Lindsay Clancy told a psychologist that she heard a man’s voice telling her to kill her children before she strangled them with exercise ropes, Massachusetts prosecutors alleged at her arraignment Tuesday– while her own attorney described her new reality as a paraplegic at risk of suicide.
Clancy, 32, appeared in Plymouth District Court via Zoom while wearing a neck brace and face mask in her hospital bed. The judge ultimately ruled that she would remain in her current hospital until her transfer to a rehabilitation facility.
Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, alleged that Clancy– who faces first-degree murder charges after strangling her three children on Jan. 24– was a victim of a healthcare system that fails women with “postpartum depression– and even postpartum psychosis.” He claimed that she was prescribed drugs– including Prozac and Seroquel– that included homicidal ideation among their side effects.
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“[Clancy] was…a beautiful person who was destroyed by this medication,” the impassioned attorney told the court of the former labor and delivery nurse.
Reddington also announced that Clancy– who tried to take her own life by jumping from a second floor window after killing her children– suffered spinal cord injuries and is now paralyzed from the waist down. He requested that she await in an appropriate rehab facility.
“She can’t walk…she can’t even go to the bathroom,” he said, noting that her emotional state was also “not well at all.”
Clancy, who did not speak during the proceedings, appeared to close her eyes for several moments as prosecutors alleged that she “created” the scenario in which her husband, Patrick, was gone from their Duxbury home for about 20 minutes, leaving her enough time to strangle Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan.
After stopping by CVS and picking up takeout at Clancy’s request, prosecutors said, Patrick Clancy returned home to “silence,” and subsequently discovered his wife in the yard.
His were later heard by 911 dispatchers when he discovered his children in the finished basement, where they reportedly still had exercise ropes around their “little necks.”
When first responders arrived on the scene, Patrick reportedly cried out “She killed the kids!”
Prosecutors also detailed the “meticulous” notes in Clancy’s journals, which documented her children’s lives as well as her mental health journey.
Although she briefly expressed suicidal thoughts and thoughts of hurting the children to her husband, the state’s attorney said,
“[Clancy] strangled the children in the place they should have felt safest: at home, with their mom,” the prosecutor said.
A funeral for all three children was held on Feb. 3 at St. Mary of the Nativity in Scituate.
Ahead of his children’s funeral mass last week, Patrick Clancy issued an impassioned plea for the public to forgive his wife.
“I want to ask all of you that you find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay, as I have,” the grieving father and husband wrote in an update to the GoFundMe page started by the couple’s friend.
“The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards 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.”
