While debate over the Lindsay Clancy murder case rages with true-crime hardliners calling for the mother to be imprisoned for life, many other Americans are empathetic to her claims of mental illness, as evidenced by a flood of donations to a GoFundMe page set up for her parents.
The donations topped one million dollars following the Massachusetts mother’s murder trial ending in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict — a decision that even drew comment from President Donald Trump, who did not opine on what punishment Clancy may or may not deserve.
Clancy, 36, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder after she admitted to strangling her three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, with exercise bands.
She entered an insanity defense, claiming she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of the January 2023 killings.
“I assume there’s going to be another trial. It’s a terrible situation,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office minutes after Massachusetts Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan declared a mistrial in the case. “Look, she did a horrible, horrible thing. Can’t be worse.”
President Trump appeared to understand the issue that jurors wrestled with in some 40 hours of deliberation. Clancy’s planning and responsibility for the killings was not left in doubt by testimony and the evidence.
Her state of mind appears to be the mitigating issue.
Reportedly, all but one of the jurors favored an insanity verdict, apparently agreeing that mental illness, delusional reasoning, and psychiatric medications had prompted her to kill the children so as not to leave them motherless as she planned to take her own life after the act.
Her suicide attempt after the murders was unsuccessful but left her a paraplegic in a wheelchair after she leaped from the second story window of her home.
Trump said Clancy will certainly “pay a price.”
“But you’ll find out what the price to pay is,” Trump said. “There’ll be a price. It’s going to be a mental institution or jail or something. But I guess they’re going to go through another trial. It’s too bad.”
The “Musgrove Family Fund” GoFundMe page was established to help Clancy’s parents pay the price of “being there for their daughter every day,” the page’s organizer Brandee Mulligan wrote as she announced the financial goal would be raised from $1 million to a $3 million target.
“I’ve decided to raise the goal of this fundraiser since this process has been extended, so is the time Paula and Mike will remain away from their home, continuing to carry the costs that come with being there for their daughter every day,” Mulligan wrote on the page.
“After the killings, Michael, 70, and Paula Musgrove, 73, relocated 150 miles from their Wallingford, Connecticut, home to where their daughter lived in Massachusetts,” the New York Post reported.
Clancy has been housed in Tewksbury Hospital since the murders. It is a state-run psychiatric facility 25 miles from Boston and about 60 miles from the Plymouth courtroom where the trial was conducted.
Earlier, Mulligan laid out the reasons for the fund on the page, saying all money would be going to Clancy’s parents, writing:
And that is who this fundraiser is for, Mike and Paula, who have spent years traveling back and forth, staying in hotels, attending court proceedings and ultimately relocating from Connecticut to Massachusetts so they could remain close to Lindsay. Their lives have largely been put on hold while they have continued doing what parents do: showing up for their child during the unimaginable.
The money belongs to Mike and Paula. The purpose of this fundraiser is to give them back some of the financial stability they have lost over the last three years and allow them to decide what they need as they eventually begin figuring out what life looks like after this trial.
Clancy’s defense attorney argued to the jury that the mother was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, worsened by a myriad of prescription medications, while prosecutors alleged she knew that what she was doing was wrong and had carefully planned the killings.
Prosecutors in the case have not yet announced whether and how, when and where they will retry the Clancy case or whether they will just drop the case.
Clancy is due back in court September 29 when the prosecution and defense will determine their next steps.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
