Prosecutors want a judge to let jurors hear Patrick Clancy’s 911 call at Lindsay Clancy’s July murder trial, arguing the recording helps show the killings of the couple’s three children were deliberate and marked by extreme atrocity and cruelty.
The Commonwealth says the call matters because Patrick Clancy was on the line when he found Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months old, in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. He cried, “She killed the kids!” as first responders were coming to the scene, and prosecutors say each child had an exercise band around the neck when he found them, with the bands lying next to the children by the time responders reached the basement. They argue that short gap suggests Lindsay Clancy manually pulled the bands around each child’s neck until they died.
Clancy, 35, does not deny killing her three children. Her lawyers have said she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled them before throwing herself from a second-story window, and they plan to ask a jury to find her not guilty by reason of insanity. That defense is now at the center of the fight over evidence: prosecutors are trying to use the 911 call and a jury view of three locations, including the Duxbury house, to bolster their claim about what happened in the home and how it happened.
The filings come as the case moves toward a murder trial scheduled for July, and they sharpen the legal question that will shape it: whether the jury will hear the call that captured the immediate aftermath, and whether it will be allowed to see the places prosecutors say help explain the deaths. A judge is expected to decide whether the call and the proposed site visits will be admitted at trial.
