The Lindsay Clancy Case: A Family Tragedy on Trial

**Natalie Morales** (0:00)
As a warning, some of this content contains graphic and disturbing details, including discussions of suicide and the killing of children. So please listen or watch with care. We'll have resources at the end of the episode.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:17)
She planned these murders, gave herself the time and privacy needed to commit the murders, and then she strangled each child in the place where they should have felt safest at home with their mom.

**Kevin Reddington** (0:31)
This is not a situation, Your Honor, that was planned by any means. This is a situation that clearly was a product of mental illness.

**Natalie Morales** (0:40)
That is the prosecution and the defense at the 2023 arraignment of Lindsay Clancy. She's the former labor and delivery nurse who is accused of murdering her three young children at their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. That's a coastal suburb of Boston. Lindsay attended the hearing remotely via video conference from her hospital bed, where she was recovering from injuries she sustained on the night of January 24th, 2023
I'm 48 Hours correspondent Natalie Morales, and this is Case by Case. Neither the prosecution nor the defense here dispute what happened that night, that Lindsay Clancy killed her three children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan. Now, the question at the center of it all is, why?
Were Lindsay's actions premeditated, or was she overmedicated and suffering from postpartum mental health issues that led to this tragedy? Joining me today is Kristina Rex, reporter and anchor for Boston CBS station WBZ. She's been reporting on this case since the very beginning, and she'll be covering Lindsay's trial, which is set to start next week. Thank you for joining us, Kristina.

**Kristina Rex** (1:52)
Thanks so much for having me.

**Natalie Morales** (1:54)
And when I say that you've been covering this case from the very beginning, I mean, literally, you were there, you reported from the crime scene on the very night of the killings. Take me back to that moment.

**Kristina Rex** (2:05)
Yeah, this case is so unique for me in my career because I followed it from its inception. So I was covering the night shift at the time it happened. So I reported from outside of the Clancy home in Duxbury that very night. And I remember personally seeing police officers actually crying, which is something that I had never seen at the crime scene before. It was also an unusual case because Duxbury is a very quiet, wealthy town where things like this don't usually happen. So since then, I followed the case closely, attending most of the pretrial hearings in person.

**Natalie Morales** (2:35)
So, Kristina, before we get further into our discussion, can you give our audience who may not be familiar with this case an overview? What happened on the night of January 24th, 2023?

**Kristina Rex** (2:47)
Of course. So prosecutors laid out a timeline of that night at Lindsay Clancy's arraignment, which as a reminder, she attended remotely because she was in a hospital bed due to her injuries from what had happened. So prosecutors said that Lindsay asked her husband, Patrick, to leave their house to pick up medication and take out food for dinner. Prosecutors alleged that she researched online how long that trip would take. When Patrick returned home less than an hour later, he went upstairs, he found the couple's bedroom door locked, and he said that he was able to unlock it, and inside the bedroom, he noticed blood on the floor and an open window.
So Patrick then ran to the backyard where he found his wife, Lindsay, lying on the ground. Lindsay had what appeared to be cuts on her neck and her wrists, but she was still conscious, and at that point, Patrick called 911

**Natalie Morales** (3:36)
Now, according to the prosecution on that 911 call, you can hear Patrick talking to his wife, right?

**Kristina Rex** (3:44)
Yeah. Just as a note, we've never actually heard the 911 call, but it's been described in court motions, and we know that jurors are going to hear it as part of evidence at trial. So prosecutors have said that on the call, Patrick asked his wife what she had done, and that she allegedly replied, I tried to kill myself and jumped out the window. Now, prosecutors said he can be heard on the 911 call asking where are the kids, and he later told police that Lindsay replied to him in the basement. So after EMS and first responders arrived and were tending to Lindsay, Patrick went to the basement and prosecutors said, he can be heard still on the 911 call screaming. They described it as in agony and in shock as he discovered his children. So their five-year-old daughter Cora, their three-year-old son Dawson, they were declared dead that night. And then their eight-month-old son Callan, he was med flighted to a Boston hospital, but he died several days later.