Lindsay Clancy: The Case That Changes How You Think About Postpartum Psychosis

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This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brusky.

Here now, Tony Brusky.

Patrick Clancy came home with takeout and found his wife

seriously injured in the backyard.

She told him she had tried to end it.

He asked where the children were and she said in the basement.

He went downstairs and 911 dispatchers heard him untangling exercise cords

from the next of his children.

Begging them to breathe between his cries.

That's where this story starts.

Not with the courtroom, not with charges or the father in a basement

and the sound of what happens when every safety net in a woman's life

has already failed.

This is a complicated story.

Let's go through it and I'd love to get your thoughts in the comments section

as we do just that.

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Five days after that, the same man sent down and wrote a public statement.

He had just lost all three of his children.

Kora was five.

Dawson was three.

Kallen was eight months old and had held on for four days in the hospital before he didn't.

And Patrick wrote about each of them.

Kora coming downstairs every morning with her hair amassed in a smile on her face.

Dawson, whose best quality was his pure kindness.

Kallen who would rest his head on Patrick's shoulder every morning for a few quiet minutes.

Just adjusting to the day.

And he wrote this.

I want to ask all of you that you find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay as I have.

The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone.

Me, our kids, family, friends and her patients.

The very fibers of her soul are loving.

All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace.

The person with the most

and the strongest right to condemn her couldn't do it.

And if that doesn't make you as a stranger who doesn't know these people, stop and ask why.

But you need to start paying attention to what this case is actually about.

Because I mean, that's that's quite a stretch.

That's quite an understanding for one person to have of another after they've just taken

your three children from you. Forgiveness.

It tells you there's more play here than just simply, well, she's evil.

Lindsay Clancy was a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital.

She spent her working life in the room where life begins.

The person other families trusted to be there when their children took their first breath.

Friends and colleagues submitted letters to the court describing her as someone who lived

and breathed for her children. A coworker described her specifically as the nurse you would want

carrying for your wife, sister or daughter as they welcome their child into the world.

She and Patrick had three kids together. Cory Dawson and Callan born in 2022.

They lived in Dexbury, a small coastal town about 30 miles south of Boston.

From the outside, it looked like a lot of families looked busy loving,

trying to hold it together. But after Callan was born, something changed.

Lindsay's family said she seemed more like a different person, more manic

than they had ever seen her. She recognized it herself and here's a detail

that the whole case turns on. She did not ignore it. She did not hide it. She did not tough it out.

She asked for help. She asked and asked and asked.

What happened next is why this case has rattled people far beyond Massachusetts and why we

are going to be covering it going forward. In fact, we have a whole

five-part series on this case for you next week.

Lindsay started saying a psychiatrist after Callan's birth. She was prescribed

Zoloft according to the civil lawsuit. Patrick later filed that made her sleepless and more

anxious rather than stopping to reassess her doctor prescribed another medication than another.

She went to an emergency room in November of 2022 telling them she was afraid something awful

was going to happen and they prescribed her more medication.

By late November, she was reporting thoughts of ending it for the first time.

On December 5, Lindsay called Aspire Crisis Support because she was having intrusive thoughts

of wanting to die. She told them directly. She believed her symptoms were connected to the

medications she had been given. Four days later, Patrick picked up the phone himself and called

her nurse's office. He told them it was fairly urgent. He described his wife's panic attacks,

her S ideation, how bad things had gotten. He needed someone to take this seriously.

The advice they received to just keep taking the meds. Just keep taking the good.

She told her husband and her own mother I have thoughts of harming the kids.

She went to women in infants hospital and provenance. A program built specifically for post-partum

depression. She told the staff she was crazy depressed, numb to all emotion. I can't feel love.

These are her words. Testing confirms she was severely depressed, ranked in the most severe

category for anxiety. But a doctor there reportedly ruled out both post-partum depression

and bipolar disorder, allegedly without taking inadequate medical history. She was not admitted.

She was told to stop one medication and go on home. Just go on your way. That's good.

Our medical system sucks.

She checked herself into McLean Hospital, one of the most respected psychiatric institutions

in the country for five days. Then a 10 minute follow-up phone call. Then a 7 minute appointment.

Then another prescription. Another reaction. Another prescription.

So we handle medical emergencies. Here's this ping pong. Oh, you got this. Take this. You got

that. Take that. You got this too. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. You know, I'm trying to get help here.

It's not a matter of like winning a game. It's just living.

Too busy. I got a tennis match. I mean, this is, this is how we handle things.

We're just take a pill. Keep going.

By January 23, the defense says Lindsay had been prescribed 13,

13 medications over four months, which by the way is insane. A lot of these medications

take weeks or months to really be effective to see their full

breadth of effectiveness or not. And when you start mixing some of these together,

anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, sedative sleep aids across multiple providers who are not

meaningfully coordinating with each other, you get this.

People relying on the experts, on the doctors, for their care, for their expertise.

And the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, or doesn't even look,

or doesn't even care, or thinks their way is better. Well, that's not my responsibility.

And then you get this.

Patrick told a friend the medications were not working. That Lindsay was experiencing

the worst side effects possible, and that he believed she had become addicted to benzodiazepines.

She described feeling disconnected from her own body. She was experiencing hallucinations.

Every appointment handed her a new anchor and called it a life preserver.

On January 23rd, the day before Lindsay had a seven-minute virtual appointment,

the doctor increased her dosage. The prosecution sees the story very differently.

And that deserves to be on the table. Blood drawn from Lindsay in the hours after the

killings found seven medications in her system. Their psychiatric experts testified those medications

at those dosage levels would not have caused psychosis or violence. Really?

I bet there's an expert that might disagree. Prosecutors also say that four days before January 24th,

Lindsay searched her phone for the phrase, can you treat a sociopath?

And that's she researched methods of killing. Their position is unambiguous. She planned this.

She sent her husband out deliberately, calculated exactly how long he would be gone,

and acted with what they call deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty.

Yeah, and maybe she did. But why? Why is that what she's thinking? Has she ever in her history of life

planned things like this, shown a pattern for violence, shown a pattern from manipulating

and coercing other people to their death or close to or just utter chaos? Is there that process

going on that prior to postpartum, even though she wasn't technically diagnosed with that, but

she clearly had it? Prior to that, is there a track record of any of this? Is this her modality?

Her husband doesn't seem to think so. Because look, there's plenty of cases where that is the case,

where that is true, and that is the reality of what you're dealing with. Basically,

a sociopath that some people call mom and wife, and it turns out they're not so much mom or

wife after all. And there's some cases where they very much are, but they're fed a cocktail of

prescription drugs that aren't being regulated or checked from the one doctor to the next,

and you mix it all together, do the hokey-pokey, and turn yourself around, and you find the kids

in the basement with nooses around their neck, or cords or whenever the hell happened here.

Because that's what it's all about. Hey,

so that's the prosecution's case. It does have evidence behind it, and a theory

certainly has a theory. One which doesn't seem to take into account anything about the

reality of the case, or the woman in it.

But they got a case, don't they? They got a case they can go with.

It has evidence behind it, and a jury is going to have to weigh it against everything else.

But here's what also is true. A woman called a crisis line. A woman told her husband,

a woman told her mother, a woman walked herself into McLean hospital. A woman showed up to have

her appointment, filed every prescription, tried everything the system put in front of her,

and the system kept moving her along on the evening of January 24th, 23, Patrick left to pick up

takeout from a restaurant in Plymouth. According to medical records cited in the civil lawsuit,

Lindsay checked a map to see how long the drive would take. Prosecutors say that was her calculating

how much time she had alone. The defendant says she was terrified to be by herself and wanted to

know when her husband was coming back. Single detail. A woman looking at a map is now one of the

most contested pieces of evidence in the case. Patrick was gone. Lindsay allegedly strangled all

three of her children with the exercise bands, Quarren Dawson, were found in the basement.

Callum was rushed to the hospital. He died three days later. Lindsay cut her wrists and neck,

and she went to the second floor window and jumped. And Patrick came home with takeout.

Oh shoot, they forgot the ketchup. What the hell is going on here?

Donner in the backyard. She told them she had tried to end it. He asked for the children where

she said the basement he went downstairs. And according to medical records, reference in the

lawsuit Lindsay told a later told providers that she'd been hearing a voice. Described as a

compelling, unrecognizable singular male voice that told her this is your last chance.

And that she had to take her children with her.

Lindsay survived the fall. She is paralyzed from the waist down. She has been held at

Tukesbury State Hospital ever since. And as of earlier, this year, her attorney told the

courts, she continues to experience S ideation every day. He sent on the record, if this woman

ends it during this trial, there's a very real probability that that could happen. It's on somebody

and it's not me. The system is still failing her. A labor and delivery nurse, a woman who spent her

career making sure other people's babies arrive safely into the world, allegedly hearing a voice

telling her to take her own children with her the night after a 17-minute virtual appointment

and a doctor who had who was supposed to be keeping her stable.

The trial is set for July 20th. In Plymouth Superior Court, Lindsay has pledged not guilty to

three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation. Her defense is pursuing lack of criminal

responsibility. The insanity defense, arguing her mental state, made it impossible for her to

confirm her behavior or conform her behavior to the law. If that argument succeeds, she would not

walk free. She would be committed to a state psychiatric facility and come up for periodic review.

Her attorney has also asked for the trial to be split into two separate phases,

one to determine if she actually killed her children, a second to determine if she was mentally

responsible when she did it. That motion is still being argued. The prosecution's psychiatric

evaluation of Lindsay is scheduled for April 10th, a few weeks from now. The defense

has asked for it to be videotaped. Patrick has since moved Manhattan. He gave an interview to the

New Yorker in 2024 and said, I wasn't married to a monster. I was married to someone who got sick.

Prosecutors have subpoenaed those recordings, arguing that statements Patrick made about Lindsay's

mental state are material to their case. Another husband's act of grace is attempt to tell his wife's

story, honestly, is potentially being used as evidence against her in court.

Both Patrick and Lindsay have filed separate civil malpractice lawsuits against her former

providers, naming the specific psychiatrist and nurse practitioner. They alleged over-medicated

and misdiagnosed her. Lindsay's parents have spent three years living in a hotel near Tukesbury

Hospital, so they can visit their daughter every day. Her mother stood outside the court house

earlier this year, crying and said, she's a loving mother. She always has been.

Three children are dead. Their father has forgiven their mother,

sued her doctors, and moved to a new city trying to build something out of what's left.

Their mother sits in the state hospital, paralyzed, still fighting to stay alive, waiting for a

jury to decide whether what happened in that basement was murdered, or the last stop on a chain

of failures that nobody in that medical system ever chose to own. In July, 12 people in

Plymouth County are going to have to answer that question. The law will give them the framework.

The experts will fight over brain chemistry and medication levels in what psychosis looks like

versus what pre-meditation looks like. But here's what the verdict won't fix. A woman can call

a crisis lie and tell her husband, tell her mother, check herself into a hospital, and still fall

completely through. That's not a legal argument. That's a problem. Your thoughts,

your opinions in the comments section, unsubstack in YouTube. We will continue this

conversation there. I look forward to it. Press subscribe wherever you're getting podcasts.

You don't miss any of our reporting on this in the many cases we follow for you right here.

Until then, I'm Tony Bursky. We will talk again real soon.

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