A suburban Chicago mother charged with strangling her 2-year-old son last week had “recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial,” according to court records.
Illinois prosecutors said Friday that Corie Walsh, 40, texted about the headline-grabbing trial with friends hours before she killed her son, Barrett Walsh, in her Frankfort home and then tried to kill herself.
A neighbor found the boy’s body hanging from a basement rafter at about 4 p.m. Tuesday, court documents said. The neighbor discovered Ms. Walsh, a mother of four, suffering from a knife wound in her bathtub.
Prosecutors said Ms. Walsh was taken into custody, telling officers that she killed her son because he was the “devil” and the “anti-Christ.”
Court filings said Ms. Walsh’s youngest child, a baby, was found unharmed in the home. The two oldest children were at school when the killing occurred.
Ms. Walsh’s husband was out of town on a business trip when the killing took place, court records said.
Ms. Walsh faces a first-degree murder charge in Barrett’s slaying, which her defense attorney called a “tragedy for the Walsh family, all of whom are mourning the loss of this child.”
“It is also a tragedy in that Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened,” attorney Andrea Lyon told WLS-TV. “It is our hope that through a thorough presentation and investigation of the facts, that all of us will come to see this heartbreak for what it is.”
The statement from Ms. Walsh’s defense team suggests they believe she cannot be held criminally responsible in her son’s death, much like Ms. Clancy’s attorneys in the Massachusetts case.
The trial judge on Friday declared a mistrial in the Clancy case, as the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether she was culpable in the 2023 slayings of her three children.
Prosecutors argued the killings were intentional and planned, as evidenced by her sending her husband on an errand run so she could strangle her children in the basement of her Duxbury home.
Ms. Clancy’s defense team said she was suffering from a postpartum psychosis when she killed Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan.
She flung herself from a second-story window in an attempt to take her life. She survived but was left paralyzed from the waist down.
The month-long trial captured the nation’s attention. Supporters for Ms. Clancy lined up outside the courthouse, and an online fundraiser for Ms. Clancy’s parents brought in more than $1.2 million.
Ms. Walsh returns to court Tuesday for a detention hearing.
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