Trial begins for Lindsay Clancy, mother on trial in deaths of her 3
children
[July 27, 2026]
By MICHAEL CASEY
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — In the months after the birth of her third child,
Lindsay Clancy 's mental health collapsed. Manic, unable to sleep and
stricken with thoughts of harming herself, she sought care from experts
in postpregnancy mood disorders, was put on multiple psychiatric
medications, and when nothing worked, checked in to a psychiatric
hospital.
Nineteen days after she was discharged, she strangled her three children
at their Massachusetts home.
A jury is set to hear opening statements Monday in Clancy's murder
trial, which will feature dueling views about her culpability and mental
state.
Prosecutors are set to argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery
nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, carefully planned the killings
and bears full responsibility for their deaths.
Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, will argue that at the time of the
killings she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a rare mental
illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes
that follow childbirth.
The trial is expected to take several weeks.
Elyse Hershon, a Boston criminal defense attorney and legal analyst,
said the verdict will likely depend on how the jury views Clancy’s
“intent and mental capacity."
“Whenever there are deaths of children, it rattles emotions. Because
these actions are incomprehensible and the outcome so horrific, people
tend to want to hold someone responsible,” Hershon said. “Some people
naturally will identify and sympathize with Clancy and her postpartum
depression, and others will not be able to understand how one could end
their children’s lives, and demand responsibility.”
While postpartum depression is fairly common among women who have given
birth, postpartum psychosis is estimated to afflict only 1 to 2 per
1,000 women after delivery. Symptoms include hallucinations, delusions,
paranoia, mood changes and thoughts of harming yourself or others. Most
women who have the condition, however, do not wind up harming their
children.
Prosecutors say Clancy strangled her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and
Callan, 8 months — on Jan. 24, 2023, after sending her then-husband,
Patrick, out for some errands. She then jumped out of the home’s
second-story window and was paralyzed from the waist down in the fall.
At the time, she had been getting psychiatric care for about four
months. On the day of the killings, she said she heard voices telling
her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill
yourself," according to her lawyer.
If convicted of murder, Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If
found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be
committed to a state mental health facility.
The case has parallels to several others involving mothers accused of
killing their children.
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Clancy confers with her lawyer Kevin Reddington during her murder
trial where she is charged in the 2023 killing of her three
children, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Plymouth Superior Court in
Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in
Texas. Her attorneys she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis
and, in a delusional state, believed Satan was inside her and that
killing the youngsters would save them from hell.
Her initial murder conviction was overturned and in a retrial she
was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state
mental hospital.
Another Texas mother, Dena Schlosser, was found not guilty by reason
of insanity in 2006 after she killed her 10-month-old daughter by
cutting off her arms.
Nicole Cirino, the director of the division of reproductive
psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, who has been an expert
defense witness in infanticide cases, said many of the women who
harm their children while in the grip of postpartum psychosis
believe their actions are helping the child.
In their own minds, “they may be saving their children from
damnation," Cirino said.
Clancy and her former husband, Patrick Clancy, filed lawsuits
accusing her medical providers of failing to properly diagnose and
treat her condition.
Awareness about postpartum psychosis has grown since the Yates case,
but Cirino and other maternal mental health advocates said
prosecutors rarely consider a mother's mental state. Illinois is the
only state with a law allowing for undiagnosed or untreated
postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis to be a mitigating
factor in sentencing.
“Women who kill their children in the throes of this medical
illness, postpartum psychosis, are seriously and profoundly mentally
ill. They are not evil,” said Dr. Catherine Birndorf, the CEO and
founder of The Motherhood Center in New York City, which treats
mothers with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
“To me it’s illness until proven otherwise,” she continued. “The
fact that we consider it criminal until proven otherwise is
problematic.”
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