The grieving husband of a nurse who killed their three children has revealed their haunting phone call that day and the chilling reason she strangled them.
Patrick Clancy returned home to find Lindsay with slashes on her neck and wrists and Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, strangled in the basement.
Cora and Dawson were dead, Callan died a few days later. His wife had brutally killed them before throwing herself from the window of their mansion in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023.
In a heartbreaking interview with the New Yorker, Patrick speaks about that day and opens up about how he and Lindsay, now paralyzed, have interacted since.
One chilling extract describes him calling her from a CVS store. When she rang back she was normal but ‘seemed to be in the middle of something.’
Patrick returned home that day to find his children strangled to death in the basement
Yet, he says, he does not blame Lindsay for the killing their three children.
‘I wasn’t married to a monster, I was married to someone who got sick,’ he said.
He told how she had been suffering from anxiety and was institutionalized in the months before the horrific incident.
He also said that just a few days before her arraignment, a voice mail was left from a phone number he didn’t recognize. It was Lindsay, calling from a psychologist’s phone to say she loved him.
When he called back the next day, Lindsay explained she heard a voice commanding her to kill the children and then herself because it was her ‘last chance’.
‘She did not sound like my wife,’ Clancy said of the phone call.
Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, were killed by their mom
Patrick returned to their Duxbury, Massachusetts home to find Lindsay semi-conscious in the backyard and his children dead with exercise bands still around their necks
It was six months before the couple spoke again, and Lindsay told her husband how every day was the worst day of her life.
‘She misses her kids,’ Clancy said. ‘Which I know sounds crazy to some people. But that’s the reality.’
Lindsay’s friends have also previously told how she often joked about having enough children to fill a ‘baseball team,’ and said she was ‘born to be a mother.’
But Lindsay apparently started to struggle with anxiety shortly after the birth of her youngest son, Callan, who was just eight months old when he was killed.
She told Patrick she wanted to go on to Zoloft as she prepared to return to work, and started seeing a virtual therapist.
Those virtual visits, though, were more centered on medication management, Patrick said.
Patrick Clancy has revealed the horrifying phone call he had with his wife, Lindsay, the day of January 24, 2023 as she strangled their three children
Lindsay’s friends have said she often joked about having enough children to fill a ‘baseball team,’ and said she was ‘born to be a mother’
By mid-November 2022, Lindsay lost her appetite and stopped socializing.
She also started having trouble sleeping, prompting doctors to prescribe her even more medication.
Lindsay’s defense attorneys have argued ‘horrific overmedication’ was the cause of her mental decline, with even prosecutors revealing in court that her blood samples found seven different medications.
Investigators found bottles of diazepam, amitriptyline and trazodone, all antidepressants, from the family home.
All three had been prescribed to Lindsay 16 days before the traumatic incident.
Lindsay’s struggles with mental health began following the birth of her youngest son
On the day of the murders, Lindsay was worried about her daughter’s stomach ache
By the end of that December, Lindsay insisted she needed to go to a hospital, telling Patrick: ‘I have thoughts of wanting to die, and I feel numb to them.’
About the same time, Lindsay also confessed to having unwanted thoughts of harming her children, Patrick later told the police.
Then, in early January, Lindsay checked herself into McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility.
But when Patrick visited her later in the week, they saw a clearly agitated individual pacing the hallways talking to themselves, he said.
‘There were people there who were clearly, like, nuts,’ he said. ‘Lindsay seemed to have it together.’ He added that she even texted him: ‘I don’t belong here.’
She was released from the hospital after just five days with a prescription for an antidepressant, and denied having any more intrusive thoughts.
Patrick had thought she had been improving, and on the morning of January 24, she even told him she was feeling ‘good’ and slept ‘pretty well.’
She took the young girl to a pediatrician, and asked Patrick to pick up some medication for her
She became concerned about her daughter’s stomach ache later in the day, and took the young girl to a pediatrician.
Lindsay texted Patrick at around 5pm to pick up Pedia-Lax for Cora and a takeout meal for dinner.
He did not think much of the request at the time, because he thought she was doing better, he revealed.
But, he said, ‘If I could go back in time, I’d have called McLean and said, ‘Take her away, lock the door, keep her in there for a year, if you have to.”
He noted she seemed ‘really good’ that day. ‘So what do you do? Somebody’s having a great day. Should I call the hotline?’
Lindsay had been institutionalized shortly before the murders, but Patrick thought she had been doing better
When he returned home, however, he found blood on the floor of the master bedroom and a bloody knife.
He found Lindsay barely conscious in the backyard, and asked her, ‘What did you do?’ to which she replied, ‘I tried to kill myself’.
Patrick then asked where the children were, to which she replied, ‘in the basement.’ That is where he found Cora, Dawson and Callan, with exercise bands still around their necks.
He tried to remove them and begged each child to breathe before they were pronounced dead.
In the aftermath, Patrick said he questioned his wife about what happened that day.
‘I think one of the first things I asked was: ‘Did you plan this? Is that why you sent me out?,’ he recounted.
‘She said, ‘No it just was like, a snap of the fingers.’
He said he asked why she looked up how long it would take him to pick up dinner, to which she replied she was concerned about him getting stuck in traffic.
‘Then I said, ‘Did you Google ‘Ways to kill?’ And she said, ‘Yeah for myself, because I was suicidal for two months.”
Lindsay has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation and three counts of assault and batter with a dangerous weapon
Lindsay has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington, who has indicated that he plans an insanity defense, painted a picture of a woman struggling with mental illness.
‘This is not a situation that was planned by any means,’ he said. ‘This was a situation that was clearly the product of mental illness.’
But the prosecution countered that Clancy had been evaluated by mental health professionals before and was told she did not have post-partum depression.
They claimed Lindsay had been researching ways to kill on her cellphone in the days leading up to the murders, and have suggested her suicide attempt was staged.
A date for her trial has not yet been set.