A high-profile murder trial opening Monday in Massachusetts will hinge less on what happened than on why. Former labor and delivery nurse Lindsay Clancy admits she strangled her three children—Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and 8-month-old Callan—in the basement of the family's Duxbury home in January 2023, then attempted suicide, reports CNN. The 35-year-old has pleaded not guilty, arguing she was legally insane and not criminally responsible for their deaths. Prosecutors say Clancy carefully planned the killings and understood her actions, but the defense says she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis and severe mental illness. The children were killed 19 days after she was discharged from a psychiatric hospital, notes the AP.
Her husband, Patrick, who left briefly to pick up takeout and returned to find the scene, has publicly backed her account, saying, "I wasn't married to a monster—I was married to someone who got sick." He plans to testify on her behalf. The case, which could run six to eight weeks, will feature clashing psychiatric experts and scrutiny of a treatment history that included roughly a dozen medications and two psychiatric hospitalizations. If convicted, Clancy faces life in prison; if found not criminally responsible, she would likely be committed to a state psychiatric facility. Clancy is paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from her home's second-story window in her suicide attempt.
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