🚨 AS LINDSAY CLANCY’S TRIAL BEGINS, ATTENTION IS SHIFTING TO THE CHI-LLING MOMENT HER HUSBAND KNEW SOMETHING WAS TERRIBLY WRONG… AND WHY THAT MOMENT COULD MATTER MORE THAN EVER
THE concerned husband of a mom who has been charged with the murder of their three children was first alerted to the tragedy through warning signs in the home, a court will hear.
The trial for Lindsay Clancy began on Monday over three years since she strangled her three children to death before attempting to kill herself by jumping from a window.
Lindsay Clancy was seen in court on Monday as her murder trial kicks off with jury selection sitsCredit: AP
Lindsay is accused of killing her three children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old CallanCredit: Handout
Lindsay’s three kids were found dead in the basement of their Massachusetts homeCredit: Facebook
Paula and Mike Musgrove, Lindsay’s parents, were also in court on Monday for the start of the trialCredit: AP
Clancy, now 35, was left paralyzed from the waist down in the fall and appeared in court on Monday in wheelchair as jury selection began.
She has plead not guilty to the murder with prosecutors arguing she was battling post-natal psychosis when she killed the children, with her own husband expected to speak in her defense at trial.
Lindsay’s trial began on Monday with jury selection, where Judge William Sullivan said he will impanel 18 jurors, an unprecedented number.
The judge said he wants to have six alternative jurors because the trial is expected to last several weeks, the Boston Globe reported.
Lindsay arrived in a Massachusetts court on Monday morning with curled hair, a gray shirt and black pants.
Two nurses brought her in her wheelchair, WCVB reported, which she is after she became paralyzed from the waist down after trying to kill herself.
On the night of January 23, 2023, Lindsay, a labor and delivery room nurse asked her husband to run and pick up dinner, and when he came home around 25 minutes later, he found the house unusually quiet.
Patrick went to search for his family and tried his bedroom first, but he found the door was locked, according to police reports.
When he finally got into the room, he saw blood and noticed the second-story window was open.
Patrick has told cops he ran outside where he found his wife lying on the ground beneath the window of their room, noticing she had injuries on her wrists and neck.
He called 911, and asked his wife, “What did you do?” a Plymouth County assistant district attorney would later say of the recorded call.
Lindsay told her husband she tried to kill herself, he claims.
“Where are the kids?” he asked.
“In the basement,” she replied.
Patrick could then “be heard screaming in agony and shock as he found his children,” prosecutor Jennifer Sprague said.
He found his three children had been strangled with exercise bands, which were still around their necks.
Lindsay was left in a wheelchair after she jumped out of the second-story window of her homeCredit: AP
Patrick Clancy returned home to find his wife had jumped out of the window and his three kids were in the basement with exercise bands around their necksCredit: Facebook
Court documents later revealed that by the time first responders arrived to their Massachusetts home, each band was “lying next to each child.”
The children were taken to local hospitals, where Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead while Callan, the youngest, died three days later.
There are 130 potential jurors that the court will have to narrow down, and as of noon on Monday two had been seated, a man and a woman.
Jurors are reportedly set to hear the 911 call and tour the Clancys’ former home.
Prosecutors had asked for the 911 call to be admitted, claiming it had descriptions of how Patrick sounded when he found his children and the methods Lindsay allegedly used to strangle them.
Prosecutors claim there is evidence of “deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, and the state of mind of the defendant,” CNN reported.
Lindsay has been held at the Tewksbury Hospital in Massachusetts.
Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, plans to argue that Lindsay is not criminally responsible for murder and instead will take an insanity defense.
Reddington will argue Lindsay was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she allegedly took her children’s lives.
There is a list of over 200 witnesses in the case, but there have been arguments made in court to exclude some of them.
Patrick is expected to testify on Lindsay’s defense, which comes after he publicly forgave her and filed a wrongful death suit against her healthcare providers.
He said his wife was prescribed several medications in the months before their children’s’ deaths, including Prozac, Ambien and Valium.
Lindsay’s attorney is set to seek an insanity defenseCredit: Facebook
Patrick, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his wife’s healthcare providers, is set to testify on Lindsay’s defenseCredit: Facebook/ Lindsay Marie Clancy
Patrick believes Lindsay started “hearing a compelling and unrecognizable singular male voice that told her ‘this is your last chance’ and that she had to ‘take them’ with [her].”
That same voice in her head “indicated to [Lindsay] that she should die … and that her children would suffer if she was gone.”
Joni Johnston, a forensic psychiatrist and investigator, cleared the air in an interview with CNN on the reality of insanity pleas.
“I think there’s an ongoing kind of perception that insanity pleas are kind of a get-out-of-jail-free card that attorneys throw on the table,” Johnston said.
“It’s a pretty rare defense to use – and an even rarer one to be successful.
“You’re having to basically convince the jury that you were so impaired and that your thinking was so distorted that you really couldn’t appreciate that what you were doing was wrong – even if you knew factually that murder was wrong – and that’s very, very hard.”
If jurors find Lindsay is not criminally responsible for the deaths of her three kids, the court will likely begin the process to have her committed to a state psychiatric hospital.
SOURCE: https://www.the-sun.com/news/16718828/lindsay-clancy-murder-trial-husband-patrick-signs-kids-strangled/
