How Social Media Can Shape a Murder Trial

Fans of true‑crime no longer just watch; they now want to be part of the case.

TikTok helped bring the Menendez brothers back into talk many years after their convictions. The Depp‑Heard defamation trial became daily social media content. Luigi Mangione built a strong online fan base before his case even went to trial. More and more, people are not happy just watching a case online. They want to look into it, affect it, and sometimes put themselves deeply into it.

Most of this activity happens outside the courtroom, where it changes what the public thinks but does not become part of the official case. That line is now being tested in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a mother from Massachusetts charged with killing her three young children in January 2023.

Clancy’s lawyers say she did kill the children but that she suffered from postpartum psychosis and was not legally responsible. Online, some viewers have rejected both sides and started their own investigation.

It was not a conspiracy theory that entered the courtroom. Instead, Clancy’s lawyers became interested in a video by Emily Thorndide that has over five million views.

Thorndide, a licensed independent clinical social worker, spent more than seven years on the same short‑term McLean Hospital unit where Clancy was later treated. She left McLean about a year before Clancy’s stay and never saw Clancy’s treatment. After watching the trial, she posted a video criticizing how prosecutors described the hospital’s staff, resources, and care, especially on weekends and holidays. She said witnesses were spreading “lies and misrepresentations” about McLean.

On August 11, Clancy’s lawyers asked the judge to add Thorndide as a witness. The request turned the usual courtroom‑to‑TikTok flow upside down.

Veteran lawyer Kevin Reddington did not find Thorndide by scrolling himself. He said at the August 11 hearing that someone in the trial’s TikTok community emailed him the video and asked him to watch it. “I hardly know what TikTok is,” Reddington said.

After watching the nine‑minute, fifty‑eight‑second video, Reddington thought Thorndide’s experience could challenge the prosecution’s claim that Clancy had access to extensive treatment at McLean but chose not to fully use it.

First, Reddington had to locate Thorndide. Because her video did not use her full name, his office first struggled to find her. His private investigator, Bob Jones, called and left messages, then waited outside her home after three days with no reply. Thorndide later said she thought the contact was fake: “I thought you guys were all AI!”

When they finally spoke, Reddington said Thorndide agreed to testify about the staffing and programs she saw at McLean, including as a supervisor. However, she left in December 2021 and could not speak about the conditions Clancy faced a year later.

Prosecutors objected, noting Thorndide was not an expert witness and had watched the trial while publicly criticizing testimony. Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham said her broader criticism of McLean might belong in the “court of public opinion,” but not inside this courtroom.

Judge William Sullivan agreed that Thorndide could not simply give jurors her personal rating of the hospital. “This is not TripAdvisor,” he said. He noted the narrower question of McLean’s holiday staffing and programming was a “closer call.” He suggested that hospital records or a staff member who worked there during Clancy’s stay could provide the same information, and took the motion under advisement.

Whether or not Thorndide testifies, the episode shows that lawyers are no longer only the subjects of true‑crime TikTok… they also watch it.

Clancy, now 36, faces three counts of first‑degree murder for the deaths of 5‑year‑old Cora, 3‑year‑old Dawson, and 8‑month‑old Callan. Prosecutors say she deliberately sent her ex‑husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the house before carrying out a planned killing. Her defense says she was suffering from postpartum psychosis after being improperly treated with a rapidly changing mix of psychiatric medicines.

On August 17, prosecutors finished their case after calling dozens of witnesses over nearly four weeks. The defense then began presenting testimony about Clancy’s worsening mental health in the months before the killings.

Meanwhile, TikTok users have been running their own parallel trial. They have broken down courtroom footage, analyzed a disputed hot‑mic moment, and even made “thirst‑trap” edits of Reddington.

Others have pushed unsupported ideas that Patrick killed the children and framed his then‑wife.

Videos have examined his clothing, body language, and claimed inconsistencies in his testimony, while creators have treated his later remarriage and move to New York as suspicious. Some have even claimed a body double appeared at CVS in his place or suggested he created conditions to make Lindsay look psychotic. None of those ideas is backed by investigators. Patrick has not been charged, and prosecutors have not said he played any role. CVS surveillance and phone records confirm he was at the store when the killings happened.

Katy Coduto, an assistant professor of media science at Boston University, calls this kind of online behavior “forensic fandom”: people become so invested in a case that simply following it is not enough — they think they can solve it.

That feeling is fed by the huge amount of material available. Court livestreams give hours of footage to study, while TikTok rewards creators for finding a supposed missed clue or inconsistency that could change the whole story.

Thorndide’s possible appearance in the Clancy trial is unusual, but she is not the first online figure to cross the line from following a case to becoming part of it. Look at the Karen Read trials.

Aidan Kearney, a blogger known as Turtleboy, spent years arguing that Read was framed for the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe. By 2026, he had posted more than 550 blog entries in his “Canton Cover‑Up” series, plus hundreds of livestreams accusing witnesses and police of a conspiracy. His coverage and “Free Karen Read” rallies helped turn Read’s claim of innocence into a grassroots movement that spread across Massachusetts and beyond.

Kearney was later charged with witness intimidation over his alleged treatment of people linked to the investigation — charges he denied. A judge forced him to leave the courtroom during testimony from certain witnesses. Prosecutors later got permission to examine his communications with Read as possible evidence. Kearney was also placed on a potential witness list and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self‑incrimination when questioned before Read’s second trial.

Read was finally found not guilty of second‑degree murder and manslaughter in June 2025, though she was convicted of drunk driving. We cannot know how much the online movement affected that result. But it clearly changed everything around the trial — including Kearney’s role in it.

Most creators do not get that close to the action. More often, they act as an unofficial press corps for audiences following cases on their phones. During Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal criminal trial, cameras were banned inside the courtroom, so TikTokers, YouTubers, and livestreamers outside the courthouse gave daily recaps of testimony and legal arguments. Some, like credentialed journalist Mona Kosar Abdi, reported directly from the courtroom and attracted millions of views. Their videos were not evidence, but for viewers they became their version of the trial.

Online participation can sometimes give investigators useful tips. During the search for Gabby Petito in 2021, travel vloggers Jenn and Kyle Bethune reviewed footage from their road trip after seeing calls for help and spotted Petito’s van near Grand Teton National Park. They sent the footage to the FBI, helping narrow the search area where her remains were later found.

But online speculation can also outrun the facts. After the remains of 14‑year‑old Celeste Rivas Hernandez were found in a Tesla in Los Angeles registered to musician D4vd (David Burke), internet users dug through his digital history. They shared photos, alleged social posts, song lyrics, and a tattoo image that seemed to link Burke and Rivas, although much of the material had not been independently verified at the time.

Some of the material raised real questions about their relationship; other users treated rumors and coincidences as proof. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell later called some theories wildly removed from investigators’ evidence. Burke was arrested in April 2026 and pleaded not guilty to first‑degree murder and related charges. By then, online sleuths had already spent months shaping public perception of his guilt and surfacing what looked like real leads — and they continue to do so.

Sometimes the target is not even a suspect. During the University of Idaho murder investigation, TikTok creator Ashley Guillard used tarot readings to accuse professor Rebecca Scofield of planning the killings. Scofield had no link to the crimes, but Guillard repeated the claim in more than 100 videos, even after police cleared her and she received cease‑and‑desist letters. Scofield sued for defamation, and a jury awarded her $10 million in 2026 — years after the false claims had reached Guillard’s followers.

Of course, renewed attention does not always hurt a defendant. The Menendez brothers were already seeing a TikTok revival when Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and a companion documentary brought the case back into the mainstream in fall 2024. The releases sent viewers searching for old trial clips and had some reconsidering whether the brothers’ sexual‑abuse claims had been taken seriously in the 1990s. TikTok and Netflix did not legally reopen the case — their attorneys had filed a habeas petition based on alleged new evidence in 2023 — but they gave that effort a huge new audience.

High‑profile trials have always been spectacles — the Lindbergh kidnapping, Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson. What has changed is how easily the people watching can become active participants.

As Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan warned in 2025, constant coverage gives jurors more chances to see inadmissible evidence and arguments. But the influence works both ways: attorneys can find witnesses through TikTok, prosecutors can subpoena creators’ messages as evidence, and online movements can pressure officials to reopen cases — even as unfounded theories hurt victims, families, and witnesses.

Courts still decide what becomes evidence, but they can no longer pretend the parallel online proceedings do not affect them. Reddington may barely know what TikTok is, but the legal system no longer has that luxury.

Topics Social Media True Crime

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