Crime
“I think I asked her at some point, you know, ‘Do you feel like you need to be kept away from [the children]?’ And she said ‘no,’” Patrick Clancy testified Monday.
July 29, 2026 | 8:58 AM
2 minutes to read
Livestream via NBC 10 WJAR.
Lindsay Clancy’s former husband is expected back on the stand Wednesday after testifying that she seemed “normal” shortly before she strangled their children.
Patrick Clancy, who has since divorced Lindsay and remarried, told jurors Monday that she seemed to be “having one of her best days” on Jan. 24, 2023, having spent the months prior battling worsening depression, insomnia, and suicidal ideation.
Lindsay Clancy, now 35, does not deny that she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan. But she’s mounting a so-called insanity defense, with her lawyer arguing that she can’t be held criminally responsible because she was struggling with postpartum mental illness and heard a voice in her head telling her to kill the children and herself.
Patrick Clancy testified that Lindsay told him in December 2022 that she was having “intrusive thoughts” about harming the children or seeing something bad happen to them, though he said she denied having a plan to act on those thoughts. He struggled to maintain his composure as prosecutors displayed photos and videos of the children and prompted him to describe each child.
“I think I asked her at some point, you know, ‘Do you feel like you need to be kept away from them?’ And she said ‘no,’” Patrick recalled. “And then it was very confusing, because one minute later, she was making them lunch, or playing with them, or getting them ready for bed, or whatever it was.”
In their opening statement Monday, prosecutors emphasized Lindsay Clancy’s ability to keep up with day-to-day tasks as they argued she was in her right mind at the time of the killings.
“This was not a woman in the throes of psychosis on Jan. 24, 2023,” Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham alleged. “This was a woman who acted intentionally, rationally, and swiftly to accomplish a very specific goal: to kill.”
To hear Buckingham tell it, Lindsay “coldly and efficiently executed” her children and attempted suicide after more household responsibilities fell to her when Patrick’s paternity leave ended in the summer of 2022.
“This was a woman who no longer liked the life that she thought she wanted,” Buckingham alleged. “And when she saw the opportunity to escape, she made the selfish choice to take it, and to take Cora, Dawson, and Callan first before attempting to take her own life.”
But defense attorney Kevin Reddington rejected prosecutors’ suggested motive. In his own opening statement, he described Lindsay as “one heck of a mother” and attributed her downward spiral to a combination of postpartum mental illness and the laundry list of psychiatric medications prescribed to her in the months prior to the killings.
“She had no motive,” Reddington maintained. “She loved her children. She intended to kill herself; she didn’t fake that.”
Lindsay Clancy cries as she sees images of herself with her children playing at an indoor waterpark. – Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger, Pool
Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.
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