Lindsay Clancy ‘s murder trial zeroed in Friday on the nearly five days that the Massachusetts mother spent in a psychiatric hospital a few weeks before she killed her three children.Her stay is a key chapter in both the prosecution and defense narratives about her mental state when she strangled the children in their suburban home and then jumped out a second-story window. In questioning one of her McLean Hospital psychiatrists on Friday, a prosecutor underscored that Clancy denied to hospital clinicians that she wanted to hurt anyone else or planned to kill herself. Clancy’s lawyer, meanwhile, aimed to flesh out the defense’s claim that she sought mental health help for months, wasn’t properly diagnosed as she went from provider to provider, and was put on a series of medications that left her worse off. ___EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
___Clancy has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the January 2023 strangling deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old. They were found in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts, and their mother was lying, badly injured, in the yard. She remains paralyzed from the waist down. Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a 35-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, was an intentional killer who attacked her children after getting her husband out of the house by asking him to run errands. The defense doesn’t dispute that she killed the children but says she shouldn’t be held criminally responsible, contending that she was so mentally ill that she heard voices telling her to kill them and herself.
