Few crimes feel more impossible to comprehend than a mother accused of killing her own children. Yet that is the charge now facing Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother of three.
Prosecutors say that on January 24, 2023, Clancy, then 36, deliberately arranged for her husband to leave their suburban Boston home before allegedly strangling the couple’s children one by one with exercise bands.
Authorities allege that afterward, Clancy cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-floor window. She survived but was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Clancy has pleaded not guilty and rejects the prosecution’s claim that the killings were premeditated. Jury selection wrapped up Friday, and opening statements in the trial began Monday.
Cases like this prompt an immediate and anguished question: Who could do such a thing? What kind of mother could harm, much less kill, her own child? When people ask me that, they are not speaking hypothetically. They want a real answer. So here it is.
Filicide — the killing of a child by a parent — is among society’s most disturbing crimes. Though rare, it is not unheard of. In the United States, roughly 250 mothers are arrested each year in connection with the deaths of their children. Fathers are accused at similar rates, though patterns differ: mothers more often kill younger children, while fathers more commonly target older ones.
For many, the Clancy case recalls the tragedy of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children in 2001. She was convicted in 2002 in connection with three of the deaths, but that conviction was overturned in 2005 after false expert testimony came to light. At a 2006 retrial, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She remains in a state hospital.
A central issue in Yates’s case was undertreatment, including poorly managed withdrawal from an antipsychotic medication that had been helping control her severe postpartum psychosis.
The last thing a mother is expected to do is murder her own children. But that is exactly what Lindsay Clancy, a mom of three, is charged with
Retried in 2006, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity; she remains committed to a state hospital
Clancy’s trial may revolve around the opposite, alleged overtreatment of her postpartum psychosis: too many drugs, too many doctors and too little coordination between medical providers.
No two cases of filicide are the same, but a common feature in some of these terrible crimes is postpartum psychosis: a rare psychiatric emergency, suffered by mothers in roughly one to two cases per thousand births.
Symptoms typically emerge days to weeks after delivery. The condition is distinct from the so-called ‘baby blues’ or postpartum depression. It is an actual psychotic episode, not a mood dip and it carries elevated risk, in a minority of cases, of both infanticide and maternal suicide. Andrea Yates’s severe postpartum psychosis diagnosis contributed to a jury finding her not guilty by reason of insanity.
Core characteristics of the condition include rapid-onset mood instability, disorganized thinking, delusions often centered on the infant, insomnia, reduced ability to distinguish internal thoughts and feelings from external objective reality and command-type auditory hallucinations (voices telling the mother to harm the child or herself). Without question, postpartum psychosis requires immediate hospitalization.
Having dealt with these cases as a practicing clinical psychologist, I can tell you there are red flags – psychological and behavioral indicators – that should never be ignored or trivialized and, in my opinion, may have been overlooked in the case of Lindsay Clancy.
Two civil suits, one filed by Lindsay Clancy’s husband Patrick and another by Lindsay herself, are underway as the criminal case proceeds.
Patrick’s suit alleges that in the days before the killings he told doctors that his wife was having thoughts of suicide. Patrick also told friends before the killings that he suspected she was suffering withdrawal from the depressant benzodiazepine and that she had been prescribed too many medications, according to the Massachusetts police search warrant affidavit.
Lindsay Clancy’s lawsuit claims, among other things, that after her dose of the antidepressant Zoloft was increased, she went 48 hours without sleep, developed racing thoughts and grew more anxious – symptoms that allegedly should have alerted physicians to potentially dangerous side effects. After the killings, Clancy alleged that she had heard voices urging her to harm her children and herself, according to her lawsuit.
Patrick’s suit alleges that in the days before the killings he told doctors that his wife was having thoughts of suicide (Pictured: Patrick arriving at court on Monday, July 27)
Dr Phil McGraw is renowned talk show host, holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and co-founded Courtroom Sciences, Inc. (CSI), a trial consulting firm that revolutionized jury selection and litigation strategy
Defendants in the Lindsay Clancy suit have denied wrongdoing. In the case of Patrick’s suit, they have collectively moved to have it dismissed.
All of these allegations beg another agonizing question: what should a family do when a mother appears to be in such an unstable, potentially dangerous state? Should Lindsay Clancy have ever been allowed to be alone with the children?
I expect Clancy’s defense to argue that from September 2022 to January 2023 at least five different health care providers, three psychiatrists and two nurse practitioners, collectively prescribed, changed and discontinued nearly a dozen drugs for Clancy (including antidepressants, benzodiazepines, an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer and the sleep drug, Ambien), trapping her on a perilous biochemical roller coaster.
Depending on the medications that Clancy was prescribed according to court documents, FDA labeling warns of potential side-effects, including confusion, instability, cognitive fog, disinhibition, impulsivity, psychosis and paradoxical agitation, an uncommon, agitated reaction to sedatives.
The FDA notes that Ambien has been linked to reports of hallucinations, aggression and suicidal thoughts. Several of the makers of these other drugs advise close monitoring by qualified medical professionals of anyone taking their drugs. Whether Clancy was receiving appropriate medical care in this tragic case is for the evidence to show.
Massachusetts prosecutors allege that on January 24, 2023, Clancy, 36, carried out a plan to convince her husband to leave their house, so she could methodically strangle her children with exercise bands, one after another, in their suburban Boston home (above)
The prosecution’s argument seems to center on Clancy’s alleged ability to carry out a murderous plan, asking her husband to pick up food and pharmacy items while she killed their children. Psychiatric illness, they will likely argue, is not usually associated with that kind of deliberation and awareness.
That tension will likely be the crux of what the jury will have to resolve – and this is where Clancy’s case, the trial of Andrea Yates and some other filicides, are similar.
Andrea Yates’ trial has become the standard example of psychosis that went undertreated. The Clancy case is shaping up, in my mind, to be the test case of a different potential failure: excessive, disorganized treatment.
If the jury finds that severe mental illness rendered Clancy not criminally responsible, the verdict could intensify scrutiny of the care she received. Instead of asking why she did not get more help, people may start asking why so much treatment made things worse.
