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Patrick Clancy, the father of three young children strangled inside their Massachusetts home, became the first witness Monday in his ex-wife’s murder trial, offering jurors a harrowing account of the mental health decline he witnessed before their deaths.
He was the first witness called in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, who faces murder charges in the deaths of the couple’s three children in January 2023. Prosecutors argue she acted deliberately, while defense attorneys contend severe mental illness drove her actions.
Patrick described watching his then-wife fall into a “big spiral” after she began taking Seroquel, testifying that she lost weight, became severely depressed and began expressing suicidal thoughts.
“Awful,” he said when asked how Lindsay was doing physically after starting the medication. “That was really where her big spiral started. She started to lose a lot of weight, and she became very depressed, and she was having a really hard time.”
LINDSAY CLANCY’S HUSBAND COULD TESTIFY FOR HER AT TRIAL OVER DEATHS OF THEIR THREE CHILDREN
Patrick also testified that Lindsay told him she was experiencing intrusive thoughts about harming their children, although she denied having a plan and said the thoughts disturbed her.
“I never saw Lindsay harm the kids,” he told jurors.
Margaret McLean, a former criminal prosecutor and trial attorney who teaches law at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, said Patrick’s measured delivery did little to conceal the anguish of a father being forced to retrace the months preceding his children’s deaths.
“I think his demeanor on the stand is really quite clinical. He’s telling it as it is,” McLean told Fox News Digital. “You can see the anguish within this man’s eyes, his facial expressions. You can tell he’s anguished up there, and it’s a horrible thing to have to relive and talk about.”
McLean said Patrick appeared to be compartmentalizing his emotions as he listened carefully to the questions and provided straightforward answers.
“He’s got to get through this,” she said. “He’s got to listen to the questions and provide the answers as best he can, and I think that he’s doing that.”
HEATED LINDSAY CLANCY COURTROOM EXCHANGE OVER 911 CALL, CRIME SCENE PHOTOS SETS STAGE FOR MOM’S MURDER TRIAL
Patrick testified that he was not concerned for the children’s safety when Lindsay first shared that the intrusive thoughts were telling her to hurt herself as well as her children. Moments after discussing the thoughts, he said, she could be seen making the children lunch, playing with them or preparing them for bed.
Patrick told jurors that he became alarmed after Lindsay was prescribed 13 psychiatric medications in the months prior to the murders and that he pushed for an in-person appointment because he believed there was a “disconnect” between the seriousness of her condition and the brief telehealth sessions she was receiving.
“It seemed like most of her telehealth appointments were pretty quick, and there just wasn’t, like, a lot of attention,” he said.
Patrick also described taking Lindsay to hospital emergency departments and helping her enter McLean Hospital after she continued expressing suicidal thoughts.
He testified that he “would have paid anything” if insurance had become an obstacle to keeping her hospitalized.
The testimony could leave jurors asking whether the warning prompted an adequate response, McLean said, while cautioning against placing blame on Patrick or family members who may not have understood the severity of the risk.
“So many people don’t understand mental health today, so I’m not blaming him at all,” McLean said. “Anybody might have done what he did, but that’s the part that scared me.”
WATCH: Lindsay Clancy clutches tissues as jurors hear about her three children
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Patrick’s testimony followed starkly different opening statements from prosecutors and the defense.
Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham told jurors that Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, were “deliberately and meticulously killed” by their mother on Jan. 24, 2023.
Buckingham alleged that Clancy deliberately sent Patrick from their Duxbury home to pick up medication and takeout food, giving herself enough time to strangle each child with an exercise band before attempting to kill herself.
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McLean said Buckingham gave jurors a “roadmap of cold, calculated intent” while humanizing each child’s interests and focusing on the time and physical effort required to carry out three separate strangulations.
“The prosecution did that because she [Buckingham] wants the jury to remember that the act of strangulation takes time and physical effort,” McLean said. “It requires a conscious choice to continue three separate times.”
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The Commonwealth’s strategy, she said, is to reject the defense’s bid that Clancy suffered a sudden psychotic break and instead portray her as organized, purposeful and controlled.
During opening statements, defense attorney Kevin Reddington conceded that Clancy killed the children but argued that the only meaningful dispute is what was happening inside her mind.
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“She knows that she killed these children,” Reddington told jurors. “The issue for consideration is what was going on in that woman’s mind.”
McLean described the concession as a calculated move by a veteran trial attorney.
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“By doing that, he is attempting to strip the prosecution of their shock value and force the jury to look purely at Lindsay Clancy’s mental capacity,” she said.
Reddington argued that Clancy had no motive to kill children she had loved and nurtured. He also displayed graphic hospital photographs showing Clancy with injuries to her neck and wrists.
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McLean said the defense was framing Clancy’s paralysis “not as a consequence of a crime, but as the tragic final symptom of a complete postpartum psychotic break.”
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Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, has pleaded not guilty to three counts each of murder and strangulation. Her attorneys do not dispute that she killed the children but argue that she lacked criminal responsibility because of severe postpartum psychosis.
Judge William Sullivan told jurors that the Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible when the children were killed.
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“It’s going to be black and white for some people, gray area for other people,” McLean said. “It is going to be one of the hardest things that this jury, or any jury, will ever have to decide.”
