Patrick Clancy Runs the Chicago Marathon in Memory of His Three Children

Patrick Clancy, whose three young children died in Duxbury, Mass., in January 2023, finished the Chicago Marathon on Sunday in 3:35:29, running the second half only five seconds slower than the first. He went through halfway in 1:47:42, according to the race results.

Photos from the course appear to show Callan’s bracelet on his left wrist, Dawson’s wristband on his right and Cora’s hair bow on his Boston Children’s Hospital singlet, the Boston Herald first reported. Race organizers had confirmed before the start that he was entered, according to NBC 5 Chicago. The unofficial results put him 12,012th overall in this year’s race, which Amos Kipruto and Hawi Feysa won at the front.

The hospital singlet goes back to his first marathon, at Boston in April 2024, where he raised more than $75,000 for Boston Children’s through its Miles for Miracles team and finished in 3:59:19, a time he beat by 23 minutes and 50 seconds on Sunday. Callan, the youngest at 8 months, died at that hospital four days after the Jan. 24 attack at the family’s home. Cora was 5 and Dawson was 3.

Three weeks before the race, Clancy sat for his first television interview since the mistrial, with CBS’s 60 Minutes, broadcast Sept. 20. He said he forgave Lindsay Clancy while holding Callan in the hospital, and he spoke about the online conspiracy theories tying him to the deaths, which the Associated Press described as unfounded. “It is a huge distraction from what really matters here, which is perinatal mental health,” he said. His wife, Dr. Rachel Danis, joined him for the interview and recalled that running is how they met: “I was just a girl that met a guy running in Central Park on a really cold Saturday,” she said, the AP reported.

Lindsay Clancy is charged with murder in the children’s deaths, and her lawyers told the jury she had postpartum psychosis. Patrick Clancy testified that he believed her mental illness was behind what happened. On Sept. 4, the seventh day of deliberations, Judge William Sullivan of Plymouth Superior Court declared a mistrial after the jury could not agree. Prosecutors were still weighing whether to try her a second time when the case came back to court for a status hearing on Sept. 29, and on Oct. 1 Sullivan turned down a defense request to find her not guilty, ruling that the prosecution’s physical and circumstantial evidence was enough for jurors to decide the case.