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The Massachusetts mom accused of killing her three children had “one of her best days” amid a struggle with anxiety and postpartum depression just before the murders.
Patrick Clancy, 34, told police his wife, Lindsay, 32, was behaving normally on the day of the killings, taking her children to a doctor’s appointment and building a snowman with them outside their home in Duxbury, NBC reports.
He said her behavior “appeared to be getting better” in the days after being discharged from McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility which she had checked herself into after having thoughts about suicide and harming her children. She was discharged on January 5.
Clancy ultimately described his wife as “happy” and said she was “smiling” on January 24 before he went out to pick up food and medication for one of the children. When he returned home, he said, he was struck by the “silence” at the house before he found his wife unconscious and bleeding after she allegedly strangled their three children with exercise bands, then jumped out a second-floor window.
Daughter Cora, 5, and son Dawson, 3, were pronounced dead after arriving at the hospital that evening, with 8-month-old Callan dying three days later.
Lindsay was charged with two counts of murder and three counts of suffocation or strangulation, with the charges expected to be upgraded to account for Callan’s death.
A not guilty plea was submitted to the court on Tuesday.
Prosecutors called for Lindsay to be held without bail, rejecting the defense’s claim that the midwife was a victim of a health care system that failed to treat her “postpartum depression — and even postpartum psychosis.”
Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told the court on Tuesday that Lindsay had several opportunities to stop herself from killing her own children, but still carried out the horrific crime.
“She had to strangle each of them … and then make sure the bands were squeezing their little necks for several minutes,” Sprague said. “She could’ve changed her mind at any point during time. She did not.”
Tuesday’s arraignment hearing marked Lindsay’s first appearance since the alleged attempted murder-suicide, with Judge John Canavan III describing the case as “both horrific and tragic.”
Lindsay appeared at the hearing virtually from an undisclosed Massachusetts hospital, where she is being treated for spinal cord injuries after the jump rendered her paralyzed, according to her defense attorney Kevin Reddington.
She was wearing a mask and a neck brace and stayed silent during most of the proceedings except answering the judge about whether she could hear him.
Reddington said despite his client’s silence, she remains unstable and is still under suicide watch.
“She’s extremely emotional,” Reddington told the court. “However, she’s unable, and has been unable, to express any happiness or sadness or cry.”
The defense contends Lindsay, who was on leave from her job as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, was suffering postpartum psychosis, a rare condition that can sometimes drive new mothers to hurt themselves and/or their children. Prosecutors said she had told a psychologist she had heard a male voice in her head telling her to kill her children shortly before their deaths.
“Our society fails miserably in treating women with postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. It’s medicate, medicate, medicate,” Reddington said.
Sprague, however, said Lindsay was not diagnosed with any form of postpartum depression when she was evaluated at the Women and Infant Hospital Center for Women’s Behavioral Health in Providence, Rhode Island, last year.
The prosecutor also noted that just three days after her children’s death, Lindsay allegedly wrote a note from the hospital asking: “Do I need an attorney?”
Sprague told the court: “She knew that she had murdered her children, and she had the clarity, focus and mental acumen to focus on protecting her own rights and interests.”
Along with the statements from the defense and her husband, 50 family members, friends and former colleagues of Lindsay have submitted letters to the court testifying to her character, Reddington said.
The court also heard the chilling 911 dispatch call made after Patrick discovered the scene, where the father was heard “screaming in agony and shock” when finding his three children strangled in his basement.
Although the judge ordered Lindsay to be held without bail in the hospital to continue her mental health treatment, he noted that she could still be ordered to home confinement.
Lindsay is due to return to court on May 2.
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