The anguished husband of the Boston nurse who strangled their three children in a fit of postpartum depression has opened up about what led up to the life-altering tragedy, insisting he did not “marry a monster” before the horrifying murders.
Patrick Clancy, 33, the father of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, had left their Duxbury, Mass., home on Jan. 24, 2023, to pick up medicine for one of the children and dinner for the family, he told The New Yorker in an interview published Monday.
His wife, Lindsay Clancy, had been battling anxiety and insomnia brought on by her pregnancy with Callan since mid-November, but things appeared to be shifting back to normal in the family home.
Lindsay had sought help from several postpartum-mental-health specialists, but Patrick said, to his knowledge, she never received more than a severe diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.
Just weeks before the tragedy, Lindsay was brought to the hospital on New Year’s Eve after telling her husband she was having “thoughts of wanting to die,” feeling “numb,” and confessed to having “intrusive thoughts” of harming them.
She was admitted into an inpatient program at McLean Hospital, just outside Boston, the following morning — but days after arriving, she texted Patrick, “I don’t belong here.”
Five days after being admitted, she denied having any more intrusive thoughts and was discharged with a prescription for an anti-depressant.
Two days after being discharged, they hosted 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 getting better, noting that she had been sleeping better and her mood was noticeably improving.
“I think it gave her hope, too,” he told the outlet.
On the morning of Jan. 24, 2024, Patrick said he woke up to Lindsay and asked her the same questions he had been since she was dealing with her mental health struggles.
“How are you feeling? How did you sleep?” He recalled asking her, to which Lindsay replied she was feeling “good” and slept “pretty well.”
Patrick, who had had a busy day of 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 come “back to reality” after weeks of improving.
But tragedy struck that evening, after Lindsay asked him to pick up medicine for Cora and dinner, he was at CVS when he suddenly got the feeling something was wrong.
Patrick said he called Lindsay to confirm the brand of medicine, but she didn’t pick up.
Minutes later, she called him back, instructing him to pick up Pedia-Lax for Cora — but she seemed distracted by something in the 14-second call.
When he returned home around 6 p.m., the house was quiet.
Patrick ran up to the master bedroom to find 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 to find Lindsay barely conscious on the ground, having jumped out their home’s second-story window in a suicide attempt.
“What did you do?” he asked her, to which she replied, “I tried to kill myself.”
He then asked where their children were, and she said, “In the basement.”
Already on the phone with 911, that’s where he found Cora, Dawson, and Callan with exercise bands still around their necks after Lindsay had allegedly killed them before trying to take her own life.
When the paramedics arrived, he could be heard crying out from the basement, “She killed the kids!”
Despite his best efforts to save them, Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead at the scene, and Callan died later in the hospital.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Patrick was staying with back his parents after burying his children, and days before Lindsay’s arraignment, he received a phone call from her.
“She did not sound like my wife,” Patrick told the New Yorker of the exchange, noting she sounded panicked and told him a voice commanded her to kill their children. After a minute on the phone, he ended the call.
Six months after the killings, Patrick called Lindsay on her 33rd birthday at her father’s suggestion, who told him that she was in “tough shape and going downhill.”
During their call, she told him that “every day was the worst day of her life” and that “She misses her kids,” Patrick recalled.
“I know [it] sounds crazy to some people. But that’s the reality,” he explained.
They’ve spoken more regularly since he said.
Patrick eventually asked 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 out?’” he recounted to the New Yorker.
“She said, ‘No, it just was like, a snap of the fingers.’”
He said he asked Lindsay why she looked up how long it would take him to pick up dinner, to which she replied she was concerned about him getting stuck in traffic.
“Then I said, ‘Did you Google Ways to kill?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, for myself, because I was suicidal for two months.’”
Patrick has made only a few public statements since the tragedy.
Days after the killing, 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 kids and raised over $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 misinformation” that have swirled due to the interest around her upcoming murder trial.
“I wasn’t married to a monster — I was married to someone who got sick,” he told the outlet.
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 defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has indicated he plans an insanity defense.
The prosecution, however, believes that since Lindsay was evaluated by mental health professionals before and was told she did not have post-partum depression and researched ways to kill on her cell phone leading up to the murders, it could prove it was premeditated.
A date for her trial has not yet been set.
