Lindsay Clancy’s modest home on Summer Street in Duxbury was once meant to be the backdrop for a young family’s future.
It was the place where she and her husband, Patrick Clancy, planned to build a life with their three children: five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and their infant son, Callan.
Three years later, that image of suburban stability has been replaced by a far different reality inside Tewksbury State Hospital.
Within the walls of the historic psychiatric facility, built before the Civil War, the former labor and delivery nurse who once cared for patients is now under care herself.
Clancy, now confined to a wheelchair, receives continuous treatment for both physical and mental health conditions. Her defense team has said she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and depression at the time of the tragedy.
Authorities say the 36-year-old strangled her three children with exercise bands on the evening of January 24, 2023. Since then, her life has been largely defined by isolation and treatment inside the hospital.
Patrick Clancy, now her ex-husband, has not visited her there.
Although he has publicly shown compassion toward Lindsay and testified in court that she had been a loving mother, the deaths of their children ended their marriage. Four months after the tragedy, in May 2023, he left Duxbury, Massachusetts, for New York City and remarried earlier this year.
Lindsay Clancy thinks about her children almost every minute of the day, the pastor said
For the past three years, Lindsay Clancy has called Tewksbury Hospital her home – a state-run facility known for housing a large number of mental health patients
Clancy’s childhood friend of 29 years, Amy Bevins, is thought to have visited her in hospital just once in the aftermath of the killings. The visit lasted just 30 minutes and they played boardgames, but they never discussed the killings.
Her parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, have remained steadfastly by her side, uprooting their lives in Connecticut and spending years living out of hotels near the hospital so they can be close to their daughter.
But Clancy does have one other regular visitor: a Catholic priest who has spent the past three-and-a-half years watching her try to rebuild her shattered life inside the hospital.
Father Bob Deehan, pastor of Holy Family Parish in Duxbury, has visited Clancy at Tewksbury every week for the past three-and-a-half years.
He told Our News Outlet that little Cora, Dawson and Callan remain constantly on their mother’s mind, with Clancy often talking about them during his visits.
‘She’s doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances,’ the pastor said.
‘She’s very devastated and thinks of the children pretty much every hour of the day.’
They often speak about the children and, in growing closer to her faith, Clancy feels she has been able to connect with them, he said.
‘I’ve been working with her in terms of faith, hope and everlasting life. She understands that her little children are now with the Lord in heaven, and so she is able to pray with them, pray for them, and continue to have a spiritual relationship with them that way.’
While pointing out that he is ‘no medical professional,’ the pastor affectionately known as Father Bob said that he has seen a marked progress in Clancy’s mental state compared to how she was in the aftermath of the killings.
She seems to ‘no longer be in a state of psychological crisis,’ he said.
‘She seems fairly stable in her mental condition.’
Clancy with her husband Patrick Clancy and two oldest children Cora, five, and Dawson, three
Patrick found new love in Dr Rachel Danis, whom he married earlier this year
But the trial has forced Clancy to relive the loss of her children in excruciating detail.
‘She’ll never get over it but she’s a little bit more able to express herself in terms of her affect,’ Father Bob said.
‘There’s a lot of feelings. Then of course she is virtually incarcerated in the hospital and she’s now paraplegic – which is of course lower in the rung of the losses that she’s experienced.
‘But she’s doing the best she can be doing under some very, very difficult circumstances.’
Something similar has been visible inside the courtroom.
Throughout the trial, she has appeared lucid, closely following testimony and conferring with her defense team.
She has also been utterly inconsolable when testimony has turned to her three young children – in particular the fatal injuries she inflicted on them.
When graphic details of Cora and Dawson’s autopsies were revealed last week, Clancy broke down into guttural, uncontrollable wails, crying out ‘I can’t do it.’
Father Bob was inside the courtroom at the time and was ushered into the chambers to help comfort the 36-year-old when the judge swiftly called a break in proceedings.
It was something that sparked the ire of the prosecution team who unsuccessfully demanded information about the pastor as well as access to logs of who was speaking with Clancy during breaks.
Visibly baffled, Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington threw his hands in the air and laughed: ‘It’s Father Bob!’
Lindsay Clancy is on trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for the January 2023 killings of her children
The three-bedroom home in the wealthy suburb of Duxbury where Patrick and Lindsay Clancy lived with their children
Reddington went on to describe the pastor as someone who is ‘very, very close to Lindsay’ and a ‘nice, nice man’ who has ‘been with her for three years.’
To date, Father Bob has turned up at Clancy’s trial a handful of days, sitting with her parents to lend the family support.
His relationship with Clancy and the wider family stretches back several years.
Though not weekly regulars at Holy Family Parish Church, Clancy and Patrick would take the children occasionally.
Father Bob remembers baptizing Dawson and later Callan in October 2022, three months before the killings, as well as seeing the extended family on special holidays.
On Christmas Day morning 2022, mere weeks before that tragic day, Clancy, Patrick, Cora, Dawson and Callan were joined by Patrick’s parents Sue and Chris at a service.
Clancy had worn a beautiful dress that day, her former father-in-law testified, and had said afterwards that she was glad they had gone.
Back then, Father Bob didn’t know the family personally. But to him ‘they looked like any typical happy family.’
Which is why that day came as such a shock to the whole community.
One day after the killings, Father Bob visited a critically ill Clancy – who, after strangling her children with exercise bands, had tried to take her own life by slitting her neck and wrists and jumping from a second-floor window of her home – at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and administered her the Last Rites.
His visits with Clancy continued weekly from then.
The pastor also reached out to Patrick that day and visited him at his parents’ home in Scituate, where the devastated father had fled in the wake of his unimaginable loss.
Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan were strangled at the family home in January 2023
Father Bob Deehan held a prayer vigil for the family in the days after the killings in January 2023
He visited Patrick several more times and performed the funerals for the three children, alongside another priest.
After Patrick moved to New York City, Father Bob said their communication became less frequent.
He wouldn’t go into detail about how Clancy is coping seeing her husband move on with his second wife, fertility specialist Dr Rachel Danis.
But he made clear it had impacted her.
‘When a marriage has ended in such a terrible way with a tragedy of the whole family, with the children gone, it has an effect as you would expect,’ he said.
‘She had been so close to her husband, and it looked like a very happy marriage – just like Patrick said too.
‘So, with all of that history and then [the children’s deaths] causing a rift that was very hard to heal, that has certainly had its effect upon Lindsay – and upon him which has of course caused him to move on.’
Despite Patrick’s public support and forgiveness of his ex-wife, the former couple had not seen each other in person since that tragic night until he became the first witness to testify at her trial.
He choked up with emotion, describing his ex-wife as a loving and doting mother who had struggled with her deteriorating mental health.
A wedding band glistened on his left hand from his nuptials in Manhattan’s Central Park this April, a physical sign of his efforts to move forward in the wake of unspeakable grief.
The outcome of the trial will determine whether Tewksbury remains Lindsay’s home – or whether she’ll spend her days in prison.
If convicted, she faces a potential life sentence in prison for the murders of her children.
He has been in court some days offering support to both Clancy and her heartbroken parents Paula and Mike Musgrove (center and right)
If found not guilty by reason of insanity, however, she would be committed to psychiatric care.
Her confinement would not have a fixed end date: she could remain hospitalized for years, potentially indefinitely.
But she could ultimately seek release if she were no longer deemed a danger to herself or others.
For the time being, Clancy will continue to shuttle 60 miles back and forth between a Plymouth courtroom and the state-run Tewksbury Hospital every day.
It is unclear how much interaction she has with other patients inside the hospital, which is home to a growing number of people who, like her, are part of the criminal justice system – either convicted of crimes, awaiting trial or being evaluated to determine if they are fit to stand trial.
But as well as her regular visitor, Clancy also gets plenty of mail in the way of letters and cards from people offering their support.
‘People write to her at the hospital and send her cards,’ Father Bob said.
‘I think this touched a chord, especially among mothers who may themselves have had some brush with mental illness after the birth of a child.
‘Lindsay knows about the support – and it is very much appreciated by her.’
If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.
