By Nate Raymond
July 29 (Reuters) – The former husband of a Massachusetts woman on trial for killing her three young children described on Wednesday the moment he returned home to find his children had been strangled in his basement while he was picking up dinner.
Lindsay Clancy, 35, admits she killed her children in January 2023 while her then-husband was on an errand away from their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. Her attorney says she was driven by postpartum mental illness and a jury cannot find she intentionally murdered the children.
Patrick Clancy, now divorced from Lindsay Clancy, recounted during his first day on the stand on Monday how she had told him in the months prior that she was having thoughts of suicide and harming their children. He said she was prescribed medications and had stayed at a psychiatric hospital earlier that month.
But he said she showed no signs she planned to hurt herself or her kids after she was discharged and had a “normal” demeanor when he left to fetch takeout food and pick up stool softener for one of their children at a pharmacy.
‘I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG’
Back on the stand on Wednesday, he said that upon returning, “the house was really quiet,” which was unusual. After calling down to the basement, checking a bathroom and trying to call his wife on her phone, he went to his bedroom and discovered it was locked.
“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” he said.
Upon unlocking the bedroom door, he said he saw “blood everywhere and the window was open.” He went outside and found Lindsay Clancy, who was lying on the ground with cuts on her wrists and neck. She told him she had tried to kill herself.
He said he asked where the children were — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. His wife said they were in the basement without indicating they were in any danger. After he called 911 and first responders arrived, Patrick Clancy said he ran to the basement.
There, he said he first found Cora and then Callan, both with exercise bands tied around their necks. After removing them, he said he searched for Dawson, who he found in his basement office, also with a band around his neck.
“I knew that he was gone,” Patrick Clancy said.
First responders then took charge. About a week later, Clancy said he received a call from his wife, who was paralyzed after jumping from the window and was in a hospital. He said she did not directly discuss the children but “talked about what she went through.”
“That she heard a man’s voice telling her that if she didn’t do it now, she would lose her chance or something like that,” he said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in BostonEditing by Rod Nickel)
