When Lindsay Clancy’s trial opened last month at Plymouth County Superior Court, there was little to suggest the proceedings would soon draw attention far beyond Massachusetts.
The courthouse stands in Plymouth, a quiet coastal community not far from the Duxbury house where Clancy strangled her three young children with exercise bands in January 2023.
On July 27, as testimony began, I joined a small group of mostly local journalists entering the courtroom to hear opening arguments in what was already a deeply tragic but seemingly localized case.
After five weeks of wrenching testimony and disturbing evidence, the scene has been transformed. The courthouse is now ringed with media crews, photographers and a growing number of public supporters.
Last week, hundreds of women arrived outside the court dressed in pink and carrying signs that read “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay.” Some had traveled from across the United States, while flags from several countries underscored how widely the case has resonated.
The case is no longer simply about a mother who killed her three children. It has become a debate about postpartum care and women’s mental health.
But inside the courtroom, the question was much narrower.
Was Lindsay Clancy a mother so consumed by postpartum psychosis that she could not understand the consequences of her actions, or did she know exactly what she was doing when she killed her children?
That answer now rests with a jury of nine women and three men, who on Friday had still not reached a verdict. Deliberations will continue Monday.
Lindsay Clancy’s fate now hangs in the hands of the jury following 21 days of testimony
The case has sparked a national debate about postpartum mental health issues with women dressed in pink rallying outside court
From my first-row seat in the courtroom, I watched prosecutors paint Clancy as a mother who methodically planned the killings, sending her husband, Patrick, out to collect takeout and run errands so she could strangle their three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, with exercise bands in the basement before attempting to take her own life.
The defense portrayed her as a devoted mother in the grip of postpartum psychosis who had spent months desperately seeking help for her rapidly deteriorating mental state. They claim she heard a male voice telling her it was her ‘last chance’ to kill herself and her children.
A total of 84 witnesses took the stand, delivering grueling and emotional testimony – some of which was too distressing to be shared beyond the walls of the courtroom.
On the second day, the televised livestream was cut, leaving those inside the room as the only people to hear the gut-wrenching 911 call made by Clancy’s husband Patrick the night he found his half-conscious wife in their backyard.
The courtroom fell chillingly quiet as the seven-minute call began with a panicked Patrick telling the dispatcher, ‘my wife tried to commit suicide’ and repeatedly urging her to ‘stay awake.’
But it was when the emergency responders arrived and he went to check on the kids that the tone of the call, and the courtroom, transformed.
The sound of Patrick’s footsteps running down into the basement reverberated around the room.
That was when the guttural, unearthly screams began.
‘She killed the kids!’ he finally cried out, reducing the entire courtroom to tears.
The media presence also suddenly blew up – so much so that Kevin Reddington faced a mob of cameras getting in and out of the courthouse
Patrick Clancy’s gut-wrenching 911 call was played inside the courtroom early in the trial
Throughout the trial, there were several other moments where emotions ran so high that the judge had to halt proceedings.
Harrowing autopsy photos of the three children prompted such a visceral reaction from Clancy that the trial stopped three times as she sobbed uncontrollably.
For prosecutors, the evidence was an attempt to show the jury the full horror of the killings.
It made for a jarring contrast with the picture painted by the defense of Clancy as a ‘wonderful mother,’ a description echoed by friends, a nanny, her mother, Patrick and his parents, Sue and Chris.
As defense attorney Kevin Reddington put it during one fiery moment, ‘there has not been anyone who had anything bad to say about this woman other than these two,’ gesturing toward Assistant District Attorneys Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham.
For Patrick, who divorced Clancy, moved to New York and remarried, his testimony during the first week of the trial brought with it a heartbreaking reunion – the first time he had come face-to-face with his ex-wife since that day.
While Clancy tearfully watched the man she once shared a life with, Patrick largely avoided her gaze.
His mother Sue, who said her former daughter-in-law was ‘begging for help’, made her support more known.
Lindsay, Patrick, Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy pictured together not long before the killings
As she left the stand and walked past Clancy, Sue looked at her for several seconds, appearing to try to catch her eye.
Then she gave a gentle, knowing nod.
It was a tiny gesture, but one that spoke volumes.
While both families clearly believed that Clancy’s actions were the result of severe mental illness, the killings have torn apart two families joined by three small children.
The rift was visible in the courthouse corridors, where the Clancys and Musgroves often kept their distance on opposite sides of the hallway.
Patrick and his family did not return to court after their own testimonies. Clancy’s parents, meanwhile, were there every day.
They have been a constant presence in their daughter’s life after relocating from Connecticut following the killings to support their daughter.
Joining them in the courtroom has been a revolving door of support including a family friend, Clancy’s sister Allison Ozga, Clancy’s priest and defense experts.
For those who came to support Clancy, her defense attorney became an unlikely feminist hero.
Moments in which the 75-year-old, silver-haired veteran held Clancy’s hand or put his arms around her as she sobbed went viral, while memes and GIFs of him flooded social media.
The vibe shifted throughout the trial, with one woman bringing her emotional support pug Chorizo to court while two parents brought along young children
There was something undeniably ironic about the attorney standing up for women’s postpartum mental health being an elderly man who drives a Hummer and wears a skull ring.
The prosecution team, meanwhile, is made up of two women in their 40s.
Throughout, there has been no love lost between Reddington and the prosecutors, coming to blows over everything from an apparent hot mic moment to Sprague demanding he address her as ‘attorney Sprague.’
Buckingham, meanwhile, raised eyebrows by wearing a bow in her hair each day, an apparent nod to the way Clancy’s daughter, Cora, wore hers.
Some of the evidence presented in court was seized upon by both sides.
Clancy’s private diary entries and Google searches offered jurors insight into her tortured mind. Five days before the killings, she googled ‘hallucinations’ and ‘psychosis symptoms.’
One day later, she searched ‘Where is the carotid artery,’ ‘How to slit your throat to die’ and ‘Can you turn airbags off Kia Sorento.’
The prosecution pointed to the searches as evidence that Clancy was planning her suicide and the killings, while the defense argued they were further evidence of her deteriorating mental state.
As the testimony grew more critical and the trial neared its conclusion, the frenzy surrounding it grew with it.
Last week, around 400 women gathered outside the courthouse dressed in pink to support Clancy, many sharing their own experiences of postpartum mental illness.
Clancy’s heartbroken parents Paula and Mike Musgrove (center and right) have been a constant presence in the courtroom
The media presence swelled too. For weeks, the same handful of reporters had occupied the press benches.
Suddenly, television crews and news tents appeared outside the courthouse, with journalists and supporters arriving in the early hours to queue for seats inside.
The atmosphere also became increasingly surreal. One woman brought her emotional-support pug, Chorizo, to court. Two parents arrived with young children. And a court reporter was chastised for appearing to wink at the camera at one point.
Online, the case had taken on a terrifying life of its own.
Totally baseless conspiracy theories spread across TikTok suggesting Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick had somehow been involved in the killings.
But inside the courtroom, amid all the competing theories, there was one thing no one disputed: Clancy was severely mentally unwell, and she was the person who killed her three children.
Just how mentally unwell was a point of contention between the prosecution and defense.
It was September 15, 2022, when she first had a Zoom appointment with psychiatrist Dr Jennifer Tufts and was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft.
Over the next four months, her mental health deteriorated rapidly.
She saw multiple providers and was prescribed 13 different medications, some of which the defense argued worsened her symptoms.
She was twice turned away from a suicide hotline because she did not have a plan, before voluntarily admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital for five days on January 1.
The defense said it was evidence of a mother desperately seeking help and repeatedly falling through the cracks of the mental-health system.
But the providers who treated her told the jury they had seen no signs of postpartum psychosis and claimed Clancy never told them she was hearing a voice, nor did she disclose homicidal thoughts.
The first time Clancy said she had heard a voice commanding her to kill came days after the murders.
Whether that voice was the product of a severe psychosis or evidence of a story that emerged after the killings became the very heart of the case.
As the trial neared its close, it became clear that the outcome may hinge on a battle of the experts.
Psychiatrists who evaluated Clancy for the defense and prosecution gave drastically opposing accounts of her mental state at the time of the killings.
Defense expert Dr Phillip Resnick said Clancy was ‘frankly psychotic’ and is not criminally responsible, likening her to ‘a puppet’ with ‘someone else pulling the strings.’
He testified that Clancy committed both altruistic filicide – a parent killing their child out of love – and acutely psychotic filicide – acting on a psychotic belief.
By contrast, the state’s rebuttal witness Dr Kirk Heilbrun testified that she was in control – and that for her to only hear a voice for the 18-minute period in which she killed the children would be ‘highly unusual.’
Crime scene photos show the inside of the basement where the children were found strangled
While each of the experts to testify at the trial gave varying diagnoses, they all agreed on one part of the criminal responsibility question: that she was suffering a mental defect or disease.
But the burden lies with the state to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Clancy could still control her actions or conform to the law despite her mental illness.
As closing arguments wrapped up, the jurors’ expressions were solemn, the weight of the decision before them seemingly etched across their faces.
Noticeably, they took no notes. It was a marked departure from the copious scribbling that had filled their notebooks throughout weeks of testimony.
And for the first time, a wall of Massachusetts State Police officers took seats in one of the courtroom rows.
Many had given harrowing testimony about the day they rushed to 47 Summer Street and encountered the horror inside.
Their presence was a stark reminder of what had brought the jury here in the first place.
Jurors must decide whether the former labor-and-delivery nurse should face two starkly different futures: a life behind bars or potentially years inside a state psychiatric hospital, where she will remain confined until she is no longer deemed mentally ill.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.
