Patrick Clancy is speaking out for the first time about a conversation he had with ex-wife Lindsay Clancy after the deaths of their three children, and why he ultimately chose to forgive her.
In a new 60 Minutes interview, Patrick Clancy shared details of a conversation he had with Lindsay Clancy following the deaths of their children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old, back in 2023.
“I asked her if she remembered it,” Patrick told correspondent Ross Douthat.
“She said it was like a dream and she remembered much in the way you would remember a dream after waking up.”
He was also asked the tough question of whether he thought he’d failed his children.
“I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time and I live with the outcome. I live with it every day,” he said.
The day in 2023 that changed everything
Patrick also described the day when he returned home from running errands and finding Lindsay in the backyard and his children in the basement. Cora and Dawson had already died. Callan was rushed to the hospital by helicopter.
“I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live,” he said.
“I remember just thinking, ‘Just give me one. Just give me one kid, and I would raise him as best I could, and I would give him the best life I possibly could. I’d tell him about his brother and sister.’ And I was holding out hope for that.”
Unfortunately Callan didn’t make it. He died four days later.
“I got to hold him. I got to lay down next to him. And he died in my arms.”
Forgiveness Lindsay never asked for
When Douthat asked whether Lindsay had ever asked him to forgive her, Patrick said that she hadn’t, but he had forgiven her anyway.
“When it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn’t get there, I would be eaten up inside forever,” he said.
Beyond the grief and trauma itself, Patrick has also had to deal with baseless online claims suggesting he was somehow involved in his children’s deaths.
“Over the past months, Patrick Clancy and his family have been subjected to a relentless, escalating and destructive defamation campaign,” his attorney, Howard Cooper said, describing it as being driven by “minor celebrities, so-called influencers and outright conspiracy theorists” chasing attention and profit off “outright falsehoods.”
He added that the ongoing pile-on has led to “real life threats to his reputation, livelihood, and life.”
Patrick addressed it himself in the interview.
“It’s painful to see. And it makes it difficult to be in public and it’s possible that some of those people, after seeing lie after lie after lie, they start to believe it, and that’s what we’re left with.”
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