PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children because she was depressed and tired of living, not because of failings with mental healthcare, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday before they began deliberating in her murder trial.
“It was a choice to take them with her,” prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said. “It is a choice that we don’t want to think about that a mother could make.”
“But it’s a choice she made,” Sprague said.
Clancy’s mental state is at the center of the closely watched trial that has drawn attention to maternal mental health after childbirth. The debate has stirred deep divisions among the public over whether she should be held criminally responsible for the January 2023 killings.
Her attorney contends she was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her children, telling jurors she was a loving mother before her mental health spiraled and that she repeatedly sought help that failed her. The rare mental illness is linked to stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes following childbirth.
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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.
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Clancy, who did not testify during the monthlong trial, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Clancy, now 36, had sought treatment from multiple providers in the months before the killings and was prescribed various drugs.
Less than three weeks after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital, she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, at the family’s Massachusetts home. She then jumped from a second-floor window and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Lindsay Clancy was depressed, prosecutor says
During more than four weeks of testimony, jurors heard differing views from medical experts about Clancy’s mental state after Callan’s birth.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington said her condition worsened “because of the damned medicine and the lousy medical care that she got.”
Clancy dabbed her eyes with a tissue and put a hand to her forehead as the prosecution described how she killed her children and confronted a central question in the case:
Why would a mother who loved her children kill them?
“She was depressed. She was exhausted. She was done. She didn’t want to try anymore. She felt damaged,” Sprague said. “But those kids, those kids were her protective factor. Those kids were keeping her from ending her misery.”
Sprague said the case shouldn’t be a referendum on the nation’s mental healthcare system or how it treats women. She argued that Clancy had access to many providers and a wealth of family support.
If convicted of murder, Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she still could be committed to a state mental health facility.
Mental health is at the heart of Clancy trial
Clancy’s decision not to tell her mental health providers about thoughts she had in December 2022 of harming her children showed that she understood those thoughts were wrong, Sprague said.
She also made sure she had just enough time to kill her children on Jan. 24, 2023, Sprague said, by sending her husband to pick up dinner and medicine for one of the kids.
The prosecutor acknowledged that Clancy sought help for her mental health struggles, but said she did not always take medications as prescribed or give her providers complete and accurate information.
Both Clancy’s mother and sister testified in the trial that she became anxious, paranoid and suicidal.
Lindsay Clancy lived for her kids, attorney says
Clancy’s attorney criticized the prosecution’s case and raised doubts about the police investigation while painting Clancy as a good mother.
He said prosecutors tried to suggest her suicide attempt wasn’t serious. “You know that is not what happened,” he said.
He said investigators didn’t take pictures or test blood found at the home. He held up a copy of the book “Good Moms have Scary Thoughts” that investigators found at the Clancy house. He said a mental healthcare provider gave it to her.
He showed jurors a small “wish box” that Clancy and then-husband Patrick bought on their honeymoon. Over the years, the couple filled the box with slips of paper wishing to have healthy, successful kids, Reddington said as Lindsay Clancy wiped away tears.
Reddington told the jury that Clancy “lived for her kids” but after she starting seeing a doctor that “it was not a wonderful life anymore.”
“You have the medical records. You heard the testimony. You know her concerns. You know her fears,” he said.
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Willingham reported from Boston. Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
