When I first started looking into the death of two-year-old Barrett Walsh, one detail immediately stood out to me: his mother, Corie Walsh, had reportedly been closely following the Lindsay Clancy trial and discussing it with friends just hours before Barrett was found. The similarities between the two cases are difficult to ignore. Both involve mothers accused of killing young children inside their family homes, suicide attempts, ligatures, and defenses centered around severe mental illness or psychosis. But similarities aren’t evidence, and they certainly don’t prove that one case inspired another. In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I want to slow the story down and look beyond that headline. Barrett, whose nickname was Bear, was found in the basement of his Illinois home with a ligature around his neck. A neighbor lowered him, began CPR, and called 911. Corie was found elsewhere in the home with injuries believed to be self-inflicted. Prosecutors have since charged her with three counts of first-degree murder, while her attorneys say she was experiencing a psychotic episode. From a death investigator’s perspective, though, those facts are only the beginning. I’m taking you through how I would approach a scene like this: documenting Barrett’s original position before lifesaving efforts changed the scene, examining the ligature and suspension point, preserving digital evidence, reconstructing the timeline, documenting medications and other evidence inside the home, and separating what witnesses actually observed from what they interpreted. We’ll also talk about Corie’s reported statements, the role mental illness may ultimately play in her defense, and why investigators have to be extremely careful about confirmation bias. If you walk into a case already believing it’s a Lindsay Clancy copycat, every message, search, and piece of evidence risks being interpreted through that assumption. There is still a great deal we don’t know. As of the recording of this episode, the final autopsy and toxicology findings had not been publicly released, the digital investigation was still incomplete, and Corie Walsh had not gone to trial. She remains presumed innocent unless and until the charges against her are proven in court. And through all of this, I don’t want Barrett to become a footnote in a story about his mother or the Lindsay Clancy comparison. He was two years old. His nickname was Bear. He deserved protection in life, and in death, he deserves an investigation built on facts, accuracy, and dignity. Content Note: This episode discusses the death of a child, ligature asphyxia, self-harm, alleged homicide, suicide, and severe mental illness. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 00:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I’m your host, Julie Mattson.  00:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.  00:24 Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey, guys, I’m coming to you from my closet again tonight. I wanna tell you a little bit about a case that I’ve been investigating.  00:39 It does allege violence against a child, self-harm, severe mental illness. So again, I like to say this at the very beginning, decide right now whether listening to this is right for you or not.  00:54 This is a case about Corie Walsh. Now, I don’t know if y’all have heard of Corie. It has a lot of clear parallels to Lindsay Clancy.  01:03 There’s also a lot of differences, so we’re gonna kinda talk about that.  01:06 Both of the cases, of course, involve mothers accused of killing a young child or children inside a family home, followed by a suicide attempt.  01:17 Now, mental illness also sits on the center of both of these defenses. Clancy’s attorney said that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and that she was not criminally responsible.  01:29 Now, Walsh’s attorney, who’s Andrea Lyon is her name, she says that Walsh experienced just a psychotic episode. Now, the biggest difference is what authorities say about the mental states.  01:42 In Walsh’s case, prosecutors said that she told investigators that she believed that two-year-old Barrett was the devil and the Antichrist, and her attorney says that this supports the fact that she was psychotic at the time.  01:57 Now, Clancy’s case is a little bit different.  01:59 As we all know, the dispute at trial focused heavily on whether or not she understood the nature of her actions despite the fact that she had psychiatric illness.  02:11 We know that she had a psychiatric illness, but did she understand what she did? Did she know that it was wrong? Now, there’s another real unusual connection between these two cases.  02:23 Walsh had been, strangely enough, very invested in the Clancy trial, and so she had been texting friends about the Clancy trial hours before Barrett was found.  02:34 Now, that makes the comparison really interesting.  02:37 But still, it has not been established that Clancy’s case caused or inspired Barrett’s killing, and so Walsh’s defense strongly rejects the idea that this was a copycat crime.  02:53 Now, I know I talked about this last week. I’m always fearful when I watch a movie that somebody’s gonna be like, “Hey, that looks like a good idea. Let’s do that. Let’s try that.  03:02 I’ve always wanted to do it.” Most of the time, criminals have probably already got in their mind what they wanna do, but the stories always kinda scare me that somebody’s gonna jump out and be like, “I wanna try that.” Now, the outcomes of these two cases are also at very different stages.  03:18 As we all know, Clancy admitted to killing the three children. Her trial that recently ended in a mistrial because the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.  03:28 Now, Walsh has only recently been charged, so the allegations against her have not been tested. She’s not gone to trial. We don’t know what’s happening with this one.  03:37 Now, the really compelling question, was she copying