What Lindsay Clancy's Nurse Never Knew

**Tony Brueski** (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 Dreeke.

**Tony Brueski** (0:18)
Lindsay Clancy's murder trial is now several weeks into testimony at the Plymouth Superior Court. The same evidence is telling you completely different stories. A mother who planned to kill her children or a mother whose providers failed her into psychosis. We are going to be talking about it from both ends of the spectrum here today. Joining us to do it, Jennifer Coffindaffer, retired FBI special agent. So is Robin Dreeke, retired FBI special agent, chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. We've all been very fired up about this case online, if anyone's been following any of us.
And we do have some differing opinions, but we can handle that.

**Robin Dreeke** (1:06)
And that's why our social is so good. We have our awesome people and we take different angles and we just entertain all options, all ideas, all thoughts.

**Tony Brueski** (1:15)
We're all in different rooms, so if somebody throws something, nobody's going to get hurt. So that's also a plus. Let's just start here.
And your thoughts, welcome in the comment section on Substack and YouTube or wherever you're watching, links are in the description. Okay, so the jury heard testimony that four mental health providers treated Lindsay Clancy in the months before January 24th. None of them reviewed her full medical history. None of them talked to each other. Her nurse practitioner didn't know she'd seen a psychiatrist 14 times in four months when she checked herself into a locked inpatient psychiatric ward on New Year's Eve, didn't get to see a doctor for days, and then was later told that's not the place for her. So then she's out of that. The providers treating her in outpatient had no idea about that stay. So the testimony has been there. We've seen the evidence now, Robin and Jen, we've heard the testimony from medical professionals and providers, and we've seen how discombobulated they were. I think that's pretty easy to see just on the surface, just one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Does any of that matter when three children are dead? Because that seems to be the breaking point for a lot of it. No matter how big this evidence is over here of a failed system and a woman begging for help, three kids are dead, so burn her at the stake. That's kind of what it feels like, Jen.
Yes, three children are dead. Nobody is denying that. That's horrible. That's horrific. But here's the context that got us here. So does all of that matter now that we're here?

**Jennifer Coffindaffer** (2:59)
I think it always matters that this is even being talked about now, you know, postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, anxiety, all of these issues. I think sometimes they get pushed to the back burner. I think women can be embarrassed to talk about them. It's so anti-motherhood to have a child and not be fully in love. But let's concentrate on her facts, first of all.
What is the central cog in everything you just said there? If you go to the doctor, Tony, and your ankle hurts, and you see your primary, and then you decide to go to a different primary, and then you decide to go to a specialist, and you don't very specifically say, by the way, I've been to this guy and he said this, here's my scans from that.
It is imperative for everyone seeking medical attention for whatever reason to explain their whole situation to the provider and what they have or haven't done. So a lot of this is on Lindsay Clancy.

**Robin Dreeke** (4:04)
So I would love to, because again, I know where you stand on, it's on Lindsay Clancy, Jen, and I would love to explore and understand fully all the medical side of things, of what your belief on this is and where not criminally culpable, the statute there, not guilty by reason and sanity, but it's got the different vernacular up in Massachusetts.
Because here's what it comes down to for me, to see if this is correct for you, but just a different understanding of what's going on medically. For me and for, you know, basically the country's divided on this one, it's, I see the psychosis as the reason behind the murder of her children, and that as I'm understanding the science as it's been explained, the psychosis, that it can last from minutes to weeks to months, and it can ebb and flow on out of there. So even in conditions where, and here's where I totally agree with so many people, this is premeditated, she's aware of it, but she's also, in my estimation from what I saw from the experts, she was in psychosis during it because it was a massive deviation from that behavior spike line that we see, because I mean, I've never seen a case, and I'd be curious if you've seen one, because I think that forms your context of the two, where you have someone who had such a stable relationship with children, being a mother, and how life is rolling to all of a sudden kill them. I mean, it's such a, and so that the only explanation for me that I understand is it must have been a psychotic break even with some pre-planning in there, as I'm understanding it, is it, where am I differing from where you're on at it?