Lindsay Clancy sobs during 911 call, slain children’s dad says ‘something was wrong’ before home discovery
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Lindsay Clancy sobbed as her then-husband's 911 call played in court Wednesday, letting jurors hear how he pleaded for help after finding the couple's three children after she allegedly killed them.
Patrick Clancy testified Wednesday that he returned to an eerily quiet home, found blood "everywhere" inside a locked bedroom and discovered his then-wife injured beneath an open second-story window before she told him their three children were in the basement.
When Patrick found Lindsay Clancy lying on her back beneath their bedroom window, he said she had deep cuts on her wrists and a red line across her neck.
"What happened?" he recalled asking her.
"I tried to kill myself," she responded, according to Patrick.
He then asked, "Where are the kids?"
"They’re in the basement," Lindsay told him.
Patrick testified that she did not say the children were injured, in danger or needed help.
Once first responders arrived at the Duxbury, Massachusetts, home, Patrick said he immediately ran into the basement, where he found Cora, 5, face down with an exercise band around her neck.
He removed the band before seeing 8-month-old Callan nearby in the same position with another band around his neck.
Patrick then searched the basement bathroom and the area surrounding a couch before finding 3-year-old Dawson inside Patrick’s home office.
"I knew he was gone," Patrick testified.
Dawson also had an exercise band around his neck. Patrick said he removed it and moved back and forth among the children, attempting CPR before first responders took over.
Jurors were later shown the clothing the children were wearing that night, along with the yellow, black and blue exercise bands recovered with them.
Before the evidence was presented, Judge William Sullivan warned jurors that some testimony and exhibits could produce an emotional reaction.
"You must not be influenced in any way by the unpleasant nature of some of the evidence," Sullivan said, reminding jurors that their verdict must not be based on "sympathy, anger, passion or prejudice or pity."
Patrick’s testimony gave jurors a minute-by-minute account of the night of Jan. 24, 2023, beginning with the errands prosecutors allege Lindsay arranged to get him out of the house.
Patrick said Lindsay asked him as he was leaving to make an additional stop at CVS to buy a stool softener for Cora. She had not mentioned the item in earlier text messages about picking up takeout food, according to his testimony.
Patrick estimated that CVS was about three minutes from their home.
While inside the store, Patrick called Lindsay because the shelves were largely empty and he wanted to confirm whether a generic product would work. She initially did not answer but called him back about a minute later, at approximately 5:34 p.m.
"She was pretty quiet," Patrick said. "It sounded like she was busy."
He said he remembered ending the call believing Lindsay was probably giving the children baths or doing something else with them.
After leaving CVS, Patrick drove about 10 minutes to the ThreeV restaurant, where Lindsay had ordered takeout under Patrick’s name and phone number.
He then returned home and placed the bags on the kitchen island.
"The house was really quiet," Patrick said.
He called out to his family but received no response. He opened the basement door and yelled downstairs but heard nothing. Patrick then called Lindsay’s phone at approximately 6:09 p.m. before searching the second floor.
He checked the bathroom and the children’s bedrooms before reaching the primary bedroom, where the door was locked.
"That’s when I knew something was wrong," Patrick said.
He retrieved a key that had been taped behind another bedroom door and unlocked it.
"I just saw blood everywhere, and the window was open," he testified.
Patrick described a large pool of blood in the middle of the room and blood across several surfaces, including the doorknob. Wind was blowing through the open window.
He took only one or two steps inside before running downstairs and into the backyard, where he found Lindsay directly beneath the window.
Prosecutors appeared to begin chipping away at the defense’s portrayal of Lindsay Clancy as over medicated, walking jurors through nine prescription bottles that still contained many of the pills she had been given.
Patrick Clancy testified Monday that his ex-wife had been prescribed numerous psychiatric medications in the months before the deaths of their three young children. But under questioning from Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham, he acknowledged that several prescriptions had only been partly used.
"So there were a lot of pills prescribed, but not a lot of pills taken. Correct?" Buckingham asked, holding up a bag of prescription medications.
"Is that comprehensive?" Patrick responded. "Of all the pills that were prescribed?"
"These are the pills that you brought into the police station," Buckingham said. "So out of these."
"Out of those, yeah," Patrick said. "It’s possible that not a lot were taken."
Buckingham also sought to distinguish between the total number of medications prescribed over several months and how many Lindsay was prescribed at one time.
Patrick estimated that she was taking three or four medications at most. Buckingham then asked whether it would surprise him to learn that Lindsay was prescribed no more than three medications at any given time and usually two.
LINDSAY CLANCY’S HUSBAND COULD TESTIFY FOR HER AT TRIAL OVER DEATHS OF THEIR THREE CHILDREN
"It wouldn’t be terribly surprising, no," Patrick said.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said the questioning appeared designed to prevent the defense from controlling how jurors view the cocktail of medications that Lindsay Clancy was prescribed in the months before authorities say she strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, inside the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023.
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"An important part of being a good prosecutor is not just proving your case, but anticipating the defense’s arguments," Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Fox News Digital. "The prosecution wants to get out ahead of that potentially bad evidence by arguing that even though she was prescribed all these meds, she wasn't prescribed them at the same time. At most, she was prescribed two, three, maybe four medications at once and, importantly, she wasn't taking them."
WATCH: Former prosecutor explains why pill bottles may become key evidence in Lindsay Clancy trial
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Rahmani said prosecutors appeared to be getting ahead of the defense’s claim that Lindsay’s changing prescriptions contributed to her alleged psychosis.
"The last thing you want is the defense to gain control of the key piece of evidence," he said. "It can be O.J.’s glove or a bag of pills."
Rahmani said the next phase will likely focus on how long Lindsay took each medication, when she stopped taking it and how many drugs she was prescribed at once.
"It’s not uncommon for psychiatrists to try different medications and stop them when they stop working," he said. "So how long was she on the Zoloft versus the Ativan versus the Seroquel? How many pills was she taking? I think the prosecution is gonna argue that Lindsay and her doctors were trying to get her better, and the fact that she wasn't on all these pills at once really shows that the defense is trying to mislead the jury."
The defense has argued that Lindsay was suffering from psychosis and was not criminally responsible when she strangled her three young children. Prosecutors, meanwhile, framed the mom of three as a calculated killer, saying that Clancy's children were "deliberately and meticulously killed."
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Buckingham alleged that Clancy deliberately sent Patrick from their Duxbury home to pick up medication and takeout food, giving herself enough time to strangle each child with an exercise band before attempting to kill herself.
During opening statements, defense attorney Kevin Reddington conceded that Clancy killed the children but argued that the only meaningful dispute is what was happening inside her mind.
"She knows that she killed these children," Reddington told jurors. "The issue for consideration is what was going on in that woman’s mind."
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, has pleaded not guilty to three counts each of murder and strangulation.
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Judge William Sullivan told jurors that the Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible when the children were killed.
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I am just an average American. My teen years were in the late 70s and I participated in all that that decade offered. Started working young, too young. Then I joined the Army before I graduated High School. I spent 25 years in, mostly in Infantry units. Since then I've worked in information technology positions all at small family owned companies. At this rate I'll never be a tech millionaire. When I was young I rode horses as much as I could. I do believe I should have been a cowboy. I'm getting in the saddle again by taking riding lessons and see where it goes.
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