Notes recovered from Lindsay Clancy’s cellphone offer a glimpse into her worsening mental health in the months before she killed her three children in January 2023.
One note, last modified the day before the killings, began with the words, “Medication stole my motherhood and my life.” Clancy wrote that she had once been a healthy and happy mother who exercised, meditated and cared for her children before struggling with postpartum anxiety and prescription medication.
Clancy, 36, does not deny killing Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months, at the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home. Her defense argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and should not be held criminally responsible. Prosecutors contend she killed the children deliberately and was not experiencing psychosis at the time.
The notes were presented during testimony from a cellphone forensic analyst. Clancy’s attorney did not dispute their authenticity.
In another note from November 2022, Clancy wrote about feeling less connected to her youngest child, Callan, and struggling with the demands of caring for three children.
“I will get through this. I will overcome postpartum anxiety and depression. I am a great mom. I love my kids,” she wrote in a list of affirmations.
“That’s When Everything Started Going Downhill”
Clancy also described how her sleeping problems worsened after she began taking Zoloft for anxiety.
She wrote that after increasing the medication as instructed, she became unable to sleep. Her psychiatrist eventually told her to stop taking Zoloft and prescribed or recommended other medications to help her rest.
“That’s when everything started going downhill,” Clancy wrote, adding that she had become dependent on medication to fall asleep.
Her account was consistent with testimony from medical providers, who said Clancy experienced severe insomnia after taking Zoloft. One provider recalled that she reported being awake for 48 consecutive hours.
Clancy’s psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Tufts, later prescribed Ativan for severe anxiety. The two eventually discussed reducing her use of the medication because of its dependency risk. However, Clancy later began taking several other medications from another provider.
In the months before the killings, she saw multiple medical professionals, changed medications repeatedly and spent several days at a locked psychiatric facility in January 2023.
“I Want to Feel Happy”
Another cellphone note described Clancy’s difficulty balancing the needs of all three children.
She wrote that she felt unable to parent Callan in the same way she had raised her older children and described the issue as the “root cause of all our problems.”
She also wrote about stopping breastfeeding and sleep training Callan, saying she had felt traumatized by the experience when she was severely sleep-deprived and paranoid.
At the time, Clancy told Tufts she felt overwhelmed by her children’s needs and anxious about leaving her baby.
In another entry, Clancy wrote that she wanted to have a fourth child but believed she needed to find a “really good therapist” first.
“I want to feel happy, but it would be nice to feel authentically happy and not fake,” she wrote, describing herself as depressed and struggling to enjoy time with her children.
Her cellphone also contained searches about parenting, children’s movies and trampolines, as well as information about psychiatric medications and mental health conditions.
In January 2023, searches included terms related to schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucinations and bipolar disorder. The phone also contained searches concerning suicide.
Prosecutors highlighted one search made four days before the children died: “Can you treat a sociopath?”
Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder. If convicted, she could face life in prison. If jurors find her not criminally responsible because of mental illness, she would likely be committed to a psychiatric hospital.
