AI Summary
5 min readOn January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled her three young children—Cora, Dawson, and four-month-old Callin—with exercise bands in the basement of their suburban Massachusetts home. She then attempted suicide by jumping from a window, an act that left her paralyzed from the waist down. By the time her husband Patrick returned from a brief errand to CVS and the takeout restaurant, it was too late. The 911 call captured his footsteps as he searched the house, then his screams when he found them. Lindsay Clancy admits she killed her children. Her defense is not innocence but insanity: she says she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, a rare and severe mental illness that she argues made her incapable of knowing right from wrong.
The spiral before the tragedy
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Crime and the Question** - Introduces Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse and mother of three who killed her children, and frames the central legal question: was she experiencing postpartum psychosis?
- 2 (02:27) **The Spiral Begins** - Reporter Christina Rex of WBZ details the timeline of Lindsay's mental health decline starting in September 2022.
- 3 (04:12) **The Final Days Before the Murders** - The timeline narrows to the weeks leading up to January 24, 2023, when Lindsay is hospitalized at McLean Hospital.
- 4 (04:50) **The Day of the Murders** - A step-by-step reconstruction of January 24, 2023, based on court testimony and the 911 call.
- 5 (07:58) **The Aftermath and the Plea** - The immediate aftermath of the crime and the current legal status of Lindsay Clancy.
- 6 (09:17) **Prosecution vs. Defense Arguments** - The core legal clash: the prosecution argues she was in her right mind, while the defense argues she was in a psychotic state.
- 7 (10:42) **The Legal Landscape for Postpartum Illness** - Massachusetts law has no specific consideration for postpartum psychosis, relying only on a general insanity plea.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
A Massachusetts jury is weighing whether a woman should be convicted in the deaths of her three young children or found not guilty based on her defense of postpartum psychosis.
This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King.
Lindsay Clancy attends her murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court on July 29, 2026. Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images.
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