PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Lindsay Clancy's mother and sister took the stand Monday to recount how they saw her become increasingly anxious, paranoid and suicidal in the months before she killed her three children.
Clancy's mother, Paula Musgrove, sounding at times emotional, described her daughter as a dedicated and loving mother whose mental health began declining in October 2022 — about three months before Clancy strangled the children and attempted
to kill herself. Musgrove recalled getting a desperate text from Clancy around that time.
“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I’m really sick. Something is wrong,” Clancy wrote in the message displayed to the jury. “I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I am going to get through the day. I started taking the medicine the doctor prescribed for anxiety, and I think it’s made things worse. It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.”
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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.
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Musgrove also recalled a more alarming disclosure in December, when she was standing in the kitchen with Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy. Her daughter appeared nervous and told them she needed to tell them something, Musgrove testified.
“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove said.
Musgrove, who lived in Connecticut, often stayed with her daughter in Massachusetts from October into December 2022. She said Clancy was scared of sleeping alone, became increasingly paranoid and believed the medications she was taking “were destroying her mind.”
The testimony from Clancy's mother and sister came in the fourth week of her murder trial, soon after the prosecution rested after calling several dozen witnesses.
Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to get takeout and to the pharmacy.
Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says the jury should not hold her criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.
The jury has heard so far from witnesses who demonstrated that Clancy had sought treatment for severe mental health problems, including admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital. But witnesses also noted Clancy wouldn't always take the medications prescribed to help with her insomnia, anxiety and depression, and that she expressed fears she was addicted to some of them.
The defense, on cross-examination, argued that Clancy was overmedicated and demonstrated that her care was disjointed, with doctors not speaking to one another or sharing notes. Despite her efforts to seek treatment, the defense also showed she was discharged from one facility after a day and denied a higher level of care at another when she couldn't show that she had a suicide plan.
Prosecutors also questioned the seriousness of Clancy's suicide attempt and showed through texts and photos that she performed many normal activities the day of the killings, including taking her children to the doctor and playing with them in the snow.
Her doctors testified they never saw Clancy exhibit signs of mania or psychosis, though she did repeatedly talk of feeling suicidal.
Clancy hasn't testified in the trial and isn't required to do so, but jurors have seen her break down in sobs at several points while others have been testifying, including when prosecutors showed the jury autopsy photos of the children.
At the start of the trial, Patrick Clancy described the horror of returning home to find his dead children. During his testimony, prosecutors played a harrowing 911 call, which was not released to the public. Clancy can be heard on the 7-minute call checking on Lindsay Clancy in the backyard, before heading down to his basement and finding his children.
He screams and howls before telling a dispatcher, “She killed the kids!”
Patrick Clancy also testified he got a call from Lindsay Clancy about a week after the killings. She didn't mention her children, he said, but “talked about what she went through. She said she heard a man’s voice telling her if she didn’t do it now she would lose her chance or something like that.”
