THE CROWD WORE PINK FOR THE MOTHER. THEN BARRETT DIED IN ILLINOIS. WHO WEARS THE CHILDREN’S NAMES?

September 05, 2026•13 min read

SHE WAS FOLLOWING A CHILD-MURDER TRIAL. HOURS LATER, HER SON WAS DEAD.

As an Illinois mother prepares for a possible psychosis defense, four dead children force a question America has been reluctant to confront: When compassion gathers around the accused, who stands for the victims?

By Staff Writer | September 5, 2026

At approximately 12:30 Tuesday afternoon, Corie A. Walsh was reportedly participating in a group text about one of the most emotionally charged murder trials in America.

The defendant was Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who admitted using exercise bands to strangle her three young children inside their family home.

Outside the courthouse, hundreds of women had gathered in pink to support her. Online, strangers defended her. A fundraiser benefiting her parents, who helped finance her defense, was approaching $1 million.

A jury was still deciding whether mental illness made Clancy legally responsible for what she had done.

Approximately three hours after Walsh reportedly discussed that case, a 17-year-old neighbor entered the basement of Walsh’s Frankfort, Illinois, home.

What she found would give America another dead child, another mother accused of murder, and another attorney preparing to say that psychosis, not criminal intent, explained the unthinkable.

Two-year-old Barrett Walsh was hanging from a basement rafter.

His feet were reportedly off the floor. A ligature was around his neck. The teenager lowered him, called 911 and began CPR.

Court documents say Barrett was cold and had no pulse.

His family called him Bear.

Upstairs, police reportedly found his mother fully dressed in a bathtub surrounded by bloody water. Authorities said her injuries appeared to be self-inflicted and were not life-threatening.

According to prosecutors, Walsh later admitted killing Barrett and said she believed her two-year-old son was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ.” They say her account was consistent with evidence discovered inside the home.

Walsh, 40, has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in her son’s death. She is presumed innocent unless the state proves the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Her attorney has already supplied the words likely to define the battle ahead.

“Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened.”
Andrea Lyon, attorney for Corie Walsh

The statement had barely been released before the comparison became unavoidable.

Another mother.

Another basement.

Another child allegedly attacked by the person he depended upon for protection.

Another apparent attempt at self-destruction after a child was beyond saving.

And, almost certainly, another courtroom in which the accused mother’s suffering threatens to become more visible than the child she is accused of killing.

The parallels are disturbing, but they are not proof that the Clancy case caused Barrett’s death. Prosecutors have made no such allegation. Following a trial does not establish motive.

But this was more than an Illinois mother who happened to know about a national story.

Prosecutors say witnesses described Walsh as “very invested” in the Clancy trial. They say she was actively discussing it with friends only hours before Barrett was found. At that exact point, Massachusetts jurors were considering whether Clancy’s claimed postpartum psychosis made her legally responsible for killing Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy.

What was Walsh saying in those messages? Which parts of the case held her attention? Was she identifying with a mother in psychiatric crisis, debating the evidence or absorbing a narrative in which the accused had become the object of extraordinary sympathy?

Did the case influence her thinking before Barrett’s death? Did it give her language through which to understand her own condition? Or did it provide a ready-made framework afterward for explaining an act prosecutors say was murder?

The answers may be inside her phone.

For now, the connection is evidence to investigate, not a conclusion to announce. But it is also why this story cannot be confined to one Illinois home.

On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy was home in Duxbury with five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan. Prosecutors said she sent her husband, Patrick, to pick up medication and takeout food.

While he was gone, Clancy took the children to the basement.

Using exercise bands, she strangled all three.

Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead that night. Callan was flown to Boston Children’s Hospital. He survived for several days before dying from complications of asphyxia.

Clancy then cut herself and jumped from a second-floor window. She survived but was left paralyzed.

She has never disputed that she caused the deaths. The question at trial was whether she was criminally responsible.

The defense presented Clancy as a desperately ill mother abandoned by a medical system she repeatedly asked to help her. Her attorneys argued that postpartum psychosis, compounded by numerous psychiatric medications, destroyed her ability to understand reality and appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions. Defense experts described hallucinations, delusions and the sensation that an outside force controlled her body.

The prosecution did not argue that Clancy had never struggled mentally. It argued that mental illness and legal insanity are not the same thing.

Prosecutors pointed to what they characterized as purposeful behavior: creating an opportunity to be alone with the children, directing her husband on errands, and carrying out three separate killings while he was away. A prosecution expert described her conduct as methodical and organized and testified that she retained the capacity required for criminal responsibility.

The competing accounts left jurors with a question medicine alone could not answer. Clancy could have been severely ill. She also could have known that killing her children was wrong. Both could be true.

After more than a month of testimony, approximately 80 witnesses, hundreds of exhibits and more than 38 hours of deliberation, the jury could not agree. A mistrial was declared September 4. Clancy remains charged, and prosecutors have not announced whether they will try her again.

Walsh’s attorney appears to be pointing toward similar terrain, but Illinois law creates a crucial difference.

In Massachusetts, once lack of criminal responsibility was properly raised, prosecutors carried the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy remained criminally responsible.

Illinois reverses that burden. Walsh would have to prove by clear and convincing evidence that, because of mental disease or defect, she lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of her conduct. Illinois also permits a verdict of guilty but mentally ill when illness impaired a defendant’s judgment without eliminating criminal responsibility.

Lyon’s statement is the position of an attorney at the beginning of a case. It is not a diagnosis accepted by a court. It does not establish insanity or answer whether Walsh allegedly planned the act, understood what she was doing or recognized that it was wrong.

The reported references to the “devil” and “anti-Christ” could become evidence of a delusion. Prosecutors may argue other conduct shows intent or awareness. Medical records, digital searches, group messages, witnesses and expert examinations will determine how much weight those words deserve.

A jury must decide that question from evidence.

A movement should not decide it first.

That is where the Clancy case became something beyond medicine and law: a cultural test of whom the public chooses to see as the victim.

On August 20, hundreds of women, many dressed in pink, lined the street outside Plymouth Superior Court. The organizer said the gathering was intended to bring Clancy peace and demonstrate that women stood behind her.

Supporters called out, “Team Lindsay.”

They told her, “You’re not alone. We’re with you.”

Clancy received boxes of letters from around the world. The fundraiser for her parents surged toward seven figures. Social media turned the trial into a cause, with creators dissecting testimony, condemning prosecutors and identifying personally with a woman who admitted killing her three children.

The cause had a color. It had slogans. It had a team.

What it did not appear to have, with the same force, was a visible place for Cora, Dawson and Callan.

“We all know her name. Very few people know the names of her children.”
Bethany Mandel, mother of six and columnist

Mandel noted what was missing outside the courthouse. Demonstrators carried messages supporting Clancy, but few appeared to carry the children’s faces or names. Many spoke passionately about Clancy and maternal mental health. The three children whose deaths created the trial were rarely central.

Jonathan Hatami, a veteran child-abuse prosecutor, saw the same imbalance.

“This shouldn’t be about the defendant even though it’s become that. It really should be about the victims and what the defendant did to those victims.”
Jonathan Hatami, veteran child-abuse prosecutor

Then he reduced the argument to four words.

“These children died.”
Jonathan Hatami

After the mistrial, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz stood before reporters and spoke about seeking justice for Cora, Dawson and Callan.

Some Clancy supporters interrupted him.

They shouted “Shame.” They yelled “Vote him out.” They accused him of corruption. One demanded to know why authorities cared only after the children were dead and why they did not care about the mother.

That moment exposed the imbalance more clearly than any closing argument could.

The mother had a crowd.

The children had a prosecutor trying to finish a sentence.

There is nothing wrong with demanding better maternal mental-health care. There is something necessary about it.

Postpartum psychosis is real, rare and potentially catastrophic. Researchers estimate it affects approximately one or two women out of every 1,000 births. It can produce hallucinations, delusions, mania, confusion and a sudden break from reality. It requires emergency attention, and early treatment can save lives.

Most women who experience it do not harm their children.

That matters because these cases must not become an excuse to portray mothers generally, or mothers with mental illness, as threats. Millions nurture and protect their children every day. Women experiencing postpartum illness are far more likely to need help than suspicion.

But acknowledging those truths does not require moving the children to the edge of the story.

Compassion and accountability are not opposites.

A medical system may have failed Clancy, and Cora, Dawson and Callan may still be the principal victims.

A mother may be profoundly ill, and the state may still test whether she knew killing her children was wrong.

Treatment may be necessary, and responsibility may still exist.

The problem begins when empathy hardens into a predetermined verdict: when questioning a defense is treated as hostility toward mentally ill mothers, and prosecutors are attacked merely for representing dead children.

Social media made that easier. The Clancy trial unfolded simultaneously in court and across thousands of phones. By late August, more than 164,000 TikTok videos reportedly had appeared under a Clancy-related hashtag. Users selected fragments of testimony, formed allegiances and built communities around conclusions reached before jurors finished hearing the case.

The algorithm found a protagonist. It chose the person who could still be seen, defended and spoken for.

The children could no longer tell anyone who they were.

Cora could not explain what she loved or what she wanted to become.

Dawson could not tell the world how it felt to be three years old and dependent upon the adults around him.

Callan never learned to speak at all.

Now Barrett cannot ask why compassion seems to arrive in greater numbers for the adult who survived.

Are children no longer safe in the care of their mothers?

The evidence does not justify that conclusion. These are rare and extraordinary cases, not a fair description of motherhood.

But a narrower question cannot be avoided.

When a mother kills her children, does society respond differently than it would if the killer were their father?

Would hundreds line a courthouse street in coordinated colors for a father who admitted wrapping exercise bands around the necks of three children? Would strangers tell him they could have been sitting in his chair? Would boxes of letters arrive? Would nearly $1 million be raised while supporters interrupted a prosecutor for saying the children deserved justice?

Perhaps severe mental illness would deserve the same examination regardless of sex. It should. But it is difficult to imagine the same public embrace.

That is not an argument for less compassion toward women. It is an argument for moral consistency and enough compassion to include the children.

Are children now “open season”?

Not literally. The phrase is too sweeping for a country in which nearly every parent protects and loves his or her children.

But if it asks whether children can be killed where they should be safest and then become secondary in the public telling, the answer is no longer comfortable.

Children cannot organize rallies.

They cannot start fundraisers, hire publicists or fill social media with their version. They cannot describe their fear, correct a narrative or remind the world that they were more than evidence exhibits.

They depend on adults for everything: life, safety, memory, and justice.

That dependence does not end when they die.

The Walsh case is only beginning. The public does not know her medical history, what was in the messages or what investigators will recover from her phone. No expert has publicly established her condition when Barrett died. Walsh is entitled to a defense and a fair trial.

The country also is entitled to ask how a mother who allegedly believed her toddler was the “anti-Christ” reached that basement without anyone recognizing the danger.

If Walsh was psychotic, when did it begin? Who noticed? Did she seek help? Were warnings missed? Was Barrett’s death preventable?

And because prosecutors placed the Clancy trial inside their timeline, investigators must determine whether Walsh’s attention to it was incidental, symptomatic or influential.

While the adults construct arguments, one fact must remain fixed at the center.

Barrett Walsh was two years old.

He should have been worrying about toys, snacks, bedtime, and whether someone would read the same story again. He should not have needed the justice system to determine why the person entrusted with his life allegedly ended it.

The adults will have attorneys.

Experts will study medical records. Prosecutors will examine phones and messages. Television panels will debate psychosis, responsibility and punishment. Strangers will choose sides.

Barrett will have none of those things.

He had a 17-year-old neighbor who entered a basement, lowered his body and tried to make him breathe again.

That is where this story belongs, not with the mother in the bathtub, the attorney at a microphone, or the crowd dressed in pink.

It belongs with a two-year-old boy on a basement floor and a teenager refusing to give up on him.

His name was Barrett Walsh.

His family called him Bear.

Before America builds another movement around the accused, it should remember the child she is accused of leaving behind.

And the three who came before him.

Cora.

Dawson.

Callan.

Barrett.