“Look at me,” a frantic Patrick can be heard saying to Lindsay, while on the phone to 911 dispatchers. “Say my name.”
He then tells the person on other side of the line that he is going to check on the kids, after Lindsay tells him they’re in the basement. Patrick enters the basement, still on the phone to 911, and what follows is a long period of howling and crying as the dispatcher repeatedly asks him what happened.
“She killed the kids,” he eventually says.
The judge ordered that the call could not be recorded or played outside the courtroom. Multiple people who were in the room reported that several people were sobbing, including Lindsay and her parents, and jurors were visibly shaken.
Lindsay Clancy does not deny killing the children. Prosecutors say she acted in a planned and premeditated way. Her defence is seeking to prove she was experiencing postpartum psychosis.
Her now-ex-husband Patrick Clancy had previously state that he has forgiven her, saying she was “ill” and “not evil”.
The bereaved father took the stand in the trial and described how his wife’s mental health worsened in the months leading up to the murders.
On the day she killed the three children, she asked him to go out to the pharmacy to get medication for their eldest child, as well as some takeaways.
He recalled how he called her from the pharmacy and she sounded quiet but he assumed she was busy with bathtime or something else.
He then returned home to an unusually quiet house. He looked everywhere for his children and wife, to no avail, before finding blood all over the master bedroom, and an open window. At the bottom, on the backyard, lay Lindsay, injured and in and out of consciousness.
Her ex-husband testified that his wife tried multiple avenues to address her worsening mental health state, seeking care from different experts, trying multiple psychiatric medications – with some of them making her even worse. When all else failed, Lindsay checked herself into a psychiatric hospital, on New Year’s Day 2023. She was discharged on January 5 and killed her children 19 days later.
If convicted of murder, Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.
The trial continues.
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