Patrick Clancy, 33, said in a new interview that he was at the pharmacy on January 24, 2023, picking up medicine for one of the children, when he suddenly got the feeling something was wrong at home.
Talking with the New Yorker in a piece published Monday, Patrick talked about how his wife Lindsay Clancy, 33, had been suffering from anxiety and insomnia since mid-November following her third pregnancy. He and Lindsay shared three children: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months.
On New Year’s Eve, Patrick detailed taking his wife to the hospital after she opened up about “thoughts of wanting to die,” feeling “numb,” and having “intrusive thoughts” about harming their children. Lindsay spent the next few days at an inpatient program, but texted her husband, “I don’t belong here.”
Five days after she was admitted, Lindsay joined Patrick and the kids for a birthday party for Cora’s fifth birthday celebration at a trampoline park. He told the outlet that her mood that day gave them both “hope” that things were improving. She had been on leave as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Hearteningly, Patrick said that he began feeling things were slowly coming back to normal for Lindsay and the family, adding that her sleep was better and her overall mood seemed to be improving.
In agreeing to the interview, Patrick said he hopes to stop “lies and misinformation” that have been spread ahead of Lindsay’s upcoming murder trial.
“I wasn’t married to a monster,” he told the New Yorker. “I was married to someone who got sick.”
January 24, 2024. On that day, Patrick said he woke up asking Lindsay the same things he’d been asking her every morning. “How are you feeling? How did you sleep?” That morning, her responses were that she felt “good” and slept “pretty well.”
He shared that he’d felt comfortable enough with how things had been going to leave his wife home alone with the kids while he went to work, and even take Cora to the doctor with a stomach ache on her own.
Lindsay asked him to pick up some medicine for their daughter, as well as dinner for the family. Patrick said that he felt suddenly that something was wrong while at the pharmacy.
When he attempted to call his wife for the brand of medicine, he said she didn’t answer, but called him back. He recalled thinking she sounded distracted in that 14-second phone call. By the time he made his way home around 6 p.m. that night, the house was quiet.
Patrick said he ran upstairs and forced his way into the master bedroom, where he found blood on the floor, the window open and a blood-covered knife on the nightstand. Lindsay was outside on the ground, beneath the second-story window.
“What did you do?” Patrick said he asked his wife, to which she replied, “I tried to kill myself.” When he asked about the children, she said they were “in the basement.”
He said he was already on the phone with 911 when he found their children in the basement with exercise bands around their necks. Responding paramedics reported being able to hear him crying out from the basement, “She killed the kids!” per the New York Post.
Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead at the scene, despite Patrick’s attempts to save all three of his children. Callan was alive in the basement, but succumbed to his injuries later in the hospital.
Patrick told the New Yorker that his first communication with Lindsay came days before her arraignment. “She did not sound like my wife,” he said of the exchange, adding that she sounded panicked and claimed a voice had told her to kill their children. Patrick said he hung up after about a minute.
Six months later, Lindsay’s father told him that she was in “tough shape and going downhill,” urging him to call her on her 33rd birthday.
During this call, Patrick recalls his wife saying that “every day was the worst day of her life” and “she misses her kids.” “I know [it] sounds crazy to some people, but that’s the reality,” he told the outlet.
He said that he’s since begun speaking to her more regularly, and started asking questions about that day.
“I think one of the first things I asked was, ‘Did you plan this? Is that why you sent me out?'” he shared. “She said, ‘No, it was just like a snap of the fingers.'”
He then asked why she looked up how long it would take him to pick up dinner. She told him she was concerned about him getting stuck in traffic.
“Then I said, ‘Did you Google ways to kill?'” he recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, for myself, because I was suicidal for two months.”
Lindsay’s defense attorney is reportedly planning an insanity defense. The prosecution is countering that since she was evaluated by mental health professionals prior to the killings and was told she did not have post-partum depression — as well as her allegedly researching ways to kill — they believe they can prove it was premeditated.
Lindsay Clancy has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation, three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. A trial date has not yet been set.
