FRANKFORT, Ill. — A suburban Chicago mother charged with murdering her 2-year-old son had been discussing Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial by group text with friends hours before the boy was found dead, prosecutors wrote in a petition to keep her jailed.
Corie A. Walsh, 40, of Frankfort, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the death of Barrett Walsh, known to his family as “Bear,” born March 26, 2024. She is scheduled to appear Tuesday at 9 a.m. before Will County Judge Amy Bertani Tomczak, who will decide whether she is released before trial.
The case has been read across social media as a copycat killing. Nothing in the public record supports that. Prosecutors allege only that witnesses described Walsh as having “recently become very invested in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial” and that she was texting about it until 12:30 p.m., about 3 1/2 hours before officers arrived. No prosecutor, police official or physician has publicly said the trial caused the killing.
Frankfort officers reached the 22700 block of Brook Stone Court at 4:04 p.m. Tuesday. According to the petition described in court records, a neighbor found the toddler hanging from a basement rafter with a ligature around his neck, removed it and began CPR while calling 911. He was pronounced dead about 5 p.m. at a New Lenox hospital. A preliminary autopsy found he died of “asphyxia due to ligature compression of the neck”; the Will County Coroner’s Office said the final cause and manner remain pending.
Upstairs, Walsh was lying fully dressed in a bathtub of bloody water with cuts to her wrists and thighs. The same neighbor was holding a towel to her thigh and had taken a knife from her hand. Walsh told officers she “did this to her baby because he was the ‘devil’ and the ‘anti-Christ,'” prosecutors wrote.
An infant was unharmed in the home. Two school-age children arrived home around the time Barrett was found. Walsh’s husband was out of state and flew home that evening. Prosecutors are asking that release be denied, alleging Walsh “made statements regarding harming her other children and statements that she intended to harm her husband upon his return home.” The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services told CNN it has no record of prior contact with the family.
Her attorney, Andrea Lyon — a capital defense lawyer brought onto Casey Anthony’s defense after Florida sought the death penalty — said in a statement Friday that “Corie herself was experiencing a psychotic episode at the time this happened.” No insanity defense has been filed.
The Clancy case ended without resolution the same day Walsh was charged. After more than 38 hours of deliberations over seven days, jurors — one holdout among the 12 — told Judge William Sullivan they could not agree, and a mistrial was declared Friday. Clancy, 36, did not dispute killing her three children in Duxbury, Mass., in January 2023; her defense argued she was not criminally responsible because of postpartum psychosis. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said no decision on a retrial would come immediately; a status hearing is set for Sept. 29.
The online reaction has outpaced the record. Posts on X on Sunday and Monday described Walsh as “Lindsay Clancy-obsessed” and called for her execution. Neither the charging documents nor police have described any link between the two women beyond Walsh’s interest in the coverage.
Frankfort Mayor Keith Ogle told NBC Chicago that residents should withhold judgment: “Let the investigators get the information, get the facts.”
Mental health conditions account for more than 40 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported from state data, and the Shapiro administration has pushed universal postpartum depression screening with faster referrals to treatment.