BOSTON — Patrick Clancy believes that there are “compassionate” ways to handle cases where postpartum psychosis and mental health issues lead to violence.

“I think we can find a compassionate way to deal with these tragedies, and that doesn’t mean no accountability,” Clancy said in a newly-released, extended version of his interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes. “It just means that we recognize the suffering and the stigma, and we try to find a way to prevent this from happening in the future.”

“That’s always how I’ve looked at it,” he added.

Clancy’s ex-wife Lindsay Clancy has been charged in the January 2023 killing of their children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months.

During her weeks-long trial, which ended in a hung jury earlier this month, Clancy’s defense argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled the children and can’t be held criminally responsible.

In the extended interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat, Patrick Clancy spoke more about her mental health decline in the lead up to the killings and his own struggles in the aftermath.

Clancy told Douthat that he’s spoken to victims of postpartum psychosis — mothers who experienced it and fathers who lost children to it.

“It doesn’t discriminate, it can happen to anyone,” Clancy said. “It’s best detected early.”

He also spoke more about his children, describing Cora as a shy and cautious girl who was simultaneously good at making friends. Obsessed with princesses, Cora once convinced her teachers her name was Sophia, like the Disney character Sophia the First, he said.

Dawson was almost the opposite of his sister but also Cora’s best friend. Clancy said that the three-year-old was precocious, counting up to 20 before his second birthday, one day in the car, then surprising his father again by counting up to 10 in Spanish.

Callan was an easy going baby, but Clancy said he had to mourn him in a different way than his older siblings, telling Douthat, “I didn’t really get to know him as well as my other kids.”

For part of the interview, Douthat and Clancy sat in the park dedicated to the children in Duxbury.

“My kids are buried here, and I still have family here, but it’s hard,” Clancy said. “It’s difficult coming back to this town, even though I loved it so much.”

Clancy had told Douthat that after the killings, he felt suicidal, and in the extended version of their conversation, he credited Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, called EMDR, for being a major help to his mental health.

“They put you right back in that place that you tried to avoid for years… and you face it head on,” Clancy said, explaining that after many sessions, “the horrible dreams, the waking up screaming, they mostly stopped.”

He also credited his wife Dr. Rachel Danis. The couple said they met in January 2024 and got married this past April.

At first, Danis said she was hesitant to date Clancy and didn’t immediately see their relationship as anything more than friendship.

“Everyone paused, understandably so,” Danis said when she told a few friends about the situation. “I think people were worried.”

But, after Danis saw how Clancy reacted when meeting her sister, who has Down Syndrome, she said she started to see there was something more.

“I think you can tell a lot about someone when they’re interacting with a person with special needs,” she said, describing Clancy meeting with her sister as warm and friendly.

From there, the relationship grew and it seemed like what they wanted in life was aligned.

“It was the first time Sundays felt like Saturdays,” she said.

Danis questioned how “the story has become so twisted,” saying that the couple hasn’t done anything wrong, despite the conspiracy theorists online.

When Douthat asked what the couple would tell someone who was fresh to their story, Clancy said, “We’re carrying forward what happened, we’re carrying my kids’ legacy forward together, I think that’s really important for both of us.”

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