Lindsay Clancy’s former mother-in-law was the latest witness to take the stand in her murder trial, testifying that her former daughter-in-law was “begging for help” with her postpartum mental health in the months before she killed her three children.
On Tuesday, former labor and delivery nurse Susan Clancy said she helped connect her then-daughter-in-law with treatment through South Shore Health’s Perinatal Behavioral Health Program.
Susan Clancy said Lindsay Clancy was experiencing “insomnia,” was “losing her appetite” and was “very anxious and sad.”
Echoing the testimony of other witnesses, Susan Clancy said her daughter-in-law’s behavior at the time was starkly different from her prior demeanor as a devoted mother. “She was very nurturing, very loving,” she said.
Lindsay Clancy, 36, has admitted to strangling her children — Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan — at their Duxbury, Mass., home in January 2023.
However, she has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. Her lawyers argued that she was not criminally responsible for the killings because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that can follow childbirth.
Prosecutors contend Lindsay Clancy planned the killings and was legally responsible.
Here’s what the key witnesses have told the court so far.
Patrick Clancy
Lindsay Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, was the first person to testify at the trial on July 27.
Over two days, he described a steep decline in his then-wife’s mental health in the months leading up to the killings. He said she had a “big spiral” after she began taking a new antipsychotic medication after the birth of their third child, Callan.
“She described thoughts of hurting the kids or them having some sort of ailment,” he said, though he acknowledged she did not indicate that she intended to hurt the children.
Patrick Clancy on the stand.
(David L. Ryan/Pool The Boston Globe via AP)On the morning their children died, Patrick Clancy said Lindsay Clancy “was playing with the kids, and she seemed in a good mood.” He added, “She was having one of her best days.”
He said his last image of his son, Dawson, was the child sitting on the couch, eating chicken nuggets and green beans. Lindsay Clancy had asked him to make a quick trip to pick up takeout food and medication for Cora.
No one had told Patrick Clancy that his wife should not be alone with the children, he said. “I didn’t know what psychosis was until after this happened.”
Discussing the multiple medications Lindsay Clancy had been prescribed, he said, “The idea was that it would help with sleep, but she didn’t get better. She got worse.”
First responders
Ten police officers, firefighters and paramedics who responded to the Clancy home were the next witnesses to testify, taking the stand on July 30.
Lindsay Clancy sobbed in court as jurors listened to a 911 call made by her husband after he discovered her injured and badly bleeding in the yard of their Massachusetts home. Patrick Clancy then told the dispatcher he was going to check on the children. Moments later, he cried out after finding them in the basement.
Officers Stephen Hall and Brian Josephine said they initially focused on Lindsay Clancy, who was drifting in and out of consciousness in the snow after jumping from a second-floor window. Within minutes, they were racing into the basement after Patrick Clancy screamed that all three children were dead. “I can’t wake them up — I can’t get them up!” he told the officers.
Only 8-month-old Callan had a faint pulse when officers reached the children, Josephine said.
Duxbury fire supervisor PJ Hussey, who arrived as Patrick Clancy was removing an exercise band from his child’s neck, said, “It turned very chaotic very quickly” as more ambulances rushed to the house. Duxbury firefighter and paramedic Jennifer Stratton testified that she immediately began chest compressions on Callan, but he never regained a pulse.
The nanny
The family’s former nanny, Elaine Rossi, also took the stand. She testified that Lindsay Clancy lost weight, couldn’t sleep and reported significant mental health issues in the months after Callan’s birth, even as she remained attentive to her children.
Rossi worked for the family from September to December 2022, after Callan was born.
Elaine Rossi, the nanny to Clancy children, sits on the witness stand.
(David L. Ryan/Pool The Boston Globe via AP)The former nanny testified that she saw prescription medicine bottles in the house, and that Lindsay Clancy “shared with me she had postpartum depression and couldn’t sleep,” and had taken to sleeping in the basement. Despite these changes, Rossi said she never worried that Lindsay Clancy might be a danger to her children or to herself.
“I observed a wonderful mom who loved her kids,” Rossi told the jury on the seventh day of the trial in Plymouth, Mass. “She was concerned about their safety, and Callan eating and sleeping. She was a wonderful mother.”
Clancy’s psychiatric team
Four months before Lindsay Clancy killed her three children, she reached out for psychiatric help, describing intrusive thoughts and problems with her treatment plan, , members of her care team testified.
Psychiatric nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta and psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Tufts, both of whom treated Clancy, were later named as defendants in separate malpractice lawsuits filed by Lindsay and Patrick Clancy. According to the lawsuits, Lindsay Clancy was prescribed nine psychiatric medications in the months before the killings, eight of which were within a single three-week span.
Jollotta testified that she regularly exchanged messages with Lindsay Clancy through a patient portal. In December 2022, Lindsay Clancy wrote, “I started having very intrusive thoughts that I never had before.” Jollotta said Lindsay Clancy was having “persistent, intrusive thoughts of suicide” around that time but had not discussed a plan to harm herself or her children and, according to Jollotta, showed no signs of psychosis or mania..
Tufts, who treated Lindsay Clancy through 25-minute video appointments from September 2022 until the children’s deaths, faced pointed questioning from defense attorney Kevin Reddington, who described her during cross-examination as a box-checking “robot.” Asked what she had done when Lindsay Clancy reported feeling hopeless two months before the killings, Tufts said she told her there was hope and that different treatments and programs were available.
Central to Lindsay Clancy’s defense is the claim that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a rare but serious condition involving mania, depression or hallucinations, when she killed her children.
Dr. Donald Condie, a clinical and forensic psychiatrist who did not treat Lindsay Clancy but reviewed her medical records at the defense’s request, testified that psychosis “just means a lack of understanding of what’s real as opposed to what is not,” and that it can involve delusions as well as hallucinations.
He pointed to records showing that Lindsay Clancy had reported dissociation, brain fog and auditory hallucinations in December 2022, the month before the killings, symptoms he said suggested her providers may have missed signs of postpartum psychosis.
Asked by defense attorney Kevin Reddington whether dissociation could be a sign of postpartum psychosis, Condie said Lindsay Clancy had reported “all those” symptoms.
Lindsay Clancy’s family
Lindsay Clancy “had thoughts of harming her children” and became increasingly anxious, paranoid and suicidal in the months before she killed them, her mother and sister testified.
Her mother, Paula Musgrove, said the combination of medications she was taking “was pretty much just destroying her mind, and it wasn’t her.”
“She said that ‘This isn’t me. I just want to feel better, and enjoy my kids again,'” Musgrove recalled.
Lindsay Clancy’s mother Paula Musgrove testifies during her daughter’s trial.
(Greg Derr/Pool The Patriot Ledger via AP)Musgrove also spoke about her daughter’s state of mind during the three months before the killings, and jurors were shown texts between the pair.
“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I’m really sick. Something is wrong,” Lindsay Clancy wrote in one message.
Lindsay Clancy’s mother also recalled an alarming disclosure from her daughter in the month before the children were killed. “She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove said.
Allison Ozga testified that in late December, her sister Lindsay Clancy had told her she had experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.
If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental or emotional health, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Lifeline, or go to 988lifeline.org.
