The grieving father told ’60 Minutes’ he apologized to his 8-month-old son, who died in his arms four days later
Patrick Clancy begged for just one of his children to survive, held baby Callan as he died in his arms and revealed why he forgave Lindsay after she killed their three children.
Speaking with correspondent Ross Douthat on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the grieving father shared new details about his children’s final moments, what Lindsay told him about the killings and the online attacks he says are hurting their legacy.
The interview aired after Lindsay’s triple-murder trial ended in a mistrial. Her attorneys argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible, while prosecutors maintained she knew what she was doing.
From his desperate plea at the hospital to the online claims that followed the mistrial, Patrick described how the tᩚraɢedy has shaped every part of his life.
Patrick Clancy on the stand at Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial on July 29, 2026.
‘Just give me one’
Patrick said he clung to hope that Callan might survive after his siblings, 5-year-old Cora and 3-year-old Dawson, were found ᴅᴇᴀᴅ inside the family’s Duxbury, Mᴀssachusetts, home.
Doctors had restored the baby’s heartbeat, and Patrick told Douthat he began imagining the life he could still give his youngest child.
“I remember that night, I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live,” Patrick said.
“And I remember just thinking, ‘Just give me one. Just give me one kid,’” he continued. “And I would raise him as best I could, and I would give him the best life I possibly could. And I’d tell him about his brother and sister.”
Patrick said that hope faded when he reached Boston Children’s Hospital and saw the look on a doctor’s face.
Callan’s heart continued beating for four days. Patrick became emotional as he recalled apologizing to his son and spending his final moments beside him.
Callan, left, Dawson and Cora Clancy. The three children were killed at their Duxbury, Mᴀssachusetts, home in January 2023.
“I said, ‘I’m so sorry,’” he told Douthat, his voice breaking. “And I got to hold him. I got to lay down next to him. And he died in my arms.”
While Callan remained in the hospital, Patrick said he held his son’s hand and used his free hand to write about all three children. He told Douthat he feared their memories might fade if he did not put them into words.
Lindsay never asked for forgiveness
The tributes Patrick wrote also included words of forgiveness for Lindsay. He said she has never asked him to forgive her, but he chose to give that forgiveness anyway.
Lindsay Clancy looks on as jurors enter the courtroom during Clancy’s murder trial at the Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth, Mᴀssachusetts, on Sept. 4, 2026.
“I saw headlines that said, you know, ‘𝘬ill mom’ and ‘baby murderer,’ ‘monster,’ and none of them were accurate,” Patrick said during the interview. “I believe that it was her mєntal illness that caused that.”
Patrick said he also feared anger would consume him if he could not forgive her.
“I felt that if I didn’t get there, I would be eaten up inside,” he said.
When Patrick asked Lindsay whether she remembered killing their children, he said she described the memory as dreamlike.
Defendant Lindsay Clancy wipes away tears as she listens to testimony during her murder trial in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mᴀss., on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026.
“She said it was like a dream, and she remembered it much in the way you would remember a dream after waking up,” he told Douthat.
Patrick said he did the best he could as Lindsay’s condition worsened but must live with what happened.
“I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time, and I live with the outcome,” he said. “I live with it every day.”
Grief left him unsure he would survive
Patrick told Douthat his grief became so overwhelming that he questioned whether he would live to see another birthday.
“There was a time where I didn’t think I would live to see my 35th birthday, and I was completely fine with it,” he said.
Patrick later left Duxbury for New York City, where he could grieve without being recognized. Five weeks after the move, on what would have been Callan’s first birthday, he went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, lit a candle and told his son, “I love you, buddy.”
“And I walk out on Fifth Avenue and I start crying my eyes out, and nobody cared,” Patrick recalled.
For Patrick, being able to cry without drawing attention was exactly what he needed.
“I thought, this is where I need to be,” he said. “I can grieve.”
His Manhattan apartment remains filled with reminders of the children, including a baby sloth Cora carried everywhere and a pH๏τograph of Callan wearing an oversized bow tie, “60 Minutes” showed.
Patrick said they also return to him in vivid dreams. In one, Cora walked into the kitchen of the family’s former home and hugged him.
“I just looked at her and it was like I basically just said, ‘Where have you been?’” he recalled. “Those dreams are so real.”
‘Trial by TikTok’ fueled painful attacks
The mistrial unleashed what Douthat described as a “trial by TikTok,” with online sleuths and influencers spreading baseless theories portraying Patrick as uncaring, unfaithful and even responsible for the children’s deaths.
“It’s deeply harmful to the legacy of my children,” Patrick said. “It is a huge distraction from what really matters here, which is perinatal mєntal health, and it’s done real harm to real people.”
Lindsay Clancy listens to testimony from Dr. Gregory Saathoff during her murder trial in Plymouth Superior Court on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026, in Plymouth, Mᴀss.
He said the repeated accusations have made it painful to be in public and warned that people may start believing false claims if they see them often enough.
“After seeing lie after lie after lie, they start to believe it,” Patrick said. “And that’s what we’re left with.”
Patrick said he sought answers from Postpartum Support International, psychiatrists and other experts. Those conversations helped him begin processing what happened.
A new marriage and keeping his children’s memory alive
Patrick’s wife, Dr. Rachel Danis, joined him for the “60 Minutes” interview and recalled first learning about his children after noticing their pH๏τograph on his phone during a coffee outing.
“I just asked, ‘Who are those cuties?’” Danis told Douthat. “And Pat had said, ‘Those are my kids.’”
Patrick Clancy and Rachel Danis hold hands as they walk through East Midtown in New York City, NY, Wedensday, September 2, 2026. Clancy’s ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy is currently on trial for the murder of their three children in 2023.
When she asked whether they lived in Mᴀssachusetts, Patrick told her they had died.
Patrick and Danis met through a New York running club in January 2024. Their relationship deepened as they continued running together, and they married in New York City this April.
The couple also discussed starting a family.
Asked what he would tell a future child about Cora, Dawson and Callan, Patrick said all of his children would remain part of the same family.
“You have different relationships with your kids, but they’re all your kids,” he said. “And I can’t wait to tell them about their brothers and sister.”
Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Sept. 4 after jurors split 11-1, with 11 favoring a finding that Lindsay was not criminally responsible and one holding out for a conviction. Prosecutors have not announced whether they will try her again.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
