiatric experts on both sides have suggested Lindsay could have bipolar disorder, marked by swings between mania and depression. The defense argued the manic phase had spiraled into psychosis by the time of the killings.
Both Lindsay and Patrick are now suing the doctors who treated her, alleging they missed the bipolar diagnosis that they say led to the children’s deaths.
Patrick’s lawyer did not return a request for comment.