Patrick Clancy revealed in a heart-wrenching “60 Minutes” interview that his ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, never asked for his forgiveness after she strangled their three kids — but he “gave it to her” anyway.
“Has she ever asked for your forgiveness?” CBS correspondent Ross Douthat asked Patrick Clancy Sunday during his first sit-down interview since her mistrial earlier this month.
“No. But I gave it to her,” Patrick Clancy responded.
Lindsay Clancy strangled the couple’s three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan, with exercise bands in their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023 before attempting suicide.
To the public’s shock, Patrick Clancy almost immediately shared that he forgave his wife for killing their sons and daughter.
“I saw headlines that said, you know, ‘Killer Mom,’ and ‘Baby Murderer,’ ‘Monster.’ And none of ’em were accurate — I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that. So I shared those words,” he recalled.
“And I think when it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn’t get there, I would be eaten up inside forever,” the grieving dad said.
Patrick Clancy described watching Lindsay Clancy’s mental state quickly deteriorate starting in fall of 2022, while baby Callan was 5 months old.
“It was October and — she went a few nights without sleeping,” he told Douthat.
Lindsay Clancy’s mental health soon spiraled, leading to repeated emergency room visits and admitting herself into a program for postpartum depression. Despite being prescribed a slew of prescription drugs, she continued to get worse.
“I think December. December was — it was a big struggle for her — just a huge lack of sleep, deep, deep depression, intrusive thoughts, and — at the end of that month she went to the hospital,” Patrick Clancy said of his then wife’s lowest point.
“I didn’t know how to manage a postpartum illness. I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive. So I’m– I’m sure there are things that I didn’t see,” Patrick Clancy told Douthat when asked if he knew anything about postpartum mental illness before his ex-wife began struggling.
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial
Seventeen days after she checked herself into another hospital, McLean Psychiatric Hospital, Lindsay Clancy attacked and killed her three kids, slit her throat and wrists, and jumped out a second-story window of their home.
The grieving father hauntingly recalled finding her partially paralyzed in the backyard of their home after the botched suicide attempt during his trial testimony in July.
During his second day on the witness stand — when the 911 call was played of him discovering his three children in the basement that night — Patrick Clancy told Douthat that he had a “massive traumatic panic attack” that sent him into an ambulance.
“We did take a break right before they played the 911 call, which I knew was gonna be just horrific. And I went to a back room, and I started having this massive traumatic panic attack,” Patrick Clancy said.
“My heart was pounding. And they put me in an ambulance, they offered me some medication, but I said, ‘I– I don’t want it, ’cause I want to go back and I want to finish this so I can be done with this.’ And I went back and I finished the testimony.”
He told Douthat he felt he “did the best” he could to help his then wife through her postpartum mental health crisis leading up to the shock murders.
“I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome. I live with it every day,” he said
Patrick Clancy’s highly anticipated “60 Minutes” appearance, alongside his wife, fertility doctor Rachel Danis, comes just three weeks after Lindsay’s Clancy murder case ended in a mistrial — when one holdout juror, Michael Desronvil, refused to find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
The other 11 jurors sided with Lindsay’s claims that she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis.
The new couple, who met in January 2024 after Patrick Clancy relocated to New York City, also revealed on Sunday that they are starting a family.
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