Wrenching 911 Call Played in Clancy Trial

Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial spent Wednesday hearing from the person who found the bodies of the couple's three children: their father. Patrick Clancy finished a second day on the stand, describing the night in January 2023 when he returned to the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts home to a find unusually quiet house, a locked bedroom door "with blood everywhere" inside, his wife gravely injured outside, and his three children—Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months—strangled in the basement with exercise bands, CBS News reports. His 7-minute 911 call was played for jurors but is barred from public release under a prior court order.

In the call, he can be heard speaking to Lindsay Clancy, who was lying injured and semi-conscious on the home's front lawn. He testified that she told him they were in the basement, without indicating that they were hurt. In the call, he can be heard howling, the AP reports. When the dispatcher asked him what was wrong, he replied, "She killed the kids!" In court, he described finding the bodies and going "back and forth" between them, trying to give them CPR before first responders took over, CBS reports. Lindsay Clancy, 35, paralyzed after jumping from a second-story window that night, faces three counts of first-degree murder and a possible life sentence. After the call was played, the court went into recess and she was wheeled out of the room, sobbing.

Prosecutors say she carefully orchestrated the killings, sending her husband out for takeout and children's medicine to create a window of time. The defense argues she was severely sleep-deprived, heavily medicated, and in the grip of postpartum psychosis, pointing to her diary entries about "horrible intrusive thoughts" and Patrick Clancy's testimony that she was a devoted mother. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged from a psychiatric hospital, the AP reports. Patrick Clancy testified Wednesday that nobody had warned him that she shouldn't be left alone with the children. "I didn't know what psychosis was until after this happened," he said. On Monday, he testified that she built a snowman with the children hours before she killed them.