The Trial of Lindsay Clancy

On January 24, 2023, Patrick Clancy left his Duxbury, Massachusetts home around 5:15 PM to run errands. He saw his three children—Cora, five; Dawson, three; and Callan, eight months—eating chicken nuggets on the couch. Fifty-four minutes later, he returned to a silent house. The bedroom door was locked. When he forced it open, he saw blood everywhere and an open window. Outside, he found his wife, Lindsay Clancy, on the ground with slashed wrists and neck wounds. She had jumped from the window. When he asked where the children were, she said, "They're in the basement." He found them there, each with an exercise band around their neck. All three were dead.

The trial that followed, three and a half years later, became one of the most divisive in recent memory. The basic facts were not in dispute: Lindsay Clancy killed her children. The question was whether she was criminally responsible at the time. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts does not use the term "insanity"; the equivalent defense is that she was not criminally responsible because she lacked understanding of right or wrong. The trial became a "why done it" rather than a "who done it."

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