The anguished husband of the Boston nurse who strangled their three youngsters in a match of postpartum melancholy has opened up about what led as much as the life-altering tragedy, insisting he didn’t “marry a monster” earlier than the horrifying murders.
Patrick Clancy, 33, the daddy of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, had left their Duxbury, Mass., residence on Jan. 24, 2023, to choose up medication for one of many youngsters and dinner for the household, he informed The New Yorker in an interview printed Monday.
His spouse, Lindsay Clancy, had been battling anxiousness and insomnia introduced on by her being pregnant with Callan since mid-November, however issues seemed to be shifting again to regular within the household residence.
Lindsay had sought assist from a number of postpartum-mental-health specialists, however Patrick stated, to his data, she by no means obtained greater than a extreme prognosis of generalized anxiousness dysfunction.
Simply weeks earlier than the tragedy, Lindsay was delivered to the hospital on New Yr’s Eve after telling her husband she was having “ideas of desirous to die,” feeling “numb,” and confessed to having “intrusive ideas” of harming them.
She was admitted into an inpatient program at McLean Hospital, simply exterior Boston, the next morning — however days after arriving, she texted Patrick, “I don’t belong right here.”
5 days after being admitted, she denied having any extra intrusive ideas and was discharged with a prescription for an anti-depressant.
Two days after being discharged, they hosted a celebration at a trampoline park for his or her daughter Cora’s fifth birthday. Patrick famous that Lindsay’s temper in the course of the social gathering gave him “hope” that issues had been getting higher, noting that she had been sleeping higher and her temper was noticeably enhancing.
“I believe it gave her hope, too,” he informed the outlet.
On the morning of Jan. 24, 2024, Patrick stated he woke as much as Lindsay and requested her the identical questions he had been since she was coping with her psychological well being struggles.
“How are you feeling? How did you sleep?” He recalled asking her, to which Lindsay replied she was feeling “good” and slept “fairly nicely.”
Patrick, who had had a busy day of labor, left Lindsay in command of their youngsters and even allowed her to take their daughter Cora to the physician with a abdomen ache.
He hoped the go to would assist his spouse come “again to actuality” after weeks of enhancing.
However tragedy struck that night, after Lindsay requested him to choose up medication for Cora and dinner, he was at CVS when he all of the sudden bought the sensation one thing was mistaken.
Patrick stated he known as Lindsay to verify the model of drugs, however she didn’t choose up.
Minutes later, she known as him again, instructing him to choose up Pedia-Lax for Cora — however she appeared distracted by one thing within the 14-second name.
When he returned residence round 6 p.m., the home was quiet.
Patrick ran as much as the main bedroom to search out the door was locked and needed to pressure his manner inside, the place he discovered the window open, blood splattered on the ground, and a bloody knife on the nightstand, he informed the outlet.
He then ran exterior to search out Lindsay barely aware on the bottom, having jumped out their residence’s second-story window in a suicide try.
“What did you do?” he requested her, to which she replied, “I attempted to kill myself.”
He then requested the place their youngsters had been, and she or he stated, “Within the basement.”
Already on the telephone with 911, that’s the place he discovered Cora, Dawson, and Callan with train bands nonetheless round their necks after Lindsay had allegedly killed them earlier than making an attempt to take her personal life.
When the paramedics arrived, he could possibly be heard crying out from the basement, “She killed the youngsters!”
Regardless of his greatest efforts to avoid wasting them, Cora and Dawson had been pronounced useless on the scene, and Callan died later within the hospital.
Within the aftermath of the tragedy, Patrick was staying with again his mother and father after burying his youngsters, and days earlier than Lindsay’s arraignment, he obtained a telephone name from her.
“She didn’t sound like my spouse,” Patrick informed the New Yorker of the alternate, noting she sounded panicked and informed him a voice commanded her to kill their youngsters. After a minute on the telephone, he ended the decision.
Six months after the killings, Patrick known as Lindsay on her thirty third birthday at her father’s suggestion, who informed him that she was in “robust form and going downhill.”
Throughout their name, she informed him that “daily was the worst day of her life” and that “She misses her children,” Patrick recalled.
“I do know [it] sounds loopy to some folks. However that’s the fact,” he defined.
They’ve spoken extra usually since he stated.
Patrick finally requested her a number of questions on what occurred that day.
“I believe one of many first issues I requested was, ‘Did you propose this? Is that why you despatched me out?’” he recounted to the New Yorker.
“She stated, ‘No, it simply was like, a snap of the fingers.’”
He stated he requested Lindsay why she regarded up how lengthy it will take him to choose up dinner, to which she replied she was involved about him getting caught in visitors.
“Then I stated, ‘Did you Google Methods to kill?’ And he or she stated, ‘Yeah, for myself, as a result of I used to be suicidal for 2 months.’”
Patrick has made only some public statements for the reason that tragedy.
Days after the killing, he requested folks to “discover it deep inside” themselves to forgive her, as he had accomplished.
In April, Clancy ran the Boston Marathon to honor his children and raised over $73,000 for the hospital the place his youngest, Callan, was handled earlier than her dying.
Patrick stated he selected to talk with the New Yorker to cease “lies and misinformation” which have swirled as a result of curiosity round her upcoming homicide trial.
“I wasn’t married to a monster — I used to be married to somebody who bought sick,” he informed the outlet.
Lindsay has pleaded not responsible to 2 counts of homicide, three counts of strangulation, and three counts of assault and battery with a harmful weapon.
Her protection lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has indicated he plans an madness protection.
The prosecution, nonetheless, believes that since Lindsay was evaluated by psychological well being professionals earlier than and was informed she didn’t have post-partum melancholy and researched methods to kill on her mobile phone main as much as the murders, it might show it was premeditated.
A date for her trial has not but been set.
