PLYMOUTH, Mass. — More than three years after a Massachusetts mother strangled her three young children, her former husband described returning home to the aftermath and a jury listened Wednesday to his frantic 911 call, as her lawyers seek to prove she was in the grip of postpregnancy psychosis.
Patrick Clancy’s last fleeting image of 3-year-old Dawson was his son on the couch eating chicken nuggets and green beans. Lindsay Clancy had asked her then-husband to pick up food and stop by the pharmacy. Prosecutors say this shows she acted intentionally and bears full responsibility for the deaths of Dawson, 5-year-old Cora, and 8-month-old Callan.
Jurors watched surveillance video from the pharmacy showing Patrick Clancy call his wife with a question about which medicine to get.
“She was pretty quiet. It sounded like she was busy,” he testified Wednesday. “I remember hanging up thinking she was probably in the middle of giving baths or something like that.”
When he came home, the house was silent.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
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He searched until finding a lot of blood in the main bedroom. Lindsay Clancy had used multiple methods to try to end her own life. She remains paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from the home’s second-story window.
Badly injured but conscious, she told her husband that the kids were in the basement, without saying they were dead, he testified.
Jurors listened to the 911 call as he discovers the children, who were strangled with exercise bands. Patrick Clancy sobs and screams “Oh my God!” A confused dispatcher keeps asking what happened, before he says: “She killed the kids.”
In the courtroom, Lindsay Clancy sobbed as the 911 call was played, and her parents also appeared to be crying. Patrick Clancy had left the court after finishing his testimony.
The trial will hinge on Lindsay Clancy’s mental state
Whether she killed her children is not in dispute. But her attorney argues that she was driven by postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. Her lawyer said she had bipolar disorder, and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.
On the day of the killings, Lindsay Clancy said she heard voices telling her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself,” according to her lawyer.
If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.
Lindsay Clancy had sought care from experts in postpregnancy mood disorders, was put on multiple psychiatric medications, and when nothing worked, checked in to a psychiatric hospital. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged.
Patrick Clancy testified Monday about her deteriorating mental health in the months before the killings, including describing intrusive thoughts of harming the children and of suicide. But he said she appeared to be doing better as recently as two weeks before the killings on Jan. 24, 2023.
He testified Monday that the day of the killings started as one of her “best days.” She took Cora to a doctor’s appointment and then returned home to build a snowman with the children and work on art projects.
Postpartum psychosis is rare, and is different from postpartum depression
Postpartum psychosis is estimated to afflict only 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery. Experts at the Cleveland Clinic describe it as a mental health emergency affecting someone’s sense of reality.
Postpartum depression is a mood disorder that can also be dangerous but is much more common.
Postpartum psychosis can happen to anyone after giving birth, but the chances are higher for people with certain mental health conditions. In a journal article on the subject in 2023, researchers at the Medical University of Lublin in Poland said about half of people with postpartum psychosis have a previous history of psychiatric problems and the most common risk factor associated with the condition is bipolar affective disorder, which causes extreme mood swings.
