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A Massachusetts mother has pleaded not guilty to strangling her three children to death during a court appearance held over Zoom as she lay paralyzed in her Boston hospital bed.
Lindsay Clancy, 32, has been charged with three counts of premeditated murder for strangling her three kids on January 29 at the family home in Duxbury, 35 miles southeast of Boston.
Clancy’s attorneys say she was severely depressed, suffering with post-partum depression and even psychosis, caused by a cocktail of prescription drugs that turned her into a ‘shell’ of herself and robbed her of her personality and ability to feel emotions.
They say Lindsay told her husband – who has forgiven her – she heard a ‘man’s voice’ telling her to kill the children and then herself because it was her ‘last choice’.
Prosecutors today launched a merciless prosecution, claiming she was well aware of what she was doing and that she even planned it out.
Clancy remains in the hospital after trying to take her own life; she slit her wrists and jumped from a top floor window of her home after strangling her kids, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months. She has been paralyzed as a result of the jump
After strangling the kids, Lindsay tried to cut her own wrists. She then jumped from a window at the family home. Baby Callan, eight months, died in the hospital. Cora and Dawson died at home
They told the court she had been behaving normally in the days before the incident, and that she had only referred to having slight ‘post-partum anxiety’ in notes found on her iPhone.
They also referred to notes where she described ‘resenting’ the older two children because they stopped her from ‘loving Callan like he was her first baby’.
Prosecutors say she deliberately sent her husband out to a takeout restaurant that was far enough away from the home to give her time to kill the kids, and even researched how long it would take him to drive there and back using Google Maps.
They also noted that she would have had to have strangled each child for several minutes with the exercise bands in order for them to stop breathing.
‘The bands had to have been squeezing their minds for several minutes.
She is not OK, at all… she’s paraplegic, unable to move her legs or feel sensation… she is paralyzed
‘She could have changed her mind,’ they said, calling it a ‘premeditated’ crime with a ‘extreme cruelty’.
They say the first thing Lindsay asked doctors in the hospital was whether she needed a lawyer, using a pen and whiteboard to scrawl out the question because she was intubated at the time.
They also claimed she’d been behaving normally all day before the attack, taking her kids to the pediatrician and then playing with them at the house.
Lindsay was denied bond but will be allowed to stay in hospital before being transferred to a rehab center. She was ordered to surrender her passport.
After attacking the children, Lindsay slit her wrists and then jumped from her bedroom window, landing in the family’s backyard.
She suffered several spine fractures and is now a paraplegic, her attorney said.
‘She is not OK, at all. She suffered several, severe spine fractions. She is not expected to recover meaningful function below that level of the spinal cord.
Lindsay Clancy with her husband Patrick and their oldest children, Cora, five, and Dawson, three. She
Tuesday’s court hearing was held over zoom with Clancy visible to the courtroom in her bed
Details from the District Attorney detail the charges Lindsay Clancy faced in a virtual court hearing on Tuesday
‘She’s paraplegic, unable to move her legs or feel sensation. She is paralyzed.
‘She needs significant medical treatment,’ he said, begging the court not to jail her and instead allow her to be sent to a medical rehab center.
Clancy’s attorneys say she was overprescribed a cocktail of prescription drugs to treat post-partum depression, and that it had turned her into a ‘zombie.’
In court today, her attorney Kevin J. Reddington, denied that the attacks were premeditated.
‘We all know this is an individual who is in dire medical condition. This woman is a danger to herself. I question whether she would ever make it to a trial.
‘She is suicidal, she is extremely emotional. She is unable to express any happiness or sadness or cry,’ Reddington said.
He said she was ‘thoroughly destroyed’ by the cocktail of medications prescribed to her after her third child was born.
‘Our society fails miserably in treating women with post partum depression or post partum psychosis.
‘It’s ‘medicate, medicate, medicate’.
‘Throw the pills at you and see how it works.’
Her husband Patrick has forgiven her, and is asking others to do the same.
In court, her attorney also made reference to the many letters of support she has received from friends and colleagues, who all say it was out of character for her to have harmed the children.
‘She loved her children,’ her attorney said.
The Clancy home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, where the children were killed in the basement
A sea of tributes for the children were left outside the home following their deaths
Patrick, Lindsay’s husband, has forgiven her. He is shown with the children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months
Lindsay was described as a loving mother who said she wanted to have more children
Clancy’s lawyer previously told a judge that the drugs Lindsay had been prescribed left her feeling feeling like a ‘zombie’.
He is seeking to fight the charges, arguing she was not in control of herself because of the drastic effects the drugs had had on her mind and body.
Investigators are now probing the theory that she might have been suffering from post-partum psychosis.
He also described the ‘horrific’ combination of prescription drugs Lindsay had been given.
Reddington says that between October and January, Clancy was prescribed a dozen medications: Zolpidem which is sold under the brand name Ambien, clonazepam, which is sold under the brand name of Klonopin, diazepam which is sold under the brand name Valium, fluoxetine which is sold under the brand name Prozac, lamotrigine, which is sold under the brand name Lamictil, lorazepam, which is sold under the brand name Ativan, mirtazapine, which is sold under the brand name Remeron, quetiapine fumarate, which is sold under the brand name Seroquel, and trazodone.
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