Patrick Clancy, the father of three children killed by his former wife, Lindsay Clancy, inside the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023, is now the target of an online harassment campaign built on the false claim that he was involved in their deaths.
The claim has no foundation. Lindsay Clancy confessed. She never disputed killing her three children. Her defense spent the trial arguing she wasn't criminally responsible because of severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, while prosecutors countered that she knew what she was doing.
Nobody on either side of that courtroom argued Patrick did it or was involved in any way. However, that inconvenient fact hasn't stopped supporters of Lindsay Clancy from claiming otherwise.
On Tuesday, Attorney Howard Cooper of Todd & Weld, who represents Patrick Clancy, issued a statement addressing what he described as a coordinated harassment effort.
"Over the past months, Patrick Clancy and his family have been subjected to a relentless, escalating and destructive defamation campaign," Cooper said.
Cooper placed the blame on a familiar cast of characters.
He pointed to "minor celebrities, so-called influencers and outright conspiracy theorists" who found a payday spreading false claims about a grieving father, seemingly untroubled by the fact that his ex-wife already admitted to the killings.
The harassment hasn't slowed since Friday's mistrial, either. Cooper said it has only intensified, "now fueled by insatiable media coverage" and sitting "at a fever pitch," with real threats to Patrick's reputation, livelihood and life.
Somewhere in the online ecosystem that turned Lindsay Clancy into a folk hero for a certain strain of aggrieved women, a father who buried three children became the villain of his own tragedy, at least according to those sympathetic to his ex-wife.
Cooper said Patrick's aim is stopping the harassment, holding the people spreading it accountable, and getting back to preserving the memory of Cora, Dawson and Callan while supporting other women navigating perinatal mental health crises. The irony belongs to nobody except his accusers.
"Enough is enough—this spread of blatant and baseless falsehoods must stop," Cooper said. "Those responsible should understand that there will be consequences, and every appropriate measure will be pursued to hold them accountable, including legally." Cooper confirmed he has already notified law enforcement.
The mistrial occurred because the jury could not agree on whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for the deaths after one juror held out for a verdict that would have found Clancy criminally responsible. District Attorney Tim Cruz still has the option to retry the case, and prosecutors have considered a retrial at a later date. However, Cruz has not given any definite timeline after the court announced the mistrial.
Patrick Clancy sat through much of that trial as the prosecution's first witness. He described the day his children were murdered, his former wife's mental collapse in the weeks before, and the moment he came home with food and medicine to find his children gone. None of that has translated into sympathy from the people now targeting him.
Attorney David Meier, also of Todd & Weld, issued his own statement after the mistrial, striking a different tone than the online mob. "Patrick Clancy is grateful to the Court and to the jurors for their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance," Meier said. "The loss of Patrick's children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful."
Patrick has said before that he forgives Lindsay, calling her ill instead of evil, a distinction that seems to matter to no one running the harassment campaign against him.