The second week of testimony in the trial of Lindsay Clancy has resumed with a focus on her mental state when she killed her three children in 2023<\/p>\n
PLYMOUTH, Mass. — After an opening week of wrenching testimony and a jury trip to the home where Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, her murder trial resumed Monday with diary entries from the months leading up to the killings in a coastal Massachusetts town in 2023.<\/p>\n
Clancy described feeling anxious and overwhelmed with motherhood, including her struggles to get her newborn Callan to sleep and constant worries of his being sick. She also expressed concerns about going back to work as a labor and delivery nurse, not being able to breastfeed, and feeling disconnected from her children and her then-husband.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to find something physically wrong with me,\u201d she wrote in a Nov. 18, 2022, entry.<\/p>\n
Clancy's defense says she was a loving mother who was overmastered by postpartum psychosis, a dangerous psychiatric condition that afflicts a small proportion of women after childbirth and affects their hold on reality.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors contend that she acted intentionally and should be held criminally responsible for the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged in age from 8 months to 5 years.<\/p>\n
EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.<\/p>\n
Clancy\u2019s lawyers don\u2019t dispute that she killed the children. But in the criminal trial and a medical malpractice lawsuit, her attorneys say the 35-year-old had bipolar disorder that wasn\u2019t fully diagnosed until after the killings.<\/p>\n
Her attorneys say her condition seemed to worsen on an ever-shifting lineup of psychiatric prescriptions, some of them problematic for bipolar patients.<\/p>\n
In the three months before the killings, various clinicians prescribed a range of antidepressants, sleep aids, an antipsychotic and other medications while she reported increasingly profound insomnia, anxiety, despair and confusion about what was real, according to her lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Both the prosecution and her defense attorney read pages from her journal Monday as she chronicled those difficult months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want help. I want to be well,\u201d Clancy\u2019s attorney Kevin Reddington read from one journal entry.<\/p>\n
She also wrote of feeling \u201cincredibly sad and guilty\u201d about not breastfeeding and was \u201cobsessed\u201d with Callan\u2019s sleep and nap schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have crazy brain fog. I feel like I can\u2019t make a plan,\u201d she wrote in another, undated entry. \u201cI live moment to moment waiting for the next nap time. I\u2019m terrified of Cal getting overtired now because I feel can\u2019t help him.\u201d<\/p>\n
In separate lawsuits, Lindsay and ex-husband Patrick Clancy allege that various providers failed her, and should have recognized she was a risk to herself and the children. The providers, at least those who have responded to date, deny the allegations and dispute that she clearly told them she intended to harm the kids.<\/p>\n