What Lindsay Clancy Warned Her Doctors She Was

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:16)
Let's talk about this case. Lindsay Clancy's jury is now seated. Eighteen people who now have to answer one question nobody agrees on. Was a mother who was on 13 psychiatric medications, criminally responsible when she killed her three children? Both sides agree she did it. That's not the debate. The fight is over whether she was sane. Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI Special Agent joins myself and retired FBI Special Agent Robin Drake.
I want to start here because I know, Jen, we have somewhat differing opinions on this, but I want to kind of understand how a jury is going to get anywhere with especially eighteen people. Prosecution thinks it's super simple. She checked Apple Maps to calculate how long her husband would be gone and allegedly strangled all three children in the window that she created, then jumped out a window and survived as part of an evil plan, completely omitting the part about begging for help countless times from countless physicians, being misprescribed, misdiagnosed over and over, and being on a cocktail of meds that would give nearly anyone who took them psychosis.
With one doctor not knowing what the other is doing and failing her at every turn, both parts are actually true in that story. Both sides seem to have people who refuse to see things from others' perspectives. It goes down to what was she thinking at that moment in time? Was it an evil conspiracy or was it a reflection of being on that many drugs? I mean, how are you going to get 18 jurors on the same page here? Do you think we do, Jen?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (1:52)
I think it's going to be really tough. I mean, as they say, any good attorney will tell you that the case is decided at Vardar. That's where it's decided. It's not decided in the courtroom. And when you look at the people I want, if I want an acquittal, I am going to look for a 40 to 50 year old woman. I want them up on that jury. I want somebody who's had postpartum, somebody who is taking whatever pills they're on to make them feel better. That the court may never know about. And that's who I want on somebody that's going to have an empathy, an aesthetic eye, if I'm the defense. Now, if I'm the prosecution, oh my gosh, I want that. I want guys, I want blue-collar guys that think women on drugs and all of that, and that you should love your children. And then I want Catholics, I want Mormons, I want, you know, the real right side of biblical theology sort of on there.
I don't know how you find that cross-section that would mean that not one person is going to sneak past on either side.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:04)
What do you think?

**Tony Brueski** (3:05)
Yeah.

**Robin Drake** (3:05)
You know what I think? I mean, both sides, the context of both sides are so strong. They really are. You can see both sides. And I think that is such a challenge. Like you said, you know, we've been saying the last couple of days, you know, likelihood of a hung jury is high. But you know what I think is going to come down to, and people are saying it in the comments to just talk about the Guthrie case, it's going to come down to human beings. I think because if you remove a lot of things from this on the science side, it's going to come down to, I think, is there congruence? They're always looking for congruence with the behavior of human beings. Because if people and events and what's being reported is in congruence, it allows us to feel creepy that there's something wrong, there's deception, there's manipulation at play.
So I think it's going to really come down to her presence in the courtroom and the husband's presence in the courtroom, because they have presented it and the defense is going to be presenting this narrative of a mother carrying wife, loving mother, children, a nurse. I mean, all these things are the arc they've painted and how incongruent this behavior was, was it? And they're blaming the doctors, the prescriptions, the 13 drugs, psychotic event. So I think what the jurors are going to be looking for, what I'd be looking for is, is what I'm seeing in a courtroom congruent with which story.
That's what they're going to be looking for. And they're going to be looking for that congruence, not just from her first, the husband, the family. You know, what are we seeing when we see her? Which story holds water based on what they are seeing? Cause that's what it comes to. I know they're going to get their instructions. I know it's going to be very technical. They're going to want to follow this, but as 18 human beings look at another human being, I think they're going to look for what story is actually most congruent from what I'm being presented as a human being.