In an emotional “60 Minutes” interview, Patrick Clancy said his ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, never asked him to forgive her for strangling their three children. He forgave her anyway.
“Has she ever asked for your forgiveness?” CBS correspondent Ross Douthat asked Patrick Clancy on Sunday, during his first sit-down interview since Lindsay’s murder trial ended in a mistrial earlier this month.
“No. But I gave it to her,” Patrick replied.
In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled the couple’s children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — with exercise bands at their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She then attempted to take her own life.
Patrick’s decision to publicly forgive Lindsay, despite the deaths of their two sons and daughter, stunned the public almost immediately after the tragedy.
“I saw headlines that said, you know, ‘Killer Mom,’ and ‘Baby Murderer,’ ‘Monster.’ And none of ’em were accurate — I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that. So I shared those words,” he recalled.
Patrick said forgiveness was also necessary for his own survival. “I think when it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn’t get there, I would be eaten up inside forever,” the grieving father said.
He told Douthat that Lindsay’s mental health began to deteriorate rapidly in the fall of 2022, when Callan was 5 months old.
“It was October and — she went a few nights without sleeping,” Patrick said.
Her condition soon spiraled. Lindsay made repeated visits to emergency rooms and admitted herself to a program for postpartum depression. Although she was prescribed several medications, her symptoms continued to worsen.
“I think December. December was — it was a big struggle for her — just a huge lack of sleep, deep, deep depression, intrusive thoughts, and — at the end of that month she went to the hospital,” Patrick said, describing the lowest point of his then-wife’s illness.
Asked whether he had understood postpartum mental illness before Lindsay became sick, Patrick said he did not know how to manage it. “I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive. So I’m– I’m sure there are things that I didn’t see,” he told Douthat.
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial
Seventeen days after Lindsay admitted herself to McLean Psychiatric Hospital, she attacked and killed the couple’s three children. She then cut her throat and wrists before jumping from a second-story window of the family’s home.
During his trial testimony in July, Patrick gave a haunting account of finding Lindsay partially paralyzed in the backyard after her suicide attempt failed.
On his second day on the witness stand, jurors heard the 911 call made after Patrick discovered the children in the basement. He told Douthat that the experience triggered a “massive traumatic panic attack” and led to his being taken to an ambulance.
“We did take a break right before they played the 911 call, which I knew was gonna be just horrific. And I went to a back room, and I started having this massive traumatic panic attack,” Patrick said.
“My heart was pounding. And they put me in an ambulance, they offered me some medication, but I said, ‘I– I don’t want it, ’cause I want to go back and I want to finish this so I can be done with this.’ And I went back and I finished the testimony.”
Patrick said he believed he had done everything he could with the knowledge and resources available to him as Lindsay battled postpartum mental illness.
“I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome. I live with it every day,” he said.
Patrick’s widely anticipated “60 Minutes” interview, conducted alongside his wife, fertility doctor Rachel Danis, aired three weeks after Lindsay’s murder case ended in a mistrial. The mistrial followed one holdout juror, Michael Desronvil, refusing to find Lindsay not guilty by reason of insanity.
The other 11 jurors sided with Lindsay’s claims that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis.
The new couple, who met in January 2024 after Patrick Clancy relocated to New York City, also revealed on Sunday that they are starting a family.
