Massachusetts mom Lindsay Clancy attended a bedside court arraignment from her hospital room on Tuesday, two weeks after allegedly killing her three young children and attempting to take her own life. She has now officially been charged with two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation, and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
During the arraignment, prosecutors alleged that Clancy planned to kill her children and that the murders were not the result of postpartum depression or any other mental illness she may be suffering from, according to multiple sources. Her attorney, however, maintains that the medications Clancy had been prescribed were a factor in what he calls a moment of "psychosis."
Clancy's lawyer claims she heard a man's voice before killing her children.
During the arraignment, Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said she told a psychologist that she heard a "male voice" telling her to kill the children prior to the attempted murder-suicide that resulted in the deaths of her children, Cora, 5, and Dawson, 3, on January 24 and Callan, 8 months, on January 27, per the New York Post.
All three children died after reportedly being strangled with exercise bands. The prosecutor said that their father, Patrick Clancy, discovered their bodies in the family's basement with the bands still wrapped around their "little necks" when he returned home from running an errand.
After allegedly strangling her children, Clancy jumped from a second-story window into the backyard, in an attempt to take her own life.
The mother's injuries are severe.
During her virtual arraignment, Clancy appeared on video from her hospital bed. She was wearing a mask and what looked like a neck brace, and she did not speak during the hearing. Reddington confirmed that her injuries are severe and that she had suffered spinal cord injuries that left her paralyzed from the waist down.
"She can’t walk …she can’t even go to the bathroom," he said, per the Post, noting that she is "not well at all," emotionally.
The prosecution maintains that Clancy was of sound mind when she killed her children.
The prosecution asserted that it believes that not only was Clancy of sound mind when she strangled her children but that she also made plans to do so. Prosecutors claim that she was "lucid" at the time of the murders and that one of the first things she asked once she was capable of communicating, was "Do I need an attorney?"
Prosecutors believe this is a sign that she is fully aware of the situation and that she had the "clarity, focus, and mental acumen" to be concerned with protecting herself," according to a recording of the hearing posted on the Law & Crime YouTube account.
The day of the murders, Lindsay Clancy reportedly exhibited no signs of distress.
Prosecutors detailed the day of the murders, stating that Clancy, who was on leave from her job as a labor and delivery nurse, had taken daughter Cora to the pediatrician early in the day and that when she returned home, she played in the snow with her children. She had also texted with her mom and husband throughout the day, never indicating a problem.
She then requested that her husband go to CVS and to pick up takeout dinner. A little after 4 p.m., the prosecutor says she used Apple Maps to determine how long it would take to run that errand, according to Law & Crime. She also called CVS to find out if they had a specific medication. The manager of the store told authorities that her voice did not sound "slurred or impaired in any way." The manager said it was a perfectly normal conversation.
After that, Lindsay Clancy reportedly texted her husband to see if he would pick up the takeout from the specific restaurant she had mapped out on Apple Maps, which prosecutors say was unusual because they typically ordered from somewhere closer to home.
Clancy spoke with her husband minutes before the children were killed.
The prosecutor says that after Patrick Clancy left the home around 5:30 p.m., he went to CVS first and called his wife from the store. She didn't answer the first call but called him back a minute later. They spoke for 14 seconds and the call was normal. He mentioned that she "seemed like she was in the middle of something."
When he returned home, the first thing he noticed was the silence. He didn't see his family anywhere. At 6:09 p.m. while in the house, he called her to find out where she was, but she didn't answer.
Minutes later, he found blood in his bedroom, which had been locked from the inside, and the window was open. He ran outside and found his wife in the backyard. He called 911 and reported that there were cuts on her wrists and neck that were no longer bleeding.
The 911 recording indicates that Lindsay Clancy knew exactly what she had done.
During the 911 call, Patrick Clancy could be heard asking his wife, "What did you do?" She replied, "I tried to kill myself and jumped out the window. When he asked her where the kids were, she said, "in the basement."
He waited for EMS to arrive before checking for the children, assuming they were still alive. On the 911 call, he can be heard calling, "Guys?" Then he is heard screaming upon discovering the children with the exercise bands still tied around their necks. When police went to the basement, he screamed, "She killed the kids!" according to the Post.
Lindsay Clancy spent time in a psychiatric hospital.
The prosecutor claims that her mental health was evaluated on December 20, 2022, and was told "by psychiatrists, that she did not have postpartum depression and that she had no symptoms of postpartum depression." Around the same time, she wrote in her journal that she had suicidal thoughts on occasion. She also told her husband this and that she one time had thoughts of harming her children.
Just three weeks before the murders, the mom of three checked herself into a psychiatric hospital, according to Reddington, per NBC 10 Boston. She was there from January 1 to 5, and hospital staff did not believe she needed to be committed or that she was "a danger to herself or others."
"This is not a situation that was planned, by any means," Reddington said. "This is a situation that was clearly a result of mental illness." The lawyer previously confirmed that Clancy had been on 12 different medications including Prozac and Seroquel, which include homicidal ideation among their symptoms.
Her husband says her condition improved after her hospital stay.
Her husband allegedly reported that she seemed to be doing much better after her stay. He says she was never on more than four or five medications at a time and that she was only on three at the time of the murders.
She was behaving normally and interacting well with family and friends. He reportedly asked her sometime in mid-January whether she was still having suicidal thoughts and she said, "No."
Her attorney previously made claims that she had been a 'zombie' at the time of the murders.
Just a few days before the killings, Lindsay Clancy's mother had visited the family, and in a text exchange after the visit, she told her daughter she was glad that she was doing better.
On the night of the murders, Patrick Clancy told police that his wife was having "one of her best days," and she was happy and gave no one any indication that she would harm the kids.
"No one. No one at all, described her as acting like a zombie in the days leading up to the murder or on the day of the murders themselves," the prosecutor argued during the arraignment.
Lindsay Clancy claimed 'psychosis' only after speaking with a doctor hired by her attorney.
The prosecutor also reported that Lindsay Clancy spoke to her husband on February 6, calling from a cellphone owned by the psychologist hired by her attorney. It was during that call that she told her husband that she "heard a voice."
She told him that it was a man's voice and that it told her to kill the kids and herself, because "it was her last chance." She also told him that after he left the house that night, she had a "moment of psychosis."
Patrick Clancy told authorities that his wife had never heard voices before or used the word "psychosis" to him before.
Lindsay Clancy wanted more children.
"I think I sort of resent my other children, because they prevent me from treating Cal like my first baby, and I know that's not fair to them. I know that," she wrote in a note on her phone, according to the prosecutor, per Law & Crime's YouTube video, who said she also wrote that she wanted to have more kids eventually. "I was feeling so depressed last evening when Cora and Dawson came home from school. I know it runs off on them, so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all of my kids."
During the hearing on Tuesday, the judge ruled that Clancy will remain in the hospital until she can be transferred to a rehabilitation facility.
