47 Summer St, Duxbury, MA 02332
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Author: Jewls Krueger
On the evening of January 24, 2023, 32 year old Lindsay Clancy allegedly strangled her three young children with exercise bands in the basement of her family's Duxbury, Massachusetts home before jumping from a second story window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Her three children, five year old Cora, three year old Dawson, and eight month old Callan, all died.
Clancy was charged with three counts of first degree murder and pleaded not guilty. Her defense did not dispute that she killed the children, but argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was overmedicated at the time, and that she was therefore not criminally responsible for their deaths. Her long delayed murder trial got underway at Plymouth County Superior Court in late July 2026. On September 4, 2026, after the jury deadlocked, Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial. No verdict was reached, and the Plymouth County District Attorney has not yet said whether Clancy will be retried.
Lindsay Clancy and her husband Patrick Clancy lived at 47 Summer Street in Duxbury, Massachusetts, an affluent coastal town roughly 40 miles south of Boston. By January 2023, the couple were raising three young children under the age of six: their five year old daughter Cora, their three year old son Dawson, and their eight month old baby Callan.
According to court records, statements from her defense attorney, and a detailed timeline compiled by Boston.com, Lindsay Clancy began experiencing severe postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of her youngest son Callan in the spring of 2022. Those symptoms intensified in the fall and winter of 2022.
According to court records, statements from her defense attorney, and a detailed timeline compiled by Boston.com, Lindsay Clancy began experiencing severe postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of her youngest son Callan in the spring of 2022. Those symptoms intensified in the fall and winter of 2022.
On December 20, 2022, Clancy was evaluated at the Women & Infants Hospital Center for Women's Behavioral Health in Providence, Rhode Island. Psychiatrists there reportedly told her she did not meet the criteria for postpartum depression. In late December 2022, she began telling her husband that she was having suicidal thoughts and thoughts of hurting her children. On January 1, 2023, she voluntarily admitted herself to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts. She was discharged four days later, on January 5, 2023, without any indication that she was a danger to herself or others.
According to a police statement of probable cause reported on by WBUR, a family friend of the Clancys later told police that Patrick Clancy had said his wife's medications were "not working" and that she had been prescribed "too many medications" in the weeks leading up to January 24, 2023. Her defense team has said that Clancy was prescribed more than a dozen medications, including a mix of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and drugs for insomnia, between October 2022 and January 2023.
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Aaisha Alvi's A Mom Like That is a firsthand memoir from a woman who survived postpartum psychosis twice, offering the most intimate account available of the condition at the center of the Lindsay Clancy case.
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Just before 6 p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy asked her husband Patrick to leave the home on Summer Street to pick up dinner from a nearby restaurant and to stop at a CVS pharmacy. According to prosecutors, she had researched on her phone how long Patrick would be gone.
At some point during the roughly hour long window Patrick was away from home, Lindsay Clancy allegedly used exercise resistance bands to strangle all three of her children in the basement of the home. She then went upstairs and jumped from a second floor window into the backyard, in what investigators have described as an apparent suicide attempt.
When Patrick returned home a short time later, he found Lindsay seriously injured in the backyard and called 911. He then found Cora, Dawson, and Callan in the basement and began attempting CPR while 911 dispatchers listened. The recording of that 911 call was played for jurors during the trial, though the judge barred its release to the public. All three children were transported to nearby hospitals, where Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead within hours. Callan died several days later.
Lindsay Clancy was taken to a Boston hospital and was found paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the fall. She has used a wheelchair since.
On February 7, 2023, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz's office filed criminal charges against Clancy including two counts of homicide, three counts of strangulation, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Following Callan's death, the homicide charges were increased to three counts of murder. On February 8, 2023, she was arraigned remotely from her hospital bed at Massachusetts General Hospital and pleaded not guilty. Judge John A. Canavan III ordered her held without bail. She was later transferred to Tewksbury Hospital, a state operated long term care and psychiatric facility, where she has remained under 24 hour care.
Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, argued from the beginning that Clancy was in the grip of undiagnosed postpartum psychosis and was overmedicated at the time of the killings, and that she should be found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Prosecutors maintained that her actions on January 24, 2023 were deliberate, planned, and premeditated.
Clancy's trial was delayed multiple times, first from December 2025, then from February 2026. In early July 2026, days before jury selection, prosecutors dropped the three strangulation charges against her, telling reporters that the counts would be "subsumed" into the three first degree murder charges and were therefore redundant. If convicted of first degree murder, Clancy faced a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
The trial got underway at Plymouth Superior Court in Brockton in the second half of July 2026, with opening statements delivered on July 27 before Judge William Sullivan, who seated a jury of 18 including alternates. Early in the proceedings, jurors were bused to Duxbury for a rare on site visit to the home on Summer Street. In groups of six, they viewed the interior, including the basement where the children died and the yard where Clancy was found, and were driven past the restaurant and pharmacy her husband had left to visit on the night of the killings.
Under Massachusetts law, the central question was not whether Clancy killed her children, which the defense did not dispute, but whether her mental state was so compromised that she could not be held criminally responsible. Prosecutors maintained that the killings were deliberate and premeditated, and that Clancy sent her husband out on errands to give herself time alone in the house. The defense argued that she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis and was overmedicated, and that she should be found not criminally responsible.
The trial stretched over roughly five weeks and included dozens of witnesses. Clancy, who attended the proceedings in a wheelchair accompanied by two nurses, did not testify. She became emotional several times, and at one point, as a medical examiner detailed the injuries to the children, she sobbed so loudly that Judge Sullivan temporarily halted the trial. Defense mental health experts testified that Clancy was experiencing postpartum psychosis and had reported hearing a male voice commanding her to kill her children and herself. Prosecution experts testified that she was depressed but not psychotic, and questioned the account of a voice heard on only one occasion. In her closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told the jury that Clancy knew what she did was wrong and urged them to convict, while the defense argued that prosecutors had not proven she was in her right mind when the children were killed.
The jury of 12, made up of nine women and three men, began deliberating in late August 2026. Over the following days the panel repeatedly told the court it could not agree. On September 2, Judge Sullivan issued what are known as Tuey-Rodriguez instructions, urging the jurors to keep working toward a verdict. By later in the week, the foreperson had sent notes indicating that a single juror was preventing a unanimous decision. According to reporting from the courtroom, the split was 11 to 1, with the majority favoring a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible and one juror holding out.
On the morning of September 4, 2026, after about 38 hours of deliberations over seven days, the jury reported it was hopelessly deadlocked, writing that it was unable to reach a unanimous decision and would not be able to. Judge Sullivan moved to declare a mistrial. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington objected and was given one hour to file a last minute emergency appeal to a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, arguing that the holdout juror should be removed or questioned further. The court denied the request. Reddington had also asked the judge to poll the jury on a lesser charge before ending the trial, which the judge declined. Sullivan then formally declared a mistrial and thanked the jury for its work.
Because the trial ended without a verdict, no conviction was entered. It is now up to Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz to decide whether to retry the case, and his office has said it could pursue lesser charges in any new trial. Speaking outside the courthouse, Cruz said no decision would be made that day but would come soon, defended the first degree murder charges as warranted, and kept his focus on the three children. He also said the two prosecutors who tried the case had been doxxed and harassed online during the proceedings. Reddington urged the prosecution not to pursue a second trial, pointing to the 11 to 1 split, and signaled that the defense may raise constitutional challenges if the case moves forward.
The case drew international attention to postpartum mental health. During the final weeks of testimony, hundreds of supporters, many of them women, rallied at the Plymouth courthouse, arguing that the medical system had failed Clancy. Clancy, now 36, was returned to Tewksbury State Hospital, where she has remained in custody under psychiatric care for more than three years. She and her former husband, Patrick Clancy, have filed separate medical malpractice suits against some of her health care providers.
This case is developing, and this page will be updated as the district attorney announces whether Clancy will face a retrial.
The former Clancy family home is located at 47 Summer Street in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a coastal residential town roughly 40 miles south of Boston. Patrick Clancy sold the home in 2024. The property is now owned by an unrelated buyer.
The home is a private residence and remains the subject of an active, ongoing criminal case. Out of respect for the surviving members of the Clancy family and for the current owners of the home, please refrain from any attempt to visit, photograph, or approach the property. Stay on public roads and sidewalks at all times and do not attempt to contact any current or former residents.
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