Within the depths of the pandemic, mom of three Chelsea DeFina arrange a Zoom group to assist fellow mothers hold one another accountable of their health journeys.
The attendees had been an eclectic combine and included a girl named Lindsay Clancy.
DeFina knew Lindsay from her center faculty cheer squad and remembered her fondly as a candy lady. She hadn’t seen her in particular person in additional than a decade, so she was excited when she joined.
Lindsay, who was pregnant together with her third baby, quickly impressed DeFina and the opposite group members.
She would attend practically each session, understanding even when she was seven or eight months pregnant. Typically her oldest two youngsters, a woman and a boy, would pop into the body, “understanding” alongside the women.
“She was an inspiration,” DeFina stated.
When Lindsay gave delivery to a different boy in Could 2022, she stopped checking in. DeFina reached out, however didn’t hear again.
“I assumed she was busy maintaining with a new child and toddlers,” stated DeFina. “I didn’t imagine it once I realized that it occurred. It didn’t make sense.”
What occurred: On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a 33-year-old nurse, spouse, and mother, requested her husband, Patrick, to run an errand close to their residence in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Whereas he was gone, Lindsay strangled her three youngsters — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — with train bands from their residence fitness center.
Then she lower her neck and wrists with a knife, swallowed prescription drugs from her nightstand, and threw herself out of a second-story window.
A 911 name bore witness to the worst moments of Patrick Clancy’s life, when he returned residence and found the scene.
“His screams appear[ed] to get louder and extra agonized as time handed,” courtroom data state.
Cora and Dawson had been pronounced useless on the hospital. Docs had been capable of get Callan’s coronary heart beating once more, however assessments revealed he had no mind exercise.
After three days on life help, Callan died three days later. By then, the information of the Clancy youngsters and their mom made headlines, not solely in Massachusetts, however nationwide.
Three years later, two narratives have emerged surrounding the kids’s deaths which are so disparate, so incompatible with one another, that they nearly appear to characterize two parallel universes.
In a single, Lindsay is an unrepentant monster. With forethought and malice, she killed her youngsters. Why? As a result of she’s evil.
The opposite narrative is extra difficult. Lindsay beloved her youngsters, however was betrayed by her personal thoughts and did the unthinkable. Why? As a result of she was sick.
In accordance with her pals, a number of of whom I spoke to over years of reporting, Lindsay was a standard middle-class girl. Chillingly so.
Those that knew her casually describe her as type, however reserved. A quiet lady, however one everybody favored.
However to her greatest pals? Lindsay wasn’t shy in any respect.
“We had been all the time laughing about one thing silly and having enjoyable,” recalled her shut buddy, who wished to stay nameless for worry of on-line retribution.
One other, who additionally solely agreed to talk anonymously, instructed me: “I simply need there to be reality put out about her, since the whole lot to this point has been portray her like a monster.”
“That’s been terrible to witness as somebody who has regarded as much as Lindsay for therefore a few years. The system failed her, and she or he doesn’t deserve what occurred. Her household didn’t need to be ripped aside. And I really imagine this tragedy may have been prevented had she obtained the right care.”
Whereas attending Lyman Corridor Excessive College within the small city of Wallingford, Connecticut, Lindsay was a part of a tight-knit group of girlfriends.
They went to class collectively, studied collectively, drove round on the weekends and had sleepovers.
Lindsay, who lived together with her mother and father and older sister on the time, was a aggressive cheerleader, a Nationwide Honor Society scholar, and an concerned classmate who participated in numerous golf equipment and occasions.
Lindsay additionally was laser-focused on her future.
“Being a nurse and a mom was her life plan since highschool and that all the time made good sense to me as a result of caring for folks simply got here naturally to her,” stated Samantha Peck, a buddy of Lindsay’s via center and highschool.
For Peck, there’s one reminiscence of Lindsay that sticks together with her.
“I had a difficult relationship with meals at occasions in highschool and would typically not carry lunch,” she recalled. “She would all the time say she was full after half her sandwich and encourage me to have the remainder so it wouldn’t go to waste…I don’t know if she even realized what a optimistic affect she was having on me, however she simply had this inherent nurturing nature.”
After highschool, Lindsay attended Quinnipiac College in close by Hamden, CT, graduating in 2012 with a level in Biology.
“I bear in mind crying our eyes out collectively the night time earlier than we went away to varsity, regardless that we knew we might see one another quickly,” her buddy recalled.
However the group of pals by no means wavered. Posts on social media present the ladies collectively, visiting one another at their respective faculties, reuniting of their hometown, hugging one another at events.
Her buddy was even with Lindsay the night time she met Patrick in 2016, who stated the pair had “a direct connection.”
“I bear in mind pondering quickly after they began relationship that he was the one for her, she simply appeared smitten,” she stated. “She all the time stated he was the nicest man she ever dated. They handled one another very well.”
For Lindsay, it appeared like the whole lot was falling into place. She married Patrick, and on Christmas Eve 2017, Lindsay and Patrick welcomed Cora. In September 2019, they welcomed their son, Dawson.
As her pals started having youngsters of their very own, Lindsay, a labor and supply nurse at Massachusetts Basic Hospital, was a supply of help.
“After I turned a mother, she was all the time the primary particular person I’d textual content once I wanted recommendation or reassurance,” her buddy recalled.
However in any case, Lindsay was human, together with her personal anxieties and stresses like every other, typically turning to the web for parenting assist, particularly, mom-focused Fb teams.
In Could 2021, in a bunch referred to as “Attachment Parenting for Littles,” a Fb account that seems to be Lindsay’s requested for recommendation coping with outbursts from then-19-month-old Dawson, whom she referred to as “essentially the most tough human I’ve ever encountered.”
“I imply that with all of the love in my coronary heart, however I actually can not make it via a day with out getting so pissed off with him,” she wrote, asking for “solidarity/recommendation/something.”
In August 2022, the identical Fb account considered Lindsay’s posted in a bunch for “morning mantras.”
“Had my third child 2 months in the past and tried to stay with my MM after he was born, however the final two weeks or so haven’t performed any of the weather of it and I’m undoubtedly struggling due to it!”
“Want me luck! Sometime it’s going to get simpler,” she wrote, with a silly-face emoji. “Pic of the three [kids] that make it so darn laborious to have ‘me’ time.”
Nevertheless it appears obvious now that what Lindsay was coping with was far past the scope of a self-help routine.
In interviews with authorities, Patrick first mentions Lindsay’s struggles in September 2022, when, he stated, she started to really feel “anxious” about her return to work. She started boomeranging between psychiatrists, treatment and even an inpatient keep in a psychiatric unit.
In November 2022, Lindsay’s obvious Fb account posted to a bunch titled “I Am Not Alone: Postpartum Despair/Anxiousness & Rage.”
She wrote she had “excessive insomnia” and worsening despair on Zoloft, that Ativan had made her “really feel like herself once more,” however she knew she couldn’t take it long run “as it’s addictive.”
“Any recommendation on an alternate that has an analogous impact?” she wrote.
In accordance with prosecutors, Lindsay stored “meticulous” journals and notes, each on paper and on her telephone, detailing the quantity and dosages of medicines she was on. She wrote that she had skilled difficulties with each treatment she had been prescribed.
Lindsay additionally wrote about how she was feeling, together with her suicidal ideation. Sooner or later, she researched “methods to kill,” though investigators don’t elaborate on what the context for these searches was.
“I feel I form of resent my different youngsters as a result of they stop me from treating Cal like my first child,” she wrote. “And I do know that’s not honest to them. I do know that. I used to be feeling so depressed final night when Cora and Dawson got here residence from faculty. I do know it runs off on them so we had a reasonably tough night. I wish to really feel love and reference to all of my youngsters.”
That December, when she was evaluated on the Ladies and Infants Heart for Ladies’s Behavioral Well being in Windfall, Rhode Island, an area outpatient clinic for perinatal and postpartum psychological well being, she was not given a analysis of postpartum despair.
In accordance with courtroom data, she was instructed “she had no signs” of the situation by the docs on the clinic.
Later that month, she wrote in her journal that she had begun experiencing “suicidal ideation,” and instructed Patrick that she had begun to have ideas of killing herself and the youngsters.
After talking together with her psychiatrist, Lindsay determined to self-admit to an inpatient psychiatric unit at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, the place she stayed from New Yr’s Day 2023 to Jan. 5, 2023.
“The hospital didn’t file any paperwork making an attempt to have her dedicated as a hazard to herself or others,” the indictment reads. “When she was discharged, she denied having any auditory or visible hallucinations and denied any homicidal or suicidal ideation.”
Lindsay returned residence. She stored journaling, and on Jan. 20, she googled “are you able to deal with a sociopath?”
Everybody, it appears, was fearful about her.
The day Lindsay got here residence from the hospital, Patrick described her to a buddy as having “the worst unintended effects potential.”
Lindsay’s household had additionally pushed from Connecticut to be there for her following her hospital keep.
4 days later, she killed her three youngsters and failed in her personal suicide try.
On Feb. 7, 2023, Lindsay, now paralyzed from the waist down and mendacity in a hospital mattress with a masks overlaying most of her face, was arraigned on Zoom for 3 counts of homicide within the deaths of Cora, Dawson, and Callan.
Within the indictment, Assistant District Legal professional Jennifer Sprague charged that it was a case of premeditated homicide — one she supposed to prosecute to the fullest extent of the legislation.
“The defendant is a hazard to herself and others,” reads the indictment. “She deliberate these murders, gave herself the time and privateness wanted to commit the murders, after which strangled every baby within the place the place they need to have been the most secure—their residence. She did so with deliberate premeditation and excessive atrocity and cruelty.”
In accordance with proof offered in her lawyer’s opening assertion in courtroom on Monday, Lindsay sought assist from psychiatrists 19 occasions within the months previous the killings.
To Chelsea DeFina, the reply to what occurred appeared apparent. This was the tragic case of a mom experiencing a horrific psychotic break, not a assassin.
“The well being care system is a multitude; there’s nothing on the market for mothers,” she defined. “You’re simply instructed to go residence and determine it out. I do not know why Lindsay would do what she did however I can solely say from figuring out her she was not in her proper thoughts. That was not her.”
Kevin Reddington, Lindsay Clancy’s protection legal professional, is making this exact case. Lindsay and her youngsters had been the collective victims of dire circumstances.
“Our society fails miserably at treating girls with postpartum despair and even postpartum psychosis,” he said, including, “Our society utterly abandons girls with this situation.”
Regardless of the large swell of on-line hate towards Lindsay for the killings, over the course of my reporting for this story, Lindsay’s pals nonetheless help her.
“Lindsay was a beautiful, current mother,” an in depth buddy of Lindsay’s stated. “Rising up, she would all the time discuss wanting an enormous household. Her infants had been her life.”
However now she should face the atrocity she dedicated — and settle for the jury’s verdict on whether or not she is a cold-blooded assassin or was a mom caught in a harmful and past tragic spiral of psychological sickness.
