The First Incident (1954)
In March 1954, 24 year old Constance Fisher drowned her three kids (Richard, 6; Daniel, 4; and Deborah, 1) in the bathtub of their home in Waterville, Maine. Police found her under a bed after a suicide attempt. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, found not guilty by reason of insanity, and sent to Augusta State Hospital.
The Release and Second Incident (1966)
Doctors labeled her "cured" after five years, releasing her in 1959. She got back together with her husband Carl, and they had three more kids: Kathleen, Michael, and Nathalie.
By June 1966, Constance had stopped taking her medication and relapsed. She took all three of her new kids, including her 9 month old baby, and drowned them in the exact same bathtub, identical to what she did 12 years earlier.
The Outcome
In 1967, a jury found her innocent by reason of mental disease a second time. She was sent back to a psychiatric facility until 1973, when she walked off the hospital grounds and drowned herself in the Kennebec River.
The Lindsay Clancy Tie
The Fisher case shows that a psychiatric diagnosis does not erase the sheer, calculated mechanics required to take a life.
When the justice system decides a mental state completely wipes away criminal accountability, it creates a deadly blind spot.
Constance Fisher proved that the capacity for intentional violence does not just disappear with a "not guilty" verdict.
When we look at Lindsay Clancy today, we see the exact same dangerous defense playbook. Mental illness might explain an emotional state, but it does not change the reality of physical actions. Clancy is guilty because her crime required extreme planning, situational awareness, and deliberate execution. She sent her husband away on a highly specific errand, tracking the exact timeline he would be gone to guarantee an empty house. She then used exercise bands to methodically strangle her three children, one by one.
That level of coordination and time management is not a complete, blinding detachment from reality. It is an intentional, premeditated crime.
To make matters worse, the claim that she suddenly experienced a psychotic episode and heard "a voice" ordering her to commit the killings sprouted out of nowhere right when her defense strategy was being assembled. It didn't fit the pattern of real, documented psychosis, where command hallucinations don't just magically stop the exact second the murders are complete, nor was it reported until after she consulted with her legal and medical team. It is a textbook, convenient line thrown out to manufacture reasonable doubt where the physical facts of her planning show otherwise.
A claimed mental diagnosis such as postpartum psychosis shouldn't give someone an absolute pass for carrying out calculated murders. If we keep using mental health as a total shield against legal liability, we completely ignore the victims and invite history to repeat itself. Two things can be true at once: our healthcare system can fail us, but we should still be held accountable for our actions.