Lindsay Clancy’s chilling messages to a nurse practitioner within the weeks earlier than she strangled her three younger children and tried to kill herself have been reavealed this week throughout her homicide trial.
Clancy, then 32, despatched nurse practitioner Rebecca Jollotta a string of messages in early December, describing she was overwhelmed by intrusive ideas, involved she could possibly be hooked on an nervousness remedy, and disturbed that she was “utterly numb.”
“I really feel like I’m going to die and I don’t care,” the Massachusetts mom of three messaged Jollotta, who works at South Shore Hospital’s Perinatal Behavioral Clinic, on MyChart on Dec. 2, 2022.
“I’ve by no means felt something like this earlier than,” Clancy added, the Every day Mail reported.
Jollotta responded, telling Clancy that intrusive ideas have been “fairly widespread” in girls affected by postpartum despair.
“They imply nothing about you as a mom,” Jollotta maintained.
Simply over a month later, on January 24, 2023, Clancy murdered her children Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, who was 8 months outdated, with train bands earlier than she slit her wrists and throat and threw herself from the second story of her Duxbury, Mass., house, leaving her partially paralyzed.
Jollotta handled Clancy from Nov. 29, 2022 to Dec. 13, 2022, after a colleague left the clinic and transferred her to her care. Throughout that point, Jollotta prescribed her a slew of highly effective psychiatric drugs.
A day after beginning remedy with Jollotta, on Nov. 30, Clancy messaged the healthcare supplier stating, “What I’m actually feeling is I can’t go on this fashion,” the outlet reported.
Later that day, Clancy requested Jollotta if they may name, however the nurse practitioner testified at her homicide trial that she was too busy seeing different sufferers and had a extra junior member of her employees name her as a substitute.
Over the subsequent two days, Clancy, a former labor and supply nurse, began describing her intrusive ideas and issues about her general remedy plan and drugs.
“It’s only a very scary hectic time for me, and beginning new meds with unwanted effects could be very scary to me,” she wrote.
Clancy continued on Dec. 2, writing, “I took the Remeron,” referring to an antidepressant used for insomnia.
“I wakened at 12:15 and had intrusive ideas – of wanting all of it to be over.”
Clancy then pressed Jollotta about whether or not she could possibly be hooked on the nervousness drug Ativan — stating she didn’t really feel she was “being heard that that could be a risk.”
“I really want to discover the choice that I’m hooked on Ativan,” Clancy mentioned. “I really feel hooked on it, and I really feel like I’m not being heard that that could be a risk,” she wrote, per the outlet.
“I really feel like we’re throwing all these completely different meds at my insomnia when the basis trigger is Ativan dependence. I don’t really feel any of the anxious ideas I had earlier than.”
“I really feel utterly numb,” she mentioned. “I really feel like I’m going to die, and I don’t care. What do I do about this?”
Jollotta testified in courtroom that she didn’t consider the mother was hooked on the drugs and that the string of feedback confirmed she was experiencing suicidal ideation.
Clancy, now 36, referred to as Jollotta on Dec. 15, 2022, along with her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, to report she was having such darkish ideas and that they might possible go to the emergency division of Mass Basic Hospital — with the pair referring to it because the “worst day for Lindsay.”
She was having “persistent and intrusive ideas of suicide,” however she had “no energetic plan” to hurt herself, Jollotta mentioned, studying from her notes concerning the telephone name.
Clancy did go to the emergency room that day and ended up opting out of checking into psychological establishment McLean Hospital, deciding as a substitute to affix an outpatient program at Girls and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island, Jollotta mentioned.
The nurse practitioner had “strongly, strongly” advisable that Clancy verify into Girls and Infants in a Dec. 12, 2022 MyChart message to the struggling postpartum mother, the jury discovered.
However when Clancy went to the Rhode Island facility on Dec. 20, 2022, they turned her away as a result of they thought she might need been taking too many prescription drugs, in keeping with Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington.
“Do you know that, in reality, they wouldn’t settle for her due to their concern she had been overmedicated on medicine?” Reddington mentioned to Jollotta throughout cross-examination.
“I can’t converse to that,” the nurse practitioner responded, noting she wasn’t affiliated with the opposite hospital.
Girls and Infants advisable that Clancy enter a basic psychological well being facility like McLean, slightly than the hospital that specialised in postpartum care, Clancy informed Jollotta over MyChart the subsequent day on Dec. 21, 2022.
Jollotta beforehand met with Clancy and Patrick in particular person throughout a Dec. 6, 2022, go to and raised the chance that Clancy may have bipolar dysfunction, she testified.
“I recall Patrick saying, ‘My spouse shouldn’t be bipolar,’” Jollotta mentioned.
Jollotta defined that she suspected bipolar dysfunction due to Clancy’s intense reactions to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Zoloft and Prozac – a typical aspect impact for folks with bipolar dysfunction.
The dearth of sleep with no fatigue could possibly be a symptom of a manic episode, Jollotta mentioned. The nurse practitioner mentioned she thought Clancy’s contradictory signs steered she could be in a “combined manic, hypomanic state.”
Nonetheless, Jollotta by no means had issues Clancy was in psychosis, she testified.
Clancy additionally confessed in her journal that she was deeply scuffling with postpartum despair, nervousness, insomnia, and being wracked with guilt over how she was elevating 8-month-old Callan.
She wrote within the diary that she had “horrible PTSD from sleep coaching Callan” and felt horrible that she needed to cease breastfeeding him, in keeping with excerpts of the journal learn to a jury.
