Patrick Clancy testified during the trial about his ex-wife’s declining mental health after giving birth.
Clancy’s team said she had postpartum psychosis, a rare condition in which postpartum women can experience mania, depression or a mixture of both.
“I didn’t know how to manage a postpartum illness. I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive,” he told CBS, the BBC’s US news partner.
It was her mental health that led to Patrick Clancy deciding later to forgive her.
“I saw headlines that said, you know, ‘Killer Mom’, and ‘Baby Murderer’, ‘Monster’. And none of them were accurate,” he said in the interview.
“I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that. So I shared those words. And I think when it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn’t get there, I would be eaten up inside forever.”
Asked if he felt he had failed in some way in this period leading up to the killings, he said: “I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome. I live with it every day.”
Living with his grief in the weeks after the tragedy became a struggle and he admitted having suicidal thoughts.
“I didn’t think I would live to see my 35th birthday. And I was completely fine with it,” he said.
