True Crime Influencer Charged With Wiretapping After Posting Secret Recording of Patrick Clancy’s Father

A true crime influencer with tens of thousands of followers has been charged with wiretapping. Police say she posted a secret recording of a phone call involving the father of Patrick Clancy, whose ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, admitted to killing the couple’s three young children.

Shawna Gramkow, a Florida woman who has more than 50,000 followers, was charged with one count of unlawful wiretapping in Hingham District Court in Massachusetts. Court records show she has been summoned to appear for arraignment in November. Officials in Florida confirmed she has not been arrested.
The charge stems from a complaint filed by Christopher Clancy, Patrick Clancy’s father.

According to the police report, Christopher Clancy told investigators that he was driving through Scituate, Massachusetts, around Aug. 6 when he received a call from a number he didn’t recognize. He said he accidentally answered the call instead of declining it, and he stayed on the line without realizing he was being recorded.

The audio later surfaced on Aug. 30 on a public Instagram account called “saltylunatics,” which police say Gramkow operates. In the video, Gramkow described how one of her viewers had called a phone number she claimed belonged to Patrick Clancy. That number had been read aloud in open court during the murder trial by Lindsay Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington.

Instead of reaching Patrick, the caller reached his father.

Christopher Clancy reported the recording to police on Sept. 4. He told investigators that he recognized his own voice. He also said some of his comments concerned his eldest son, Brian. Police allege the recording was made and shared without his knowledge or consent. An investigator also reported matching Gramkow’s driver’s license photo to the woman seen introducing the recording in the video.

Gramkow has been one of the most vocal critics of Patrick Clancy online. She has at times posted several videos a day pushing unfounded theories about him and his wife. In a Facebook video that did not specifically address the charge, Gramkow said the allegations against her are false and easy to prove.

The case has drawn intense attention on social media. Lindsay Clancy admitted through her defense that she killed the couple’s children, Cora, Dawson and Callan, in January 2023. She pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges. Her defense argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and could not tell right from wrong.

In September, Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked 11-1.

During the trial, conspiracy theories spread online claiming Patrick Clancy was somehow responsible for the deaths, even though nothing of the kind came up in court. His attorney has since threatened legal action against those spreading what he called misinformation and defamatory statements. The attorney warned that “there will be consequences.”

Patrick and Lindsay Clancy have also filed separate civil lawsuits against her former health care providers.