Lindsay Clancy claims a ‘voice’ told her to kill her three kids and is suing medical team for not stopping her
A former Massachusetts nurse accused of strangling her three young children to death in their family home before attempting to take her own life claims a chilling “voice” in her head pushed her toward the unthinkable.
“You should harm the children, you should kill yourself, you will never be the same, the only option is to die,” the voice told Lindsay Clancy, according to a lawsuit she filed against the mental health providers who treated her before the killings.
Clancy, who is charged with murdering her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, on January 24, 2023, claims doctors missed clear warning signs as her mental health rapidly deteriorated and failed to properly treat her, according to the lawsuits, CT Insider reported.
Two lawsuits filed in Norfolk Superior Court in Massachusetts – one by Lindsay Clancy and another by her husband, Patrick Clancy – accuse several mental health providers of wrongful death and medical negligence. The lawsuits seek unspecified damages and a jury trial.
Prosecutors allege Clancy strangled her children with exercise bands after sending her husband to get takeout food. An hour later, he returned home to find she had attempted to take her life by cutting her wrists and jumping from a second-story window.
The former labor and delivery nurse survived the suicide attempt but was left paralyzed from the chest down and is now in a wheelchair. She is being held in the Tewksbury State Hospital while awaiting a murder trial scheduled for this summer.
The new filings paint a disturbing picture of Clancy’s mental decline in the months before the killings. They claim Clancy, who had previously struggled with anxiety and postpartum depression after her second child, became increasingly fearful about returning to work after the birth of her youngest son, Callan, in 2022.
She desperately sought psychiatric help that September as her mental health spiraled, but instead of stabilizing her, the medications she was prescribed allegedly made her condition worse, leaving her sleeping only about three hours a night and eventually triggering suicidal thoughts.
Those thoughts included the idea that she should kill her children before taking her own life so they would not suffer without her, Patrick Clancy’s lawsuit claims.
“The tragedy that followed was the direct and proximate result of the defendants’ collective negligence in failing to recognize obvious warning signs, coordinate care, properly diagnose Lindsay’s condition, and provide treatment that met the applicable standard of care,” the lawsuit filed on her behalf said.
In the days before the killings, Patrick Clancy told doctors his wife was having “horrible thoughts” throughout the day and had admitted to him and her mother that she was thinking about harming the children, the lawsuit filed by her attorneys said.
She heard a voice saying, “You should harm the children, you should kill yourself, you will never be the same, the only option is to die,” the lawsuit filed for Lindsay Clancy said.
Her lawsuit also alleges her psychiatrist spent only about 17 minutes with her during each appointment, including a visit the day before the killings.
The filings say Clancy repeatedly tried to get help, including going to an emergency department, checking herself into inpatient treatment and contacting crisis hotlines, while telling providers the medications she had been prescribed were making her condition worse.
“Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do,” her attorneys said in the lawsuit filed on her behalf. “She recognized something was wrong with her. She sought medical treatment. She went to emergency rooms. She called crisis hotlines. She admitted herself to hospitals. She took the medications prescribed to her. She communicated her worsening symptoms to her providers. She told them the medications were making her worse.”
According to the lawsuits, there had never been any indication that Clancy was capable of harming her children. She had been consistently “academically excellent” growing up in Connecticut and spent nine years working as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital – a job she loved, the filings say.
Her mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, told a grand jury that she “loved everything about Lindsay, she was a fun loving, doting wife and mother” who adored her children and was always smiling, the lawsuit said.
“Lindsay now faces a lifetime of physical disability, psychological trauma, and the unbearable grief of waking up every day knowing she killed her children – all of which could have been prevented had defendants provided competent medical care,” her attorney said in the lawsuit.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges and is scheduled to undergo a forensic psychological evaluation in April before returning to court on April 23.
After being postponed multiple times, Clancy’s murder trial is scheduled to begin on July 20.
