Lindsay Clancy and the age of TikTok trials

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:05Marianna Spring:Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription. OK, this week there have been two new haircuts which have broken the internet, Matt, haven't they? The first being Erling Haaland, ofs. Which, can I say, he looks so much better. No, I loved his. I just think it was so his vibe. Like, he's so absurd meme energy. And I feel like his long hair and top knot really fitted with that.

0:48Marianna Spring:That's what I'm saying. He looks better. He's less memeable. He looks better. Like, he's more handsome. Before, his hair lent itself to memes where it got to the point where you could post a picture of a mop or a celery with like the roots dangling off the back and people would know that it was Holland. He shaved his hair off for anyone who somehow missed this huge development. I just loved, particularly during the World Cup, because, like you say, because everyone would post these funny things that looked like him and now, alas, that is finished. Yeah, but he, at the peak of his internet fame during the World Cup, he was the most memorable band in the world because he, like Trump, like all these masters of social media, figured out that you need a strange physical trait to succeed sometimes, whether that's orange skin or, in his case, incredibly long Viking-style haircut that makes you look like a vegetable in some memes.

1:44And what was the other haircut?

1:46Marianna Spring:Well, it was Matt Shea's mullet, which I can see in front of me over video. Yeah, so, I mean, it's a very slight mullet, a baby mullet, if you will, So in like a really desperate attempt to get our kind of younger viewing figures up, I've decided to get a very slight mullet. It makes you more memeable. Smash that like button if you're a Gen Z who loves my mullet. Look, my girlfriend was like, can you get a mullet like Oscar Isaac's? And my hairdresser said, no, I cannot give you that mullet because you do not have anything like that hair. So here we are. This is where we've landed. I think you're quite memeable.

2:23Marianna Spring:I'd quite like if top commenters started shaving mini mullets in their pets and then tagging you in the comments. I saw loads of cats that had hair like Harland. Alas, no more. I mean, look, one of the strange facts about the internet is that you always know in the back of your mind that if you did something really weird and crazy, you would become more famous and successful. If I like dyed my hair like a weird color or surgically got a third nipple or something, then we would become famous. Like that's just how it works. No one would see your third nipple. We don't do Top Comment top. Oh, they would see my third nipple, Marianne.

3:00I would make sure of it.

3:01Marianna Spring:Now on Top Comment, we often start by chatting about the slightly more absurd stuff, e.g. haircuts and Harland and everything else. But we're going to be discussing something a bit more serious today, aren't we, Matt? So, okay, I want to start this story by recounting my experience of watching what I genuinely think is probably the strangest, most hallucinatory video I've seen on social media since we started doing this podcast. So to describe this video, a woman is using Bratz dolls to reenact her interpretation of a triple murder where Lindsay Clancy, a mother, strangled her three children and then jumped out of a window to try and end her own life, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.

3:48Marianna Spring:I've managed to semi-accurately dress Lindsay in a black tank top and jeans, but unfortunately, my male Bratz doll didn't come with a weaker jawline, and he doesn't have accurate clothing to what Patrick was wearing, other than the first pair of shoes. So excuse me for that. First, let's do a quick tour. This is the doorway. This is the navy shelves. This represents the mirror. Blood spot A, blood spot B, blood spot C. This person is reenacting this scene with Bratz dolls and makes it seem as though it's unlikely or impossible that the mother, Lindsay Clancy, who is alleged to have killed these children in a bout of postpartum psychosis, is really the person who did it.

4:28What is she getting out of this video? What is going on here?

4:32Marianna Spring:I've ended up very much down the rabbit hole of this trial on my social media feeds. And the Bratz doll video really caught me off guard as well. And it's part of a whole range of content which is being shared by what we often refer to as sleuths, who are themselves covering, inverted commas, the trial. It's all got really, really toxic. And so on this episode, we are going to try and explain to you how a Bratz doll video like this is the product of sleuth disease gone wild, and particularly in relation to trials that can now be live stream on social media, because being addicted to true crime, being addicted to these kinds of cases isn't new.

5:13Marianna Spring:But social media seems to have turbocharged the way this world works.

5:23Marianna Spring:Now, Matt, my feed has been inundated with content about the Lindsay Clancy trial. And I know that I investigate social media and I look into sleuthing and all this sorts of stuff. So perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that this is the kind of case that would take over my feed. But the numbers are wild. I mean, millions and millions of views, lots of people summing up every single day what's happening in the trial, which is in Massachusetts in the US. So who's Lindsay Clancy and what is going on? Buckle up. So this is going to be a deep dive into every single aspect of the Clancy case as a whole.

5:55Marianna Spring:The five most talked about pieces of evidence in the Lindsay Clancy trial so far. Just because stupid people on the Internet don't understand something, that doesn't mean that there's a conspiracy theory afoot. Welcome to What the F is Happening in the Lindsay Clancy Trial. 70 witnesses, 13 days, and a lot of bows. What are the facts of this case? What do we actually know about what's happened here? Okay, so the base fact of this case is that Lindsay Clancy, she has admitted to killing her three young children in 2023 before a suicide attempt which left her paralyzed from the waist down. Now, there is a very interesting question at the heart of this case, which is that her lawyers are saying she should not be held criminally responsible.

6:36They argue she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and extreme mental illness. Now, postpartum psychosis, it's very rare, but it causes some women to experience delusions and intrusive thoughts. And that's what they argue happened. And she is also suing her medical providers for what she says are catastrophic failures in adequately treating her. So her lawyers are trying to put her health care providers on the stand and say that this could have been prevented potentially. Now that question, which is an interesting question and is a reason some people have used this trial to come in in support of her, to come in criticism of the healthcare establishment, how it deals with women like her, is a really interesting conversation and a valid conversation.

7:16But that is not what has dominated social media. No, and I think, you know, when I started trawling through some of this content online, the main focus of a lot of these videos was on concerns that women's health is not taken seriously, that particularly issues like postpartum psychosis are not taken seriously, and

7:34Marianna Spring:criticism of the healthcare system in the US in particular, and how it can fail women. You know, those are all really valid discussion points. But very quickly, it has snowballed into something much more toxic and sinister at times and into really sort of unfounded conspiracy theories. And in lots of ways, some of those unfounded conspiracy theories actually detract from the legitimate accountability possibly for healthcare providers. Obviously, we don't know the outcome of the case yet. You know, it could be the argument that her defence are making isn't the one that the jury go for. But nonetheless, there are questions that are valid here.

8:08Marianna Spring:And then there's stuff that is not valid. I mean, we see this all the time with conspiracy theory content, right? What start with a kernel of truth and a lot of emotion, then spiral into something that is just really misleading? So the trial is being live streamed. And because Lindsay Clancy has agreed to what's called a stipulation of facts, that means that the prosecution, the defense do not need to present all of the evidence because they have both agreed on a lot of the facts, including that she has admitted to killing the children. But because that has happened, that means that there are lots of conspiracies that have arisen.

8:44Marianna Spring:Yeah, so essentially people are able to watch this trial all the time so they can make their own observations and comments. And because of what you described there, Matt, that stipulation of facts, a lot of people understandably don't necessarily know that rightly. They don't know the basis of the case. And so instead of thinking the case is trying to decide whether postpartum psychosis played a role in what happened, and to decide what Lindsay Clancy is responsible for and how responsible she is for it, people think that they're actually trying to figure out who is responsible for it. And that's not even the question that the trial is asking.

9:19Marianna Spring:And it's that that has spawned a load of conspiracy theories about Lindsay Clancy's husband, Patrick Clancy. And he has been the absolute focal point of the majority of the misinformation that's being shared. Now, bear in mind that he has also lost his three children who've been killed. and he has repeatedly been accused of actually like killing them. And there are loads of sleuths that will point to irregularities in even the way that he behaved when he gave his testimony in court. They'll look over his social media posts. They'll make allegations about his personal life. They'll look over the way, you know, facts about what he was up to or what he was doing in his life at the time.

9:56Marianna Spring:But he's not a suspect, right? And he's a lot of this stuff, people certainly close to him have said, could be really defamatory. Patrick Clancy did not expect his wife to live, so now his alibi is coming to haunt him. And let's review it. Patrick's the one who did it. Not Lindsay. Patrick did it. Because, you know, I also heard that women typically don't strangle. Let me tell you hypothetically why I think Patrick may be the one who's guilty for these crimes. Are you guys watching the same trial as me or not? What if her lawyer is setting this all up so that there is a trial to prove that she is innocent and Patrick Clancy is the one that did this.

10:35Yeah, I mean, and, you know, it's ridiculous we even have to say this because, again, she has admitted to killing, you know, these children, right? But he has a strong alibi. So he's not a suspect in that courtroom. He is a suspect only on TikTok.

10:51Marianna Spring:Yeah, and, you know, there are other slightly more complex theories, some of which suggest that he somehow coerced Lindsay Clancy into admitting that she's responsible for killing the children or just trying to suggest that there's some irregularity and that really he's the one entirely at fault. And it's interesting because I messaged quite a few different TikTokers who've been sharing content about this, including some who have posted about Patrick Clancy. And several got back to me. One who got back to me called Jennifer explained actually, so she doesn't believe these theories about Patrick Clancy, but her mum does.

11:23Marianna Spring:and she explained why she actually ultimately thinks that conspiracy theories could be productive or constructive because they mean that there is better scrutiny of everyone involved. Through conversations mainly with my mom about why she believes this, her main thought and feeling is that Patrick should have been investigated and or charged. And I think if all of this finger pointing leads at least to better investigation, I think that's worth it because the prosecution here should have never pressed charges. the prosecutors have a lot of discretion on how these investigations are run and charged and what they're doing is failing women left and right and what this trial is showing is that they didn't investigate Patrick like they should have and I do firmly believe if Patrick was a woman he would have been charged with something so I think giving that theory the credit it deserves is something that I've come full circle on and I think actually hearing what she has to say made me think that a lot of what's being directed at Patrick Clancy, whether it's misleading or false allegations, whether it's abuse, hatred, whatever it is, it feels like he's become symbolic of something and a lot of women feel like he represents when men have let down or failed their wives.

12:43Marianna Spring:But to go as far as suggesting he's killed his children when there's just absolutely no evidence to support that and all the evidence is to the contrary, that's a really extreme reaction. But I think that's where the emotion in a lot of this content comes into play, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, there's a lot for us to say and we will say about why this kind of content accusing Patrick Clancy is so popular on TikTok, why it feeds into a certain true crime narrative, why it feeds into what the algorithms promote. but you're right there is it seems to be a large emotional outpouring from a lot of women especially around this trial who see in this trial a lot of the the valid realities of motherhood expressed for example mothers who work full-time in the u.s do 1.6 times as many child care duties and household laborers full-time working fathers there's been studies that you know that the anxiety levels in some new mothers were equivalent to that of combat soldiers and there's a perception, a very valid perception that a lot of men aren't aware of or do not help enough or leave new mothers behind.

13:51And that has made a lot of women come in support of her. But what's bizarre and clearly unfair is to make Patrick Clancy the kind of the punching bag for those frustrations, someone who's lost three children. And it's not just social media. I mean, you've seen even Wired, They did an article called The Patrick Clancy Conspiracy Theories Are Rooted in the Harsh Realities of Motherhood. And it even says there's no real reason to believe Patrick is guilty of killing his kids. But there is reason to believe he is guilty of failing his wife on some level, as many, many other husbands have. I found that pretty surprising for that take to be published in Wired.

14:29I mean, as someone who's lost three children, the evidence seems to be his general demeanor, his attitude, the fact that he took one of his daughters to skiing, you know, while his wife had suicidal ideations, it feels as though the internet has been quite unfair to him.

14:45Marianna Spring:Yeah. And I think this point actually about who is engaging in this social media content is really, really important. And we're going to get into other cases and examples that have sparked a social media frenzy of this scale. And Jennifer, who I chatted to, she's someone who posts about being a mum. She is not someone who traditionally posts true crime content, yet some of her summaries of the case are getting, you know, she said she's had seven million views on one summary of what's going on, just laying out her understanding of the case and what's been happening in court. And when I asked about this question of misinformation and conspiracy theories, it was interesting that she felt that the allegations of conspiracy theories were being used to suggest again that women were insane, quote unquote, is the word she used, and that actually this was unfair and invalidating their experience.

15:34Marianna Spring:Women are having a reaction that is being labeled as insane and I don't think their reaction is insane. What I think the reaction really shows us is that as women we know that if we're hurt if something happens to us or our children most of the time it's the man in the house and for that reaction to be labeled as crazy I don't think that tracks at all. what concerns me about the online conspiracy or the finger pointing is the detraction from what I think is really happening here which is the mental health system is broken here the court system is broken here that I think we have a real opportunity to really point that out is being sidetracked by this conspiracy theory and I think it's a really really powerful example of where two things become really intertwined or intermeshed real valid frustration from women about the healthcare system and about the way that they're treated when they've had just had a baby and then separately the content that's obviously is misleading or untrue or conspiratorial but that has almost become linked in with that and it's why i kind of described patrick clancy earlier as like a as like a symbol you know when people are saying he killed the kids it's almost their way of saying he let this happen, how could he let this happen?

16:54Marianna Spring:Which is two totally different things, right? And also, I mean, also both allegations could be unfair. But I think what's hard is when content is particularly emotional and it tips into misinformation, people don't like it being called out. And this is where this kind of sleuthing overlaps with what some people see as activism. So there's, of course, the theory that she is arguing, that her lawyers are arguing, that she was let down by her healthcare providers. There's the theory that he is somehow responsible for their death because he kind of abandoned his wife. And then, of course, there's the thing that I think is getting a lot of traction on TikTok that is obviously the most irresponsible of the three, which is the notion, as potentially argued through Bratz Dolls in that reenactment, that it wasn't her who did it and that it actually could have been him.

17:41Marianna Spring:Yeah, and there were these really viral moments as well of women wearing pink lined up along the road where Lindsay Clancy was being brought to the courthouse. And there were also people analysing even the outfits that people working in the court had chosen to wear, like suggesting, oh, look, this person looks like they've worn pink. Are they in support of Lindsay Clancy? Oh, look, they've passed her some tissues. Are they in support of Lindsay Clancy? All this kinds of stuff, which when I saw, you know, those women wearing pink, there was something quite moving about it, which was there were people who feel like they were wearing pink.

18:11Marianna Spring:This is a moment for them to voice their concerns about where women have been let down or not listened to. But the real issue is, and it actually serves to undermine that cause when there is a load of misinformation and conspiracy theory content, right? Like we're talking like really nasty stuff, like really extreme hate, people trawling through images, photos, really personal details who actually have, you know, weren't part of that family and don't necessarily have any idea about what's going on. And often also complicating or mixing up the legal details. Like when, for example, someone is called as a witness, like Patrick Clancy's mum, for example, the mother-in-law of Lindsay Clancy, people suggesting like, oh, she's testifying against her son.

18:50Marianna Spring:So that's not true. She's just there as a witness who the defence have called as a character witness to Lindsay and what she was like as a mum and all that kinds of stuff. But people then use that to say like she must hate her own son and look at how she looks. It's just gone really berserk. And I think it's what we've chatted about on Top Comment quite a few times, that sort of hyper reality where people feel like they're watching some kind of TV show or playing some kind of game and that it's not real lives. But right, all of these people in the courtroom are going home every night and they're real people.

19:20Marianna Spring:This is not some kind of drama that you're watching. And that, what you've just said, is I think what this shows more than anything about our culture is we now have the desire and feel we have the right to treat tragedies like this that involve real people as though they are a reality show or a true crime show. Now, the crazy sleuthing, the people who point to things like what shoes Patrick Clancy was wearing or his heart rate and all these kind of false true crime tropes that don't actually mean anything, but they've used to kind of point out the conspiracy that he's guilty is one end of the spectrum.

19:53But I would argue that even people like, for example, Taylor Vaughn Leslie, who's a screenwriter and a professor at Syracuse University, she posted in some TikTok, if I were making a TV show and this is the story that we were telling in the show, these are the three things I would purposely plant for the audience so that they know perhaps this woman did not actually kill her kids. So she's sort of saying, and she says, as a storyteller, I identify a hole or multiple holes in a story when I start asking questions. now she is profiting from this tragedy and the content she's making off the back of it she's saying in a way she appears to be saying that as a screenwriter i have a right and it is my job to point out the plot holes in this trial to me this is a little bit crazy this is like it's like we as a society think that this is a reality television show yeah and i think what

20:43Marianna Spring:you described matt that kind of misguided attempt to help quote unquote like people seem to that They paint it as though they're helping, but actually they're often benefiting from sharing this content. They get the likes and the views and the profile and even they can make money from it. I think one of my main takeaways when it comes to the conspiracy theories around Lindsay Clancy has been that we should remember that conspiracy theory content more often than not derives from people feeling invalidated, not listened to, like their experiences are ignored and denied. And I think it's worth us getting into, which we're going to in the next bit, this wider phenomenon of cases, particularly trials that capture a lot of people's attention and how social media has totally turbocharged that.

21:30so you know you just mentioned that a lot of the conspiracy theories that arise around these trials and conspiracy theories generally come from a place of people not feeling listened to or understood right so is there like an emotional upwelling of feeling misunderstood that can be ascribed to gender or race around trials because for example women who feel are left behind the healthcare system or left behind by their husbands in this case. In the OJ trial, one of the original trials that people pulled apart, followed on television, etc. Race played a part in that. You know, is this another black man being framed?

22:03Marianna Spring:Yeah. And, you know, when we think of the trial, the OJ Simpson trial, which happened in 1995, that predates social media in the way that we know it. And it was such a big deal. People were obsessed with it. He was accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and friend. And there was that whole infamous moment of if it doesn't fit you must have quit with the glove demonstration showing that that he couldn't have done it because this glove didn't fit his hand but I guess the difference Matt was that when that happened you couldn't live stream it like you could watch it on the telly right or you could you could follow it but you couldn't comment you couldn't be commenting and then making your own content and saying here's what I think happened and this is where you get from the OJ type trials of the Ted Bundy type trials which had huge national attention to to trials like this, the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard trial, the Karen Reed trial.

22:50How did social media change the game with these? Is it rewarding these crazier and crazier takes on these trials?

22:58Marianna Spring:Well, I think the live streaming thing is a big deal because the ability to be able to like watch a trial, right, to analyze people's reactions to, it's fascinating. I can completely understand why people do it. I mean, I found it quite fascinating watching clips of the trial and you can see how people think, oh, great, I'll kind of gather my own clues from this. I'll I may cut my own mind about what I think has gone on here. The problem is, is that a lot of that making up your own mind is based on, as you described it, Matt, the emotion. And we bang on about it on Top Comment all the time. Those algorithmic systems sort us out into teams.