The Plymouth District Court has unsealed nearly 300 pages of records disclosing investigative efforts behind a Duxbury mother’s alleged murder of her three young children just two days ahead of her Superior Court arraignment.
Lindsay Clancy, 33, is accused of strangling her three children with exercise bands in the basement of their home at 47 Summer St. in Duxbury the night of Jan. 24 before jumping out of a window in an apparent suicide attempt.
Affidavits released Tuesday state that she also cut her wrists and neck before jumping from the second-floor window. According to the documents, a “large blood-covered kitchen knife” was found just under the open window.
Among the most striking new details is that investigators disclosed that they “are also aware that Ms. Clancy used her cellular telephone and her journal to document her mental state and her feelings about her children, in addition to keeping track of her medications and researching ways to kill.”
While the affidavits don’t include any quotations from the journals or her cellphone, authorities used this as an argument when asking for warrants to forensically examine her devices, which include her pink phone and purple tablet as well as laptops.
Previously released court documents stated that Clancy did write this note on her phone: “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 it (rubs) off on them so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all of my kids.”
Plymouth DA Timothy Cruz issued an arrest warrant for Clancy the next day as she lay in Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston being treated for her injuries. She was charged in Plymouth District Court on Feb. 7 via video feed from her hospital bed.
A Plymouth grand jury indicted her on Sept. 15 with three counts of murder and strangulation for the deaths of Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, an infant. Clancy will be arraigned in the county Superior court on Thursday morning, once again from her hospital bed but this time from Tewksbury Hospital.
“In the present case, the court finds that the defendant’s physical and mental condition presents an overriding interest to schedule the arraignment at the Tewksbury Hospital,” Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan wrote in a Tuesday filing announcing the arrangement, adding that the patients there be afforded privacy, so public access to the proceedings would be done over the phone.
New details
The cache of previously impounded documents, totaling 299 pages, though much of that is retellings of the investigative history up until each filing, includes 11 search warrant applications, along with their findings. The earliest affidavits included were previously impounded, DA Cruz wrote in a Jan. 25 filing, because “the public disclosure of the facts contained herein may compromise the investigation.”
Among the new details:
Duxbury police dispatched all cruisers to the Duxbury home at 6:11 p.m., where responders found Lindsay Clancy on the ground to the left side of the house. As police were assessing Lindsay Clancy, her husband Patrick Clancy went inside to check on the children. Soon, the police radios broadcast that “Mr. Clancy was in the basement and something was wrong because his children would not wake up.”
Patrick Clancy would begin screaming and tell an arriving officer, “She killed the kids.” The first police officer affidavit then describes a hellish scene of discovering the kids — Dawson on his back in one room, Cora and Callan in another, bands around their necks and “blue and purple” in the face — in the basement and the life-saving efforts of the first responders.
Police conducted a full search of the home on Jan. 25 and recovered many items including: a series of home cameras; a receipt from ThreeV, which is the restaurant where Patrick Clancy went to pick up dinner Lindsay Clancy had ordered that night; a CVS bag with children’s laxative in it that Lindsay had told Patrick to pick up; a bloody knife; laptops, tablets and hard drives; the three exercise bands — yellow, black and blue; swabs from red-brown stains from several areas; some clothing; as well as notebooks.
The notebooks allegedly contain a list of medications Lindsay Clancy was prescribed, which according to Patrick Clancy’s interview with police included Zoloft, Valium, Trazodone, Ativan, Klonopin, Prozac and Seroquel, though not necessarily all at the same time. Lindsay Clancy also “at times” wrote of “suicidal expressions and thoughts,” a topic that her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, also spoke of at her original arraignment.
“We all know … that this is an individual in dire medical condition. We all know, as counsel concedes apparently, that this woman is a danger to herself. I question whether she would even make it to a trial. She’s suicidal,” Reddington said then in argument that she not be transferred to a jail setting. “She’s extremely emotional. However she’s unable, and has been unable, to express any happiness or sadness, or cry.
“And, in fact, sometime about a month or two ago, she made the comment that ‘I just wish I could feel something.'”
