Lindsay Clancy sobs during murder trial as jurors view autopsy photos of her youngest child
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PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) -- Lindsay Clancy sobbed uncontrollably Thursday as jurors viewed autopsy photos of the youngest of her three children who she strangled in 2023, until the court eventually had to take an unscheduled break.
In the second week of her Massachusetts murder trial, prosecutors brought more friends, a former work colleague and her former father-in-law to testify about Clancy's mental and emotional state. For the most part, they said she was open about her postpregnancy mental health struggles but seemed like a loving mother who cared for her kids.
The prosecution wants to show the 35-year-old former labor and delivery nurse acted intentionally and should be held criminally responsible, while Clancy's defense says she had postpartum psychosis, a rare and dangerous psychiatric condition that affects women's hold on reality after childbirth.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, who she killed on Jan. 24, 2023, after sending her husband out on errands. Prosecutors say this was a ruse to get her husband out of the house. She remains paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from the home's second-story window that night.
None of the witnesses Thursday testified they heard Clancy express suicidal or homicidal thoughts. However, after the birth of her third child, she told them of trouble sleeping and harmful side effects from medications. She text-messaged one childhood friend to say medication had "caused her to have some dark thoughts."
Amy Bevins visited Clancy in a rehabilitation facility after the killings. The two made small talk, she said, and played a game. When asked by prosecutors if Clancy brought up her children or cried about them, she said she had not.
But on cross-examination by Clancy's defense attorney, Bevins acknowledged the meeting was "awkward" and that Clancy's sister had said not to bring up the kids.
Christopher Clancy testified that he knew his then-daughter-in-law was having issues. At one point, he suggested the grandchildren stay with him and his wife, but his son declined.
"I knew she was having a hard time sleeping," Christopher Clancy said. "I knew she just didn't feel well. I knew she went to the emergency room where my wife was working. Those types of struggles."
Clancy's lawyers don't dispute that she killed the children. But in the criminal trial and a medical malpractice lawsuit, her attorneys say she had bipolar disorder that wasn't fully diagnosed until after the killings. Her attorneys say her condition seemed to worsen on the psychiatric medications, some of them problematic for bipolar patients.
If convicted of murder, Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.