Lindsay Clancy told doctors she drank five days a week and had severe insomnia and suicidal thoughts — but claimed she wouldn’t kill herself because of her children — before she ended up fatally strangling them, it was revealed in court Friday.
Just two days before the three little kids’ horrific slayings Jan. 24, 2023, the Massachusetts mom went with her husband and children to a friend’s barbecue and was “just quiet but fairly normal,’’ the pal, Sarah Carney, testified.
Plymouth prosecutors, in a chilling moment, asked Carney at one point if she ever saw the kids playing with the exercise bands that their mother, a 35-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, would soon kill them with.
“Sure, if that’s what I said. I don’t recall,” Carney replied, referring to a social-media exchange over some of Clancy’s video posts showing the doomed kids playing around with the exercise cords.
In another tense moment, Clancy’s fuming lawyer told the judge that a prosecutor was caught on a mic with jurors in the room Thursday saying, “Shut her up’’ as the killer mom wailed when autopsy photos were shown of her baby in court.
Clancy lawyer Kevin Reddington protested over the incident to Judge William Sullivan while jurors were still out from a break.
“They got picked up on a hot mic saying ‘Shut her up,’ during the playing of the autopsy,” Reddington said of the alleged incident, demanding a sidebar.
It wasn’t clear who the “her’’ was that the lawyer was referring to, but Reddington was apparently suggesting the timing meant it was Clancy, and the judge agreed to a sidebar.
The new revelations about the horror case surfaced Friday as prosecutors honed in on the state of the mother before the slayings — additionally with a string of doctors who testified as Clancy tightly clasped her hands in front of her.
Her lawyer wants a jury to find Clancy not guilty of her children’s killings by reason of insanity on the grounds she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis, partly caused by the drugs she was on.
She had been given 30 prescriptions for 13 drugs by five different providers in the four months leading up to the murders, according to testimony and evidence.
Dr. Jennifer Tufts, a psychiatrist who started treating Clancy in September 2022 and prescribed her Zoloft at the time, testified that Clancy had reported on an intake form that she was having one to two drinks five times a week and that she felt guilty about it.
Here’s the latest on Lindsay Clancy’s trial for allegedly murdering her three children:
Clancy told the doctor about her anxiety, depression and insomnia but she denied having any suicidal or homicidal thoughts at the time and she also denied hearing any voices, Tufts testified.
She then landed in the psychiatric facility McLean Hospital in Massachusetts on Jan. 1, 2023, for suicidal thoughts about eight months after Callan’s birth.
She was released Jan. 5 — two and a half weeks before the killings and her suicide attempt, which left her a paralyzed from the waist down.
Dr. Alia Goodheart told the jury about weaning Clancy off of the antipsychotic drug Seroquel during her four nights at McLean in hopes of improving the struggling mom’s insomnia.
In place of Seroquel, the doctor prescribed Clancy two new medications — a 14-day supply of anti-anxiety drug Ativan and a 14-day supply of Trazodone to help her sleep, the psychiatrist told the jury.
Goodheart insisted on the stand Clancy had told her that despite her suicidal thoughts, she would never follow through on them because “of her children and her family and her mother.”
The doctor added that while Clancy reported feeling anxiety, being unable to sleep and having brain fog and suicidal ideations, the medical expert did not see any signs of psychosis in her.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, wants a jury to find Clancy not guilty of her children’s killings by reason of insanity on the grounds she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis, partly caused by the drugs she was on.
Reddington has also said Clancy heard a voice telling her to carry out the heinous acts.
Toxicologists told jurors Clancy had two antidepressants, two anti-anxiety medications and two antipsychotic drugs in her blood after the killings.
Goodheart said she would have liked some more time to observe Clancy’s sleep patterns after weaning her off of Seroquel but that Clancy insisted on checking out of McLean Jan. 5, so she could be home for the birthday of her oldest child, Cora, 5, that weekend.
Reddington questioned the fact that Goodheart took Clancy at her word for many things.
“You ever heard of patients who minimize their symptoms and lie about their symptoms?” Reddington asked.
“Yes,” Goodheart answered.
She later clarified that she considers a patient’s body language and eye contact to help her “get a sense of whether a person is being honest” — and that Clancy didn’t give the doctor reason to believe she was lying.
Clancy is accused of using exercise bands to strangle Cora, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan at her Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. Immediately after, Clancy cut her wrists and neck and threw herself out of a second story window, partially paralyzing herself.
She now appears in court in a wheelchair.
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