By An Illinois mother charged with killing her 2-year-old son had become consumed by the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy and reportedly described herself as “inspired” by the Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children, prosecutors said.
Corie Walsh, 40, of Frankfort, faces three counts of first-degree murder after her son was found hanging in the basement of the family’s suburban Chicago home September 1, according to The Daily Caller. A neighbor discovered the child and was performing CPR when police arrived, but the boy was pronounced dead at a hospital. A preliminary autopsy identified the cause of death as asphyxia caused by ligature compression of the neck.
Officers found Walsh fully clothed in a bathtub filled with bloody water. She had cuts to her wrists and thighs and was hospitalized with injuries described as non-life-threatening. Her husband was out of town with the couple’s three other children, who were unharmed.
Prosecutors said Walsh later told investigators that she killed her son because she believed he was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ.” Her attorney said Walsh was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time of the killing.
The circumstances immediately drew comparisons to Clancy, whose children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — were found strangled with exercise bands in the basement of their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home. Clancy also attempted suicide after the killings, cutting herself with a knife and jumping from a second-story window after arranging for her husband to leave the house.
Clancy’s attorneys argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and therefore could not be held criminally responsible. Prosecutors maintained that Clancy understood what she was doing, waited until she was alone with the children and killed all three during an approximately 18-minute period.
Walsh had become “very interested” in the nationally watched trial and was discussing it in a group text until approximately 12:30 p.m. on the day her son died, prosecutors said. The child was discovered less than four hours later. Walsh reportedly said she was “inspired” by the Clancy case, although authorities have not publicly established that the trial directly caused her alleged actions.
The allegations cast a disturbing new light on the public campaign that has formed around Clancy. Hundreds of demonstrators, most of them women and many dressed in pink, gathered outside the courthouse to support her. Some carried signs reading “Peace for Lindsay” and “She Needed Help,” while an organizer said women believed “it could be any one of us.” Supporters cheered Clancy’s attorney and called him a “fighter for women’s rights.” After the mistrial, others interrupted the district attorney’s press conference with chants of “shame,” “corrupt” and “vote him out.”
Recognizing postpartum psychosis and demanding better mental-health treatment are legitimate causes. More unsettling is the transformation of Clancy herself into a symbol of female solidarity while the three children she admittedly killed risk becoming secondary characters in their own murder case.
That response is particularly jarring in Massachusetts, which has steadily expanded one of the country’s most permissive abortion laws. State law permits abortions after 24 weeks when a physician determines that the procedure is necessary to preserve the mother’s life or physical or mental health, or because of certain grave or lethal fetal diagnoses. The law establishes no separate gestational cutoff before birth when one of those exceptions applies — the reason critics describe Massachusetts as permitting abortion up until birth. The Legislature broadened those provisions again in 2026, effectively making abortion legal up until birth.
Abortion law and the murder of children who have already been born are legally distinct. But the cultural connection is difficult to ignore: Massachusetts increasingly treats the protection owed to a child as dependent upon the mother’s circumstances, then witnesses hundreds of women rally around a mother who killed three children rather than centering the lives that were taken. The allegation that another mother closely following the case subsequently killed her own toddler makes that inversion of sympathy even more disturbing.
A judge declared a mistrial Friday after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict following seven days of deliberations. One juror reportedly remained unconvinced that the killer should go free, preventing the panel from returning a verdict. Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will try Clancy again.
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