Jury hears 911 call in Lindsay Clancy murder trial

Jurors in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial listened Wednesday to her former husband’s frantic 911 call from the night their three young children were killed, a recording in which Patrick Clancy screams for help and tells a dispatcher, “She killed the kids.”

Clancy, 35, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 24, 2023, deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan inside the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She has admitted killing the children while her then husband was away on an errand, but her lawyers say she was suffering from extreme postpartum psychosis and cannot be found to have intentionally murdered them.

Prosecutors allege the killings were planned. They say Lindsay Clancy sent Patrick Clancy out of the house to pick up takeout food and stool softener from a pharmacy, giving herself time alone with the children. If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty because of a lack of criminal responsibility, The Guardian reported, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.

Patrick Clancy, who is now divorced from Lindsay Clancy, returned to the witness stand Wednesday at Plymouth Superior Court. He testified that when he left the house, his son Dawson was on the couch eating chicken nuggets and green beans, and Lindsay Clancy’s demeanor seemed “normal.” Jurors watched surveillance video from the pharmacy showing him call his wife with a question about which medicine to buy.

“She was pretty quiet. It sounded like she was busy,” he testified. “I remember hanging up thinking she was probably in the middle of giving baths or something like that.”

When he returned home, he said, the house was silent. He searched until he found blood in the main bedroom and then discovered Lindsay Clancy badly injured outside. She had used multiple methods to try to end her life and remains paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from a second-story window. Patrick Clancy testified that she told him the children were in the basement but did not say they were dead.

The jury then heard the roughly six-minute 911 call as he found the children, who were strangled with exercise bands. According to CBS News, the audio is not allowed to be broadcast under a ruling by the judge. In the call, Patrick Clancy can be heard asking, “Where are the kids, Lindsay,” and, “Did you fall out the window, Linds? Did you fall? Is there something on your neck, Lindsay?” After first responders arrived, he said he needed to check on the children, then screamed that he needed help in the basement.

Lindsay Clancy cried as the recording played. CBS News reported she was hunched over the defense table, sobbing, and was wheeled out of the courtroom with her face in her hands after the judge called a recess. Her parents also appeared to be crying, The Guardian reported. Before the call was played, the judge told jurors not to let their emotional reaction interfere with their judgment.

Other witnesses testified briefly Wednesday about interactions prosecutors say are relevant to the timeline. Angela Krause, general manager of a CVS in Kingston, said she received a call from a woman asking whether a medication was in stock. Asked whether the caller seemed impaired, Krause said, “It was a very normal interaction.” Sweeney Schelgren, who was working as a hostess at ThreeV in Plymouth, said a woman placed a takeout order and that the exchange was normal. She also said nothing seemed unusual when a man picked up the food.

The defense has said Lindsay Clancy had sought care from specialists in post-pregnancy mood disorders, was prescribed multiple psychiatric medications and had been hospitalized earlier in January 2023. Patrick Clancy testified that she had described thoughts of suicide and harming the children in the months before the killings, but he said she appeared to be improving and that the day began as one of her “best days,” including a doctor’s appointment for Cora, building a snowman and art projects.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington filed a motion Tuesday seeking to strike parts of the prosecution’s opening statement and Patrick Clancy’s early testimony, CBS News reported. The defense objected to a timeline suggesting meaning in the order of the children’s deaths, testimony about an anniversary dinner and massage that Patrick Clancy said never happened, and a reference to a Google search for “ways to kill,” which the defense says concerned methods of suicide.