Prosecutors rested their case Monday morning, setting the stage for defense attorney Kevin Reddington to begin calling witnesses.
updated on August 17, 2026 | 2:05 PM
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On the stand: Paula Musgrove, Lindsay Clancy’s mother
Previously:
This story may contain content readers find disturbing. For help with postpartum mood disorders, text or call 1-833-TLC-MAMA for the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call 988 or go to https://988lifeline.org/ to chat online.
1:45 p.m. update: Lindsay Clancy’s mother says she disclosed thoughts of harming her children one month before the killings
Paula Musgrove. – AP
Lindsay Clancy texted her mother in October 2022 saying she didn’t want to be alone after starting psychiatric medication and experiencing “scary” side effects, her mother testified Monday.
“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit,” Clancy’s text read. “I’m really sick. Something is wrong. I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I’m going to get through the day. I started taking the medicine my doctor prescribed for anxiety, and I think it’s made things worse. It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.”
Paula Musgrove told jurors she drove up from Connecticut that same day to stay with Clancy at the family’s home in Duxbury.
“Lindsay was a very loving mother. She was dedicated to her children. She was a fun mother,” Musgrove recalled. “She was always doing things for her kids. She always wanted to be a mother, have many children, and I felt it was the best thing that ever happened to her. And she would do anything for her children. She was just a loving mother.”
Musgrove fought back tears when asked to tell jurors about her grandchildren.
“I love my grandchildren with all my heart,” she testified. “You never know what it’s like to love a grandchild until you become a grandmother. And it was the most beautiful thing. I love them with all my heart.”
Sometime around the second week of October 2022, Musgrove said she noticed Clancy had grown anxious about returning to work following the birth of her third child, who was still struggling to drink from a bottle. She also described a “disturbing” moment in late November or early December of 2022, when Clancy asked if she could sleep in her mother’s bed during one of Musgrove’s visits to Duxbury because she was afraid of being alone.
Clancy continued to grow paranoid as winter progressed, her mother said.
“She would mention that this wasn’t her mind. She would say to me, ‘This isn’t me. I’ve never been like this before,’” Musgrove recalled. “And I would agree, because she wasn’t. She was attempting to go through the motions of her day, take care of the kids as best she could.”
She said she would sometimes drive Clancy to pick her children up from daycare, because Clancy was afraid to get behind the wheel. But Clancy also worried the school would know she was struggling with her mental health and think her a bad mother, Musgrove confirmed.
“She said, ‘The school knows something’s going on, because … they see that I’m not driving my car to pick the kids up,’” Musgrove testified.
In January 2023, she said her daughter told her she had trouble with her memory as a result of the psychiatric medications she was taking.
“The medication was pretty much just destroying her mind. And it wasn’t her,” Musgrove recalled. “She said that, ‘This isn’t me. I just want to feel better and enjoy my kids again.’”
At defense attorney Kevin Reddington’s prompting, she also confirmed that Clancy made an alarming disclosure to Patrick, her then-husband, and Musgrove in December 2022.
“I remember her being very nervous. I remember her saying, ‘I just have to tell you guys something.’ And then she told us,” Musgrove recalled. “She told us that she had thoughts of harming the children.”
Judge William Sullivan dismissed jurors for the lunch recess around 1 p.m. Musgrove will undergo cross-examination following the break.
Allison Ozga. – AP
At her daughter’s birthday party a couple weeks before she strangled her children, Lindsay Clancy “looked like she was going through the motions,” her sister told jurors.
“I think she looked like she was going through the motions of putting together a birthday party for her daughter,” Allison Ozga testified. “But she looked tired. She looked like she was still struggling.”
Ozga testified that she and Clancy are “very close” and communicate regularly. When they saw each other for the first time in a while around Thanksgiving 2022, Clancy’s “mood did not look good,” her sister recalled.
“Her energy, you know, she didn’t seem very energized,” Ozga continued. “It definitely seemed off from how I’ve seen her in the past.”
She testified that Clancy appeared to be deteriorating around the start of December that year and even told her, “I’m in a really tough spot.”
“I had this gut feeling that something was off and that she was really struggling, and I asked her if she was safe,” Ozga recalled. “She said ‘yes’ at that point.”
Ozga said that based on her communications with Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick, she understood her sister’s mood was worsening in December 2022 and that Clancy wasn’t feeling like herself and had been struggling with insomnia and suicidal thoughts.
“I believe the very end of the month, she told me she had had suicidal ideation every day for a month,” Ozga noted.
Answering a question from defense attorney Kevin Reddington, she agreed Clancy wasn’t much of a complainer.
“But you were aware of the struggles and the hurt that she was going through?” Reddington asked.
“Yes,” Ozga confirmed.
She testified that she got a call from her mother on Jan. 24, 2023, informing her that Clancy had strangled her children and attempted suicide.
“I jumped in the car, packed a bag, and I sped up to South Shore Hospital, which is where I was told she was,” Ozga recalled.
However, she said she wasn’t able to see her sister until about two weeks later, while Clancy was hospitalized at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Under cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague, Ozga fielded questions about her sister’s stay at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility, at the start of January 2023. She said she didn’t recall whether Clancy mentioned that she had asked to be discharged from McLean early to attend her daughter’s birthday party.
Sprague also pointed out that Ozga previously told investigators Clancy seemed “OK” when they saw each other at the child’s party.
At Sprague’s prompting, Ozga confirmed she is a licensed social worker and a mandated reporter. She denied that there was ever a point in January 2023 during which she felt concerned enough about Clancy’s safety or the safety of her children to file a report.
Margaret Hamp. – AP
Lindsay Clancy often checked on her children remotely while working the night shift as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, even calling police for a wellness check once after she noticed her then-infant daughter crying on the baby monitor, according to a former co-worker.
Clancy’s eldest child, Cora, was about 6 months old at the time, Margaret Hamp recalled.
“Lindsay never let Cora cry,” Hamp testified. “She wasn’t at that point in parenting, and she was very communicative about that.”
According to Hamp, Clancy decided to call police for a wellness check because she hadn’t been able to reach her then-husband, Patrick, to check on the baby.
Otherwise, Hamp said, Clancy tended to ask co-workers for child care and parenting tips, with topics ranging from sleep habits to daycare providers and even monogrammed lunchboxes. She also testified that Clancy seemed to enjoy her work as a nurse.
“Lindsay was often emotional during [the] birth of complete strangers. She would cry, and she would just say, ‘That was so beautiful,’” Hamp testified. “You could just tell that she really loved being in that setting.”
Once, while Clancy was still a “brand new” nurse on the labor and delivery unit, a pregnant patient came in reporting plans of wanting to hurt herself, Hamp recalled.
She said she and Clancy discussed mental health in pregnancy and the postpartum period, and she asked Clancy whether she had ever heard of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman found not guilty by reason of insanity after she confessed to drowning her five children in 2001.
Clancy was unfamiliar with Yates’s case, Hamp testified, adding, “I explained that to her, and she cried, and she said, ‘How could a mother hurt her children?’”
12:15 p.m. update: Lindsay Clancy’s defense calls first witness
Judge William Sullivan denied Lindsay Clancy’s motion for a required finding of not guilty, disagreeing with her lawyer’s assessment that prosecutors had put forth no evidence to rebut her insanity defense.
“The evidence that has been presented in this case is overwhelming that this young woman was clearly and unequivocally suffering from a mental disease or defect, that it was occupying her waking hours, her life, that she considered all of her avenues, she attempted to go to these health care providers — using the term loosely,” defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued. “She went to these people. She had medication after medication after medication. She was obviously acting, I suggest to the court, in a state that was observed by witnesses that, in fact, she was suffering from mental disease or defect.”
He asked Sullivan to find Clancy not guilty or, failing that, to lower her charges from first-degree murder to second-degree.
Assistant District Attorney Jennfier Sprague asserted Reddington’s request was premature, noting that prosecutors plan to call their own experts to rebut defense witnesses who will speak to Clancy’s state of mind.
After denying the motion, Sullivan brought the jury back into the courtroom. Reddington then called his first witness: Margaret Hamp, Clancy’s former co-worker from her time as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In a note logged on her cellphone, Lindsay Clancy wrote that her prescription medications “stole my motherhood and my life” and “stole me from my own body.”
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington displayed the note briefly as he cross-examined Cellebrite expert Ian Whiffin.
“Basically, this is the note that says, ‘I was the healthiest, happiest mom. I worked out every morning, meditated, took care of myself, and basically, my life has turned to crap,’” he summarized.
Reddington also had Whiffin confirm Clancy’s various Google searches for drug interactions with Trazodone, a treatment for major depression, and other inquiries for antidepressants. He further noted that Clancy’s phone data wouldn’t necessarily show anything she did after the device stopped recording her movements the evening of Jan. 24, 2023.
“So the phone could have been put down,” he said. “The [Apple] Watch could have been put down. Battery died, whatever those issues could be, and the person would still be going down the stairs, going up the stairs, going in the backyard, doing push-ups, whatever. You just don’t know, right?”
Following a brief redirect examination, Whiffin concluded his testimony. After he left the stand, the prosecution rested its case.
Judge William Sullivan sent jurors out of the courtroom on another break and said he will hear arguments on Clancy’s motion for a required finding of not guilty following the recess. A defendant will typically make a motion for a required finding of not guilty at the end of the state’s case, arguing that the evidence against them was insufficient to yield a conviction.
10:45 a.m. update: Cellebrite expert testifies about Lindsay Clancy’s phone data
Ian Whiffin, of Cellebrite, testifies. Greg Derr / The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool
Lindsay Clancy’s phone data indicates she had just gone up a flight of stairs in her home when her then-husband called her from the pharmacy on the evening of Jan. 24, 2023, a Cellebrite expert testified Monday.
Ian Whiffin, a customer engagement manager at the digital forensics company, walked jurors through some of the Apple Health data gleaned from Clancy’s cellphone after she strangled her three children at home in Duxbury the night of the 24th.
He said the last heart rate recorded to Clancy’s phone from her Apple Watch was at 5:23 p.m., at a rate of 57 beats per minute. According to Whiffin, the watch would stop recording vitals if its battery died or if it had been powered down or removed.
Whiffin said the phone data also showed the device going up two flights of stairs between 5:33 p.m. and 5:38 p.m. that day. He noted that flights are recognized as either a 3-meter or 10-foot incline over 16 steps.
Whiffin also confirmed that Clancy’s then-husband, Patrick, attempted to call her at 5:33 p.m., but the call went unanswered. Patrick previously testified that he tried to call Clancy when he discovered CVS was out of the brand of stool softener she had asked him to pick up for their 5-year-old daughter, Cora.
When Clancy called him back about a minute later, “She was pretty quiet,” Patrick testified. “It sounded like she was busy.”
Whiffin confirmed another unanswered call from Patrick to Clancy at 6:09 p.m., around the time Patrick said he arrived home to an eerie silence.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague also had Whiffin confirm Google searches on Clancy’s phone, including a Jan. 18, 2023, search for “ketamine for suicidal ideation” and two searches the following day for “symptoms of postpartum psychosis” and “psychosis symptoms.”
According to Whiffin, Clancy’s phone was unlocked for the last time around 5:13 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2023, when she Googled children’s laxatives and sent a text to Patrick informing him which brand to buy.
Judge William Sullivan excused jurors for a brief recess before defense attorney Kevin Reddington began his cross-examination.
Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial enters its fourth week of testimony Monday as prosecutors near the end of their case.
When court was last in session, jurors heard the emotional journal entries and Google searches investigators found on Clancy’s cellphone after she strangled her three children and attempted suicide.
The notes ranged from affirmations — “I will overcome postpartum anxiety and depression,” “I am a great mom,” and “I love my kids” — to laments about being “terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development.”
In one log from Oct. 25, 2022, Clancy wrote that she was “sad and depressed” she couldn’t parent her third child, infant Callan, like she had her eldest.
“I think I sort of resent my other children because they prevent me from treating Cal like my first baby. And I know that’s not fair to them. I know that,” Clancy wrote. “I was feeling so depressed last evening when Cora and Dawson [her two older children] came home from school. I know it runs off on them so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all my kids.”
Clancy, 36, does not deny she strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan at home in Duxbury on Jan. 24, 2023. But she is raising an insanity defense as she maintains she was wracked by postpartum mental illness and heard a voice in her head instructing her to kill the children and herself. Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has painted a picture of a loving young mother coming apart at the seams — at odds with prosecutors’ description of an “extremely controlling, meticulous, and manipulative” killer who had tired of her life as a mother.
As he cross-examined Timothy Chiappini, previously of the Plymouth County Massachusetts State Police detective unit, last Thursday, Reddington highlighted Clancy’s Google searches for “where is the carotid artery,” “how to slit your throat to die,” and “can you turn airbags off on Kia Sorento” — the type of car Clancy drove.
Clancy ultimately tried to kill herself after strangling her children, paralyzing herself in the process.
According to Reddington, Clancy’s internet history also showed “page after page after page” of Google searches for questions regarding bipolar disorder symptoms, psychosis, schizophrenia, hallucinations, insomnia, and medications for anxiety and depression, among other alarming keywords.
Just four days before the killings, she also Googled “can you treat a sociopath,” followed by a search for information about psychosis.
Reddington further emphasized Clancy’s texts with her mother throughout January 2023, and Chiappini confirmed Clancy messaged her mother on Jan. 14 saying she was “hanging in there and waiting for the day I wake up and feel [like] me.”
Lindsay Clancy looks toward the prosecutors’ table during her murder trial, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass. – Josh Reynolds/AP Photo, Pool
Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between. She has been covering the Lindsay Clancy murder case since January 2023.
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