This is Dawson Clancy. He was only 3 years old.
Dawson loved firefighters and trucks. Patrick described him as energetic, funny, and a little boy who loved to push buttons. On the morning of January 24, 2023, Dawson did something big in his tiny world: he dressed himself completely by himself for the first time. Patrick was so proud that he took a picture and sent it to Lindsay.
That same night, Dawson was dead.
Lindsay Clancy took him into the basement and strangled him with an exercise resistance band. Patrick later found Dawson on the floor of his basement office and testified, “I knew he was gone.”
And when we talk about Lindsay’s relationship with Dawson, I think the things she herself wrote and said matter.
When Dawson was 19 months old, Lindsay wrote in a parenting group that he was “the most difficult human I have ever encountered” and said that nearly everything with him felt like a battle. Investigators testified, however, that despite examining the relationship closely, they found no evidence that she had previously abused Dawson.
Later, after Callan was born, Lindsay wrote that she “sort of resent[ed]” her older children because they prevented her from treating Callan like her first baby. She specifically wrote about feeling depressed when Cora and Dawson came home from school and said she wanted to feel love and connection with all of her children.
Those facts don’t tell us everything that was inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind. They shouldn’t be twisted into things the evidence doesn’t prove.
But Dawson deserves to have his story told too.
He wasn’t a diagnosis.
He wasn’t an argument about postpartum mental illness.
He wasn’t an inconvenience or a “difficult human.”
He was a three-year-old little boy who loved firefighters and trucks.
And in this picture, he got to be one. ❤️🚒
Dawson Clancy deserved to grow up. 💙
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
— Romans 6:17-18
I just want you to know that you are loved. You matter more than you know. Your thoughts, feelings, and spirit make the world a brighter place. Even on your darkest days, know that you are not alone.
And to my assigned FBI agent..
Someone loves you.
Not me, but someone..
On this day, exactly one year ago…
Decarlos Brown Jr, a man who had been arrested 14 TIMES, brutally m*rdered Iryna Zarutska on the Light Rail in Charlotte NC.
Her k*ller has still not been held accountable.