Lindsay Clancy searched 'can you treat a sociopath' prior to killing children: Investigator
Lindsay Clancy's phone was used to search the question "Can you treat a sociopath?" on Jan. 20, 2023 -- four days before Clancy killed her three children, a state police investigator testified at her trial on Thursday.
Jurors heard testimony on Thursday from state police investigator Timothy Chiappini and state police Sgt. Kyle Pavao, who each testified to the forensic analyses they conducted of Clancy's phone, as well as her ex-husband Patrick Clancy's tablet.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three murder charges in connection with the deaths of her 5-year-old daughter Cora, 3-year-old son Dawson, and infant son Callan at her family's home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury on Jan. 24, 2023.
Defense lawyers do not contest that Clancy was responsible for the deaths of her three children. Instead, they argue she should not be held criminally responsible for their deaths because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.
"I'm struggling so hard because I wanted to parent each of my kids like my first, and since I can't, that's depressing to me," Clancy wrote in one note on her phone from October 2022, according to prosecutors. "This is definitely the root cause of all our problems. Now I feel like I'm not parenting any of my kids the way I want to, and that makes me sad too. But I'm going to try my best."
Clancy specifically appeared frustrated with the compromises she had to make taking care of her newborn Callan.
"I hate that he has to put himself to sleep. I'm sad I'm not breastfeeding anymore, but I think deep down these were the right choices," she wrote in a note found on her phone.
In her notes, Clancy also raised concerns about her own mental health, sleep deprivation, and parenting choices.
"I still don't want Cal to be our last, but I have a lot of figuring out to do before I have another. I'm on the fence about starting a new medication for anxiety/depression. I just want to feel happy. I want to be able to relax and take care of my kids, and then and when they go to bed at night, I want to deeply relax and hang out with Pat, and then fall into a deep sleep for eight hours," she wrote in the note.
Clancy also wrote that she was "terrified" she might mess up her children's development, attributing the concern to reading and watching too much about parenting.
"I'm terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development. Our generation is inundated with information about every aspect of parenting and everything that goes wrong if you don't get it right, and all the scary things happening in the world -- it's insane," she wrote in another note. "For the last five years, I've just filled my mind with all things parenting, and it's just unhealthy."
Thursday's session followed an especially emotional day in court on Wednesday, during which Clancy broke down sobbing multiple times as medical examiners testified about her children's autopsies.
Judge William Sullivan opted to excuse the jury at times during testimony from doctors Renee Stonebridge and Barbara Olson, who described the injuries to two of the Clancy children, Cora and Dawson.
"Sometimes there's evidence that's presented in the trial that creates an emotional reaction," Sullivan told jurors, reminding them that the law "says you must separate any emotional reaction on your part from the informational value and weight that the evidence produces."
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