Patrick Clancy said in a 60 Minutes interview that his ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, never asked him to forgive her for killing their three children. He forgave her anyway.

“Has she ever asked for your forgiveness?” CBS correspondent Ross Douthat asked. “No. But I gave it to her,” Patrick said. He believed mental illness caused the killings and that if he did not forgive her he would be “eaten up inside forever.” He rejected headlines that called her a “killer mom,” “baby murderer,” or “monster.”

On Jan. 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy, then a labor and delivery nurse, strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan with exercise bands in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home, then cut her throat and wrists and jumped from a second-story window. She was left paralyzed. Patrick had been sent out on errands. He found Cora and Dawson dead. Callan was revived and lived four more days. Patrick said he held him in the hospital, told him “I’m so sorry,” and that Callan “died in my arms.”

He later asked Lindsay if she remembered. She said it was “like a dream,” recalled the way someone remembers a dream after waking. He described her decline from fall 2022: sleepless nights, deep depression, intrusive thoughts, ER visits, and hospitalizations for postpartum illness. He said he did not know how to manage postpartum mental illness and is “sure there are things that I didn’t see.” “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.” After the deaths he had suicidal thoughts and at one point did not think he would live to 35.

Lindsay’s defense argued she was not criminally responsible because of postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors said she knew right from wrong. After a five-week trial, the jury split 11-1 in September 2026; one holdout refused to find her not guilty by reason of insanity. A mistrial was declared. Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry her.

Patrick has moved to New York, remarried fertility doctor Rachel Danis, and said they are starting a family. He wants future children to know Cora, Dawson, and Callan. He criticized online conspiracy theories that blamed him, calling them a distraction from perinatal mental health and from his children’s memory.

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Sources

• New York Post, Zoe Hussain, Sept. 20, 2026
• CBS 60 Minutes / Ross Douthat
• NBC News, CNN, The New York Times, BBC, USA Today, Boston Globe, People