The anguished husband of the Boston nurse who strangled their three children in a fit of postpartum depression has opened up about what led to the life-changing tragedy, insisting he did not “marry a monster” before the gruesome murders.
Patrick Clancy, 33, the father of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, had left their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on January 24, 2023, to pick up medication for one of the children and dinner for the family, he said The New Yorker in an interview published Monday.
His wife, Lindsay Clancy, had been struggling with anxiety and insomnia since mid-November due to her pregnancy with Callan, but everything seemed to be returning to normal at the family home.
Lindsay had sought help from several postpartum mental health specialists, but Patrick said that, to his knowledge, she has never received more than a severe diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.
Just weeks before the tragedy, Lindsay was taken to hospital on New Year’s Eve after telling her husband that she had “thoughts of wanting to die,” felt “numb” and confessed to having “intrusive thoughts” about hurting them .
She was admitted to an inpatient program at McLean Hospital, just outside Boston, the next morning, but days after arriving she texted Patrick: “I don’t belong here.”
Five days after admission, she denied having any further intrusive thoughts and was discharged with a prescription for an antidepressant.
Two days after they were fired, they organized a party at a trampoline park for their daughter Cora’s fifth birthday. Patrick noted that Lindsay’s mood during the party gave him “hope” that things were going better, noting that she had been sleeping better and that her mood had noticeably improved.
“I think it gave her hope too,” he told the outlet.
On the morning of January 24, 2024, Patrick said he woke up with Lindsay and asked her the same questions he’s been asking since she was dealing with her mental health issues.
“How are you feeling? How did you sleep?” He recalled asking her, to which Lindsay replied that she was feeling “fine” and sleeping “pretty well.”
Patrick, who had had a busy day at work, left Lindsay in charge of their children and even allowed her to take their daughter Cora to the doctor with a stomach ache.
He hoped the visit would help his wife “return to reality” after weeks of improvement.
But disaster struck that evening, after Lindsay asked him to pick up medicine for Cora and dinner. He was at CVS when he suddenly felt like something was wrong.
Patrick said he called Lindsay to confirm the brand of drug, but she didn’t answer.
A few minutes later she called him back and instructed him to pick up Pedia-Lax for Cora, but she seemed distracted by something in the fourteen-second conversation.
When he got home around 6 p.m., the house was quiet.
Patrick ran to the master bedroom and discovered the door was locked and had to force his way inside, where he found the window open, blood splattered on the floor and a bloody knife on the nightstand, he told the outlet.
He then ran outside and found Lindsay barely conscious on the floor, having jumped from the second floor window of their home in a suicide attempt.
“What have you done?” he asked her, to which she replied, “I tried to commit suicide.”
Then he asked where their children were, and she said, “In the basement.”
He was already on the phone with 911 and there he found Cora, Dawson and Callan with exercise bands still around their necks after Lindsay allegedly killed them before trying to kill herself.
When paramedics arrived, he could be heard screaming from the basement, “She killed the kids!”
Despite his efforts to save them, Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead at the scene, and Callan later died in hospital.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Patrick was staying with his parents after burying his children, and days before Lindsay’s arraignment, he received a call from her.
“She didn’t sound like my wife,” Patrick told the New Yorker of the exchange, noting that she sounded panicked and told him a voice was ordering her to kill their children. After a minute on the phone he ended the call.
Six months after the murders, Patrick called Lindsay on her 33rd birthday at the suggestion of her father, who told him she was in “tough shape and going downhill.”
During their phone call, she told him that “every day was the worst day of her life” and that “she misses her children,” Patrick recalled.
“I know [it] sounds crazy to some people. But that is the reality,” he explained.
They’ve spoken more often since he said that.
Patrick ended up asking her a few questions about what happened that day.
“I think one of the first things I asked was, ‘Did you plan this? Is that why you sent me on my way?’” he told the New Yorker.
“She said, ‘No, it was just a wink.’”
He said he asked Lindsay why she was concerned about how long it would take for him to pick up the food, to which she replied that she was worried about him getting stuck in traffic.
“Then I said, ‘Did you use Google Ways to Kill?’ And she said, ‘Yes, for myself, because I was suicidal for two months.’
Patrick has made only a few public statements since the tragedy.
Days after the murder, he asked people to “find it deep within themselves” to forgive her, as he had done.
In April, Clancy ran the Boston Marathon to honor his children and raised more than $73,000 for the hospital where his youngest, Callan, was treated before her death.
Patrick said he chose to speak with the New Yorker to stop “lies and disinformation” that have circulated because of interest in her upcoming murder trial.
“I wasn’t married to a monster – I was married to someone who got sick,” he told the newspaper.
Lindsay has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, has indicated he is planning an insanity defense.
However, the prosecutor believes that since Lindsay was previously assessed by mental health professionals and told she did not have postpartum depression and was researching ways to kill via her cell phone in the lead-up to the murders, this would can prove that there was premeditation.
A date for her trial has not yet been set.
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