Content warning: This article contains disturbing descriptions of violence.
Prosecutors say a Massachusetts mom who is accused of murdering her three young children strangled each of them to death with an exercise band after a man’s voice in her head told her to kill them.
On Tuesday, the prosecution laid out the events they allege led to the January killings of Lindsay Clancy’s 7-month-old son, Callan, her 5-year-old daughter Cora and her 3-year-old son Dawson, followed by her own suicide attempt.
Lindsay, 32, pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation, and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
The former nurse appeared for her arraignment via Zoom from her hospital bed.
Prosecutors said on Jan. 24, the mom of three murdered her children with “deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty” when she knowingly sent her husband Patrick Clancy on an errand run to pick up dinner and prescription medication at a CVS that evening.
“She created the situation, and she used Apple Maps to make sure she would have enough time to strangle each child before her husband returned from where she had sent him,” prosecutors said.
Following the alleged strangulations, Lindsay allegedly locked herself in the couple’s bedroom, cut her wrists and neck and leapt from the second story window, according to prosecutors.
Upon Patrick’s return home, prosecutors say the first thing he noticed was silence.
He searched for the children and Lindsay, and eventually found his wife seriously injured, laying in the backyard and asked her, “What did you do? Where are the kids?” the prosecution described.
“In the basement,” she allegedly replied.
Patrick called 911 and allegedly found all three children with exercise bands wrapped around their necks.
“He removed the bands and begged them to breathe,” prosecutors described.
“She killed the kids,” Patrick allegedly told first responders when they found him in the basement where the kids were strangled. Cora and Dawson died that day and Callan died three days later from his injuries.
In the weeks leading up to the suspected killings, the prosecution said Lindsay had “suicidal ideations in December of 2022 … and on one occasion had thoughts of harming her children.” The incidents allegedly prompted her to voluntarily commit herself to a psychiatric hospital in Boston on Jan. 1, according to prosecutors.
Four days later, on Jan. 5, Lindsay was allegedly discharged. The hospital did not file any paperwork to have her committed as a danger to herself or others, the prosecution said.
On the night of the Jan. 24 killings, Patrick told investigators that Lindsay was “having one of her best days,” since her hospital release. “She was smiling and happy, and there was no indication that she was going to harm the kids,” said the prosecution.
Following the killings, during a phone call between Patrick and Lindsay, prosecutors said she allegedly confessed, saying she had a “moment of psychosis” after she “heard a man’s voice telling her to kill the kids and kill herself because it was her last chance.”
Lindsay’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, argued the multiple medications doctors prescribed to treat Lindsay’s depression and anxiety following the birth of her third child is to blame for her “postpartum depression, as well as the possibility of postpartum psychosis.”
Reddington described Lindsay as a loving mother who “was a beautiful person who was thoroughly destroyed by these medications.”
“She always wanted to have kids, always wanted to have babies,” said Reddington. “She’s a nurse. She wanted to be a midwife because she wanted to help other women in having babies.”
Judge John Canavan declined to set monetary bail for Lindsay, claiming she is a minimal flight risk due to the paralysis she suffered after her alleged leap from the second-story window.
He ordered her to remain in her current hospital until medically cleared to be moved to a new facility. Upon completion of treatment, her bail status will be re-addressed, he said.
Lindsay is due back in court May 2.
