The Lindsay Clancy case has sparked a heated debate on social media. There are multiple sides to this case, with some people convinced she’s a cold-blooded killer, while others see a woman desperately seeking help for postpartum psychosis, and then there are those who question if she is the one who even killed those innocent babies.

Some people claim she confessed to the murders, while others insist she never confessed but was told she did it when she regained consciousness. I will not list all the reasons some people believe she was not the one who committed the horrific act. However, I am going to say that if she did it; I don’t believe she is a Susan Smith.

For those who don’t remember Susan Smith, back in 1994 Smith murdered her two young boys by strapping them into their car seats and rolling the vehicle into a lake. She blamed an imaginary Black man for kidnapping them. 

But when I saw Smith on television, begging for her sons’ return, I knew she had done something to those children. I knew she was lying. You see, during at least one of those TV interviews with Smith, she was wearing a bow in her hair—a freaking bow. What mother, whose two babies had just been kidnapped, would think about sticking a decorative bow in her hair?

That bow cinched it for me with Smith. And my hunch proved correct. Smith was guilty, and it had nothing to do with postpartum depression or psychosis; she simply wanted to unburden herself of the responsibility of her children.

It’s rather ironic that during the Clancy case the prosecutor mentioned how five-year-old Cora Clancy loved wearing bows, and then throughout the case at least one of the prosecutors wore an obvious bow in her hair, leading people to speculate that the bow been a strategic fashion choice to remind the jurors of the dead little girl. Yet had I been on the jury, the bow would have reminded me of something else: that Lindsay was not Susan Smith.

No, I don’t believe Lindsay Clancy was a Susan Smith. By all accounts—even from her mother-in-law—she was a caring and loving mother. It’s well-documented that she repeatedly reached out for help.

One thing this tragic case has shown me is that we have not progressed much in the last eighty-five years regarding postpartum depression and psychosis. And by the comments I’ve read on social media, there seems to be an abundance of misunderstanding. I’ve seen countless posts claiming this is some new trendy excuse homicidal women have come up with to get away with murder. One post I read from a man in his sixties claimed he had never heard of such a thing before in all his life. That man had obviously missed the news story on Andrea Yates, who, a few years after Susan Smith, drowned her five children in the bathtub. But Yates wasn’t a Susan Smith either.

I learned about postpartum depression long before the Yates story, back in the late 1960s. It involved a member of my father’s family. While I thought of it as postpartum depression back then, I understand now, by the severity of the case, it was more accurately postpartum psychosis. And while postpartum psychosis is incredibly rare, it’s not something new.

Dad told us about the event. It happened when he was 12 years old—in 1940. He had two cousins, both boys who were around the same age as him. Their mother had given birth to a third child—which she horrifically murdered. According to my father, after the birth of her second child, the doctor had warned her husband not to get his wife pregnant again. Apparently, she had suffered from severe postpartum depression after the births of her two older sons, who were close in age. While vasectomies were available in 1940, the husband obviously didn’t have one.

 I won’t say how she murdered her baby, because frankly, it was horrific and no one needs that picture in their head. The wife ended up in a mental institution for the rest of her life, and Mom said she once received a rambling letter from the woman that freaked Mom out. I have no clue how the woman got Mom’s address or even knew she existed. Dad was never clear about how we were related, only that it was on his maternal side of the family, and on that side of the family, Dad only had two first cousins, both girls. So, I assumed they were distant cousins. Mom once told me the woman was not a blood relative but had married into the family.

When I eventually had children, I fortunately did not suffer from postpartum depression. Yet, because of what Dad had told me years earlier, I was keenly aware that many women deal with severe depression after having a baby, and I never dismissed it as something to ignore, and I’ve always believed new mothers need our support as they deal with the challenges of motherhood while their bodies struggle to regain their normal hormone levels.  

Now, fast forward a number of years. We’re living in Lake Havasu City. Both of our kids are grown up and out of the house, and one of my hobbies is genealogy.

One year, on March 19th (remember that date; it is important); I started thinking of that baby who was murdered in 1940. How were we related? By this time, Dad had passed away, and Mom was living with us, but Mom didn’t know how the baby fit on our family tree. Mom suggested Dad’s cousin might know. As I mentioned, Dad only had two first cousins on that side of the family: Betty and Fran. While Fran had passed away a few years earlier, Betty was still alive and living in Michigan. So, on Mom’s suggestion, I called her.

Betty proved extremely helpful. It turned out Mom had been wrong. The woman hadn’t married into the family; she was my great-grandmother’s niece, or (according to ancestry.com) my first cousin, twice removed. They called her Vivian, which apparently was her middle name.

With the information Betty gave me, I was able to do some online sleuthing, digging into the census reports at Ancestry.com and old newspaper articles at Newspaper Archives. For some reason, I had always assumed the baby was a girl—but I learned it had been a boy. His name was Howard, and he was just eight weeks old when killed.

I found something interesting in the census reports. Vivian’s first two sons were born around 1928 and 1930, and in 1930—according to the census report—she was institutionalized. The place she was living was listed as State-Psychopathic-Hospital-Insane on the top of the census report. But then, ten years later, she was back home and having another baby.

The following excerpt is a quote from one of the newspaper articles written right after the murder: “She was treated at an Ann Arbor hospital 10 years ago for a nervous disorder.” Nervous disorder? I remember Dad saying the doctor had told the husband not to let his wife get pregnant again, so I wonder if they called postpartum depression a nervous disorder in the 1940s. When I first heard the story in the 1960s, I remember my parents calling the event a result of severe postpartum depression.

What I found most troubling, according to the article, prior to the murder, Vivian had threatened to kill the baby—repeatedly—and in the horrific manner in which she eventually killed him. Over eighty years later, I ask myself, has anything improved in all this time?

Betty also told me she, along with her mother and husband, visited Vivian at the institution about once a year, usually around Christmas time. They would bring her sweets. Betty remembered Vivian as a timid, quiet woman and the institution as a scary place, some place she would not have wanted to visit without her husband accompanying them.

Ever since hearing Vivian’s story from Dad—long before I knew where she fit on our family tree and still thought it had been a baby girl—I felt extreme sadness not just for the innocent baby, but for Vivian. I can’t imagine the horror of coming out of a psychosis and realizing what you had done. According to the news article, Vivian calmly confessed and showed no emotion. I suspect by that time she had already checked out mentally.

Now, back to that date I mentioned. My quest to find this baby’s place on our family tree came to me on March 19, which I later learned was the anniversary of baby Howard’s death.

And if you think I am getting all woo woo—yeah, I am. Because I honestly believe baby Howard’s spirit reached out to me on the anniversary of his death, wanting me to set the record straight. He was a boy, not a girl, and he had a name. And he showed me his place on our family tree.

Howard makes me think of the Clancy children. Just like Howard, they deserve the truth, whatever that may be. I don’t care what anyone thinks about Lindsay; you can’t ignore the contradictions in this case. Even if the next trial finds her innocent, it’s still not a win for Lindsay. She is spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair, and she has lost everything. But if she is found guilty, then the legal system has no reason to investigate those troubling contradictions and seek answers to the questions.  

The Clancy children deserve the truth.