The Lindsay Clancy case was back in court, but the mother accused of strangling her three young children to death in the basement of their Duxbury home was not.
Clancy’s appearance at Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth Friday afternoon would have to have been from the Zoom internet video conferencing service because she’s still being held without bail and on an extended six-month stay at Tewksbury Hospital, as ordered during her last hearing, which took place from the hospital, in October.
The logistics of hearings from the hospital are difficult, as the privacy of other patients there is paramount, as discussed at the October hearing, and so Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington waived her appearance in court on Friday and has already wavied her appearance for the next court date.
That new date will be Jan. 17 at 9 a.m. at the other Plymouth Superior Court location in Brockton.
Friday’s hearing had to do strictly with document sharing and timeline planning for evidence discovery.
Clancy is charged with the strangulation murder of her three children Cora Clancy, 5, and Dawson Clancy, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in the basement of their home at 47 Summer St. in Duxbury the night of Jan. 24. Right after the strangulations, attorneys say, she cut herself with a knife in front of her full-length bedroom mirror and then jumped out the window 20 feet to the ground, where her husband Patrick Clancy would find her after he returned with their takeout dinner.
Clancy remains bedridden at Tewksbury Hospital and under treatment not only for the wounds she suffered at her own hand the fateful January night, which Reddington has said left her paraplegic, but also for poor mental health.
A forensic psychologist, Dr. Karin Towers, recommended the extended hospital stay at the last hearing, having determined after examining Clancy that morning that the defendant presented with a flat affect and reported “unbearable depression and trouble getting through each day,” feelings of worthlessness and regular suicidal ideation.”
Lindsay Clancy had at the time of the children’s deaths been suffering from postpartum depression, according to Reddington. Court documents say that Clancy, who was a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, was taking medications including antidepressants, anxiety-targeting benzodiazepine drugs, and the antipsychotic drug Seroquel at least as far back as last September.
Last October, according to court documents, she wrote a note on her phone: I think I sort of resent my other children because they prevent me from treating Cal like my first baby. And I know that’s not fair to them. … I know it (rubs) off on them so we had a pretty rough evening. I want to feel love and connection with all of my kids.”
