Patrick Clancy takes the stand, offering jurors a painful window into a family’s collapse

CNN

By Nicki Brown, CNN

(CNN) — Dawson Clancy, an energetic toddler who loved trucks and firefighters, dressed himself for the first – and last – time the morning of January 24, 2023. In a photo captured by his father, Dawson leaps towards the camera wearing his chosen outfit, with his arms above his head and a grin spread across his face.

That evening, when Patrick Clancy returned from running errands to his family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home, he found Dawson and his two other children lying motionless in the basement, each with an exercise resistance band around their neck.

“I knew he was gone,” Patrick said of his middle child Monday, when he was called to testify as the first witness in the triple-murder trial of his ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy.

Lindsay Clancy, 35, does not deny she fatally strangled her children: Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan.

But her attorney says the former labor and delivery nurse should not be held criminally responsible for their killings, arguing she was suffering at the time from postpartum psychosis and extreme mental illness, despite her best efforts to seek treatment. After the killings, Lindsay Clancy cut her wrists and her neck and jumped out of a window on the home’s second floor – a failed suicide attempt that left her partially paralyzed, according to the defense.

“She had no motive. She loved her children,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington said in his opening statement. “She intended to kill herself. She didn’t fake that.”

Prosecutors, meanwhile, argue Lindsay Clancy was not in the “throes of psychosis” when she “deliberately and meticulously” killed her children, though they acknowledge she struggled with her mental health.

“This is a woman who acted intentionally, rationally, and swiftly to accomplish a very specific goal – to kill,” Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham told jurors during her opening statement Monday.

The trial, which is expected to focus heavily on testimony from dueling experts about postpartum mental illness, could last up to eight weeks. Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison if she is convicted.

Jurors this week also visited the family’s former home and heard testimony from about a dozen witnesses, most of them medical personnel and law enforcement officials who responded to the grisly scene.

But the central focus of Week 1 was inarguably Patrick Clancy, a central figure in the case who spent two days testifying about his ex-wife’s downward spiral that culminated in the deaths of their three children.

A ‘dedicated’ mother and her search for treatment

Patrick Clancy took deep breaths as he testified about each of his three young children.

Cora loved princesses, he said, and she was named after the first baby Lindsay delivered as a nurse. Dawson’s favorite TV show was “Paw Patrol,” Patrick said, and Callan was “a happy baby.”

Lindsay Clancy was a “very dedicated” mother who did everything for their kids, her former husband testified. She took hundreds of pictures of them; some she included in collages that hung in their house, he said.

Photos displayed in court showed the family’s home littered with toys and decorated with colorful stickers and homemade paintings he said his then-wife put on the walls.

But beneath the surface, Lindsay Clancy was grappling with stress, anxiety and other mental health issues that developed in the aftermath of childbirth, according to her ex-husband – problems that grew as she prepared to return to work after their third child was born in May 2022.

“She just had a really hard time being separated from them,” Patrick Clancy testified.

From September 2022 to January 2023, she was prescribed numerous medications from several different doctors, he said.

Prosecutors have argued Lindsay Clancy sought a “quick and easy fix” for her mental health, choosing to seek out different doctors and switching medications when she didn’t get what she expected.

But according to Patrick Clancy, “it wasn’t a matter of trying to get off the medication – it was trying to get on the right medication.”

Clancy’s ‘big spiral’

Lindsay Clancy’s “big spiral” began when she started taking a new antipsychotic medication around early December 2022, her ex-husband testified. Around that time, she told him she was suicidal and had “intrusive thoughts” about harming the children, he said.

“She described thoughts of hurting the kids or them having some sort of ailment,” he said, adding he wasn’t concerned for their safety because she didn’t show “any intention” of harming them.

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health worsened in December after a doctor increased her dosage of the antipsychotic medication, Patrick Clancy said, and she visited two medical centers in the coming weeks.

But after a multiday stay at a locked-ward facility in early January, she seemed to improve, Patrick Clancy said. Lindsay Clancy said she wasn’t suicidal anymore, he testified, and she did not mention having thoughts about harming their kids.

Prosecutors showed jurors several images from a series of outings that month, when the family of five played at an indoor waterpark and visited a museum.

“I was hopeful,” Patrick Clancy said. “She seemed much better.”

A quiet home

On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy helped her children build a snowman in the yard and texted Patrick – who was working in the basement – photos of the kids playing in the snow.

“She was playing with the kids, and she seemed in a good mood,” Patrick Clancy said. “She was having one of her best days.”

That afternoon, he left the house to pick up medicine for their oldest child and a takeout order his wife had placed at a local restaurant. Before leaving, Patrick Clancy rocked his baby, kissed his daughter on her head and told his family he’d “be right back,” he testified.

While at the pharmacy, Patrick Clancy said he called Lindsay Clancy but she didn’t answer. She returned his call about a minute later, he said, and the two had a brief conversation about the medication.

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

After buying the medicine, Patrick Clancy drove to the restaurant to pick up dinner. When he arrived back home, he said the house was unusually quiet.

The father said he called out to his family and began searching for them, looking in the children’s bedrooms and the bathroom. He then checked the second-floor bedroom he shared with his wife.

“The door was locked,” Patrick Clancy said. “And that’s when I knew something was wrong.”

‘She killed the f**king kids!’

When he unlocked the door, he found the room covered in blood and the window open.

Lindsay Clancy was lying face-up in the backyard directly below the window, he said, with deep cuts on her wrists and another cut across her neck.

When he asked her what happened, he said she responded: “I tried to kill myself.”

Patrick Clancy asked where their kids were, he testified, and Lindsay Clancy told him they were in the basement. He called 911 and waited with his wife in the yard for help to arrive.

A recording of the call was played in court but was not broadcast, in accordance with a court order. Lindsay Clancy held her head in her hands and sobbed as the audio was played for the jury.

Once first responders arrived, Patrick Clancy ran into the house, where he said he found his three children lying still in the basement with exercise resistance bands around their necks.

First responders outside the home heard screams coming from inside, one responding officer testified, describing how he and another ran and found Patrick Clancy in the basement.

“He looked up and he screamed, ‘She killed the f**king kids!’” Duxbury police officer Brian Josephine said.

‘She heard a man’s voice’

Multiple first responders testified about their desperate attempts to revive Cora, Dawson and Callan.

Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead that night, according to court documents. Medical personnel were able to get a heartbeat on Callan at the hospital, prosecutors said, but he never regained consciousness and died three days later.

About a week after she fatally strangled their children, Lindsay Clancy called her husband from a hospital, he said.

“She didn’t talk about our kids, she talked about what she went through,” Patrick Clancy testified. “She said 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.”

His former wife had never before mentioned hearing a man’s voice, he said.

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CNN’s Andi Babineau and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.