A district attorney in Massachusetts said a mother strangled and killed her three young children with exercise bands before she tried to take her own life.
Lindsay Clancy, 32, is in a Boston hospital, but has been charged with murder, strangulation or suffocation and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in the deaths of her children: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3 and Callan, 8 months, our sister station WFXT reported.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said Clancy jumped from a second-floor window of the family home after she killed her children on Jan. 24.
Clancy attended her arrangement via a video call because of her injuries. Her attorney said she is now a paraplegic after jumping from the window, and suffering several spinal fractures.
A Duxbury mother who prosecutors say strangled her three young children with exercise bands before attempting to take her own life was ordered Tuesday to remain hospitalized under police guard. https://t.co/0hwksHWR70
— Boston 25 News (@boston25) February 8, 2023
Sprague told the court that Clancy took her eldest to a doctor’s appointment and there were no issues with the mother’s behavior or demeanor. Clancy then returned home, and played with Cora and Dawson in the snow before going inside the house to order takeout, WFXT reported.
Sprague said that Clancy then mapped out how long it would take someone to go and get the food, and texted her husband who had been working in the home office to get the order.
While he went to get the food, Sprague said Clancy used exercise bands to kill the children in the home’s basement.
Chilling timeline: Lindsay Clancy accused of planning murders of her 3 children, prosecutor says https://t.co/fNRHUB2S1T
— Boston 25 News (@boston25) February 8, 2023
When her husband returned with the food, he realized it was too quiet and saw blood on the floor near an open window. He proceeded to call 911 and while he was on with a dispatcher found his wife with cuts on her wrists and neck. She told him that she had jumped from the window, WFXT reported.
Her husband asked “What did you do?” and then asked where the children were, Sprague said.
Clancy allegedly told her husband they were “in the basement,” Sprague told the court, adding, “She knew what she had done.”
According to Sprague, Clancy’s husband could be heard on the 911 call “screaming in agony and shock” when he found the children who still had the bands tied around their necks.
Sprague said the husband yelled, “She killed the kids!” before he removed the bands, trying to get the children to breathe WFXT reported.
Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after, while Callan died days later.
Sprague said Clancy detailed her activities in the days leading up to the killings and showed no signs of delusions or hallucinations. Clancy did write on Jan. 23 that she had a “touch of postpartum anxiety” and had earlier admitted herself to a hospital on Jan. 1 but checked herself out on Jan. 5. She also kept logs of medications she had been taking, noting that three of them that she was taking at the time of her children’s deaths were giving her issues.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, said she had taken several medications before the murders, including Prozac, Ativan, Benadryl, Seroquel, Amitriptyline and Trazodone.
Reddington told the court that the medications “thoroughly destroyed” his client and that her mental condition got worse, allegedly telling her husband that she was having suicidal thoughts.
“This is not a situation that was planned by any means. This is a situation that clearly is a product of mental illness,” Reddington said during the hearing, adding that society does not treat women who have postpartum depression.
“It’s medicate, medicate, medicate,” Reddington said in court, WFXT reported.
Clancy was ordered to remain in the hospital but under police guard until further notice. Her next court appearance is in May.
