Lindsay Clancy Trial: Prosecutor Buckingham Opens With "This Wasn't Psychosis"

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is live courtroom coverage of the trial of Lindsay Clancy from the Hidden Killers podcast in True Crime Today. Now, back to the courtroom.

**Shanan Buckingham** (0:12)
Morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Cora. She had just turned five. She was sweet, silly, smart. She loved sparkly dresses and wearing bows in her hair. She loved princesses and baby dolls. She even tried to convince her preschool teachers at the beginning that her name was Sophia because she loved the Disney character of Sophia the First so very much. Dawson. He was three. A boy's boy. He was a bit rambunctious, but funny, full of energy. He loved troughs, construction troughs, fire troughs. And he spoke with a brassy little voice. Callan. Callan was just eight months old. Always smiling with chunky cheeks, a sweet little baby. We are here, ladies and gentlemen, because they are not. They were strangled, deliberately and meticulously, killed by this defendant on January 24th of 2023
One by one, she wrapped exercise bands around each one of the kids' necks and pulled until their little bodies were limp and lifeless. First Dawson, then Cora, and finally Callan. Your job, ladies and gentlemen, is not easy in this case. The evidence will be difficult to see, to hear, to process. Testimony of witnesses, family, friends, teachers, people who knew the Clancy family, people who saw them regularly, people who saw them on the day in which this defendant killed them. They're all going to come before you. And it may be heartbreaking to hear what they have to say. You'll see photographs of the crime scene. You'll hear testimony from first responders. They're going to tell you about what they discovered when they came into the Clancy home at 47 Summer Street in Duxbury on January 24th. You'll hear evidence about the defendant during that time period, observations of her physical appearance, her demeanor. You'll hear testimony about what she was reporting to her friends and family and doctors during this time period. The list of witnesses is quite long. Law enforcement, firefighters, friends, family, teachers, crime scene investigators, forensic scientists, toxicologists, medical examiners, experts. We expect over the next few weeks that you will be able to or will be able to present to you a clear picture of what was occurring in the Clancy household on January 24 of 2023 We ask that you keep an open mind when you're hearing this evidence and during the course of the trial, don't forget that you use your common sense and your life experience. Those are things that you bring as jurors to the court room every day and it's what's going to take you into the deliberation room at the end of this trial.
So what happened? On January 24, 2023, it had recently snowed. It was in fact a Tuesday. Tuesdays were days that Cora and Dawson usually went to preschool. They attended the Learning Sprouts Preschool in Duxbury, but they didn't attend on Tuesdays. So on this day, they were home. On this particular day, Cora, who had just turned five, had an appointment at the doctors, an annual checkup. And so the defendant brought her first thing in the morning to the doctors.
Defendant's husband, Patrick Clancy, was home, and he was caring for Callan and Dawson, while defendant took Cora to the doctor. Pretty normal. You'll hear and see that Patrick and the defendant exchanged text messages that morning. Patrick sends a photo of Dawson, who had just dressed himself that day, and he was jumping for joy. And he sends that text to the defendant when she's at the doctor. And while at the doctor, the defendant sends a text of Cora and her little Johnny and mask to Patrick.
When the defendant and Cora returned home that morning, Patrick went downstairs to his basement office to do work, same as he had normally done on any other day since returning from paternity leave. And then the defendant was charged caring for the kids for the rest of the day.
She put Callan down for a nap, bundled up Cora and Dawson, took them outside to the backyard and played in the snow. They built a snowman. The defendant sent pictures of the snowman and the kids in the snow to Patrick when he's working in the basement and her mom, who was living in Connecticut, who had just been there that weekend but had gone home.
The day proceeds as normal. You'll hear Patrick describe it as a good day actually. In the late afternoon around 4 p.m., the defendant searched on her phone for kids' Merill acts. She searched takeout 3V and she opened the Apple Maps on her phone and searched the route that it would take to get from their house to the 3V restaurant in Plymouth. She searched how much time and how far it was. Now, this restaurant had been a place that the family had eaten before, but wasn't their normal takeout spot. She also called CVS and asked them about the kids' PBLACs or MIRLACs. And that's because at the doctor earlier that day, the doctor had recommended a LACsid at Percora because she had some stomach issues. She had complained of an upset tummy at school the day before. You'll hear she had some issues, but she didn't like to go to the bathroom at school, a little bit embarrassed, so they suggested the PBLACs. So she calls CVS and she confirms that they actually have it at their local CVS in Kingston.