Patrick Clancy's deleted social media posts offer glimpse into Lindsay Clancy's mind before children's deaths

Two days before Lindsay Clancy killed her three children, her husband Patrick posted on Reddit asking for advice on building an app for a real estate open house.

It was a mundane, unrelated question, and according to his own testimony, there was nothing about his wife's behavior that day that gave him any reason to worry.

That final post, from January 23, 2023, is the last entry in a Reddit account Patrick kept active from 2017 until it was deleted last year.

According to the New York Post, which uncovered the archive, the months before it paint a very different picture: Patrick using the site's medical advice communities, including 'Ask Docs' and 'Ask Psychiatry,' to describe his wife's symptoms in detail and ask doctors and psychiatrists on the forums to weigh in on her treatment, essentially crowdsourcing a second opinion from strangers online.

Patrick Clancy's reddit account was discovered by the New York Post (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The posts trace the crisis back to Lindsay's anxiety about returning to work as a labor and delivery nurse after having the couple's third child. Patrick, posting 'for my wife,' wrote on December 7 that Zoloft had been his own suggestion, but that her psychiatrist believed she was 'exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder.'

He said the anxiety itself had been mild beforehand, noting Lindsay had been sleeping and eating normally and had even been 'dancing at the wedding we went to' not long before.

Within a week of starting the medication, he wrote, Lindsay developed severe insomnia, at one point going 48 hours without sleep and routinely getting only three to four hours a night despite, in his words, not feeling tired. She also lost around 15 pounds in two months, dropping to 115 pounds, a detail experts have since linked to symptoms of mania.

By December 9, the posts had turned darker. Patrick asked a psychiatry forum whether medication side effects could bring on 'thoughts of hurting others, including loved ones,' and whether those thoughts could ever turn into action - a direct question about his own wife's state of mind, not a hypothetical one.

The trial of Lindsay Clancy ended in a mistrial on 4 September 2026 after the 12-member jury remained deadlocked following nearly 40 hours of deliberations (Photo by Greg Derr / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened before Lindsay Clancy killed her children?

Doctors went on to prescribe Ativan, other benzodiazepines, sleeping pills and eventually Prozac, as they first treated what they believed was simple insomnia. Lindsay was taken to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital on December 15 after telling Patrick she felt 'severely depressed, numb' and had suicidal thoughts. A postpartum program in Rhode Island turned her away on December 20, judging she needed broader psychiatric care, before she was admitted to McLean Hospital from December 30 to January 5.

Patrick later testified Lindsay seemed much improved after her discharge and that he had no concerns when he left her at home on January 24.

That day, she killed Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan before attempting suicide.

Medical experts on both sides of her trial have pointed to bipolar disorder, and her defense argued a manic episode escalated into psychosis by the time of the killings. Lindsay and Patrick are now jointly suing the doctors who treated her, alleging they missed the bipolar diagnosis.

Unilad has approached Patrick Clancy's attorney, Howard Cooper, for comment.