By Nate Raymond
Aug 17 (Reuters) - The mother and sister of Lindsay Clancy testified on Monday that the Massachusetts woman had mental health struggles and professed to thoughts of harming herself and her three children in the months before she killed them in 2023.
Clancy, 36, admits she killed her children in the family home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury on January 24, 2023, while her then-husband was on an errand. Her attorney argues she was driven by postpartum mental illness and urged jurors
to reject the prosecution's claims she intentionally murdered the children.
Jurors previously learned that she killed her children, Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan in their basement by strangling them with exercise bands before jumping out of a second-floor window, which left her paralyzed.
Clancy's family members took the stand on Monday as some of the first defense witnesses to be called after prosecutors rested their case earlier in the day in a trial now in its fourth week.
Under questioning by Clancy's defense lawyer, her mother, Paula Musgrove, said her daughter had loved her children and was dedicated to them.
But Musgrove said that starting in October 2022, she began to frequently stay at Clancy's home after receiving a text message from her that said: "It's just really scary and I don't want to be alone."
Clancy told her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, and Musgrove in December 2022 "she had thoughts of harming the children," Musgrove said. The couple divorced after the killings.
DEFENSE ARGUES MENTAL ILLNESS
Allison Osga, Clancy's sister, testified that around that time she learned Clancy was "feeling numb," having suicidal thoughts and seeking treatment. In late December, "she told me she had had suicidal ideation every day for a month," Osga testified.
But under questioning by a prosecutor, Osga, who is a social worker and by law required to report suspected harm to children, said she never had enough concern about the children's safety in January 2023 to file a report about her sister.
Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. If found not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, or by reason of insanity, she would be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
Osga and Musgrove took the stand after prosecutors called a last witness in their case, Ian Whiffin, a digital forensic expert from the company Cellebrite, who had been tasked with examining Clancy's cellphone to look at her search history, calls, text messages and health data.
His testimony focused in part on data that recorded that after 5 p.m. on January 24, 2023, she had climbed two flights of stairs and spoken by phone with her husband, who was at a pharmacy and going to pick up takeout food for dinner.
Whiffin's testimony also detailed how in the days before the killings Clancy had searched online for "how quickly does wellbutrin work for depression" and "ketamine for suicidal ideation." On January 19, she searched "symptoms of postpartum psychosis" and "psychosis symptoms."
After prosecutors rested their case, her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, unsuccessfully sought to convince Judge William Sullivan to rule in Clancy's favor before the case could go to the jury, saying the evidence "is overwhelming that this young woman was clearly and unequivocally suffering from a mental disease or defect."
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
