Lindsay Clancy trial opens amid postpartum psychosis claim
Jury selection has begun in Massachusetts for Lindsay Clancy, who is charged with killing her three children in January 2023. Prosecutors allege the killings were premeditated. Her lawyers say postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible and plan an insanity defense. She has pleaded not guilty.
Key Takeaways
- Jury selection started in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
- Prosecutors say she planned the January 24, 2023, killings of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months.
- Defense attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute she killed the children but will raise an insanity defense.
- Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, was paralyzed after a suicide attempt the same night.
- She and her husband have sued medical providers over alleged failures in postpartum psychiatric care.
What happened on the night of the killings?
According to prosecutors and reporting on the case, on January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy asked her husband, Patrick Clancy, to leave their Duxbury home to get takeout and pick up something at a pharmacy. Investigators say she checked how long those errands would take so she would know how long she would be alone with the children.
Prosecutors allege she then strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan with exercise bands. She tried to end her own life afterward and was paralyzed after falling from the home's second-story window. She is being held at a state hospital between court appearances.
Patrick Clancy is listed as a witness for both sides. In interviews, he has said he forgives his wife. In a GoFundMe post after the killings, he described "shock and pain" that was "excruciating and relentless," while asking the public to see Lindsay as generously loving toward their family and patients.
Why is postpartum psychosis central to the defense?
Clancy's legal team says she was suffering from postpartum psychosis—a rare, serious mental illness that can follow childbirth and involve delusions and hallucinations. The UK's NHS describes it as distinct from the "baby blues" and a medical emergency. The defense does not dispute that she carried out the killings, but argues she was not criminally responsible.
Clancy, now 36 and a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, was undergoing treatment for psychiatric problems that developed postpartum. Weeks earlier, she spent several days in a psychiatric hospital. In a civil lawsuit filed with her husband, she said she had trouble sleeping and heard voices urging her to harm herself and her children.
"Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do," the lawsuit said, listing emergency-room visits, crisis hotlines, hospital admissions, and warnings that prescribed medications were making her worse. The lawsuit also cites medical records saying that on the day of the killings she heard voices telling her this was her "last chance" and that her children would suffer if she was gone.
Prosecutors reject that framing. They say the killings were intentional and well planned, not the work of someone who had lost control. For more cases in this beat, see BlasterPost's True Crime & Unsolved Mysteries coverage.
What happens next in Lindsay Clancy's trial?
Five of 18 jurors needed—including six alternates—were seated on the first day of selection in Plymouth, near the family's home about 30 miles south of Boston. The trial could take several weeks. Clancy's husband and dozens of others are expected to testify.
The case matters beyond one courtroom: it will test how juries weigh rare postpartum psychiatric illness against evidence prosecutors call premeditation. Clancy has pleaded not guilty. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has called the case "an extreme tragedy."