Clancy Defense Opens as Mother Details Her Spiral
Clancy Defense Opens as Mother Details Her Spiral
The News
Prosecutors rested their case Monday against Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of murdering her three children, and the defense opened by putting her own mother on the stand.
Paula Musgrove testified that her daughter told her the drugs she was taking were "pretty much just destroying her mind, and it wasn't her."
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder. Her attorneys do not deny she caused the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan at the family's Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023 — they argue the former labor and delivery nurse cannot be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder and was overmedicated.
The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office says she acted "intentionally, rationally, and swiftly," planned the killings, and faked a suicide attempt afterward.
Timeline
Clancy's third child, Callan, is born. Musgrove testified her daughter was happy that summer.
Her mood shifts. "She told me she was anxious about going back to work because Callan was having trouble taking a bottle and she didn't feel right about leaving him," Musgrove testified.
Psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Tufts begins treating Clancy.
In a text message shown in court, Clancy asks her mother to stay with her as she struggles with insomnia after taking anxiety medication: "It's just really scary and I don't want to be alone." Musgrove testified she stayed about a week.
Clancy has low energy and "seemed off," her sister Allison Ozga testified, and her condition deteriorated in early December. "She was having more suicidal thoughts, insomnia continued to be an issue."
Clancy tells her mother and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, that she is having thoughts of harming the children. "I remember her being very nervous," Musgrove testified. "She told us that she had thoughts of harming the children." By the end of the month, Ozga testified, her sister said she felt numb and hopeless and had suicidal thoughts every day.
After a multiday stay at a psychiatric facility, Clancy appears to improve, her sister testified. Her mother testified she then lost a lot of weight and became paranoid about things that "really weren't logical."
Clancy's last of 14 telehealth appointments with Tufts, held the day before the killings.
The three children are strangled in the family's Duxbury home. Clancy jumps from a second-story window and is left paralyzed from the waist down.
The prosecution's case opens with two days of testimony from Patrick Clancy.
Tufts testifies Clancy never seemed psychotic and tried at least 10 medications searching for the right combination.
Clancy sobs loudly as a medical examiner describes the children's injuries. "I can't do it," she says before being wheeled out. Judge William Sullivan sends the jury out twice that day.
State Police Detective Timothy Chiappini reads Clancy's phone notes and search history in court.
Prosecutors rest after more than 70 witnesses. The defense begins.
Reactions
Musgrove was emotional on the stand. "She always wanted to be a mother, have many children, and I felt it was the best thing that ever happened to her," she testified. "I love my grandchildren with all my heart. And you'll never know what it's like to love a grandchild until you become a grandmother."
She said her daughter repeatedly told her she was not herself. "She would mention that this wasn't her mind. She would say to me, 'This isn't me, I've never been like this before.' And I would agree, because she wasn't." Of the last weeks: "She said, 'This isn't me. I just want to feel better and enjoy my kids again.'"
Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague pressed the point on cross-examination, asking whether Musgrove had any concerns about the children's safety after her daughter's December disclosure, or considered having her committed. Musgrove said she did not.
Margaret Hamp, a nurse who worked with Clancy, described her as an attentive mother and a compassionate nurse who would tear up helping strangers give birth. Hamp recalled telling her about Andrea Yates, the Texas mother found not guilty by reason of insanity in the drownings of her five children. "She cried, and she said: 'How could a mother hurt her children?'"
The prosecution's theory is that Clancy chased a "quick and easy fix" — that she sought out different doctors, manipulated her providers and switched medications when she didn't get what she expected. Psychiatric nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta testified Clancy asked to change medications nearly every day, blaming the drugs for intrusive thoughts, insomnia and numbness; in messages read in court, Jollotta told her the problem was more likely postpartum depression than the medication.
Tufts testified she was never told Clancy had disclosed thoughts of harming the children, and that she would have been very concerned if she had known.
What's Next
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington continues calling witnesses. The jury will ultimately decide not whether Clancy killed her children — that is not contested — but whether she can be held criminally responsible for it.
If convicted, she faces life in prison. If jurors find she cannot be held criminally responsible, the court is expected to begin the process of committing her to a psychiatric hospital. She is currently held at Tewksbury Hospital, a public facility in Massachusetts.
More
The digital evidence cuts both ways, which is why both sides have fought over it. Chiappini read a note from Clancy's phone in which she wrote, "I'm sad and depressed because I am not able to parent my third child like my first," and another that said, "I'm on the fence about starting a new med or not. I want to feel happy, but it would be nice to feel authentically happy and not fake." He also testified she searched "Can you treat a sociopath?" four days before the killings.
On cross-examination, Reddington pulled up other searches — "how to slit your throat to die," and whether the airbags could be turned off on her Kia Sorento — and said her January 2023 searches included the words "schizophrenia," "hallucinations" and "intrusive."
Tufts, who prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft, was asked about its warning that antidepressants may increase suicidal thoughts or actions in some people aged 24 and younger. "I don't believe there's evidence that it causes that at all in individuals over 24," she testified.
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.
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