Emily Thorndike, a licensed independent clinical social worker, once worked at the same inpatient hospital where Lindsay Clancy was admitted before she killed her three children.
In a since-viral TikTok video, she spoke about her experience of the staffing levels at McLean Hospital and took issue with the prosecution’s depiction of the care they provided. Having seen the video, Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington proposed she testify as a witness for the defense, and she took part in a voir dire session on Aug. 19.
While the judge noted he found the witness credible, he decided against allowing her to serve as a witness, in part due to the “limited materiality” of her testimony, considering the one-year gap between her and Clancy’s time at McLean. (Thorndike worked at the hospital until December 2021, just over a year before Clancy had a five-day inpatient stay.)
She spoke exclusively with Oxygen about her experience with the highly-publicized trial. The jurors ended up in a deadlock, 11 to one, and a mistrial was declared.
“My initial reaction to the mistrial, like the first emotion that comes to mind, is disappointment,” she said, “and I think primarily in the context of this one juror who was holding out.”
Despite her disappointment in the case’s outcome, she remains hopeful in the case of a retrial.
“I hold out hope,” she said. “In my opinion, this one juror, I wish he could have been literally excused from this; but in my mind, he’s excused.”
The mental health worker added, “I’m hopeful that we can find a jury who will give a verdict under the law and using the facts.”
She also revealed she thinks Lindsay, who stands accused of murdering her and ex-husband Patrick Clancy’s three children, should have been found not guilty.
“I don’t think it ended in the way that’s morally right, in my opinion,” she said. “I think she should have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Oxygen reached out to McLean Hospital for comment. The prosecution in the case declined to comment when contacted by Oxygen.
What Was Lindsay Clancy Accused Of?
Lindsay’s murder trial centered on the harrowing events of Jan. 24, 2023: the day she acknowledges she killed her and Patrick’s kids,5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan,in their Duxbury, Mass., home.
As Patrick testified, that evening, Lindsay requested that he drive to a local CVS pharmacy to pick up medication, then to a nearby restaurant to grab takeout for dinner. When he returned home, he found her lying in the backyard after jumping out a second-story window in a suicide attempt. In their basement, he discovered Cora, Dawson and Callan strangled with exercise bands, and all three passed away from the attack.
In their opening statement, the prosecution argued that during the time frame that Patrick was out of the house, Lindsay executed the children’s killings with “deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty.”
“This was not a woman in the throes of psychosis on Jan. 24, 2023,” Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham told jurors. “This was a woman who acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly to accomplish a very specific goal: to kill.”
“This was a woman who no longer liked the life she thought she wanted,” she added. “It was getting harder and harder to control, and when she saw the opportunity to escape, she made the selfish choice to take it, and to take Cora, Dawson and Callan first before attempting to take her own life.”
Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial heard Aug. 20 testimony from a chaplain about her emotional state after killing her three children.
What Was Lindsay Clancy’s Defense?
Lindsay’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington did not dispute she killed the children, but he argued that her actions were driven by postpartum psychosis, not malice, and that she was therefore unable to understand the wrongfulness of them.
“This is a woman that was suffering from psychosis at the time that she went down to that basement,” he told jurors during his opening statement. “She had no motive. She loved her children. She intended to kill herself. She didn’t fake that.”
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