Testimony in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial was the most harrowing yet Thursday with nine first responders recalling the horrifying moment they discovered her three strangled kids — a scene that brought one veteran cop to tears on the stand.
Police Officer Stephen Hall told jurors gut-wrenching details about the condition of the children when he arrived at Clancy’s Duxbury, Mass., home and how he heard husband Patrick Clancy screaming, “I can’t wake them up!’
During the difficult testimony, Hall — a 43-year-old with 11 years on the force — paused, drawing deep, slow breaths and took off his glasses so he could wipe both of his eyes with his hand. When he resumed answering questions, his voice broke and he wiped under his left eye with one of his fingers.
Hall said he “heard a scream from inside” the house and went to the basement with his partner, Officer Brian Josephine, to find Patrick frantically coming to terms with the heartbreaking situation.
Patrick said, “I can’t wake them up!” Hall recounted hearing before he saw Clancy’s middle child, Dawson, 3, lying lifeless on the floor.
“He was discolored, like a blueish, purple,” Hall told the jury in a Plymouth courtroom.
Hall and Josephine rushed Dawson outside to an ambulance so paramedics could try to revive him, before the partners hurried inside to find Cora, 5, and 8-month-old Callan “motionless” on the floor, Hall told the jury.
“She killed the f–king kids!” Josephine recalled hearing Patrick yell.
Clancy, a 35-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, is on trial for allegedly strangling the children with exercise bands on the evening of Jan. 24, 2023. She also downed medication, slashed her wrists and neck and threw herself out of her second-story bedroom window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed.
Clancy’s lawyer will ask the jury to find her not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming she was in the throes of severe postpartum psychosis partly caused by a cocktail of drugs prescribed by her doctors.
Josephine described in graphic detail for the jury the state he found the kids in, including that they had gray skin, blue lips, bloodshot eyes and marks on their necks from where the elastic bands had strangled them.
When Josephine approached Dawson, he “knew it wasn’t going to be good.”
He checked for a pulse on the 3-year-old boy’s neck and saw “some red marks” there, Josephine recalled.
After Josephine brought Dawson to the ambulance, he returned to give the 5-year-old daughter CPR and it “felt like forever” as she was the last of the kids to be brought up to the ambulances.
When Josephine and Hall went up to the kitchen after, Patrick was there “frantic” and “in shock,” Josephine said. He was “still screaming and losing himself,” the cop told the jury.
In all, prosecutors called nine first responders Thursday who testified about the horror they discovered when they were called to the home just after 6 p.m.
Clancy was laying on her back “moaning” in their backyard, coming “in and out of consciousness” with bloodied cuts on her wrists and neck, Hall and other witnesses told the jury.
Meanwhile, Patrick, paramedics, firefighters and police tried — in vain — to revive his kids before they were brought to the hospital where they were declared dead, according to testimony.
Duxbury Fire Department Capt. PJ Hussey said “it turned very chaotic very quickly,” noting he had to call for additional ambulances since there were four people who needed medical attention.
And paramedic Jennifer Stratton told the jury when she worked on the baby, he was wearing a onesie pajama and had “deep strangulation marks around the entire circumference of his neck.”
After failed efforts to bring back the boy’s pulse or get him breathing again, Stratton said, “I scooped him up in my arms and carried him to the truck.”
Clancy cried during the opening day of trial Monday and sobbed Wednesday as a 911 call was played in court that Patrick made when he found the kids with the bands around their necks.
Prosecutors Wednesday also showed the jury the pajamas the children were wearing at the time and the exercise bands Clancy used to kill them.
Clancy, who comes to court in a wheelchair since she is paraplegic, appeared solemn Thursday with her hands clasped together on the defense table and her head bowed.
Clancy and Patrick — who has since remarried — have both filed lawsuits against her doctors claiming they failed to properly diagnose her and overprescribed her powerful prescription drugs.
Patrick testified that from September 2022, when Clancy’s postpartum depression first set in, to the time of the murders, she had seen five different doctors who prescribed her 15 medications. Clancy was taking six drugs at the time of the killings.
She’d also been hospitalized twice for suicidal thoughts during that same time period.
Trial is set to continue Friday morning, with the jury expected to be escorted to the home — that is now owned by a lawyer — where the slayings occurred.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
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