An Oconomowoc mother of three has become the public face of a $1.2 million-plus GoFundMe campaign for the parents of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of strangling her three young children.
Brandee Mulligan, 42, a TikTok creator who built a following posting raw family moments, launched “The Musgrove Family Fund” last month without speaking to Clancy’s parents first. The page has drawn more than 35,000 donations, mostly from women. The goal was raised from $2 million to $3 million after a mistrial was declared Sept. 4.
“And as a mom, like, your heart just goes out to Lindsay,” Mulligan told the New York Post. “And I don’t want to focus too much on the Lindsay aspect of it. But I mean, it’s a huge part of it.”
That quote is the problem in miniature. Three children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan, were found dead or dying in their Duxbury home in January 2023 after Clancy used exercise bands and then jumped from a second-story window in a suicide attempt. She survived but is paralyzed from the waist down. Prosecutors say she murdered them. Her defense says postpartum psychosis. A jury could not agree. The case is headed for a possible retrial. The children are still dead.
Mulligan told the Post the parents “had no idea” she was starting the fundraiser and were “extremely grateful and overwhelmed.” She has since spoken with Clancy’s father, Michael Musgrove, and made him the sole beneficiary. Massachusetts has no Son of Sam law, so nothing legally stops those dollars from going to Clancy or being spent on her next defense. Clancy’s lawyer said the Musgroves have been “pretty much depleting everything they have” to pay legal bills.
GoFundMe’s rules bar campaigns from using funds for criminal defense costs in violent-crime cases. The company has not answered questions about safeguards once the money is in the parents’ hands. Mulligan’s answer: “Everybody’s very clear on what it can and can’t be used for.”
On her platforms, TikTok @brandeemulligan with over 119,000 followers and 25 million likes; Facebook as Brandee Carriere; Instagram under her married name, Mulligan has not been shy about whose side she is on. After the hung jury, she posted it was “truly a jury of her peers,” then attacked the lone holdout: “And then one total idiot … one f–king man.” She shared clips questioning Patrick Clancy’s alibi, his clothing in surveillance video, and why investigators never pulled his phone records. Patrick Clancy’s attorney called the online pile-on an “escalating campaign of misinformation” by influencers chasing attention.
This is the new true-crime economy. A Wisconsin mom who once went viral crying in a minivan because her toddler no longer answered to “Babers” is now organizing a multimillion-dollar slush fund for the parents of a woman charged with killing her own kids. The same social-media machine that rewards “relatable” motherhood content now treats a triple homicide as a women’s-health cause and the surviving father as a suspect by default.
Online empathy, unmoored from facts and consequences, turns monsters into mascots. Mulligan’s campaign is the exhibit. Donors are told they are helping two exhausted grandparents who left Connecticut to sit in Massachusetts courtrooms. Fair enough. But the organizer keeps circling back to Lindsay. “They tell moms to reach out and get help, and then when you don’t get that, then what?” she asked the Post. “I hope that this case helps change that.”
The change some critics want is simpler: stop raising seven-figure sums that can legally flow to a woman who, by her own account and the physical evidence, ended three small lives. Stop treating the one juror who would not acquit as the villain. Stop acting as if the murdered children are a footnote in someone else’s trauma narrative.
