Lindsay Clancy has not taken the stand in her trial, but her words to doctors and entries from her diary have given the jury a look at what she was experiencing before and after her three children died.
Clancy, 35, is accused of killing her children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan at the family’s Duxbury, , home on January 24, 2023. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The killings themselves are not disputed. The main issue in the trial is Clancy’s mental state. Prosecutors say she acted intentionally and was responsible for the deaths. Her defense argues that she was suffering from and was not criminally responsible.
What Lindsay Clancy said right after the killings
When her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, came home that night and found blood in the bedroom, Lindsay Clancy had strangled her three children with exercise bands in the basement before trying to end her own life by cutting her wrists and neck and jumping from the home’s second-story window. Badly injured, she told him the kids were in the basement but did not say they were dead, he testified, as per .
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What she remembered in the hospital
Two days after the killings, Clancy was still on a ventilator and could not speak, so a doctor gave her paper to write her answers. Dr Jhilam Biswas, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that when she asked Clancy about her mood, “She wrote, ‘horrified.’” Clancy “seemed very anxious,” Biswas said.
One of the first things Clancy asked was whether she had a lawyer. She also wrote “Is my body broken?” and “Are my legs straight?” and asked if she could have visitors and where her family was, according to News.
Dr Sejal Shah, who first spoke with Clancy on January 29, five days after the killings said Clancy told her she had felt delirious at first and had some visual hallucinations in the hospital.
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What does her diary say about her mental state?
Clancy’s diary, seized by police, was read aloud in court and showed her struggles before the killings. Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham read an entry where Clancy said she was obsessed with her infant son’s sleep schedule: “Hearing him cry for one-plus hours and not intervening just about killed me. I even said the words ‘I want to die’ to Pat while he was crying,” she wrote, as per CBS News. She also wrote, “I feel like I’m drowning every day.”
Defense attorney read other entries where Clancy wrote, “I now have horrible insomnia and anxiety which is causing depression. I have no appetite, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want help. I want to be well.” She also wrote that she felt “completely disconnected” from her baby: “I feel like I’m going through the motions every day.”
In an entry dated November 18, 2022, Clancy wrote, “It’s like I’m so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to make something physically wrong with me.”
What her lawyer says happened on the day of the killings
Clancy’s attorney says that on the day she killed her children, she heard voices telling her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself,” according to her lawyer, as per AP. Her defense argues she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis at the time, while prosecutors say she acted intentionally and rationally.
Prosecutors argue Clancy “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she strangled her children, and say doctors found her clear-headed, organized, and goal-directed in the days after, as per CNN.
