The final texts Lindsay Clancy sent to her husband Patrick before killing their three children have been revealed as her murder trial continues.
Lindsay Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder over the deaths of Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan at their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts home on January 24, 2023.
Lindsay’s defence team do not argue that she killed the children by strangling them an exercise band, but say she wasn’t criminally responsible as she was experiencing extreme postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that causes hallucinations, delusions, and extreme mood swings.
As her trial continues, the text messages she sent her husband as he was out running errands on the day she killed their children were read to the court on Thursday.
She texted Patrick at 4.35pm that night about a local restaurant, writing: ‘Any chance you want to do takeout from ThreeV.’
Patrick simply responded ‘Yeah’, to which Lindsay replied, ‘Okie dokie. Check the menu when you can.’
Patrick then asked Lindsay what she would like to eat, and whether Callan had woken up yet. She wrote back that he had.
The couple then shared their food order with each other, which ended the text exchange, Daily Mail reports.
Surveillance footage allegedly shows Patrick at a nearby CVS picking up medication for his daughter, before stopping at the restaurant to get the food.
When he returned home that night at 6pm, Patrick found Lindsay lying injured on the floor outside, having jumped around 20ft from an upstairs window after making cuts to her wrists and neck.
He then discovered his three children had been strangled with an exercise resistance band in the basement.
Investigators later found several concerning Google searches Lindsay, whois now paralysed and uses a wheelchair, made before the children’s deaths, including one four days prior, in which she asked ‘can you treat a sociopath?’
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Other searches included ‘how to slit your throat to die,’ ‘where is the carotid artery’ and ‘how to turn airbags off on Kia Sorento’.
Several notes on Lindsay’s mobile phone were shown during the trial, including one written on October 25, 2022, which said she ‘resents’ her two older children because ‘they prevented her from treating Cal like her first baby.’
‘I’m terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development,’ she wrote. ‘I am sad and depressed because I am not able to parent my third child like my first.’
‘I am sad that I stopped breastfeeding. I feel not as connected with Cal now. 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.’
One month later in November 2022, more writing saw Lindsay describe how she felt she couldn’t parent all of her children how she wanted to, which she described as ‘the root cause of all our problems’, CNN reports.
‘I guess I also feel slightly traumatized by the sleep training, but that feeling was only really present when I was severely sleep deprived and paranoid,’ she wrote. ‘I know what we did was the right thing and okay.’
What is postpartum psychosis?
According to the NHS, postpartum psychosis is a rare, severe mental illness that causes hallucinations, delusions, and extreme mood swings.
It affects about 1 in 1,000 mothers and is a medical emergency that needs quick hospital care.
Symptoms of postpartum psychosis include:
- Feeling very confused.
- Hallucinations – hearing, seeing, smelling or feeling things that are not there.
- Delusions – suspicions, fears, thoughts or beliefs that are unlikely to be true.
- Mania – feeling very ‘high’ or overactive, for example, talking and thinking too much or too quickly, restlessness or losing normal inhibitions.
- A low mood – showing signs of depression, being withdrawn or tearful, lacking energy, having a loss of appetite, anxiety, agitation or trouble sleeping.
- Sometimes a mixture of both a manic mood and a low mood – or rapidly changing moods.
She went on to say that she wanted a fourth child, but needed to see a ‘really good therapist’ before then.
Lindsay wrote: ‘I want to feel happy, but it would be nice to feel authentically happy and not fake, but I need to feel happier than I did last evening because then I was pretty depressed and not enjoying any of my children. It was really sad.’
In a note, last modified on January 23, 2023 — the day before the deaths — Lindsay explained how she had struggled with anxiety following her youngest child’s birth, and her feelings around medication she had been prescribed.
‘I had 3 young kids to take care of and was a touch anxious. So I did what you do…. asked a psychiatrist for some Zoloft,’ she wrote.
Lindsay then said that after her dosage was increased, she ‘couldn’t sleep a wink’ and, according to the note, her psychiatrist allegedly told her to stop taking Zoloft and instead use Ativan and Benadryl to sleep.
‘That’s when everything started going downhill,’ she continued.
Lindsay’s phone also included a list of affirmations, which read ‘I will get through this. I will overcome postpartum anxiety and depression. I am a great mom. I love my kids.’
Lindsay’s attorney has claimed that she had bipolar disorder, and that an antidepressant prescribed to Lindsay following Callan’s birth worsened her condition.
Patrick also testified about his wife’s deteriorating mental health leading up to the killings, saying that Lindsay had told him she had experienced thoughts of suicide as well as intrusive thoughts about hurting their children.
Lindsay sought help from specialists in postpartum mental health and was put on several medications before checking into a psychiatric hospital.
She was discharged from their care, and killed her children 19 days later.
Lindsay and Patrick have accused medical professionals of failing to properly diagnose, treat, and monitor her ahead of the deaths.
Prosecutors, however, allege that Lindsay deliberately sent Patrick out of their home on an errand to give her enough time to strangle the children to death with exercise resistance bands.
The trial continues.