“Medication stole my motherhood and my life.”
That’s what prosecutors say was written in a note found on Lindsay Clancy’s cellphone, which was last modified the day before she fatally strangled her three young children in January 2023.
“I was the healthiest, happiest mom,” the note, which was created in late December 2022, said. “I worked out every morning, meditated, and took care of myself so I could be the best for my kids. Until prescription medication stole me from my own body. It began with a touch of post partum anxiety.”
The note briefly displayed in court Thursday offered jurors in Clancy’s triple-murder trial perhaps their best glimpse yet at the Massachusetts mother’s apparent perspective on her own struggle with mental health leading up to the killings. In other writings found on her cellphone, Clancy detailed her anxiety and depression, challenges raising her children and her hesitation to take new medication.
Clancy, 36, does not deny she killed her children – Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan – in the family’s Duxbury home on January 24, 2023. But her attorney argues she should not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled them and then attempted to kill herself.
