Prosecutors rest their case in Lindsay Clancy trial

Prosecutors rested their case against Lindsay Clancy on Monday after calling approximately 70 witnesses -- including her ex-husband and former father-in-law – over the last month to build their case against Clancy, whom they alleged “deliberately and meticulously” killed her three children in 2023.

Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington has signaled he plans to present a defense case over the coming days. While Reddington has not publicly disclosed his witness list, he has signaled that he plans to call multiple medical experts to testify about postpartum psychosis.

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.

Reddington has argued that Clancy had postpartum psychosis and severe mental illness, and that she attempted to take her own life after strangling her children.

Postpartum psychosis is a rare but serious medical emergency characterized by severe, rapid onset psychiatric episodes such as mania, depression, delusions or hallucinations. It can have rapid onset in the days or weeks after birth, research shows.

On Monday morning, one of the final witnesses called by the prosecution testified that five days before Clancy killed her children, her phone was used to look up the “symptoms of postpartum psychosis."

In the preceding days, Clancy’s phone was also used to search “ketamine for suicidal ideation” as well as how long some medications take to treat depression, according to Ian Whiffin, a manager with the digital forensics firm Cellebrite, whom prosecutors brought in to analayze her phone movements.

Whiffin also testified about health data taken from Clancy’s phone and smart watch about her movements on the night she killed her children.

According to Whiffin, Clancy’s devices showed that she was walking up the equivalent of two flights of stairs between 5:33PM and 5:38PM – and that she spoke with her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, over the phone after she had gone up the first flight of stairs.

Clancy strangled her children in the basement of her home before going up to her second-floor bedroom and attempting to kill herself.

“In between when the flight climb started and the flight climb ended, you have the two calls: the incoming call that was missed from Patrick, and then the outgoing call to Patrick,” a prosecutor asked.

“Correct,” Whiffin said.

Last week, jurors heard from five different medical professionals who treated Clancy in the months before she killed her children.

While the doctors and nurses generally offered consistent testimony that Clancy was not showing symptoms of postpartum psychosis, they acknowledged on the stand that Clancy was being treated by multiple providers who did not always communicate with one another, including on what medications she was being prescribed, during the same timeframe they treated her.

Clancy was prescribed more than a dozen psychiatric medications in the four months before she killed her children, and her lawyer argues that being overmedicated and misdiagnosed worsened Clancy's mental illness.

Jurors also heard from Clancy's own descriptions of her struggle with postpartum issues, with a state police investigator reading from a note Clancy drafted on her phone in October 2022.

"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 the note. "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," the note continued.

Prosecutors also read notes of affirmation that Clancy wrote to herself that month about her struggle with postpartum depression and anxiety.

"I am strong, I am brave, I will get through this, I will overcome postpartum anxiety and depression, I am a great mom, I love my kids, I love my family, I love my life,” one note read.

Jurors saw other notes from Clancy's phone that highlighted her fear of changing medications and concerns that her symptoms would not improve.

"I worked out every morning, meditated, and took care of myself so I could be the best for my kids. Until prescription medication stole me from my own body. It began with a touch of postpartum anxiety," read one note drafted on Clancy's phone in December 2022 and modified the following month. "Medication stole my motherhood and my life."

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are not on your own.