A mother strangled her three young children to death in the family basement, then tried to take her own life by cutting her wrists and throat and leaping from a second-story window. That much is horrifying enough. What happened next is almost harder to process: Thousands of strangers have rallied around her with cash, cheerleading, and a fan club. How does something like that happen?
You’ve probably heard about the Lindsay Clancy case. On Jan. 24, 2023, she sent her husband out on an errand to a restaurant the family didn't normally visit, with instructions to swing by the pharmacy on the way. While he was gone, Clancy took their three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, into the basement and strangled them with exercise bands.
I admittedly haven't been following this case, but I heard about the details the other day while listening to the radio in my car. Apparently, Clancy had searched the restaurant on Apple Maps beforehand, calculating exactly how much time the errand would buy her. After killing her children, she cut her own wrists and throat and jumped out of a second-story window, an act that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
Her defense attorneys don't dispute what she did. She’s going with the insanity defense. She claims she heard a voice telling her to kill their children and then herself, and her attorneys argue she shouldn't be held criminally responsible due to mental illness. If a jury convicts her, she faces up to life in prison. If a jury instead finds her not guilty by reason of insanity, a judge would commit her to a state mental institution.
This case is horrifying enough on the facts alone. But Clancy has fans and supporters rallying for her outside her trial, and a GoFundMe called "The Musgrove Family Fund" has raised over $1 million in under a week, chasing a $2 million goal through roughly 26,000 donations. Officially, the beneficiaries are Mike and Paula Musgrove, Clancy's parents. The page notes that Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, is "aware of it," which tells you exactly where a good chunk of that money is likely headed: straight into her legal defense.
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Hundreds of donor comments skip her parents entirely and address Lindsay Clancy directly, many signed by self-described members of "#lindsaysarmy." One commenter called her a "true hero." Another wrote, "We are rallying around Lindsay because in so many ways, she is us."
She is us? That’s frightening.
Strangers online are looking at a woman who strangled her three kids and are ready to turn her into the next George Floyd.
This kind of thing keeps happening.
Take Karmelo Anthony, convicted of murder and sentenced Tuesday to 35 years in prison for fatally stabbing 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas. He has since filed a notice of appeal challenging the conviction. Less than two weeks after the stabbing, his mother, Kala Hayes, posted a GiveSendGo fundraiser titled "Help Karmelo Official Fund," with a goal of nearly $1.4 million. It ultimately raised just shy of $634,000.
The fundraiser page claimed, "While legal defense is a critical part of this journey, we want to make it clear that this fund is not solely dedicated to legal expenses," and said the money would also cover "the safe relocation of the Anthony family due to escalating threats to their safety and well-being, as well as basic living costs, transportation, counseling, and other security measures." In other words, the fund quietly became a family relocation package dressed up as a legal defense drive.
Race dominated a lot of the commentary around the Anthony fundraiser, and that conversation deserves its own space. But if we zoom out a bit, a pattern that transcends race and gender emerges. Lindsay Clancy is a white mother from Massachusetts, and Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of a health insurance executive, has his own devoted online following cheering him on as a folk hero. His GoFundMe also raised over $1 million.
From where I sit, the common thread is ideological. Survey the people cheering on Mangione, Anthony, and Clancy, and I'd bet they land overwhelmingly, if not universally, on one side of the political aisle. Makes sense, doesn't it? This is the same political movement that treats the life of an unborn child as disposable. Once you've talked yourself into that, how much of a stretch is it to call the murder of a health insurance executive justified, to lean on race to excuse the killing of an innocent teenager, or to turn a mother who strangled her three children, with the mental clarity to plan the whole thing out, into a hero?
