▶ Watch Video: Patrick Clancy: The 60 Minutes Interview
Patrick Clancy said he felt he had no purpose after his three children were killed.
“There was a time where I didn’t think I would live to see my 35th birthday,” Clancy, 36, said in an interview with 60 Minutes. “And I was completely fine with it.”
His interview with correspondent Ross Douthat comes after his ex-wife’s mistrial earlier this month. The court has yet to determine whether Patrick’s ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, will be retried for the killings of their children: 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan. It also comes as Patrick and his wife, Rachel Danis, face intense public scrutiny, becoming the subjects of online suspicion and speculation on social media.
What happened after Callan was born
In October 2022, five months after Callan’s birth, Patrick said Lindsay told him she had gone a few nights without sleeping.
Over the next two months, Lindsay made repeated emergency room visits. She admitted herself to a program for patients with postpartum depression and was discharged after a day of treatment. Lindsay was also prescribed an escalating number of prescription drugs.
Patrick said he struggled to help his wife navigate the medical system and did not know how to manage a postpartum illness.
“I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive,” he said.
December was the low point, Patrick said. “It was a big struggle for her — just a huge lack of sleep, deep, deep depression, intrusive thoughts.”
Lindsay checked herself into McLean Psychiatric Hospital on New Year’s Eve. She was treated for depression and released days later, making it home in time to celebrate Cora’s birthday on Jan. 7.
The deaths of Cora, Dawson and Callan
Less than three weeks later, Patrick said he came home from an errand to find Lindsay lying in the backyard, her throat and wrists cut, paralyzed after jumping from an upstairs window.
He said he found his children strangled in the basement. Cora and Dawson were dead. Callan was airlifted to Boston Children’s Hospital.
“I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live,” Patrick recalled. “I remember just thinking, ‘Just give me one. Just give me one kid, and I would raise him as best I could, and I would give him the best life I possibly could. I’d tell him about his brother and sister.’ And I was holding out hope for that.”
Callan’s heart kept beating for four days.
“I got to hold him. I got to lay down next to him. And he died in my arms,” Patrick said.
Patrick Clancy forgives his ex-wife
In the days after the tragedy, Patrick wrote tributes to each of his three children and decided to publicly forgive Lindsay.
“I saw headlines that said, you know, ‘Killer Mom,’ and ‘Baby Murderer,’ ‘Monster.’ And none of them were accurate,” Patrick said. “I think if people said, ‘She did a horrible thing,’ I think everyone could agree with that. …But I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that.” So I shared those words.”
Lindsay never asked for forgiveness, but Patrick said he gave it to her. They’ve both brought medical malpractice lawsuits against health care providers who treated Lindsay. Some have denied wrongdoing, and others have yet to respond to the claim.
Patrick said he thinks he “did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome. I live with it every day.”
Patrick said he realized he could no longer stay in Duxbury and moved to New York City that April, seeking anonymity.
Trial in court — and in the court of public opinion
In July, Lindsay Clancy’s trial began. Her lawyers argued she was suffering from dangerous postpartum psychosis and couldn’t be held criminally responsible for her actions.
The trial became a national obsession – generating furious arguments about the relationship between mental illness and criminal fault, how the medical system fails mothers and how men and women understand one another.
Patrick testified and found himself at the center of an online swarm of sleuths and influencers dissecting every detail of the case, developing theories that portray him as uncaring, unfaithful and even the murderer of his children.
“It’s painful to see. And it makes it difficult to be in public and it’s possible that some of those people, after seeing lie after lie after lie, they start to believe it and that’s what we’re left with,” he said.
One of the catalysts for the theories about Patrick was his apparent stoicism on the witness stand. Patrick said that testifying was difficult for him and that he had a “massive, traumatic” panic attack on the second day of his testimony.
“They put me in an ambulance,” Patrick said. “They offered me some medication, but I said, ‘I don’t want it, because I want to go back and I want to finish this so I can be done with this.’ And I went back and I finished the testimony.”
Lindsay’s trial ended with a hung jury earlier this month.
Moving forward
Patrick says reaching out to survivors and experts in the field of postpartum health has helped him move forward. He remarried this April to Dr. Rachel Danis, a fertility doctor in New York City.
Danis said the pair met in January 2024 in a New York City run club and got to know each other over coffee.
“Pat pulled out his phone to pay, and I noticed this adorable photo of children as the wallpaper,” Danis said. ” I just asked, ‘Who are those cuties?’ And Pat said, ‘Those are my kids.’ And then I think I asked if they live in Massachusetts, and Pat said, ‘They died.’ And this is just at the cashier.”
Danis said she tried to “take some of the weight from Pat.”
“I can’t bring his kids back,” she said. “But if I can honor them and allow Pat to grieve but also just continue to honor them in the present, it, I guess that’s all I can do.”
The pair are starting a family, and Patrick is preparing to one day tell his future child about their older siblings, Cora, Dawson and Callan.
“I think every parent can agree, you have different relationships with your kids, but they’re all your kids,” he said. “And I can’t wait to tell them about their brothers and sister.”
