PLYMOUTH, Mass. — In the months following the birth of her third child, Lindsay Clancy’s mental health deteriorated dramatically. She experienced manic episodes, severe sleeplessness, and recurring thoughts of self-harm. She sought help from specialists in postpregnancy mood disorders, was placed on several psychiatric medications, and eventually admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. Nineteen days after her release, she strangled all three of her children inside the family’s Massachusetts home.
Jurors heard opening statements Monday in Clancy’s murder trial, a case that will pit two very different accounts of her mindset and culpability against each other.
Prosecutors contend that Clancy, who previously worked as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, carefully and deliberately planned the killings and must be held fully accountable for the deaths of her children.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, counters that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time — a rare and severe mental illness triggered by the physical stress, sleep deprivation, and hormonal upheaval that can follow childbirth.
The proceedings are expected to stretch over several weeks.
Boston criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Elyse Hershon said the outcome will likely hinge on how jurors interpret Clancy’s “intent and mental capacity.”
“Whenever there are deaths of children, it rattles emotions. Because these actions are incomprehensible and the outcome so horrific, people tend to want to hold someone responsible,” Hershon said. “Some people naturally will identify and sympathize with Clancy and her postpartum depression, and others will not be able to understand how one could end their children’s lives, and demand responsibility.”
While postpartum depression affects a significant number of women after giving birth, postpartum psychosis is far less common — estimated to strike only 1 to 2 out of every 1,000 women following delivery. The condition can cause hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, dramatic mood swings, and thoughts of harming oneself or others. However, the vast majority of women diagnosed with the condition do not harm their children.
According to prosecutors, Clancy strangled her three children — Cora, age 5; Dawson, age 3; and Callan, just 8 months old — on January 24, 2023. She had sent her then-husband, Patrick, out to run errands before the killings took place. Afterward, she jumped from a second-floor window of the home and was left paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the fall.
At the time of the incident, Clancy had been receiving psychiatric treatment for approximately four months. Her attorney says that on the day of the killings, she reported hearing voices telling her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself.”
If the jury finds Clancy guilty of murder, she faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole. If she is found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.
Legal observers have noted similarities between this case and other high-profile cases involving mothers accused of killing their children. In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in Texas. Her attorneys argued she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, believed Satan had taken hold of her and that killing her children would spare them from hell. Her original murder conviction was later overturned, and in a retrial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state psychiatric facility.
In another Texas case, Dena Schlosser was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006 after she killed her 10-month-old daughter by severing her arms.
Nicole Cirino, who directs the division of reproductive psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and has served as a defense expert witness in infanticide cases, said many mothers who harm their children while experiencing postpartum psychosis believe they are acting out of love or protection.
In their own minds, Cirino said, “they may be saving their children from damnation.”
Clancy and her former husband, Patrick Clancy, have both filed lawsuits alleging that her medical providers failed to properly identify and treat her condition.
Awareness of postpartum psychosis has increased since the Yates case, but Cirino and other advocates for maternal mental health say prosecutors rarely take a mother’s mental state into full account. Illinois stands as the only state with a law that allows undiagnosed or untreated postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis to be considered as a mitigating factor during sentencing.
Dr. Catherine Birndorf, the CEO and founder of The Motherhood Center in New York City — an organization that treats mothers dealing with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders — was direct in her assessment.
“Women who kill their children in the throes of this medical illness, postpartum psychosis, are seriously and profoundly mentally ill. They are not evil,” she said. “To me it’s illness until proven otherwise. The fact that we consider it criminal until proven otherwise is problematic.”
