So It Begins: Lindsay Clancy 'Copycat' Killer Allegedly Strangles Son While Saying He's 'Antichrist'

We told you so. People were warned that openly sympathizing with accused murderers would only create more of them.

America's victim culture brought us to this. And now, our sick culture is going to reap what it has sown.

Now we have word in the aftermath of the appalling mistrial of Lindsay Clancy, there is an eerily similar murder case.

Prosecutors say a mother who was closely following the Clancy trial allegedly killed her 2-year-old son while believing the child was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ.”

And she was reportedly discussing the Clancy case with friends just hours before her son was found dead.

Corie Walsh, 38, of Frankfort, Illinois, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old son, Barrett Walsh, according to FOX 32 Chicago. Prosecutors say Walsh strangled the toddler Tuesday and later made statements describing the killing to investigators.

The details contained in the prosecution's court filing are horrific. Police were called to Walsh's home shortly after 4 PM Tuesday. A neighbor told investigators she discovered Barrett in the basement with a ligature around his neck and his feet off the floor. The neighbor removed the ligature and attempted CPR, but the child could not be revived.

Preliminary autopsy findings determined that Barrett died from asphyxia caused by ligature compression of the neck, prosecutors said.

Walsh, meanwhile, was found fully dressed in a bathtub in the master bedroom, surrounded by bloody water. A neighbor reportedly took a knife from her hand, and investigators said Walsh had cuts on her wrists and thighs.

Three of Walsh's other children were unharmed. Her husband was reportedly out of state when the killing occurred. But what Walsh allegedly told police — and what she had been doing in the hours before Barrett's death — makes the case particularly chilling.

Then there is the Lindsay Clancy connection. According to prosecutors, witnesses said Walsh had recently become intensely interested in Clancy's nationally watched murder trial in Massachusetts.

Walsh was reportedly participating in a group text with friends about the Clancy case at approximately 12:30 PM Tuesday. Her son was discovered roughly three and a half hours later.

At that very moment, jurors hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts were deliberating over whether Clancy should be held criminally responsible for strangling her three children.

That trial ended Friday in a mistrial after seven days of deliberations. Judge William Sullivan declared the jury deadlocked after an extraordinary dispute involving what Clancy's defense described as a single holdout juror.

Clancy does not dispute killing her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — in their Duxbury home in January 2023. Instead, the trial centered on her state of mind.

Her attorneys argued that Clancy was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and was therefore not criminally responsible for the killings. Prosecutors argued that although Clancy suffered from mental-health problems, the evidence showed she deliberately planned the murders and understood what she was doing.

That distinction proved impossible for the jury to resolve unanimously. The defense has claimed the jury was split 11-1, although that characterization comes from Clancy's attorney rather than an official jury poll. Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will retry her.

Now another mother accused of killing her own child while apparently experiencing delusional beliefs has surfaced at almost the exact moment the Clancy trial reached its dramatic conclusion.

Does that make Walsh a “copycat”? Not necessarily — but the parallels are too strong to lightly dismiss.

This wasn't someone who happened to have seen Clancy's name on television weeks earlier. Prosecutors say Walsh had become highly interested in the trial and was actively discussing it approximately three and a half hours before her own child was discovered dead.

Investigators now have Walsh's cellphone, which was recovered near the bathtub, and a forensic examination remains underway. That could become extremely important in determining what she was reading, searching for and saying in the hours and days before Barrett's death.

There is another disturbing aspect of the timing. The Clancy trial became a national referendum of sorts on postpartum mental illness, with the defense arguing that Clancy's psychosis meant she could not legally be held responsible for killing her children. The case generated enormous media coverage and a substantial contingent of vocal supporters who viewed Clancy primarily as a severely mentally ill mother failed by the medical system.

On Friday, the criminal case ended without a verdict. It is not being disputed whether or not she killed her three children, but whether or not she should be held accountable for it.

After the mistrial, the message will only be further driven home that people should not be held accountable for killing people if they are not in their right minds.

In a nation where mental illness has surged, particularly among liberal white women, this is a recipe for disaster.

This isn't a cheapshot at those women, either. A 2020 Pew survey found that 56 percent of White liberal women ages 18–29 said a doctor or other healthcare provider had ever told them they had a mental health condition — roughly double the rate among white conservative and moderate women the same age.

Mental illness is a serious issue. And the way America has treated it for decades should be raising some serious questions. 

Instead of getting people to help themselves, many shrinks have infantilized patients by telling them they are victims. The mainstream culture has repeated this toxic narrative by claiming people of certain identity groups are inherently victims.

Now, three children are dead. Not just slain by their mother, but by this victim mentality.

It is time to stop sympathizing with imaginary victims based on their gender, their skin color, or their supposed states of mind. We should sympathize with actual victims who are harmed by people's actions.

That is how our justice system has gotten so far off-track — and why there may be more cases like Lindsay Clancy's to come.

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