Two Mothers, Two Verdicts, Same Internet
By Gabriella Rodriguez
How much influence can “armchair detectives” have on journalistic reporting? In recent cases, there has been an increasing trend of people —“coming in the form of true crime fans”— getting more involved in legal cases. But who are these people? Individuals commonly known as “armchair detectives” are those who try to assist law enforcement from their homes via the internet. They not only analyze released evidence but also conduct their own “investigations” to find additional information that may be publicly available online. Although these individuals have been helpful in the past, there has been a noticeable shift from objective reporting to sensationalism, leading to issues like neglecting evidence to push their conspiracy, harassment, discrimination, and defamation. Most notably, the Lindsay Clancy case that took place in July of 2026 gained heavy amounts of traction on social media, but not for the reason you might think.
Lindsay Clancy, a mother of three, was arrested after she was discovered to be responsible for the strangulation of her children and her own suicide attempt. She was eventually tried in court for three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of her children: Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months). During the trial, her defense team argued she was ‘not guilty by a lack of criminal responsibility,’ since she was experiencing postpartum psychosis (PPP) at the time of the murders. Postpartum psychosis is a very serious condition that affects “between one and two women per 1,000 births, and can cause hallucinations and paranoid delusions.”
When the case was first introduced to the public, the main topic of the discourse was whether she was in the right state of mind at the time of the murders, considering her past with mental health issues, and the combination of pills she had been taking. Eventually, these debates expanded to questioning if she even killed her children or if her now ex-husband, Patrick, was responsible. The problem was that many of those same “armchair detectives” continued to cherry-pick information to fuel their conspiracies, creating false narratives that painted Patrick in a defaming light. Although Postpartum Psychosis (PPP) is known to unfortunately “lead to incidents of maternal suicide and infanticide,” many of those same people continue to come up with new twists in the story. The fact that her disorder was treatable was “not salacious or a ‘neat’ enough story for conspiracy theorists or TikTokers looking for clicks.”
Even following the case, which resulted in a mistrial, many “armchair detectives” had taken to the internet to find the holdout juror who believed Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible. Michael P. Desronvil was publicly doxxed and now is facing public scrutiny for causing the mistrial and revealing his lengthy criminal history. Some have even taken to discriminating him due to his race, as “he became a racialized symbol upon whom people could direct anger, suspicion, and speculation.” This has led to the case being redirected from seeking justice for the three children who lost their lives on January 24, 2023, and instead becoming about re-evaluating a systemic issue that wasn’t able to diagnose a mother with postpartum psychosis until it was too late—later turning the incident into a game of Clue where everyone tries to point-blame.
Similarly, another case took place in Massachusetts in February 2018, before the Lindsay Clancy case. Latarsha Sanders was also a mother who struggled with mental health concerns (paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis). On February 5, 2018, ambulatory services were called to the Sanders residence to assist her during a psychotic episode but ended up discovering her two sons had been stabbed: Edson (8) and La’Son (5). Even though both cases are comparable, Latarsha Sanders’ case didn’t get the same traction or responses. “Armchair detectives” were sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy, but the attention Sanders gained was painting her as an ‘evil’ mother who only sought fame.
The case is now resurfacing following the mistrial in the Clancy case, with Sanders being granted a new trial where her mental health history is to be heard. Why is Latarsha Sanders only now getting a fair trial? Could it be because a double standard was made apparent in the rulings? Sanders was “convicted of two counts of first-degree murder on Dec. 27, 2022” and is from Brockton, Massachusetts, which consists of a “just over 34 percent black” population and has a “poverty rate [of] 13.5 percent.” Clancy's case, however, ended in a mistrial, and she lived in Duxbury, which has a predominantly white population “with a Black population under 1 percent and a median household income of $177,000, which is reportedly “more than double that of Brockton.”
Could social factors like race, wealth, or even living arrangements have played a role in the inconsistent reporting on each case? Overall, the motivations of “armchair detectives” have become skewed as seen in cases like Lindsay Clancy and Latarsha Sanders. Both cases highlight how sensationalism has led to instances of harassment, discrimination, cherry-picking, defamation, and the creation of conspiracy theories. It begs the question: if the legal system continues to become more accessible and influenced by those on social media, will they be allowed to provide an “impartial jury of [their] peers?”
Gabriella Rodriguez is a freshman seeking to major in Biology for Allied Health Professions with a minor in Psychology. She joined the paper to continue her interest in writing while preparing to hopefully enter medical school. In her free time, she likes to casually visit Barnes & Nobles, see a Broadway show, or go straight home to look for a new reality tv show.
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