We’ve asked it about people who kill their own children.

Despite social media sleuths’ theories, Patrick Clancy did not kill Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months. Lindsay Clancy did, and she was not in her “right mind.”

Patrick Clancy didn’t know what was wrong with her. She couldn’t sleep for days. She had thoughts about harming herself and her children.

No problem. Take 25 mgs of this. If it doesn’t work, we can increase the dosage or add another “Mother’s Little Helper.” Still feeling lost, lonely, tired, suicidal? Get another doctor. Another “helper.” Go to a renowned mental health facility. Stay there for a bit, then go home. Call a suicide help line as you plead to doctors, therapists and family for help.

Stop taking your meds. Start. On again, off again. Saddle up. Who cares how many times you must switch horses on the medication merry-go-round at the Crazy Carnival?

Evidence shows that Lindsay Clancy was prescribed Prozac, Zoloft, Remeron, Trazodone, Amitriptyline, Ativan, Klonopin, Valium, Seroquel, Lamictal, Hydroxyzine, Ambien, Buspirone, as well as over-the-counter Benadryl. Who cares if they weren’t all prescribed at the same time. From the outset, each pill impacted her mind.

At the time she committed Filicide, Clancy was a physically fit (mentally not so), 32-year-old woman, running a mentally, emotionally and physically debilitating maniacal marathon, the finish of which was the horrific murder of the three children she undoubtedly loved.

Who and what created the Frankenstein’s Monster that became Lindsay the monster mother? Six experts – three defense and three prosecution – testified that Clancy had a variety of mental illnesses.

Isn’t that the crux of the Lindsay Clancy case? Was Lindsay Clancy in her “right mind?” Was she properly diagnosed? Adequately treated?

That’s the question Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz should have pondered, or did he, before going with Murder 1? Is Cruz hard-nosed, hard -hearted or pragmatic?

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Did he look at the public opinion meter prior to deciding the charges? Did Cruz look in the rearview mirror and see the Latarsha Sanders case following him? In 2018, Sanders, 43, stabbed each of her two boys, 5-year-old, La’son Britto and his 8-year-old brother, Edson, multiple times with a kitchen knife. How could Cruz charge Sanders with Murder 1 and not Clancy?

Found guilty of two counts of murder, in December, 2022, during a trial overseen by Judge William Sullivan, Sanders was sentenced to two mandatory life sentences. Her conviction was overturned by the SJC five weeks before the Clancy trial ended.

Cruz must decide next steps.

After defense attorney Kevin Reddington, and two of Cruz’s Assistant DAs – Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham – battled for five demanding weeks, the nine women and three men on the exhausted jury couldn’t agree on a verdict. The same Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial.

Cruz also must decide how next to charge Clancy.

Some trial followers wished death on Lindsay Clancy. Massachusetts no longer has the death penalty, a fate endured by Alice Bishop, in Plymouth Colony in 1648. After 32-year-old Alice slit her four-year-old daughter Martha’s throat, killing her, Bishop had a quick trial and a quicker hanging.

There was no TikTok or Instagram during the Bishop trial. There were no pink-clad throngs outside of Latarsha Sanders’ trial. Be that as it may, all three cases have something tragically in common: Innocent children were killed by mothers who weren’t “in their right mind.”