Lindsay Clancy was having ‘considered one of her finest days’ earlier than she strangled her 3 children, husband informed police

Earlier than Lindsay Clancy was accused of killing her three kids, she had been having “considered one of her finest days” after an extended wrestle with nervousness, her husband informed officers.

After his kids have been strangled Jan. 24 on the household’s Massachusetts residence, Patrick Clancy informed police that his spouse had been “smiling” and “pleased” earlier within the day, prosecutors stated Tuesday in courtroom.

Lindsay Clancy has been charged of their deaths and was arraigned Tuesday in Plymouth District Courtroom. She is hospitalized following a suicide try and appeared on the courtroom listening to by a video hyperlink. 

On the morning of the killings, she had taken 5-year-old daughter Cora to the pediatrician for an appointment, the place medical employees members observed nothing out of the extraordinary about Lindsay Clancy’s conduct, Assistant District Lawyer Jennifer Sprague stated in courtroom. After they returned residence, she constructed a snowman with Cora and 3-year-old Dawson, texting photographs to her mom and her husband, Sprague stated.

However when Patrick Clancy left the home at his spouse’s request to choose up kids’s medication and meals, the day took a horrifying flip.

He returned residence to seek out his spouse mendacity within the yard after having tried to die by suicide, Sprague stated. A 911 name captured Patrick Clancy “screaming in agony and shock” upon discovering the couple’s three younger kids within the basement strangled with train bands, Sprague stated.   

Cora and Dawson have been pronounced useless at a hospital that night, and 8-month-old Callan died on the hospital three days later.

Lindsay Clancy, 32, is charged with two counts of homicide and three counts of suffocation or strangulation. A plea of not responsible was entered on her behalf Tuesday.

Prosecutors requested Tuesday that she be held with out bail. They rejected her lawyer’s claims that she was a “zombie” who had been overmedicated with antidepressants and different psychiatric medicine.

“She needed to strangle every of them … after which be sure the bands have been squeezing their little necks for a number of minutes,” Sprague stated. “She may’ve modified her thoughts at any level throughout time … and he or she didn’t.” 

A case ‘each horrific and tragic’ 

The arraignment marked Lindsay Clancy’s first public look since her kids’s deaths in a case that District Choose John Canavan III described as “each horrific and tragic.” She attended just about from the undisclosed Massachusetts hospital the place she has been handled, and he or she was sporting a masks and what seemed to be a neck brace. 

Protection lawyer Kevin Reddington stated his consumer is paralyzed beneath the waist due to a spinal wire harm and a damaged again and ribs she sustained through the tried suicide. He stated she stays beneath 24/7 suicide watch. 

“She’s extraordinarily emotional. Nonetheless, she’s unable, and has been unable, to precise any happiness or disappointment or cry,” Reddington stated. 

However her feelings have been muted even earlier than the deaths, he stated. 

Reddington stated {that a} month or two in the past, Lindsay Clancy had stated, “I simply want that I may really feel one thing.” 

On Tuesday, from her mattress, Lindsay Clancy spoke to the choose solely as soon as, responding, “Sure, your honor,” when she was requested whether or not she may hear him. She confirmed little emotion apart from when she closed her eyes and appeared to wipe away tears after Sprague described how the kids died.

The choose ordered her held with out bail within the hospital for psychological well being remedy.  It’s doable she might be ordered to residence confinement, Canavan stated, including {that a} listening to could be held earlier than that would occur. 

She is subsequent due in courtroom Might 2. 

A historical past of ‘dangerous ideas’ 

Each Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer and the prosecutor stated her mother and father and husband have been conscious of what Reddington described because the mom’s “worsening melancholy” and “dangerous ideas” because the delivery of her son Callan in Might. 

However whereas Reddington contends she was affected by postpartum melancholy “and probably postpartum psychosis” — a uncommon situation wherein hallucinations and delusions can alter folks’s sense of actuality after childbirth, generally driving them to hurt themselves or their kids — prosecutors stated Lindsay Clancy was informed she didn’t have postpartum melancholy or any signs when she was evaluated on the Girls and Toddler Hospital Heart for Girls’s Behavioral Well being in Windfall, Rhode Island, final 12 months.

She was identified with generalized nervousness dysfunction, Sprague stated. 

The day earlier than the killings, Lindsay Clancy wrote a notice in her cellphone that stated she had a “contact of postpartum nervousness round returning to work,” Sprague stated. A consultant for Massachusetts Basic Hospital beforehand confirmed to NBC Boston that Lindsay Clancy had been an worker. 

Sprague stated Lindsay Clancy by no means used the phrase “psychosis” to explain her signs till after she was arrested whereas talking to her husband on a cellphone belonging to a forensic psychologist whom her lawyer organized to look at her. Throughout that decision, she informed her husband she killed the children throughout “a second of psychosis” when she heard a voice ordering her to take action, Sprague stated.

Sprague pointed to an October notice wherein Lindsay Clancy is alleged to have written: “I believe I form of resent my different kids as a result of they stop me from treating [Callan] like my first child. And I do know that’s not truthful to them, I do know that. I used to be feeling so depressed final night when Cora and Dawson got here residence from college. I do know it rubs off on them so we had a fairly tough night. I need to really feel love and reference to all of my children.” 

She additionally wrote within the entry that she hopes to have extra kids, Sprague stated. 

The prosecutor additionally stated that three days after the kids’s dying, whereas intubated, Lindsay Clancy allegedly wrote a notice asking, “Do I want an lawyer?”

It was one of many first questions she requested after she regained consciousness, Sprague added. 

“She knew that she had murdered her kids, and he or she had the readability, focus and psychological acumen to deal with defending her personal rights and pursuits,” he stated. 

Drugs and a keep at a psychiatric facility

Lindsay Clancy checked herself into McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts, on Jan. 1 after she informed her husband in December that she had had ideas about harming the kids. She had additionally written in a journal about having suicidal ideation, Sprague stated. She was discharged from the ability Jan. 5.

After she returned residence, she “seemed to be getting higher,” Patrick Clancy informed police, noting that she had stayed alone with the kids and informed him in mid-January that she was now not having suicidal ideas, prosecutors stated.  

However Reddington alleged that Lindsay Clancy had been “totally destroyed” by a number of drugs — together with Valium, Prozac, Klonopin and Zoloft — which he claimed masked her signs moderately than handled them. 

“Our society fails miserably in treating ladies with postpartum melancholy or postpartum psychosis. It’s medicate, medicate, medicate,” he informed the courtroom. 

Fifty relations, pals and former colleagues submitted letters to the choose testifying to Lindsay Clancy’s character, her lawyer stated.

When Reddington toured the Clancy household residence not too long ago, he discovered a “want vase” with “dozens of those little items of paper that discuss Lindsay’s want for happiness and well being, for her kids, that she may get pregnant once more … that [her children] could be pleased, wholesome and profitable.” 

“This isn’t a girl that had any cause to hurt these harmless kids,” Reddington informed the courtroom. 

In case you are pregnant or a brand new mom and you’re in disaster, the Nationwide Maternal Psychological Well being Hotline offers free, confidential assist 24/7 in English and Spanish. Name or textual content the hotline at 1-833-9-HELP4MOMS.