Before Lindsay Clancy: 5 Tragic Cases Of Mothers Who Killed Their Children

By Courtney Hardwick

There are few crimes harder to comprehend than a mother killing her own child. The cases are devastating, complicated and, in some instances, raise difficult questions about mental illness when it collides with the challenges of motherhood and postpartum. 

The Lindsay Clancy case is the latest example of a mother whose actions have sparked difficult questions about mental illness, motherhood and criminal responsibility. Clancy was accused of killing her three young children in Massachusetts in 2023, after experiencing a serious decline in her mental health following the birth of her youngest child. Her defence argued that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible for the killings, while prosecutors maintained that she had deliberately planned them. After a highly publicized trial, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared earlier this month, leaving the case unresolved.

The Clancy trial inspired passionate debates about postpartum depression and the lack of support available for new mothers, and questions about postpartum mental illness play a major role in many cases of mothers accused of murdering their children. Here are five tragic cases of mothers who killed their children—and how their cases unfolded.

Andrea Yates

In June 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children, ages six months to seven, in the family bathtub. She had a documented history of severe postpartum psychiatric illness, including psychosis and suicide attempts. She was under the care of a psychiatrist at the time who advised her husband, Rusty, not to leave her alone with the children. He decided instead to start leaving her alone for short periods of time so she “wouldn’t become dependent on him and his mother for her maternal responsibilities”. Yates was alone for one hour between Rusty leaving for work and her mother in-law arriving when she drowned all five kids before calling the police herself.  

Yates used an insanity defence but it was rejected by the jury and she was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life. That conviction was later overturned because of a false testimony and she was retried in 2006, found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric hospital.

The Yates’ were devoutly Christian and vocally planned to have as many children as possible despite several psychiatrists urging them not to. Rusty Yates claimed he didn’t know the extent of his wife’s illness, but he also witnessed her struggles first-hand including several suicide attempts. The Yates case raised difficult questions about religion, the limitations of psychiatric care for mothers and the role severe mental illness played in one of the most shocking family tragedies in modern American history. Yates has been in a low-security mental hospital in Texas since 2007. She is entitled to annual mental status reviews to determine release eligibility, but she continues to decline these hearings, choosing to remain committed.  

Liliana Carrillo

Liliana Carilllo, a California mother of three, was struggling with postpartum depression, childhood trauma and the demands of motherhood when she drowned her three kids, aged 3 years to 5 months. From obsession over conspiracy theories and delusions about a local child sex trafficking ring, Carrillo was losing touch with reality when child protective services finally stepped in and awarded physical custody of the kids to their father. But they never made it to him. 

Carrillo admitted to the crime right away and in an interview with a local TV station only a few days later, she said that she wished her kids were still alive but said, “I prefer them not being tortured and abused on a regular basis for the rest of their life.” After assessment by three separate doctors, a judge found Carrillo not guilty by reason of insanity in 2024. The children’s father has since filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles city and country claiming police and social workers ignored multiple warning signs about Carillo’s mental state leading up to the murders. Today, she remains committed to a California state psychiatric facility under court supervision.

Sheryl Lynn Massip

In 1987, Sheryl Lynn Massip killed her six-week-old son by running him over with a car. She then disposed of his body and called the police to report that he’d been kidnapped. When her story started to fall apart, she later admitted to investigators that she had killed him because she heard voices telling her to put the baby “out of his misery”.

On trial, Massip’s defense was that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. A jury initially rejected her defence and convicted her of second-degree murder. But just five weeks later, in an unusual ruling, the trial judge set aside the verdict and found Massip not guilty by reason of insanity. Later, the appeals court said the judge had gone too far by entering the insanity finding himself, and the case became a complicated legal battle over who had the authority to determine her sanity.

Similar to the Clancy case, the question was not whether Massip killed her son, but if she knew what she was doing and if she should be held criminally responsible. Nearly 40 years later, many of the same questions continue to surface in the Lindsay Clancy case.

Heidi Anfinson

Heidi Anfinson’s infant son was only 15 days old when she left him alone in a bathtub for nine minutes and later hid his body in a nearby lake. Anfinson’s first trial ended in a hung jury and after a second trial, she was convicted of second-degree murder. Although Heidi’s family urged her lawyer to look into her recent mental health records, her lawyer deliberately rejected the idea, saying that postpartum depression would not be part of the defence. He instead pursued the argument that the baby’s death had been an accident.

It took 10 years for the Iowa Supreme Court to rule that Anfinson’s lawyer had provided ineffective assistance by failing to properly investigate and present evidence of her postpartum depression in support of the accidental-death defence. Her mental health history may have helped explain her behaviour and could have influenced the outcome of the trial—but we’ll never know for certain. Her case is an example of postpartum depression not being taken as seriously as it should be and the resulting consequences.

Anfinson was granted a new trial, but opted to plead guilty to child endangerment instead and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. She was paroled in 2012.

Latarsha Sanders

In February 2018, Latarsha Sanders stabbed and killed her two sons, eight and five. Her defense argued that she was having a psychotic episode and wasn’t criminally responsible with reports about her behaviour including references to voodoo, conspiracy theories and evil. The jury convicted her of first degree murder anyway and she was sentenced to life.

Sanders later appealed and in August 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered a new trial after ruling that Sanders’ relevant psychiatric records — including records concerning the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness — should have been available to the jury and that excluding them was prejudicial error.

What makes Sanders’ case particularly notable is that it was handled by the same prosecutor’s office and judge as the Lindsay Clancy trial, bringing up even more questions about how mental illness is currently being handled in the justice system. With her original convictions and sentences vacated, Sanders is awaiting a new trial where her defense will be able to present evidence supporting its claim that she was experiencing psychosis when she killed her sons.

The details of each case are different, but together they illustrate why the intersection of motherhood, mental illness and criminal responsibility remains one of the most difficult areas of the justice system. Decades before the Lindsay Clancy trial dominated headlines, courts were already wrestling with many of the same questions—questions that, in many cases, remain unresolved today.