Jury selection got underway Monday in the murder trial of a Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three young children while receiving psychiatric treatment following childbirth.
Lindsay Clancy has entered a not guilty plea in connection with the deaths of her children — Cora, age 5; Dawson, age 3; and Callan, who was just 8 months old at the time of their deaths on January 24, 2023.
Clancy, who is now 36 years old, jumped from a window after the children were killed and suffered paralysis as a result of the fall. She is currently being held at a state hospital.
The case is expected to put a spotlight on the rare and complex condition known as postpartum psychosis, which affects a very small number of women who experience delusions and sometimes hallucinations following childbirth. Both Clancy’s legal team and her husband maintain that she was not in control of her actions.
The prosecution, however, argues that the killings were intentional and carefully premeditated — not the actions of someone who had lost their grip on reality.
On the day of the incident, Clancy — a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital — sent her husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the home by asking him to pick up takeout food and stop by a pharmacy. She then used exercise bands to strangle the three children inside the family’s residence in Duxbury, a community roughly 30 miles, or about 48 kilometers, south of Boston.
A panel of 18 jurors, which includes six alternates, is expected to be seated over the course of several days. The full trial is anticipated to run for several weeks.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, does not contest the fact that she killed the children, but intends to pursue an insanity defense on her behalf.
“This whole case is an extreme tragedy,” Reddington said.
Earlier this year, both Lindsay and Patrick Clancy filed separate lawsuits alleging that her medical providers failed to properly identify, treat, and monitor her for what the suits describe as a “severe postpartum psychiatric condition.”
Lindsay Clancy’s lawsuit described a pattern of worsening symptoms — including depression, difficulty sleeping, and recurring voices urging her to harm herself and her children. She had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital just weeks before the killings took place.
The lawsuit stated: “Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do. She recognized something was wrong with her. She sought medical treatment. She went to emergency rooms. She called crisis hotlines. She admitted herself to hospitals. She took the medication prescribed to her. She communicated her worsening symptoms to her providers. She told them the medications were making her worse.”
According to her account, on the day of the killings she heard voices telling her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself.”
Patrick Clancy is listed as a potential witness by both the defense and the prosecution. In public statements, he has expressed forgiveness toward his wife.
In a GoFundMe post written just days after the tragedy, Patrick Clancy described the “shock and pain” as “excruciating and relentless,” while asking the public to remember his wife as the person she was before that day.
“The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring toward everyone — me, our kids, family, friends, and her patients. The very fibers of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace,” he wrote.
