Patrick Clancy’s since-deleted Reddit posts chart Lindsay Clancy’s sharp mental-health decline in the weeks before she strangled their three children, and a couple’s frantic, unfinished search for help.
In the months before the killings, Patrick Clancy poured private alarms onto Reddit. The account, active since 2017 and later deleted, described sleepless nights, rapid weight loss, medication changes, hospital trips, and rising fear that something was badly wrong with his then-wife, a former labor and delivery nurse.
The New York Post reviewed those posts, which now sit at the center of a grim record: on Jan. 24, after sending Patrick on errands, Lindsay Clancy strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan with exercise bands, cut her wrists and neck, and jumped from a bedroom window in a failed suicide attempt.
The posts do not explain the final act. They do show how fast a household unraveled while doctors, hospitals, and a young family tried, and failed, to get ahead of it.
After the third child, return-to-work anxiety led to a Zoloft prescription. In a Dec. 7, 2022, Ask Docs post written “posting for my wife,” the account framed the choice in blunt terms.
Patrick’s lawyer did not return The Post’s request for comment on the deleted account.
The same post said a psychiatrist was already flagging warning signs.
“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,”
Insomnia hit within a week, the posts said.
“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 Dec. 7 post came about seven weeks before the children’s deaths. Related posts described mania-linked weight loss of 15 pounds in two months, down to 115 pounds, and a medication scramble that moved from Zoloft to Ativan and other benzodiazepines and sleeping pills before a switch to Prozac.
By Dec. 9, the account was asking strangers on medical forums about a line no parent wants to cross.
“Has your [medication] experience ever involved thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones?”
“Did you ever feel like you came close to acting on them? Or were they just thoughts?”
Earlier, on Dec. 6 in Ask Psychiatry, the writing stressed how mild things had looked at the start.
“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.”
The same thread cast prior postpartum anxiety as manageable.
“This happened with our previous two children and she was able to get through it fairly easy with some therapy and renewed coping skills,”
“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,”
That confidence did not last. A later description of Lindsay’s state said she felt “severely depressed, numb, don’t really care about anything... even had suicidal thoughts.”
On Dec. 15, Patrick took Lindsay to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room. Five days later, a postpartum treatment program in Rhode Island turned her away, saying she needed broader psychiatric care than the program could give.
From Dec. 30 to Jan. 5 she was admitted to McLean Hospital, according to later court testimony from treating psychiatrists. The stay ended less than three weeks before the killings.
Readers tracking the Plymouth court fight have followed every turn in the holdout juror battle as the murder case moved under a national spotlight.
Patrick later testified that Lindsay seemed much better after the hospital release. On Jan. 24, he said, he had no inkling anything was wrong.
The day before the killings, the Reddit account’s final post had nothing to do with psychiatry. On Jan. 23 it asked a tech subreddit about building an app for a real estate open house, ordinary life, on the surface, one day before the household was destroyed.
Cell phone forensics expert Timothy Chiappini told a Plymouth court he read aloud the same email address Patrick had included in a Reddit post, tying the deleted account to the man on the stand.
At trial, psychiatric diagnosis became the core fight. Medical experts on both sides suggested Lindsay could have bipolar disorder. The defense argued a manic phase spiraled into psychosis by the time of the killings. Lindsay and Patrick have both sued the doctors who treated her, alleging a missed bipolar diagnosis.
Public interest in the jury’s split has only grown as a holdout juror’s account of pressure inside the room continued to draw scrutiny.
Formal charges, a final verdict, and full medical records were not detailed in the reporting on the posts. What the posts do show is a husband documenting insomnia, intrusive thoughts, ER visits, a rejected postpartum admission, and an inpatient stay, then testifying that the danger still was not visible to him on the last morning.
Defense strategy has kept shifting in plain view, including a move to bring in double-jeopardy counsel as lawyers fought over what comes next.
None of that legal maneuvering restores Cora, Dawson, or Callan. The children are dead. Their mother remains the defendant. Their father is left with deleted posts that read like a timeline of alarms that never produced lasting safety.
Foreperson comments after the deadlock only sharpened the stakes for anyone still asking how reasonable doubt and the insanity question collided in the jury room.
Patrick has also spoken publicly about grief that does not close, including how he still reaches for his three children in the empty years after Jan. 24.
The Reddit record is not a verdict. It is evidence of a system and a family racing the clock, medication changes, hospital doors, online pleas, while three small children remained in the home.
When warning signs pile up in writing and the ending is still three dead kids, families deserve more than another contested diagnosis and another round of lawyers.
