Variety of prescriptions were found in blood of mother accused of strangling her three children, court hears
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The trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her three children in January 2023, continued on Wednesday with a forensic toxicologist testifying to the variety and concentration of medications found in the defendant’s blood.
Justin Brower, a forensic toxicologist with NMS Laboratories, testified that his lab examined the levels of four psychiatric medications detected in Clancy’s blood after she allegedly strangled her children and attempted to take her own life.
Those drugs included the antidepressant mirtazapine, the mood stabilizer lamotrigine, the antidepressant trazodone and quetiapine, a drug used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Brower noted that quetiapine could also be prescribed in low doses to treat insomnia.
Asked if the concentrations of each drug were different from what was prescribed, Brower said the only drug that appeared slightly elevated was quetiapine, but noted that it was not at a “toxic concentration” or “suicidal concentration”.
“Usually people take handfuls of pills when they’re trying to harm themselves and take their own life, and this is not consistent with that,” Brower testified.
He later testified, upon questioning from Clancy’s defense attorney, that the toxicology results “don’t tell the entire story”.
Prosecutors say Clancy acted intentionally when she killed her children Callan, eight months old; Dawson, three years old; and Cora, five years old. Clancy’s defense team says she was a loving mother who was overcome by postpartum psychosis, had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and was on problematic medications.
The court has heard from a range of experts for the prosecution, with testimony at times halted when witnesses, including Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, or the defendant have become overwhelmed.
On Wednesday, the family’s nanny, Elaine Rossi, was asked on the stand if she’d ever had concerns about Clancy’s care for her children.
“Not at all. She was a wonderful mom,’ she said. “I observed a wonderful mom who loved her kids.”
If convicted, Clancy faces life in prison without parole. A not-guilty verdict by reason of a lack of criminal responsibility could lead to her being placed in a state mental health facility.
On Monday, jurors heard excerpts from Clancy’s journals that revealed her mental struggles including thoughts of suicide and her feeling overwhelmed with motherhood, including her struggles to get her newborn to sleep, going back to work as a labor and delivery nurse, not being able to breastfeed, and feeling disconnected from her children and husband.
“I’m so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to find something physically wrong with me,” she wrote in an entry on 18 November 2022.