Murder trial of Lindsay Clancy begins in Massachusetts

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who admits to killing her three young children, began on Monday, July 27, 2026, with prosecutors describing the act as a calculated plan and the defense arguing she was legally insane due to severe postpartum psychosis.

Clancy, 35, faces three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, in the family's Duxbury home on January 24, 2023. Authorities say she strangled each child with exercise bands in the basement before cutting herself with a knife and jumping from a second-story window in a failed suicide attempt that left her paralyzed. She appeared in Plymouth County Superior Court in a wheelchair.

In opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham told jurors that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, acted intentionally and with premeditation. Buckingham said Clancy sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out to pick up a food order after using her phone to calculate his return time. She alleged Clancy separated the children in the basement and strangled them to accomplish what she called a "very specific goal to kill." Buckingham...