{"id":985478,"date":"2026-08-06T22:43:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T22:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/985478\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T22:43:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T22:43:31","slug":"lindsay-clancy-mother-who-killed-her-3-kids-sobs-as-autopsy-photos-shown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/985478\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsay Clancy, mother who killed her 3 kids, sobs as autopsy photos shown"},"content":{"rendered":"

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Lindsay Clancy<\/a> sobbed uncontrollably Thursday as jurors viewed autopsy photos of the youngest of her three children whom she strangled in 2023, until the court eventually had to take an unscheduled break.<\/p>\n

In the second week of her Massachusetts murder trial, prosecutors brought more friends, a former work colleague and her former father-in-law to testify about Clancy\u2019s mental and emotional state. They said she was mostly open about her postpregnancy mental health struggles but seemed like a loving mother who cared for her kids. <\/p>\n

Clancy has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of<\/a> Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan. <\/p>\n

Defense attorneys don\u2019t dispute that she killed her children on Jan. 24, 2023, after sending her husband out on errands, but they argue that she was too mentally ill to bear criminal responsibility for her actions. <\/p>\n

Prosecutors, however, said that sending her husband out of the house was a ruse<\/a> and that the 35-year-old former labor and delivery nurse acted intentionally. She remains paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from the home\u2019s second-story window that night.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

A friend recalls a difficult reunion after the killings<\/p>\n

Much of the week has been dominated by witnesses detailing their memories of Clancy in the days, weeks and months before the killings.<\/p>\n

Outwardly, Clancy appeared normal, most said, attending family functions, lunches with friends and activities with her children. None of the witnesses Thursday testified they heard Clancy express suicidal or homicidal thoughts, talking of hearing voices or wanting to harm her children.<\/p>\n

But after the birth of her third child, she told a friend she was having trouble sleeping and noted harmful side effects from medications she was taking. Another former colleague at Massachusetts General Hospital, Andrea Hennigan, recalled a lunch where Clancy said she wouldn\u2019t return to work because she \u201cwas not in a mental state to take care of patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe talked about insomnia and not feeling herself,\u201d she said. \u201cI believe she might have used the words brain fog or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The month of the killings, Clancy texted Hennigan that she was experiencing \u201cbad or negative side effects\u201d from her medications. She told another witness, Amy Bevins, around then that the medications had \u201ccaused her to have some dark thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another witness, Bethany Decollibus, attended a birthday party for Clancy\u2019s daughter, Cora, in January 2023. Asked about her sleep troubles, Clancy said \u201cthings haven\u2019t gotten better and that she feels like a zombie.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Lindsay Clancy\u2019s former father-in-law testifies<\/p>\n

Christopher Clancy praised his former daughter-in-law\u2019s mothering skills. But he admitted knowing she was having issues. At one point, he suggested the grandchildren stay with him and his wife, but his son declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew she was having a hard time sleeping,\u201d Christopher Clancy said. \u201cI knew she just didn\u2019t feel well. I knew she went to the emergency room where my wife was working. Those types of struggles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lindsay Clancy\u2019s attorneys in criminal and civil cases have said that she had postpartum psychosis<\/a>, a condition that a small fraction of women exhibit after childbirth, and that she had bipolar disorder that wasn\u2019t fully diagnosed until after the killings. Her attorneys say her condition seemed to worsen on the psychiatric medications, some of them problematic for bipolar patients.<\/p>\n

If convicted of murder, she 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.<\/p>\n

Another case that echoes Clancy\u2019s is going back to court<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the judge and the district attorney learned Thursday that they face a retrial in another case involving a mother\u2019s mental state when she killed her two school-age children in 2018.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts\u2019 top court threw out Latarsha Sanders\u2019 murder convictions<\/a> in the stabbings<\/a> of sons Edson \u201cMarlon\u201d Brito, 8, and La\u2019son Brito, 5.<\/p>\n

Sanders told police in a recorded interview that she stabbed the boys because \u201cbad people\u201d text-messaged her commands to carry out a \u201critual\u201d connected to \u201cVoodoo stuff\u201d and the Illuminati<\/a>. The latter is a purported powerful secret society at the center of various conspiracy theories, and Sanders\u2019 family said she had become obsessively fearful of it.<\/p>\n

Like Clancy\u2019s lawyers, Sanders\u2019 defense argued she was mentally ill and shouldn\u2019t be held criminally responsible, while prosecutors said she acted deliberately. <\/p>\n

A defense neuropsychologist diagnosed Sanders with schizophrenia spectrum disorder, among other conditions, and testified that she was \u201cgrossly psychotic\u201d when she killed the children.<\/p>\n

The appeal turns on psychiatric evidence<\/p>\n

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court faulted the judge for not letting jurors hear many specifics from Sanders\u2019 medical records. They showed, among other things, that clinicians at a prison and a psychiatric hospital suggested similar diagnoses after Sanders\u2019 arrest.<\/p>\n

Withholding the records from jurors \u201cimpermissibly stripped\u201d the defense of its medical foundation, Justice Frank M. Gaziano wrote in a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz\u2019s office said in a statement that it was thinking through next steps. Messages seeking comment were sent to a clerk for Superior Court Justice William Sullivan and to a court system spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019 lawyer, Robert F. Shaw Jr., said he looked forward to retrying the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hope is that those records and that evidence will be able to be viewed by a jury with fresh eyes,\u201d he said by phone.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Peltz reported from New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Lindsay Clancy sobbed uncontrollably Thursday as jurors viewed autopsy photos of the youngest of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":985479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[245,356,57,210,4221,12588,362,236901,2739,50,2737,8007,61,67,132,68,8572],"class_list":["post-985478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-children","tag-courts","tag-general-news","tag-health","tag-homicide","tag-juries","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-lindsay-clancy","tag-massachusetts","tag-news","tag-rhode-island","tag-trials","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-violence"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117050986080082819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/985479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}