This story may contain content readers find disturbing or triggering. For help with postpartum mood disorders, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is free, confidential, and 24/7. Text or call 1-833-TLC-MAMA. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call 988 or go to 988lifeline.org to chat online.
As Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial enters its fourth week of testimony, prosecutors have called dozens of witnesses as they seek to prove that the Duxbury mother was in her right mind when she killed her three young children.
Clancy, 36, has admitted to killing Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. But she’s asserting an insanity defense, arguing her postpartum mental health conditions were exacerbated by the cocktail of psychiatric medications she was prescribed in the months after giving birth to her third child. It’s her mental state that the jury will consider — to determine whether she should be held legally responsible for her actions and convicted of three counts of first-degree murder.
Immediately after strangling the children with exercise bands on Jan. 24, 2023, Clancy cut her neck and wrists, then jumped out a second-story window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed.
Jurors have heard testimony from the children’s father, Patrick Clancy; first responders who discovered the children’s bodies; medical examiners who conducted autopsies; a former nanny; family friends and coworkers; and several health care workers and psychiatric clinicians who treated Lindsay Clancy. They also heard entries from Clancy’s personal writings.
During cross-examination of the commonwealth’s witnesses, Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, sought to portray her as a loving, devoted mother who desperately tried to get help as her mental state precipitously declined.
Here are several key moments so far from the trial:
Testimony about Clancy’s mental health treatment provides opportunity for the defense
Testimony from psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, and a licensed mental health counselor who treated Lindsay Clancy leading up to the killings provided a look at her mental health concerns and the treatments she was offered.
Their testimony has also allowed the defense to lay the groundwork for its argument that Clancy was overmedicated and misdiagnosed. The former labor and delivery nurse was hearing “command hallucinations” telling her to kill her kids and herself, Reddington has argued.
During his cross examinations, Reddington has elicited testimony showing Clancy sought help from multiple providers who treated her without consulting each other’s full clinical notes.
At times, he appeared exasperated as they acknowledged they had not reviewed Clancy’s records from other providers.
“Seriously?,” Reddington said to Dr. Jennifer Tufts, a psychiatrist who treated Clancy. “She’s visiting with you as a patient, and you can’t access her medical records?”
The providers began testifying on Aug. 7, and have described medications they prescribed to Clancy to address her complaints about anxiety, insomnia, and depression following the birth of her third child, Callan, in 2022.
They also testified that Clancy voiced worry about potential prescription side effects and developing physical dependence on benzodiazepines to treat anxiety.
All of the psychiatric providers to testify so far have been called by prosecutors, who allege the violence was premeditated.
They testified they did not diagnose her with psychosis.
Three of the providers: Tufts, Dr. Alia Goodheart, and Rebecca Jollotta, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, told the jury they considered or monitored Clancy for bipolar disorder but did not diagnose her with the condition.
Goodheart said Clancy rejected such a diagnosis, which was offered by a different provider. Jollotta said Patrick Clancy did the same, telling her, “My wife is not bipolar,” during a meeting in December 2022.
Clancy now asserts that she did have the condition. A psychiatrist who examined Clancy as she awaited trial in 2024 diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, according to a medical malpractice lawsuit she filed earlier this year. Dr. Margaret Spinelli found Clancy initially experienced symptoms in 2020 after giving birth to her second child, Dawson, the lawsuit said.
State Police witness testifies that Clancy searched for information about psychosis online
Days before killing her children, Lindsay Clancy conducted web searches on her cellphone for the words “hallucinations,” “psychosis,” as well as “can you treat a sociopath.”
State Police Sergeant Timothy Chiappini said data extracted from Clancy’s phone also revealed Google searches about suicide, medications she had been prescribed, and mental health terms.
On Jan. 19, 2023, Clancy conducted searches about 90 minutes apart seeking information about “schizophrenia” and “hallucinations.”
The next day, at about 8:30 p.m., Clancy, searched, “Can you treat a sociopath?” Chiappini told jurors during direct examination.
About 10 minutes after that, she searched for information about psychosis.
Clancy sobs while medical examiners describe the children’s injuries
Proceedings were halted several times on Wednesday as Lindsay Clancy sobbed uncontrollably during testimony from a pair of doctors who participated in the autopsies of her children.
The doctors from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner described the children’s injuries as photographs from autopsies for Cora, 5, and Dawson, 3, were shown to the jury.
A different forensic pathologist previously testified about Callan’s autopsy.
Plymouth Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan warned jurors not to be swayed by their emotions.
“Sometimes there’s evidence that’s presented in the trial that creates an emotional reaction,” he said. “But as jurors who have taken an oath to follow the law … the law says you must separate any emotional reaction on your part from the informational value and weight that the evidence produces.”
Patrick Clancy’s 911 call is played for the jury
Some jurors visibly fought back tears and others clearly were shaken as they listened to the gut-wrenching recording of Patrick Clancy’s call to 911, one of the most anticipated pieces of evidence. They heard his frantic screams and the anguish in his voice as he told police his wife had killed their three children while he was picking up dinner.
It was a harrowing call, roughly eight minutes long. Patrick Clancy first found his wife, bloodied, face up on the back lawn from a suicide attempt. She had cut her wrists and throat and jumped from a second-floor window. He then discovered his children’s bodies in the basement.
Patrick Clancy initially called 911 for his wife. As she was drifting in and out of consciousness, he asked her what happened, he told the jury.
She told him, “I tried to kill myself.”
Patrick Clancy asked where the kids were, and Lindsay Clancy told him they were in the basement.
The call was introduced during Patrick Clancy’s testimony. He was led from the courtroom before it was played to spare him the trauma of listening to it.
The recording was so graphic that Judge William F. Sullivan prohibited its release to the public, allowing only those present in the courtroom to hear it.
Experts cast doubt on the seriousness of Clancy’s self-inflicted wounds
There has been sparring over the seriousness of Lindsay Clancy’s suicide attempt, a point of contention first raised during opening statements. The prosecution called Lindsay Clancy’s wounds “superficial.” Reddington has sharply pushed back, pointing out that Lindsay Clancy severed her spinal cord when she leapt from the window, is now paralyzed, and uses a wheelchair.
When Patrick Clancy called 911, the dispatcher said they could tell him how to apply pressure to Lindsay Clancy’s wounds while he waited for paramedics to arrive.
“It’s not really bleeding,” he said. “It’s an open wound.”
Patrick Clancy testified that Lindsay Clancy’s cuts were “deep” and there was blood “everywhere” when he found her. Prosecutors countered with photos from the couple’s bedroom.
Kelly McDonough, the emergency room doctor who treated Lindsay Clancy at South Shore Hospital before she was transferred to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told jurors during her testimony that she wouldn’t characterize the wrist lacerations as “deep.”
“I wasn’t able to visualize any active bleeding, or muscle tissue, or injury to tendons,” she said.
What “sticks out most in my mind,” McDonough said, was Lindsay Clancy’s thoracic spine injury and her body temperature which was significantly lower than normal.
Clancy was prescribed several medications by different providers, a fact her lawyer has sought to highlight
Reddington has highlighted the bevy of medications his client was prescribed after the birth of her third child. He has argued that she desperately sought help for her mental health issues but was misdiagnosed and overmedicated.
In the four months before Lindsay Clancy killed her children, she was prescribed 13 psychiatric medications, Reddington said during his opening statement.
The prescriptions came from psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, emergency department doctors, and staff at an inpatient psychiatric program and included antidepressants, mood stabilizers, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and an antipsychotic, he said.
Sejal Shah, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said she evaluated and had close contact with Lindsay Clancy for about a month before she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility.
Shah said Lindsay Clancy had a delirious episode on Jan. 29, 2023, in which she reported having visual hallucinations, but it cleared by the next day.
Lindsay Clancy was “very ill” but “cooperative,” Shah said.
Shah told jurors that people experiencing psychosis can be lucid.
“You don’t have to be stuttering and drooling and unable to walk to be in a psychosis, do you?” Reddington asked.
Shah said that was “correct.”
Shah also described for jurors the nature of the numerous medications found in Lindsay Clancy’s system after a blood draw on Jan. 24, 2023.
The drugs all were prescription medications, ranging from antidepressants to sedatives and mood stabilizers, Shah said.
“It’s an awful lot of drugs to be prescribed in four months, isn’t it?,” Reddington asked.
Shah didn’t get an opportunity to respond. Sprague, the prosecutor objected to the question, and the judge sustained the objection.
Clancy’s personal writings include discussion of how she was overwhelmed and increasingly anxious
Investigators testified about the contents of a handwritten journal and a note on Clancy’s phone, both of which contained detailed accounts of her psychological struggles.
“I’m so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to make something physically wrong with me,” Clancy wrote in an entry dated Nov. 18, 2022.
Reddington later read more of that entry, which continued: “My mind never shuts off. It’s constantly thinking of the next thing someone needs, I can’t shut it off.”
Clancy wrote that she desperately wanted to return to work as a labor and delivery nurse, but wasn’t sure how she was going to function.
Notes from her phone also listed a number of affirmations from the month prior, including “I will overcome postpartum anxiety and depression,” and “I am a great mom.”
During testimony Thursday, State Police investigator Timothy Chiappini read aloud from her notes, where Clancy agonized over the challenges of raising three young children, saying “the root cause of all our problems” was her inability to parent each of them like her first. She described feeling “sleep-deprived and paranoid.”
“I just want to feel happy. I want to be able to relax and take care of my kids,” Chiappini read.
“I’m terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development,” he continued.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez. Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi.