Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her 3 children is indicted for their murder

BOSTON – The Duxbury, Massachusetts, mother accused of strangling her three children with exercise bands in January has been indicted for their murder.

A Plymouth grand jury indicted Lindsay Clancy, 32, with three counts of murder and strangulation. Clancy is being held without bail and is currently a patient at a hospital being treated following what was reported as a suicide attempt that dark night, Jan. 24, in Duxbury. She will be arraigned at Plymouth Superior Court on the charges at an unscheduled date.

The father of the three children, Patrick Clancy, called police to report that his wife had tried to kill herself at 6:11 that night. As first responders tended to Lindsay Clancy, the sound of Patrick Clancy’s screams came from the basement.

Down there, the three children were unconscious and blue, with exercise bands around their neck, according to charging documents. Cora Clancy, 5, and Dawson Clancy, 3, were transported to Beth Israel Deaconness Hospital in Plymouth where they were pronounced dead that night.

The baby, Callan Clancy, was flown to Boston Children’s Hospital, where he would hold onto life for several days, turning 8 months old, before also dying from his injuries.

The state’s chief medical examiner declared the two older children died of asphyxia, while Callan had died from complications from asphyxia.

The Plymouth DA’s office issued an arrest warrant the next day, though Lindsay was still in the hospital.

She would be arraigned on Feb. 7 from her Brigham and Women’s Hospital bed.

Lindsay Clancy had at the time of the children’s deaths been suffering from postpartum depression, according to her attorney Kevin Reddington. Court documents say that Lindsay Clancy, who was a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, was taking medications including antidepressants, anxiety-targeting benzodiazepine drugs, and the antipsychotic drug Seroquel at least as far back as last September.

Last October, according to court documents, she wrote a note on her phone: I think I sort of resent my other children because they prevent me from treating Cal like my first baby. And I know that’s not fair to them. … I know it (rubs) off on them so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all of my kids.”

On Dec. 20, Lindsay Clancy was told at Women & Infants Hospital Center for Women’s Behavioral Health in Providence that she did not have postpartum depression. She told her husband in the beginning of this year that she was having suicidal thoughts and she admitted herself to McLean Hospital, in Belmont.