When I first heard that Lindsay Clancy had strangled her three children to death with exercise bands, I was appalled. Among the million horrifying questions darting through my mind – which child did she kill first, did the others witness their siblings’ deaths, how long did it take – was the refusal to believe that any mother could do something so evil to her own children.
Then I saw the conspiracies flooding the internet – conspiracies that Patrick Clancy had murdered the kids and convinced a mentally ill Lindsay otherwise. Influencers waxed eloquent about how Patrick Clancy’s new marriage was too sudden; he has made over a million in life insurance and lawsuits since the killings; he didn’t shed a tear during the hearings in which the gruesome deaths of his children were described. Suddenly, my Instagram timeline was rife with the infamous “Same, Lindsay” trend that disturbingly has American women in a chokehold.
