Lindsay Clancy's Prosecution Expert Said She Killed Out Of THIS

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
All right, we're going to get into it again today as we await the jury's decision in the Lindsay Clancy case. As we are sitting here on Monday morning, Lindsay Clancy jury started deliberating, nine women, three men, five verdict options, both sides agree she killed Cora Dawson and Catlin. That is not up for debate despite what you may be understanding if you're just watching TikTok. Patrick's not an option. The fight is whether she understood what she was doing. That's what we're going to be getting into. We're going to talk about the prosecution's case and how that landed, how the defense cases landed from various perspectives and what is going on as we move ahead. Jennifer Coffindaffer is with us, retired FBI special agent, along with Robin Drake, retired FBI special agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program and master class extraordinaire instructor. Links by the way in the description.
Let's start with this. Sprague's theory is that Clancy couldn't end her own life while her children were alive, that they were basically the protective factor and so she removed them. This is part of the psychotic thinking, if you will. Where True North is truly pointing southwest and she's not aware that this sort of thinking is crazy. Not rage, not psychosis, a decision.
Let's talk about that because the bar is not necessarily a specific diagnosis of psychosis. It's not having essentially your wits about you to understand right from wrong. Whatever that is that's going on in your mind is what it is, but arriving to that decision, a decision itself. Do you buy that? And doesn't that prove psychosis something very much like it even if it's not that exact word, Jen?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (2:00)
I don't buy it. I don't want a free sample of it.
I don't believe it. Look, this is the problem. I can't ignore the facts. I cannot ignore the facts of the what she did to set up her opportunity to take her children's lives. I just can't. I can't ignore the fact she got her husband out of the house, she sent him to a specific place, she sent him to another place, she mapped it all out, she knew the time frames. There is no chance I can get over the premeditation in this case to say the voices that by the way only lasted 18 minutes, somehow made her do this.
I can't go there.

**Robin Drake** (2:45)
It's interesting, Jen, because when I was listening to, and for everyone that's watching and everyone knows that Jen and us, 180s on the thoughtfulness of her before this. But again, we're engaging in a really thoughtful way, which I enjoy on this, even though it's surrounding a horrendous loss of three lives. So that isn't lost on any of us, is that it's all about the three lives that were lost, is just talking about the culpability of her being criminally responsible for it or not.
So on that, Jen, it was interesting listening to Reddington's closing statement where he actually had a different optic and context, which I hadn't really locked on to before, about what you just said. You say, and granted, I'm on the side of arguing that you can do all that planning in a psychotic break, and for that amount of time. Now granted, I saw your post on it. Yes, it's a slim amount of time, and I'm not a medical expert on this by any stretch of imagination. I've just watched all the testimony, and only the people that testified, because again, that is when we're talking about justice, that's where justice is, justice is in the process, in the system. And for my optic, I think it's been served well so far because it's the process, right? But what happened was, Reddington gave this optic saying that she wasn't checking all these things and planning it out to get them out of the house. She did it to check how fast he's going to be back to the house because she didn't want to be without him, which is a completely different optic.
So for me, I now have two things that I'm holding in my mind. I'm holding the fact that I thought originally and agreed from, again, my understanding of what was presented, that this was a psychotic break for that period of time because of all these mental health issues that were come up. And now every single clinician that testified, both sides agreed that she was in a severe mental crisis. Some said she had criminal responsibility for it and some on the defense side didn't. But again, a lot of overlap there. But again, adding that new dimension to it, that's his take for the closing was very interesting. Saying that actually wasn't her trying to get him out, it was actually her planning, how fast can I get him back?