In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children in her basement and then tried to kill herself. On August 20 this year, several hundred women dressed in pink lined the street outside Plymouth Superior Court, where she was being tried for murder. Some called out “I love you,” as her lawyer went past. One of them shouted, “Team Lindsay.”

Many mothers have frightening thoughts; very few become killers like Clancy

Many mothers have frightening thoughts; very few become killers like Clancy

The gathering had been organized by Renee Kimball, who had never met Clancy and had driven down from Maine. She had been following the trial via a livestream. She told Court TV it was neither a protest nor a rally, and that the point was “to show Lindsay support; to show her peace, to show her calm.” When a radio reporter asked why she had come, Kimball said: “I think that every one of us women believe that could be any one of us, any one of us who have dealt with mental health: anxiety, depression, postpartum,” Kimball said. “I think we just know that any one of us could be sitting in her chair.”

Kimball knew about anxiety, depression and motherhood, but she did not know what was happening in Clancy’s mind in her basement when she killed her children. Yet the statement, “I recognize that feeling,” has somehow become, “she could be me.” Personal experience is being used as evidence about the mind of a complete stranger. The comparison works in reverse too. To make Clancy representative of ordinary women is to make ordinary women........

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