Tuesday, January 24, 2023, was a cold and snowy morning in Duxbury, an upscale New England suburb of Boston. It was on that very typical and tragic day that Lindsay Clancy strangled to death her three children after her husband left to pick up some food for dinner and pediatric medicine. He returned to find his wife in their backyard. She had slashed her wrists and throat before jumping out the second-story window. He called 911 for help. While still connected to the dispatcher, he frantically began searching for his children. He found them in the basement bedroom, lifeless, with exercise cords wrapped around their necks. In a state of horrific agitation, he could be heard screaming, \u201cShe killed the kids.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ms. Clancy is charged with three counts of premeditated murder. The prosecution alleges that she waited for her husband to leave before killing the children, which reveals that she acted with intent and was rational. It will present evidence of a normal family life and that she behaved normally on the morning of the killings. For instance, she exchanged photos of her children via text with her husband. <\/p>\n
As further evidence that Ms. Clancy acted purposefully, the prosecution will show that the exercise bands used during the killings were looped in a way that required her to maintain tension on the cord to cause deadly strangulation. This required sustained effort and intentionality. The prosecution will call Mr. Clancy as a witness to document the ligature positions at the time of the killings. In terms of motivation<\/a>, they might argue that Ms. Clancy was driven by resentments, as evidenced by an entry in her personal journal about resentment of her two older children.<\/p>\n The defense attorneys will tell a very different story. They will argue that she was suffering from postpartum depression<\/a> and psychosis<\/a>. She was in psychiatric<\/a> treatment and had been prescribed 13 psychiatric medications, evidence of the persistent nature of the defendant\u2019s symptomatology. Her symptoms included intractable depression<\/a>, insomnia<\/a> and command hallucinations to kill her children. They will argue that she was administered inadequate psychiatric care. Her visits with the psychiatrist were brief, and her husband was not counseled that she might be dangerous and unpredictable. Her lawyer will argue that Ms. Clancy has been deteriorating into a non-reality for months. <\/p>\n Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is not as uncommon a calamity as you may think. A study supported by the National Institutes of Health found that about 15% of homicide arrests over a 32-year period were filicides. A myriad of studies have identified the motivations of adults who murder children. Some children are killed because they are perceived as a hindrance, whereas others are killed by an enraged spouse seeking revenge<\/a> on a partner. There is a fatal maltreatment group, encompassing children who died as an unintended consequence of neglect or abuse. The majority of child victims are killed by parents who are delusional and believe they must kill their child to avoid real or imagined suffering (referred to as altruistic<\/a> delusions) or from those who were acutely psychotic. Women mostly comprise the altruistic group, whereas men the revenge group.<\/p>\n I have been an expert witness in multiple insanity trials, including those involving mothers who killed their children. Consistent with the forensic psychological literature, I found that in the great majority of cases, mothers who kill their children are psychotic and irrational, and motivated by bizarre or altruistically irrational delusions. Often, the killings are followed by an attempted or completed suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n In one poignant case, I evaluated Janice, who was driven by her altruistic delusional beliefs to murder her two children. For months before the killing, she had the irrational conviction that she was dealing with deadly demonic forces that existed in the family household that were affecting her and her children. She told her family physician, who diagnosed her with depression and provided antidepressant<\/a> medication<\/a>, which had no impact on her insidious thought disorder. Desperate, she concluded that the only way to save her children and herself was through death. She also tried to kill herself, but survived.<\/p>\n