Trending
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) -- Lindsay Clancy’s mother and sister took the stand Monday to recount how they saw her become increasingly anxious, paranoid and suicidal in the months before she killed her three children.
Clancy’s mother, Paula Musgrove, sounding at times emotional, described her daughter as a dedicated and loving mother whose mental health began declining in October 2022 -- about three months before Clancy strangled the children and attempted to kill herself.
"Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I'm really sick. Something is wrong," Clancy wrote in a text message displayed to the jury. "I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don't know how I am going to get through the day. … It's just really scary, and I don't want to be alone."
Musgrove also recalled a more alarming disclosure in December, when she was standing in the kitchen with Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy. Musgrove said her daughter appeared nervous and told them she needed to tell them something.
"She told us she had thoughts of harming the children," Musgrove said.
Musgrove, who lived in Connecticut, often stayed with her daughter in Massachusetts from October into December 2022. She said Clancy was scared of sleeping alone, became increasingly paranoid and believed the medications she was taking "were destroying her mind."
Clancy's sister described a similar decline. Allison Ozga testified that at the end of December Clancy told her she had experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.
The testimony came in the fourth week of Clancy’s murder trial, soon after the prosecution rested their case.
Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to get takeout and to the pharmacy.
Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says she shouldn’t be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed worsened her condition.
A former co-worker testified Monday about Clancy's years as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, describing Clancy as a "really good" nurse who loved her job and was "compassionate, kind and a patient advocate."
"She was the type of nurse that you wanted taking care of you or your loved one when you walked onto our unit," said Margaret Hamp.
Hamp said she and Clancy worked night shifts together and that Clancy regularly sought parenting advice from her co-workers, asking about everything from children's sleeping habits and choosing a daycare provider to monogrammed lunch boxes.
Hamp also recalled a conversation from Clancy's first year on the unit after a pregnant patient arrived with plans to harm herself. Hamp said she spoke with Clancy about mental health during pregnancy and postpartum and asked whether she had heard of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.
"I explained that to her, and she cried," Hamp testified. "She said, 'How could a mother hurt her children?'"