Latest / Crime Night / Thirteen medications and a postpartum nightmare

Transcript

Thirteen medications and a postpartum nightmare · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture a freezing evening in Massachusetts. It is January 24th, 2023.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: The air is sharp, like biting the kind of cold
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: that just hurts your lungs, you know.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that bone-chilling New England winter cold.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So a father pulls into his driveway after what
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: was a completely mundane errand run. He's got children or
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: his medicine from CVS in one hand and a warm
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: takeout dinner in the other.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Just a totally normal Tuesday night.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Right. And he walks through the front door. fully expecting
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the familiar, beautiful chaos of three young kids, the noise,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: the toys on the floor, the warmth of his home.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: But instead, he steps into this absolute suffocating silence.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Which is terrifying for any parent. Silence is never good.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Never. So he walks to the house, calling out, genuinely confused.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And then he looks outside. In the freezing snow of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the backyard, he finds his wife bleeding from her neck
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and wrists. And his three young children are nowhere to
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: be found.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: It's I mean, it's just an unimaginably horrific scene. And
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: while the Internet immediately fixated on the timeline of that night,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the courtroom is looking at something much more fundamental.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Which is what we are getting into today.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Right. Because both the prosecution and the defense actually agree
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: on the most horrific fact of this case. They both
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: agree that Lindsay Clancy killed her three children.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: The profound, intensely scrutinized question that the jury has to
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: answer is why.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Was this a calculated, premeditated murder, or was she
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: a woman pushed into a devastating postpartum psychosis by a
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: medical system that just catastrophically failed her?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this deep dive into the harrowing case of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Lindsay Clancy. Our mission today is to cut through the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: massive blinding cloud of social media speculation. We are going
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: to look strictly at the undisputed timelines, the chilling forensic evidence,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: and the truly shocking medical records presented in the courtroom.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Because there is so much noise out there and we
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: need to look at the facts.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We really do. I like to think of this case
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: as a terrifying puzzle. You have all these internet sleuths
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: trying to jam mismatched pieces together to form a picture
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: they want to see. But the courtroom. The courtroom only
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: permits the pieces that actually fit.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And to figure out how those pieces fit, we have
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: to rewind a bit. We have to go back to
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: September 2022. Because to look at the Clancy's before the
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: tragedy is to see a life that looked, you know,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: perfectly built from the outside.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: From the outside, yeah, they were living the dream. Lindsay
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: was a highly trained labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: General Hospital. Her husband, Patrick, worked at Microsoft. They had
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a beautiful family. Right.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: They had Cora, who was five, Dawson, who was three.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And Lindsay had just given birth to their third child,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: baby Callan, who was only eight months old.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: And Patrick testified that Lindsay was a devoted, deeply loving mother.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: But beneath the surface of that picturesque life, this biological
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: storm was gathering. Like so many mothers, Lindsay began suffering
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: from severe postpartum mental health issues.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: She couldn't sleep. She described a physical sensation of her
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: own body feeling, she used the word heavy.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Heavy, yeah. And it escalated terrifyingly fast. I mean, over
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the next five months, she desperately sought help. She made
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: two separate emergency room visits for mental health crises.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Two ER visits, a behavioral program, and she even spent
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: five days at McLean Psychiatric Hospital.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing that just stops me in my tracks.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: During this brief five-month window, she was prescribed a staggering
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: 13 different psychiatric medications.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: 13. I mean, this is where we really need to
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: look at the pharmacology, because prescribing 13 different mind-altering medications
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: in just five months is a massive red flag.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems so dangerous.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: It absolutely is. We are talking about a cocktail of antidepressants,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: anti-anxiety meds, and heavy antipsychotics like Seroquel. Now, Seroquel is
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: designed to alter the way dopamine and serotonin receptors function
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: in the brain to quiet hallucinations. Right. But here is
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: the biological reality. A postpartum brain is already experiencing one
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: of the most violent hormonal drops a human body can endure. Yeah.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Estrogen and progesterone just absolutely plummet after birth.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And then you throw in 13 different drugs.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you start rapidly introducing, withdrawing, and aggressively changing
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: the dosages of 13 different psychiatric drugs in a brain
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: already starving for neurochemical stability, you are playing with fire.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: It's a chemical rollercoaster. It is.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Instead of stabilizing her, this volatile chemical cocktail can paradoxically
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: induce severe mania... or trigger the exact psychosis it is
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: meant to prevent.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this medical timeline for a second because
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: my mind is reeling. I am stuck on this one
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: crucial detail. She is a medical professional herself.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Right, she's a nurse.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: She is a labor and delivery nurse. She knows the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: signs of postpartum depression. And by December, she is actively
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: telling her husband and her mother that she's experiencing paranoid
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: delusions and having thoughts of hurting the kids.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: She's communicating that she's in danger?
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. So how does a trained medical professional not recognize
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: her own descent into total psychosis?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a phenomenon called anosognosia. It's a symptom of
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: severe mental illness where the brain literally physically cannot perceive
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: its own illness.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Wow. So she couldn't even see how bad it was getting.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. As the psychosis deepened, her brain's ability to objectively
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: evaluate its own state was deteriorating. And instead of recognizing
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: this catastrophic decline, The siloed medical system just kept throwing
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: conflicting pills at the problem.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Just writing another prescription.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Packer testified that he went to an appointment with
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: her in December during a massive downward spiral. And he
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: explicitly told a nurse practitioner that Lindsay had gotten 10
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: times worse since starting Seroquel.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: And what did they do?
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: The medical response. They increased the dosage.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: No. You have a patient and her family screaming for
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: help and the system responds by blindly altering brain chemistry
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: and without looking at the whole picture.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And that blind, conflicting medical approach is exactly what set
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the stage for January 24th, 2023. We have to break
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: down this timeline minute by suspenseful minute because this is
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: where the public investigation really derailed into an absolute frenzy.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: It really did.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: By all accounts, it started as a quote-unquote good day.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: She took Cora to the pediatrician. She was outside building
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a snowman with the kids.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Very normal winter day activities.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Then at 5.15 p.m., Lindsay texts Patrick. She asked
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: them to go to CVS to get a children's laxative, Pedialax,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: for Cora, and then to pick up a takeout dinner
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: they had talked about from a restaurant called 3V.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: A completely ordinary, highly specific domestic request, it establishes the
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: sense of normalcy, which prompts Patrick to leave the house.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: But the surveillance footage creates a timeline that armchair detectives
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: just tore apart. The CVS is only a three-minute drive
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: from their house, yet the cameras show Patrick walking into
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the CVS at 5.32 p.m.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Which leaves a 17-minute gap.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: A 17-minute gap. And during that gap, at 5.24 p.m.,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a work email is sent from Patrick's account to his staff. Then,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: at 5.33 p.m., he calls Lindsay from inside the CVS
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: because the specific medicine she wanted was sold out.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Right. He asks if a generic brand is okay.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: And she doesn't answer at first, but calls back a
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: minute later. Patrick testified she said the generic was fine,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: and he described her voice on the phone as sounding, quote,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: busy but quiet.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Busy but quiet. When you realize what was likely happening
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: in the house at that exact moment, those three words
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: become the most chilling detail of the entire investigation.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: It gives you chills. So thinking she's just giving the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: kids a bath, Patrick continues his errands. He picks up
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the takeout at 3V, which surveillance confirms at 5554 p.m.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: He arrives back home at 6.09 p.m.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And that's when he finds the house silent.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: He finds Lindsay bleeding in the snow. He calls 911.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And while on the phone with the dispatcher, he goes
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: down to the basement. The jury had to listen to
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the agonizing, guttural screams of this father finding Cora, Dawson,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and baby Callan strangled with exercise bands.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I can't even imagine.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: He's screaming on the tape, she killed the kids. It
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: is a discovery so completely unimaginable that it left the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: entire courtroom in tears. And while this father was thrust
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: into the worst trauma a human being can endure, a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: very different kind of storm began brewing online.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the stark contrast between how the
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: unfiltered Internet judges trauma versus the reality of human behavior.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: You know, the digital space demands perfect victims and perfectly
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: linear actions.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The Internet sleuths immediately zoomed in on the surveillance footage.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: They were analyzing if he was wearing the same shoes
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: at CVS as he was at the restaurant.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Which is just absurd.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: They fixated on that 17-minute gap and the work email
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: sent at 5.24 p.m., They even dug up a public
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: AllTrails review he posted for a hike in Costa Rica
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: weeks after the murders, using that as, quote unquote, proof
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that his grief wasn't genuine.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Right. They took him trying to survive his grief as
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: evidence of guilt.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you listening? Why
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: is human nature so quick to point fingers at a
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: devastated husband over an email?
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: It is a psychological defense mechanism. The reality that a
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: loving mother could suddenly snap and kill her children due
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: to a biological and medical failure is just too terrifying
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: for the public to process.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: It's easier to blame someone.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It means it could happen to anyone. So the
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Internet looks for a villain. They invent a conspiracy because
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: a conspiracy feels safer than the chaos of reality.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Think about the last time you sat in your car
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: to answer a quick work email or just decompress for
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a second before going into a grocery store. To you,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: it's a mundane 17-minute delay in your day. But to
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: an internet sleuth watching on surveillance camera after a tragedy,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: it is suddenly proof of a master conspiracy.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: But inside the courtroom, the jury hears the reality. They
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: hear that 911 call. They hear his visceral, unfiltered destruction.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And we have to be clear, Patrick was never a suspect.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Not for a single second. He fully cooperated with detectives
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: while his entire world was systematically destroyed.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Right. The focus of the trial and the forensic investigation...
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: rests entirely on Lindsay's state of mind in those quiet minutes.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: And the physical crime scene left behind is incredibly jarring.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the forensic facts. When paramedics get to
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Lindsay outside in the snow, her core body temperature is
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: severely hypothermic. It was 82 degrees.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: 82 degrees. She had been lying out there for a
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: long time.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: A very long time. but the cuts on her neck
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and wrists. First responders testified they were superficial, not life-threatening.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And then there is the forensic evidence inside the house,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: which is just as confusing.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: State police testify that they recovered zero usable fingerprints on
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the knife and zero usable fingerprints on the exercise bands
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: used to strangle the children.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: That lack of fingerprints combined with the superficial wounds creates
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: this massive forensic ambiguity. And both the prosecution and defense
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: are leveraging these exact same facts to argue entirely different motives.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: It's like looking at a fractured mirror. Depending on which
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: shard you look at, you see a completely different reflection.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: On one hand, the prosecution presents a narrative of cold,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: calculated premeditation. They introduce digital forensic searches from her cell phone.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Just days before the murders, she searched, can you treat
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: a sociopath? She searched, had a slit throat to die.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: And the most damning one she searched, how to turn
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: airbags off in Kia Sorento?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The prosecution claims that she used Apple Maps to
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: calculate the exact driving time to CVS and the restaurant,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: calculating precisely how many minutes she had to execute the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: children before Patrick got back.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: But the defense log reads completely differently, drawing directly from
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Lindsay's own civil lawsuit. They claim that on that afternoon,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: she was suffering from absolute postpartum psychosis.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Beyond terrifying. She heard a voice inside her head screaming
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: at her, this is your last chance. Kill the children
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: so you can kill yourself. You have to kill the
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: kids so you can kill yourself.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: She describes feeling entirely disconnected from her body, losing all
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: physical control, just blindly following auditory hallucinations. She claims she
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: told her babies, go to God, baby, as she strangled them.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: before cutting her wrists and jumping out the second-story window.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: But see, this is where the mirror fractures again. If
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: she is a trained, experienced nurse, and she truly wanted
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: to end her life, wouldn't she know how to make
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: cuts that weren't just superficial?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: That's the prosecution's argument, yes.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: But conversely, if this is a sudden, uncontrollable, psychotic break,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: how do we explain those highly specific, chilling internet searches
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: about treating sociopaths and disabling airbags days prior?
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Well, this tension is exactly why the insanity defense is
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: not just a razor-thin needle to thread it, is a
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: massive structural legal hurdle.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Because it's really hard to prove.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Incredibly hard. In Massachusetts, the standard for the insanity defense
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: is the lack of criminal responsibility. The defense doesn't just
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: have to prove that Lindsay was mentally ill. They have
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: to prove that at the exact moment of the crime,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: her mental disease caused her to lack the substantial capacity...
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: either to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: conform her conduct to the requirements of the law.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Meaning she either didn't know it was wrong or she
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: literally couldn't stop herself.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And this is why the prosecution's digital forensics are
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: so devastating. If you are Googling how to disable a
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: car's airbags, you are demonstrating an understanding of cause and effect.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: You're demonstrating planning.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yes. If you are calculating the minutes your husband will
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: be gone, you are demonstrating cognitive capacity and an awareness
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: that what you are doing needs to be hidden. That
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: level of premeditation aggressively contradicts the legal definition of total
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: incapacitating psychosis.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: But to prove she was pushed to that point of
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: absolute psychosis, the defense essentially puts the Massachusetts medical system
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: itself on trial. And the testimonies from the professionals who
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: treated her too, I mean, they are jaw-dropping.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: They really are.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Take Dr. Jennifer Tu, the psychiatrist who oversaw Lindsay Heer's
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: case the longest. She'd only been practicing independently for one
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: single month, She saw Lindsay 14 times over those crucial,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: deteriorating months.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: 14 times!
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: But here's the kicker. Every single visit was virtual. She
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: never once saw this severely ill woman in person. And
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the appointments were capped at a maximum of 25 minutes.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: On the stand, the defense absolutely eviscerated her chaotic, contradictory
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: medical notes.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And the structural failure extends well beyond one doctor. We
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: also hear from Dr. Aaliyah Goodhart at McLean Hospital, which
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: is this prestigious psychiatric facility where Lindsay spent five days
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: just weeks before the tragedy.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And what did they do when she left?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: When they discharged this severely suicidal, hallucinating woman, their grand
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: medical plan was to instruct her to go to psychologytoday.com
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: to find an outpatient provider that took her insurance.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Just a website link. It's staggering. It is.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And what's worse, neither Dr. Toon nor Dr. Goodhart had
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: ever actually treated a patient with postpartum psychosis before Lindsay.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Which just blows my mind. And then you have nurse
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: practitioner Rebecca Gelata, who was prescribing some of those 13
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: medications to Lindsay at the exact same time. She testified
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: she had absolutely no idea Lindsay was even seeing Dr.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Toon 14 times.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: She thought she'd only seen her once.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. There was zero cross-communication between her prescribers. Lindsay didn't
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: just fall through a crack. She fell into a canyon.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: She even called suicide hotlines twice and was rejected both
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: times because she didn't have a quote-unquote active plan to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: carry it out.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: The dysfunction is entirely systemic, but the legal strategy surrounding
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: these doctors is truly bizarre.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. The doctors I just mentioned, Dr. Two, Dr. Goodhart,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: They were not called to the stand by the defense.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: No, they weren't.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: They were called by the prosecution. The prosecution called them
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to prove Lindsay wasn't psychotic, to say, look, medical professionals
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: evaluated her and deemed her sane. But in doing so,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: they exposed this labyrinth of medical negligence to the jury.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It's this wild courtroom paradox where the prosecution's own witnesses
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: seem to be handing the defense their entire case on
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: a silver platter.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it is
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: a classic prosecutor's trap. They get so hyper-focused on establishing
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: their timeline and proving premeditation that they fail to see
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: how the jury will actually perceive the context.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: They miss the forest for the trees.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The prosecution wanted these doctors to testify that Lindsay
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: was legally sane. But because these providers hadn't read each
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: other's charts, hadn't communicated, and in some cases hadn't even
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: seen her in person, their medical credibility instantly crumbled.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: You looked incompetent.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Right. When the defense attorney demonstrates to the jury that
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: he understands the patient's medical timeline vastly better than the
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: treating physicians themselves, it powerfully bolsters the narrative that Lindsay
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: wasn't a calculating murderer, but a victim of gross medical
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: negligence who was driven mad by a volatile cocktail of
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: improperly managed drugs.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: And the courtroom drama around this medical failure was palpable. Mid-trial,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the defense tried to bring in a former licensed clinical
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: social worker named Emily Thorndyke. She actually worked at McLean
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Hospital in the exact same unit Lindsay stayed in.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: And she had been speaking out.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she had been posting online claiming the hospital suffered
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: from severe understaffing, a lack of resources, and unqualified staff.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: The defense wanted her to testify to shatter the illusion
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: that McLean was providing top-tier psychiatric care.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: But the judge blocked her, right?
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, yes, the judge blocked her from taking the stand.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: but it just shows how aggressively the defense was attacking
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the medical infrastructure.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: The tension in the room wasn't just about medical care, though.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: It bled into deep, highly inappropriate emotional and moral judgments.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. While Patrick's mother, Sue Clancy, was on the stand
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: testifying for the defense, adamantly stating that Lindsay had been
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: begging for help and that the whole family was terrified
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: for her, the prosecution crossed a line that stunned the room.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: They really did.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: The prosecutor established that Sue was Catholic, and then out
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: of nowhere asked her, so you're aware murder is considered
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: to be a mortal sin?
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: That is a wildly inappropriate question. It's designed purely to
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: inflame moral outrage rather than establish a legal fact regarding
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: the defendant's mental capacity.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: The judge immediately shut it down, called a sidebar, and
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: instructed the jury to disregard it. But as the saying goes,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: you can't unring a bell, you can't unhear that accusation,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and it perfectly encapsulates the incredibly stark, unforgiving stakes of
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: this trial.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: The stakes are everything here.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: If the jury looks at those Google searches for disabling airbags,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: looks at the timeline, and finds Lindsay Clancy guilty of
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: premeditated murder, she will spend the rest of her natural
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: life in prison.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: However, if they believe the defense, if they believe the
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: medical pharmacology of 13 conflicting drugs combined with severe postpartum
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: hormonal shifts fractured her reality so completely that she couldn't
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: comprehend the wrongfulness of her actions... she will be found
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: not guilty by reason of insanity.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And what happens then?
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: If that happens, she will be committed to a psychiatric
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: facility indefinitely, subject to rigorous, ongoing reviews to ever determine
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: if she could be freed decades down the road.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Amidst all this complex legal maneuvering, the forensic debates over
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Google searches, and the viral internet outrage, we have to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: center the absolute devastation at the heart of this deep dive. Cora, Dawson,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and Callen had their entire lives ahead of them.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: They were just innocent kids.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: The loss of those three beautiful children is a tragedy
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: so deep it defies language.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: As you process this case, we have to impartially remind
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: you the viral online sleuths, the armed terror detectives, the outrage,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: none of that dictates reality. The only thing that determines
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the outcome of this case is the concrete forensic evidence
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: presented to those jurors in that sequestered room.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Facts over speculation.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Always. And more importantly... if you or anyone you know
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: is struggling with postpartum mental health, please do not suffer
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: in silence. Demand help. Scream for it if you have to.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Because the cost of silence or the cost of a
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: system that refuses to listen is simply too high.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Which leaves us with a lingering thought to consider long
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: after this deep dive ends. If a patient repeatedly begs
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: for help, texts her family saying, I don't want to
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: be alone, is turned away by suicide hotlines, and is
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: discharged from a prestigious psychiatric hospital with nothing but a
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: link to a website, at what point does a personal
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: tragedy cross the line into a structural crime?
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And if this insanity defense succeeds, how will it permanently
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: rewrite the legal liability of the psychiatric profession?
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: We might soon find out.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: We just might.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Until next time.