Lindsay Clancy Researched Psychosis and Hallucinations Before Tragedy, Court Hears

Editor’s Note: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

According to phone data presented at trial, Lindsay Clancy searched online for information on hallucinations, psychosis, and prescription drug side effects in the weeks preceding the January 2023 incident that led to her children’s deaths. The testimony further revealed that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, researched suicide methods, bipolar disorder, and insomnia toward the end of December 2022, followed by searches for postpartum depression in January. Additionally, a written note from October 2022 conveyed her doubts about parenting decisions, including her choice to stop breastfeeding her eight-month-old child and plans for a fourth child.

The defense argues Clancy was experiencing bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis—a rare condition capable of distorting reality postpartum—a diagnosis rendered by a forensic psychiatrist after the killings. The note conveyed her primary fear of failing to provide her youngest child with the same level of attention as her older children, ages three and five. Quoted in the note, Clancy wrote: “I’m terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development. Our generation is inundated with information about every aspect of parenting. … It’s insane. For the last five years, I’ve just filled my mind with all things parenting, and it’s just unhealthy.”

Clancy has pleaded not guilty to murder charges related to the deaths of Callan, Dawson, and Cora Clancy. Authorities state that their father discovered the children in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home, south of Boston, while Clancy was found in the yard after jumping from a second-story window; she remains paralyzed from the waist down. Text messages exchanged with her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, documented the couple’s shared parenting routines. According to testimony from Massachusetts State Police cellphone forensics expert Tim Chiappini, messages read aloud from the day of the killings showed them checking in on one another, with Clancy expressing relief that one child’s kidney was unharmed. The exchange also included photos of the children. Patrick Clancy texted, “You’re a good mamma,” to which Clancy responded with a heart and smile emoji.

The livestreamed trial has drawn intense public and media interest, with courtroom spectators and online audiences alike closely following the proceedings. While Clancy’s attorneys do not dispute that she killed the children, they argue the jury should not hold her criminally responsible, asserting she was mentally ill and believed she heard voices commanding her to take her own life and that of her children. Prosecutors contend Clancy intentionally planned the deaths, fabricating an errand to remove her husband from the home by sending him for takeout and pharmacy visits on January 24, 2023, before strangling the children with exercise bands. Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham has urged jurors to avoid framing the trial as a broader debate on women’s mental health or the medical system’s treatment of women. A murder conviction would sentence Clancy to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; a finding of not guilty by reason of criminal responsibility would result in her commitment to a state mental health facility.

Clancy’s legal team asserts she exhausted efforts to seek help, consulting multiple outpatient providers, trying prescribed medications, contacting a suicide hotline, visiting an emergency room, and applying for a hospital-based full-day treatment program for postpregnancy mental health issues, though she was ultimately denied entry. She also voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric hospital for several days. Her attorneys and family maintain that, rather than improving, her condition deteriorated amid a continually adjusted regimen of psychiatric medications, some of which are known to be problematic for bipolar patients. Prosecutors seek to establish that Clancy had access to diverse mental health services but at times disregarded medical advice and discontinued medications. Several of her providers testified she never disclosed a plan to harm herself or her children, and while they acknowledged she expressed suicidal thoughts, they assert she displayed no signs of psychosis or mania.

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