Lindsay Clancy Case Takes Dark Turn as New Chilling Details Emerge

New disturbing details revealed in the case of Lindsey Clancy, the New England mom accused of strangling her three young children to death after a fun afternoon playing in the snow. Lindsey's defense alleges she was suffering postpartum psychosis, but new details revealed by the prosecution could tell a different story. We're hearing from a reporter who was on the scene the day of the murders, and what she makes of the arguments ahead. This is Scandal, presented by Lawncrime. I'm Sierra Gillespie. The case of Lindsey Clancy is a true tragedy. A young and beautiful mother, knowingly, strangles her three young children to death in their upscale home, leaving her husband and their father to discover the lifeless bodies. It's a chilling story on so many levels, and the devastating question remains. Did Lindsey Clancy have a mental break or was this cold blood in murder? Court documents filed just this month are giving new insight into the prosecution's theory that Lindsey Clancy, knowingly murdered her young children, allegedly acting with premeditation. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts says they've got enough evidence to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that theory, and if they do just that, Lindsey Clancy will spend the rest of her life in prison. But Lindsey and her husband Patrick have been steadfast from the start. This was a mental health crisis. Lindsey doesn't deny murdering her children, but she says she wasn't in the right state of mind when it happened. And by now, you've at least heard of this case, but I'll give you a quick recap just in case. Lindsey and Patrick Clancy got married in December 2016. They moved into a beautiful home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, which is a quaint and upscale town on the South Shore. Lindsey worked as a nurse at the renowned mass-gen hospital in Boston, and by all accounts was really loving and very dedicated to her patients. But according to multiple reports, Lindsey's demeanor changed after having kids. She reportedly started to develop anxiety and depression, especially after her second and third children. By January 2023, Lindsey and Patrick Clancy share three kids. There's oldest daughter, five-year-old Kora, three-year-old son Dawson, and eight-month-old son, Kallen. But Lindsey's symptoms had allegedly gotten progressively worse. Her defense team later say that Lindsey was struggling with bipolar disorder and severe postpartum depression, maybe even the rare postpartum psychosis. She'd even been seen by some of the top mental health experts in the country, spending time in McLean psychiatric hospital just north of Boston for her struggles with thoughts of self-harm. Her stay there happened in the weeks before the murders, but her mental health treatment started way before that, according to Cortox. Lindsey had been on a regimen of up to 13 different psychotropic meds, both to monitor her mood and her sleep. Her husband, Patrick, would later file a lawsuit against doctors, claiming this large amount of drugs actually hurt her more than it helped, and in fact altered her mental state. So Patrick had been so worried about Lindsey, her concerning journal entries, he hardly left her home alone. Either he would stay with her in the kids or a family member would actually come and do the same, but that's not what happened the day the murders, January 24th, 2023. That morning, the Clancy's oldest daughter, Kora, was having some stomach issues, so Lindsey took her to the doctor for an appointment. When she got back, Lindsey and the kids played outside the snow even building a snowman. Around 4pm, Lindsey Googled the 3v restaurant in Plymouth, and she looked up the driving distance from her home to the restaurant. And this is important because prosecutors will later argue that Lindsey murdered the children with pre-meditation, making sure that Patrick would be out of the house long enough that she could complete the act without any interruption. But according to a lawsuit, filed by Lindsey's team, that's not what happened. Yes, she did send Patrick out to get dinner, and yes, she did ask him to run to CVS to pick up something for Kora. But after that, she says she suffered a severe mental break, and this is straight from Lindsey's lawsuit, quote, "As soon as Patrick left to pick up the food, there was a loud demanding, repetitious voice. This is your last chance. You have to kill the kids so you can kill yourself." Lindsey's team argued she felt a force come over her and started to experience a series of hallucinations. She says she experienced a dream-like state where she had no choice but to follow these voices instructions and described watching herself carry out the murders. Lindsey described, "I lost all control. My body started acting without any control on my part. I was just following commands, all action, the voice demanded action." Lindsey proceeded to strangle each of her children uttering, "Go to God, baby." Prosecutors they Lindsey used exercise bands to strangle each one of her children before ingesting a substantial amount of medications, cutting her wrists and neck and jumping out of a second-story window to land on the frozen ground beneath her. She suffered severe injuries from the jump and remains permanently paralyzed to this day. And here's where the new details of the case comes in from the filings that were made in just the past couple of days. The Commonwealth has filed a motion to include Patrick Clancy's 911 call at trial. They say, shows, quote, "deliberate pre-meditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty at the hands of Lindsey Clancy." According to the Commonwealth, the 911 recording depicts Patrick Clancy running into the home and calling out for his kids before finding the bodies of Kora, Dawson, and Callen in the basement. As police headed into the basement, Mr. Clancy yelled out, "She killed the kids." Prosecutors argue the recording of Patrick calling for help has significant, probative, evidentiary value to prove Lindsey's alleged pre-meditation and the extreme atrocity or cruelty of her alleged actions. And a lot of this alleged significant evidence stems from the exercise bands, and I will note once again. Lindsey isn't denying that she did it. This isn't a who-done-it case. Lindsey's defense says she did kill her children, but that she was mentally unwell in the process. The prosecution, however, disagrees and says they have proved based on the state the exercise bands were found in, according to the filing, quote, "the timing of when he found each child and the manner in which they were discovered is probative of how they were killed." Kora, Dawson, and Callen were each strangled with a separate exercise band, and the band used to strangle each child was found around their necks by Mr. Clancy. First responders then found each band lying next to each child when they reached the basement, because Mr. Clancy had removed the bands from the necks of Kora, Dawson, and Callen as he found each of them. The spontaneous and excited nature of the 911 call made prior to any reflective thought further establishes that the bands were wrapped around each child's neck in a fashion that negates any theory that they were tied or noted. According to the filing, Patrick later gave police and grand jury testimony, reporting that the exercise bands around both Kora and Callen's necks had been tied with a knot, almost like a shoelace loop that was easy to remove relatively. However, in the case of Dawson's exercise band, Patrick testified it was tied a lot tighter and he actually had to pull it over Dawson's head. Why is all of this important? Well, the Commonwealth argues that if the exercise bands were noted, that could mean Lindsay tied them tightly and then just walked away while the children were strangled to death. But if the exercise bands were just looped around their necks like shoelace ties, it means that Lindsay would have to manually pull the bands until each of her children strangled to death, which could take multiple minutes to complete. Basically, the prosecution believes the latter, and we can expect them to argue Lindsay choked each of her children methodically, one after the next, strangling them as they fought in a prolonged and physical effort according to the prosecution that would show deliberate and extreme cruelty. Now, in the filing, prosecutors also petitioned the court to show jurors the locations in the case, namely the Clancy home, the restaurant where Patrick went to pick up food and the CVS, just to show how far each of these locations is away from each other. And they also requested a blood spatter expert be allowed to testify, to which the defense actually pushed back Lindsay's team filed a motion just one day after the Commonwealth, writing quote, "Wherefore the defendant requests that this court exclude all blood stain pattern analysis testimony and/or conduct an evidentiary lannigan hearing before permitting any such testimony, limit any expert testimony to objective observations of physical stains and prohibit reconstruction opinions regarding positions, movement, intentions, deposit of the substance or any actions of any participant." Even though her trial is just around the corner, there's still a lot of prep work ahead, a lot to go through for attorneys and reporters covering the case, and actually that's just what our guest is today. It's CBS Boston reporter Christina Rex, who's also an attorney, and Christina, you've been following this case since day one, so thank you for coming on scandal today and kind of giving us your expertise. And let me ask you about that going way back to January of 2023. I mean, were you there were you covering it the day of the murders? Yeah, unfortunately I was and as a reporter, this was probably top three like worst crime scenes I've ever been to. I've been a reporter for a decade, so I've been to a lot of crime scenes and I distinctly remember this one because it was nighttime and the police officers were crying. So that always stuck out to me, because I was sent there as kind of like a breaking news situation. We didn't really know what was going on. You know, we were working to learn more information, but then they're ended up being. a press conference. I remember like near the scene that night. And when I got there, the officers who were coming out of the house were investigating were crying. So we, we knew we being the media. We knew that something really serious had happened inside that house because it was obviously affecting law enforcement. And it was just like the most somber heartbreaking, like otherworldly unbelievable crime scene I've ever been sent to. As you were describing it, I almost got chills on my body, just hearing about that because you and I both know having worked in this industry, we talk about really, really difficult things. And the police officers, the first responders see really, you know, devastating things. So we almost have to put up a shell to not really get affected. So when something breaks through that shell and they're just crying, you know, it's a really, really devastating case. And that's, that's what we found based on all of the facts that have come out. But what's interesting to me about this case too is so many people have almost come to Lindsay Clancy's defense saying, you know, this is a psychosis situation. She had a mental break. What do you make of all of that? I mean, I think that's going to be the entire crux of her case. I think it surprised a lot of people when she was, you know, charged with premeditated murder for all three of her children because as soon as the details of this situation came out, including the fact that Lindsey Clancy allegedly attempted to take her own life in the same sort of episode, you know, the whole conversation was around postpartum psychosis. And I think that's what a lot of people either assumed or were told had happened. And so I think that's going to end up being the crux of the case. And certainly for Lindsay Clancy's defense team, that's what they're going to want the jury to be focusing on rather than what actually happened. Yeah, because the defense isn't saying this isn't a who done it kind of thing. It's not somebody broken and this happened. They're saying, yes, Lindsay did do this, but it was because of her mental health status at the time. I mean, they talk about her journal entries that were very harrowing. She had actually been placed at McLean. So she was having psychiatric care, multiple different kinds of prescriptions that she was on kind of all added up to this. And I guess I'm wondering based on your experience in Massachusetts, what is it like if she's coming forward with this defense that she is not guilty by reason of mental insanity, the differences between states and the statutes of what it's called. But basically her defense is saying, I had this psychosis and that's what caused me to commit this crime. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, what you exactly just said is going to be what her defense attempts to prove. Lindsay Clancy is not denying what happened. She's denying why it happened. And that's a complicated and nuanced argument to make in front of a jury. I did cover one other case where a police officer was killed and the defense was not guilty by reason of insanity. And the first trial ended in a mistrial. The second trial nearly had a hung jury and then ultimately they did convict the man, but it's a complicated and hard defense. And so that's what her defense is going to be trying to prove. Yes, this happened, but it happened because their client was in the state of psychosis and what they really will need to prove is just that Lindsay Clancy didn't have the mindset, what's called the mens rea, the criminal intent to do what she did. She didn't according to her defense desire to kill her three children. They're going to have to prove that that mental capacity was lacking at the time that the crime, the crime occurred, which is going to be really complicated. But there are some factors that they have to go off of, like you said, she did do a stay in McLean. She had been treated in multiple different ways for kind of postpartum issues she was dealing with. And right now, there's actually a civil lawsuit going on where her husband has sued some of her doctors claiming that she didn't get the care she received, which ultimately led to the death of her children. Yeah, we talk about that civil lawsuit actually in this episode because it's substantial here. The fact that he's saying, okay, she was going through something. I mean, if you look at all of the evidence that things that we've talked about, he's saying she didn't do this with the mens rea with the intent with the premeditation. She had a break. She had this psychosis. And I'm wondering just based on your experience in the legal side of things, is that something that will come in in the trial? The civil lawsuit. I think I don't know is the short answer, but I think there's going to be argument about whether or not it comes in at trial because it's certainly a gray area. And I think, you know, probably Lindsey Clancy's team will want it included to show that perhaps her husband agrees. We don't know if her husband is going to testify. I would assume since he's one of the closest people to the situation. He's a witness. I'll assume he'll take the stand and that it could come up as a part of his testimony for sure, but we don't know for certain that that will be introduced as a part of the case. But it's it is really interesting because you mentioned like premeditation versus psychosis. I think that's going to be the crux of the argument. You know, the state is arguing in this case, the commonwealth is arguing that the time that Lindsey Clancy sent her husband away to pick up takeout food was, you know, the perfect enough distance away that she had made that choice and premeditated that so that he'd be gone long enough for her to do the crime that she had planned in her own head. You know, her team is going to say, no, there's just a place they got take out all the time and she kind of snapped for lack of a better term once he left. Okay, there's so many things to consider here. And something you pointed out whether Patrick is actually going to testify, I'm leaning toward probably yes, given that he obviously knew her very well is the father of the children and discovered the bodies. And this is one of the recent filings too that the commonwealth has asked that his 911 call be allowed in as evidence to really show, okay, this is what's happening. He comes in XYZ kind of the order of events. And in their motion, they talked about something that I think is kind of interesting talking about the way that the children were found with the ligatures or the exercise bands around their necks. So basically, they're talking about whether it was tied kind of like a shoelace easy to get rid of or whether it was nodded up, you know, and tied really tightly. And it's kind of interesting. There are arguments that they're talking about here, whether Lindsey just tied them and then left and, you know, attempted suicide on her own or whether she actually had to physically, and I know that this is really hard to talk about, but she had to physically strangle each of them, which is very personal, very intimate shows, you know, I believe in the filings that said atrocity and cruelty. What's your make of, you know, the commonwealth wanting to include all of this? I mean, this is so hard to talk about, right? And I think that, unfortunately, in order to try and prove their case, the commonwealth is going to have to talk about some really gory details and have witnesses talk about these gory details because the commonwealth does claim this was premeditated deliberate murder. And therefore, they're going to try to show that Lindsey Clancy, you know, did the work and made the effort to kill her children deliberately. And this is when kind of, first off, nuanced little detailed things like the way an exercise band was tied would become a piece of evidence at the same time. This is when both sides will just theorize about what that means. You know, the commonwealth might try and introduce an expert who can talk about the way the ligatures were tied, even if that's a police officer who has seen maybe something similar in previous crimes. And the prosecution will try and say, you know, the way this was tied shows you that Lindsey Clancy did this on purpose or that it took time or that, you know, if you're in a state of psychosis, this wouldn't have been possible. The defense will try and say, you know, my client doesn't even remember what happened. This, she was, you know, not in her own mind at the time when this was going on. And that's going to be really where the jury has to think about this. Juries aren't experts, right? They're, they're supposed to not be experts. Juries are just regular people who have regular jobs who show up and listen to this evidence. And these lawyers who are arguing this case are going to have to think, you know, what's a jury going to think based on how these, these exercise bands were tied. What are they going to infer from that? And what can we make them infer from that? And like you said, it's really tough to talk about. We, in our reporting, I mean, some of these details we can't even get into because it's just too much for, you know, television. I mean, when you're talking through and you're talking about all of it, you keep using the word nuance. And to me, I think that that is huge in this case because if you look at it as an overarching thing, this is a woman, a mother who's accused of murdering, you know, strangling three of her children. Terrible. Devastating. But then as you said, the nuance of it all kind of adds up to be, okay, you know, was this premeditated cold blooded murder? Did she have a break? Did she snap, so to speak? And the jury of it all is what's so important. I mean, as you said, this is a jury of her peers. People don't want to think about something like this because it's so devastating. Any life lost. But the fact that we have three young kids, the oldest was age five. The youngest was eight months old. I mean, so tough to talk about. And this has been a highly publicized case. So in terms of finding a jury pool that hasn't been tainted, I mean, what are your thoughts about that? I think the questionnaire for the jury and the questions they're asked during Vardier during jury and panelman is going to be so important because you know that the defense is going to be looking for mothers, right? Mothers who can be on that jury who can have who maybe could have sympathy for the postpartum experience at the same time. There might be some mothers who the prosecution wants on the jury who would be so horrified that a mother could ever do this to her children that they'd be someone who the prosecutors would think would be likely to convict. So I think mothers are going to be probably the most analyzed and like highly debated jurors to take this impalement. Fathers as well, you know, parents are going to they're going to be the lawyers on both sides are going to be considering the roles that parents play in all of this. And I just think that this is the kind of situation where it touches so many people's lives, right? So many people are parents, so many people have children. We all all once we're children, we have parents. It's going to be hard to find anybody who's like, no, I have no connection to the concept of being in a family. You know what I mean? So, that's just not going to be possible. I think there will be people who haven't heard of this case. It's been widely publicized, but not in the way that it's unavoidable. There are certainly people who haven't followed this closely, or maybe you'll just say, like, oh, yeah, I remember we're hearing it on the news when it happened, you know, years ago. I do think it's going to be possible to find a jury, but I think what's really going to be thought over is those parents and the role that they play, whether they get a seat on this jury. And you're right. I mean, the details of this, as you pointed out, some things we can't even talk about because they're so gruesome or they're so harrowing. These are things that the jurors, it's literally going to be their job, their civic duty to go there and take notes about the worst day of some people's lives. And that is such a heavy task in burden that they have, but an important duty, obviously. So, it's going to be interesting when the jury's seated all of that. And I guess my next question to something just because you're a local reporter and you're there, people are talking about Patrick and Lindsay, their relationship. Obviously, he's filed suit against some of the professionals involved in this saying, you know, she was over-medicated. I believe she had upwards of 13 different medications that she was on. She didn't receive the sufficient treatment, et cetera. Do you have any insight about what their relationship is like right now? You know, I don't. And I actually think that that's going to be one of the things that the public and myself and reporters and people who have all of this case are really going to want to learn about throughout this trial because, as is his right, Patrick Clancy has stayed so private about all of this ever since it happened. And Lindsay, Clancy's parents, you know, her parents have been there with her every step of the way. She's at Toxbury State Hospital. They've, I'm told that they visited her nearly daily. The one time that she was in person in court or the first time she was in person in court, they were there supporting her. They did an interview with me saying that she's a great mother and they're going to be here for her every step of the way. We haven't heard from Patrick Clancy like that. We really only heard from him. I know he did one newspaper magazine interview and he did, he filed this lawsuit. And he certainly has never come out and, you know, really faulted his wife for what happened. We do know that, or we have heard, I should say that he's moved out of state. So we just don't know. And I think he has to testify, right? He's the person, other than Lindsay Clancy, who is closest to what happened. He's the one who came home and found the scene and called 911. So he has to be a witness. And I think that, you know, for better or for worse, we're going to kind of learn how he is doing and how their relationship has been since this all happened as a result of his testimony. I'm so interested to see how both of them are holding up after such a tragedy, what their relationship status is now. And to your point, I do think we're eventually going to learn some of that at least during the testimony. And I guess this leads into my last question too. Some people were shocked as you pointed out that the Commonwealth brought forth these charges against Lindsay Clancy, that it wasn't, you know, manslaughter or something lesser than the first-degree murder charges, you know, premeditation of it all. I'm wondering if would the Commonwealth back down? If both sides, you know, we see this sometimes in the final hour before we're actually supposed to do jury selection, they reach a deal. And there's some sort of plea deal between the two. Is that something you see the Commonwealth doing here? At this point, I don't think so. You know, I think plea deal discussions happen earlier than right now. This has gone on for years at this point. And I personally would be shocked to see a sudden plea deal right before a jury selection given how much preparation has gone into trial. And the fact that it's been delayed so many times due to the abundance of discovery and evidence going into it, I'd be shocked to see a plea deal last minute. At the same time, I think the charges are a reflection of kind of how inflexible the law is, you know, at the end of the day, the law is what it is. And when the Commonwealth is trying to charge someone, they have to place the actions of what happened into certain bubbles that qualify for, you know, breaking a certain law. And if you look on paper at the actions that happened here, they clearly decided that they fit into the bubble of first degree murder. And at the end of the day, you know, at one point, Lindsey Clancy's attorney even said she would admit to the actions if the trial could instead focus on her mental health. That didn't go anywhere. That wasn't approved. But we keep using that word nuance. There isn't a lot of room in the law for the nuance of a situation like this. And so that's part of what makes it such an interesting trial that's coming up is, you know, the humanity, the human side of kind of what happened here doesn't fit neatly into these legal boxes. And the one thing I forgot to mention that I just I think that is going to be maybe shocking to the jury or certainly you can't you can't avoid the fact that Lindsey Clancy gets wheeled into that courtroom in a wheelchair. Yeah. And that is a direct result of her attempts to take her own life by jumping out of a window, the night that all of this happened. She ended up paralyzed as a result. So I just think it's going to be so interesting and troubling and tough to watch to see those details come into play in a court system and a legal landscape that likes nice checked off elements of a crime and checked off boxes. And this case is just it's not neat and clean like that. Yeah, you're right. I think it really blurs the line. I mean, what is that Aristotle quote? It's the law is reason free from passion. No, Aristotle. It does seem like there's a lot going on here. There's literally the fact that part of the evidence will be that she has to be wheeled in. You can't avoid that because she's the different case, you know, it's right. This is a it's a very dramatic and upsetting case to have to talk about the nuance of it all. It's very interesting at the least. Christina Racks, thank you for coming on and giving us your insight and expertise about the case. Thank you for having me. All these motions are really important given that the trial against Lindsey Clancy is set for July 20th. She's pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and three more counts of strangulation and suffocation. And that is where today's episode of scandal leaves us for now. If you like what you saw and you want to see more or connect with me on social media, you can find me on places like Instagram at Sierra Gillespie. Thanks for watching today's episode of scandal. As always, I'm your host Sierra Gillespie and I'll see you next time.