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, wore a neck brace and face mask as she appeared in Plymouth District Court via Zoom from her hospital bed. The judge ultimately ruled that she would remain in her current hospital until her transfer to a rehabilitation facility.
Clancy was on leave from her job as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital when prosecutors allege she strangled her three children– Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months– at the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24.
Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, alleged that Clancy– who faces first-degree murder charges – 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.
“[Clancy] was…a beautiful person who was destroyed by this medication,” Reddington told the court, holding up the “wish vase” of notes full of hope for both herself and her children that was found near Clancy’s bed.
Reddington also announced that Clancy suffered spinal cord injuries and is now paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from a second floor window in the moments after the murders.
“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.”
He also said said that Clancy told a psychologist she heard a “male voice” telling her to kill the children and herself before the incident.
Clancy, who did not speak during the proceedings, appeared to close her eyes for several moments as prosecutors alleged that she was “lucid” before the killings.
They also said she “created” the scenario in which her husband, Patrick, was away from their home for about 20 minutes on an errand at a CVS, leaving her enough time to strangle all three children.
Patrick Clancy returned home to “silence” — and found blood and an open window in the couple’s upstairs bedroom before finding his injured wife on the lawn, Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said.
The state’s attorney described in painstaking detail the moment Patrick then found his children in the finished basement, each with exercise bands still wrapped around their “little necks.”
The grieving father’s screams “seemed to grow louder and louder” on the phone to 911 dispatchers, the prosecutor said. When first responders arrived at the scene, he allegedly yelled “She killed the kids!”
