Prosecutor's Closing in Lindsay Clancy Trial Calls the Killings Rational, Not Psychotic

**Tony Brueski** (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.

**Jennifer Sprague** (0:12)
There's no dispute that Lindsay Clancy was suffering from mental illness and that she tried to kill herself. There's no dispute about that. All of the evidence that you've heard, even the experts that the Commonwealth put before you, say that she was suffering from mental illness and she tried to kill herself. That's not the issue in this trial. The issue is whether at the time she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan, she knew the difference between right and wrong, and whether she could conform her behavior to the requirements of the law.
This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women or what's in the DSM-5 and what's not. That's a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that's not on trial here. What's on trial here, what the issue is here, is what Lindsay Clancy did the night of January 24th, 2023, and what her mental state was at the time. And you can use her psychological history and records, the treatment records, to look at both before and after she killed the kids, to look at how she got to that point, what her thought process was, what her motivation was. But it's not the system or the DSM or any of that that caused her to strangle our kids. In fact, she had more access to treatment and care and support than a lot of people do. She had health insurance that covered multiple doctors, multiple specialty programs, treatment at South Shore, at Mass General, her stay at McLean. She had prescription coverage to cover the different trials she went through. She had support at home. She had 18 weeks of maternity leave with the opportunity to extend that as much as she needed, which is excellent, which is what all women should have. But she had that. She had support from both sides of her family, hers and Patrick's. The two older kids, Cora and Dawson, were in preschool three and a half days a week. She had the nanny, Elaine, who helped with Callan in three mornings a week. She also helped her with housework and with food prep. This wasn't a woman suffering from a lack of care, a lack of resources. She had an abundance of help, an abundance of care. She had all of that and more. And this doesn't mean that she wasn't struggling, that she wasn't dealing with mental health issues. She was, she had depression. And whether that's from bipolar or being a depressive disorder or postpartum depression, it all boils down to, she was depressed, right? And she was trying to deal with that, trying to get help for that. But it wasn't the fault of the providers that she was struggling with this or that she wasn't getting better. They were doing the best they could. You have the records, you heard the testimony. They were doing the best they could with the information she provided them. And that wasn't always accurate information. That wasn't always the full picture. And they were doing the best they could with her level of cooperation and compliance with the plan. Take her medications. You know from the records and from the pill bottles what she was prescribed and how she was supposed to take those medications. And you know from the pill bottles what she actually took. And sometimes those two things didn't align with what she told her providers, what she told Patrick, what she told her mother. You take the Zola, for example. The prescription was for one 25 milligram pill a day for seven days. And then to go up to the 50 milligrams after seven days. She told Dr. Tufts that she took the pills for, as prescribed for seven days, went up on the eighth day to 50 milligrams. And that's when she had the insomnia and the other side effects and symptoms. She told Patrick that she took the pills for seven days and they had no effect. So she called Dr. Tufts, who then told her to increase the dose. Well, you know what she told Patrick is not accurate, because the pill bottle says, take it for a week and then increase it. That was the plan for the beginning. That wasn't the result of a phone call to Dr. Tufts. And you know what she told Dr. Tufts isn't accurate either, because only seven pills were taken from the bottle. So that leaves you two options. Either she took the medication as prescribed, one pill a day for seven days, and then didn't increase it, which she says is what caused the side effects and the insomnia, or what she did was not take it as prescribed. She didn't do it seven days and ease into it and then increase it. She either missed a dose or increased it early before she was supposed to. Either scenario is not good. She knows as a nurse the importance of following the instructions of your medications. She knows how important it is to follow the plan and do what's on the bottle, and do what your provider tells you, and to give that accurate information to your provider. She didn't say, I went up a dose, went up to 52 early. Maybe they could have adjusted that and tried the 25 milligram for longer and eased her into it. But no, she told her that she did what she was told, and then went up and had these problems. So you can see that in a lot of the medications she has. You have the pill bottles that were turned in by Patrick, and a lot of them don't even have many pills missing from the bottles. Some of them have none. Abuse bar prescription, the first one, there's only two pills missing. The second prescription, no pills missing. The Lamictal, she never took those pills at all until the night she tried to kill herself. So there's a lack of compliance there, a lack of follow through, a lack of communication with her providers about what was happening with her and how she was taking the medications. And the defense wants you to believe that this is a woman who's begging for help and willing to do anything and everything her providers tell her to do to get better. And she was asking for help, she was, she wanted help, she wanted to get better. But she wanted to get better on her own terms, doing things her way, the way she thought she should do them. And as a nurse, she knew that's not the right way to approach it. She knew that an accurate medical history, accurate information about your side effects and symptoms, what your thoughts are, that's important for your providers to know. And she didn't do it.