PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts — What role could postpartum mental health play in the murder of innocent children? That’s just one of the questions at play inside a Massachusetts courtroom where Lindsay Clancy, formerly of Wallingford, was arraigned on charges of killing her three young children.
Clancy, a 2008 Lyman Hall grad and 2012 Quinnipiac grad, appeared in court via Zoom Tuesday. Her attorneys said she is now paralyzed from the waist down after attempting to take her life. Disturbing details in 110 pages of court documents detail how Clancy told her husband “she heard voices and had a “moment of psychosis.”
In the weeks leading up to the murder of her three children, 32-year-old Clancy was reportedly anxious about returning to her job as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital.
On Friday, January 27, Clancy took 5-year-old Cora to the doctor, built a snowman with Cora and 3-year-old Dawson then strangled them both along with 7-month-old baby Callan with exercise resistance bands while her husband was picking up takeout and medicine for Cora, court documents state.
“One of the first questions that Lindsay Clancy asked was, Do I need an attorney? She knew that she had murdered her children,” said Jennifer Sprague, Massachusetts Assistant District Attorney.
Each child was blue in the face when authorities arrived and “had the exercise band that was used to strangle them tied around their necks when their father found them.” Medics were able to restart baby Callan’s pulse but not brain activity. He died days later.
“She used apple maps to make sure she had enough time to strangle each child before her Husband returned from where she had sent him,” Sprague said in court.
The warrant also portrays a mom suffering from severe mental illness. Clancy wrote in her journal she had “suicidal ideation” and “thoughts of harming herself and the kids.”
Clancy was on several medications including Prozac and was admitted to the hospital in early January. But prosecutors focused on a late December diagnosis of generalized anxiety, not postpartum psychosis.
Dr. Paul Zeizel a psychologist for the defense said, “[Clancy’s] in a surreal state. It feels dream-like to her.”
Clancy’s defense lays out a different picture of an emotionally fragile mom who failed by a cocktail of medications.
“When you have delusional thinking, fixed beliefs that are unchangeable and hallucinations, you believe those voices that are telling you, you need to follow what they say that’s when things go downhill,” Zeizel said.
Half of the 110 pages of court docs are not police documents at all, but firsthand accounts from Clancy’s colleagues at the hospital, portraying her character in a positive light.
Dozens of Clancy’s colleagues at Massachusetts General wrote to the court about Clancy’s nature saying, “her patients were so lucky to have her” and “she is a compassionate, supportive, and excellent nurse.” Others said they were shocked to see the number of meds she was on at the time of the murders.
Samaia Hernandez is a reporter for FOX61 News. She can be reached at shernandez@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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