Patrick Clancy, the father of three children strangled by his ex-wife Lindsay Clancy in their Massachusetts home, revealed in a preview of his first television interview that he still speaks to his dead kids, telling them, "Help me. All the time."
CBS released a sneak peek Thursday of its upcoming 60 Minutes segment featuring the 38-year-old father, who has largely stayed out of the public eye since the January 2023 killings in Duxbury, Massachusetts. In the clip, correspondent Ross Douthat asks Clancy what he says when he talks to his children. Patrick's answer is two words long and lands harder than any prepared statement could.
The full interview, conducted over two days, is set to air Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBS. The U.S. Sun reported that CBS correspondent Shannelle Kaul described the sit-down as "raw and emotional," noting that Patrick broke down in tears at several points. It will be his first on-camera appearance since Lindsay Clancy's trial ended in a mistrial on September 4, a case that gripped the country and raised hard questions about mental illness, criminal responsibility, and a justice system that left a father with no resolution.
On January 24, 2023, Patrick Clancy stepped out of the family's Duxbury home to run errands. While he was gone, Lindsay Clancy, then his wife, took their three children, Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eight months, into the basement and strangled them with exercise bands. She then attempted to end her own life.
Patrick returned to find Lindsay on the ground in the backyard. He discovered the children in the basement and removed the exercise bands from their necks. Cora and Dawson did not survive. Callan, the baby, spent three days in the ICU before he was taken off life support.
Days after the killings, Patrick did something that stunned many observers. He issued a public statement asking people to forgive his wife.
"The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone, me, our kids, family, friends, and her patients."
That statement, offered while the country was still absorbing the horror of what happened in that basement, set the tone for how Patrick would approach the case publicly. He did not cast Lindsay as a villain. He framed the killings as the product of mental illness, specifically, what the defense later argued was undiagnosed postpartum psychosis.
Lindsay Clancy, now 36, did not deny killing the children. Her defense rested on the question of criminal responsibility, whether postpartum psychosis rendered her legally insane at the time. Patrick testified as the first witness in her trial, a proceeding that stretched across five weeks of testimony and one week of deliberations.
The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. All but one juror was prepared to find Lindsay not guilty by reason of insanity. That single holdout forced the mistrial declared on September 4.
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not yet announced whether he will retry the case. Lindsay Clancy remains hospitalized at Tewksbury State Hospital, a state psychiatric facility. She is scheduled to appear in court on September 29, when attorneys are expected to discuss next steps.
Her legal team is already maneuvering to prevent a second trial. Lindsay recently hired Boston attorney Martin Weinberg, the same lawyer who fought Karen Read's retrial, and he has filed a motion seeking to dismiss the case on double jeopardy grounds, arguing the Constitution bars prosecuting a person more than once for the same alleged crime.
In the CBS interview, Patrick addressed the public narrative that formed around the case. He said he read headlines calling Lindsay a "monster" and a "killer mom", labels he considered inaccurate. He told CBS that "everything had to do with her mental health."
Patrick also confronted online conspiracy theories suggesting he bore some responsibility for the children's deaths. He called those claims deeply harmful to the legacy of his children and a distraction from the issue of perinatal mental health. His unnamed attorney separately issued a statement telling internet commentators to stop spreading those theories and threatening legal action.
Since the killings, Patrick has relocated to New York City and remarried. He has kept his children's artwork and turned some of their T-shirts into pillows, small, tangible pieces of three lives that ended in a basement on a January afternoon.
The Clancy case sits in a kind of legal limbo. The mistrial left the question of accountability unresolved. The double jeopardy motion, if successful, could end the prosecution entirely. If DA Cruz does pursue a retrial, the case will go through the same grinding process, with the same father likely called to testify again about the worst day of his life.
None of this gives Patrick Clancy his children back. He still talks to Cora, Dawson, and Callan. He asks them for help. That is not a legal argument or a policy position. It is a father carrying a weight that no courtroom proceeding, no verdict, and no interview can lift.
When the system fails to deliver a clear answer, when eleven jurors agree and one does not, when motions pile up and court dates stretch out, the people left holding the consequences are never the lawyers or the judges. They are the ones turning children's shirts into pillows and talking to kids who cannot answer.
