Nurses and Other Health Experts Say Some Facts In Lindsay Clancy’s Case Don’t Make Sense

Editor’s note: Please be warned that this case includes graphic and traumatic details of child death and self-harm. This is a very tragic case, with real lives that have been affected, so any discussion of the case is not meant to be taken lightly or as a form of entertainment. Find mental help at the National Crisis Line website, calling 988, or calling the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline (1-833-TLC-MAMA).

As of publication, the jury is deliberating what has become a very public and closely followed case of Lindsay Clancy. While the jury deliberation could still take days to decide on an actual verdict, it has not stopped many from openly discussing the case.

One angle that some on social media have taken is pointing out what appear to be inconsistencies in what prosecutors say happened to Lindsay and the children, especially given the fact that Lindsay had a years-long career as a nurse. Of course, some invested in the case have always noted that during a snap with reality, even a medical professional may not act in a way one would expect, but that has not stopped people from wondering if there could be more to the story.

Here are some of the discussions that have occurred on social media surrounding what seems to be inconsistent with Lindsay’s profession as a nurse and the alleged facts of the case.

Want to see more Nurse.org articles in your Google results? Add us as a preferred source.

Patrick Clancy testified that when he found Lindsay outside, she told him she had tried to take her own life and that the children were in the basement. But emergency personnel who arrived minutes later testified that she was moaning and mumbling, drifting in and out of consciousness, and unable to speak to them.

The 911 call was played in court (the judge barred the media from publishing the audio), and Lindsay can reportedly be heard on it only moaning. One day before closing arguments, Lindsay’s attorney told NewsNation she was “unable to speak” and only made grunting noises; asked why Patrick would testify otherwise, he said, “How do I know?”

Medical experts not involved in the case have offered one possible explanation: a “crushed thyroid” usually refers to the thyroid cartilage around the voice box, and speech after such an injury can be preserved but hoarse, weak, or intermittent, especially as shock and blood loss progress. Notably, a forensic toxicologist testified at trial that the drug levels in Lindsay’s blood were well below toxic levels, so worsening medication effects are not supported by the trial record as an explanation.

A doctor not associated with the case told Parade that a crushed thyroid could not only make it difficult to talk, but that such an injury could happen as the result of “falling against a window sill/ledge, steering wheel, sometimes during an attempted strangulation.”

One alleged fact presented in the case is that Lindsay crushed up her own pills and put them in lemonade that she then drank before harming herself. But Lindsay’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, pressed forensic psychiatrist Gregory Saathoff on whether police or investigators actually tested the powder residue to see what it contained.

“There’s no investigation by the police to determine what was in that powder, right?” Reddington asked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Saathoff said.

Separately, prosecution witnesses testified that pill counts and toxicology suggested she ingested relatively little: a forensic toxicologist testified that the drug levels in her blood were well below toxic levels. Prosecutors used this to argue her suicide attempt was not genuine, while Lindsay described the overdose to evaluators only in vague terms.

Some have questioned how Lindsay could admit to the killings while also saying she doesn’t clearly remember them. Testimony offers a more specific picture: prosecution expert Dr. Gregory Saathoff said that in his interviews, she recounted much of the night, including the sequence of events, but said she could not recall certain moments, such as what she said to her children.

However, it should be noted that Lindsay Clancy provided a very clear timeline of events leading up to and through the actions that she confessed to in her civil suit. (Warning: the civil suit is very graphic and contains all details of Lindsay’s hallucinations and actions.)

Lindsay’s defense attorney told reporters that if any jury member wanted to specifically see the pill bottles or the knife that Lindsay allegedly used, they had to put in a specific request to look at it. The jurors did request to see both those items today from the judge. 

Social media users have seized on first responders describing some of Lindsay’s wounds as ‘superficial.’ But hospital witnesses testified she went into cardiac arrest that night, required multiple blood transfusions, and suffered a severed spinal cord that left her paralyzed.

Testimony from psychiatric NP Rebecca Jollotta (who treated Clancy in the weeks before the killings) described Clancy almost daily asking to change her medication plan, citing side effects like numbness, intrusive thoughts, and insomnia, and expressing fear of benzodiazepine dependence. Jollotta created a treatment plan for Clancy’s anxiety, depression, and insomnia, and Clancy sought changes to it nearly every day. It should be noted that Jollotta is among the providers Lindsay and Patrick Clancy are suing in their civil malpractice cases, and that she has denied the allegations. 

Clancy’s messages to the NP show a patient fluent in medical language who was closely tracking her own side effects. How to read that is contested: prosecutors point to it as evidence of a rational, engaged patient, while the testimony also showed she frequently stopped medications early and attributed her symptoms to the drugs rather than her illness. 

This is part of why some say the “zombie” framing, which dates back to the defense’s earliest statements in the case, doesn’t fully square with a patient who was this engaged in adjusting her own regimen, though the defense counters that side effects (like the ones tied to lamotrigine) were serious enough to justify her refusing certain drugs. 

The defense specifically raised lamotrigine’s risk of severe skin reactions, including blistering, to argue it was reasonable for a nurse like Clancy to decline it.

Lindsay’s Fingerprints Were Not Found on the Bands

One of the details of the case was that Lindsay’s fingerprints were not found on the exercise bands used in the killings. Some people fixated on that detail; however, it has been explained that her DNA was found, but fingerprints are simply hard to preserve on an object like an exercise band.

>>Listen to The Latest Nurse News Podcast

Emily Thorndike, a licensed clinical social worker who worked at McLean Hospital for about seven years, posted a viral TikTok saying the prosecution’s portrayal of the hospital’s psychiatric care didn’t match her experience there. The defense moved to add her as a last-minute witness, but Judge William Sullivan ruled she couldn’t testify before the jury: although he found her credible, he said her account offered limited value because she left McLean a year before Clancy was admitted and never worked during her stay.

The “discrepancies” in the Clancy case, some say, are nothing more than the public’s attempt to try to make sense of a senseless tragedy. “Where a mother has killed children, you’re motivated to think – that can’t be,” Michael Wagner, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, told CNN.

The evidence in court supports that Lindsay was the only adult in the home, and if there were any shred of doubt that Patrick may have been involved, the defense would have presented it, the outlet added. 

🤔 What are your thoughts on the Lindsay Clancy case? Have you heard any details that don’t make sense from a nursing perspective?