Mass. Mom Lindsay Clancy Was 'Mom Everyone Wanted to Be.' Now She's Accused of Killing Her 3 Kids 

Lindsay Clancy "was the epitome of a mother," says her attorney, who argues that being overmedicated with powerful medications caused her to have a psychotic break

Photo: Facebook

Lindsay Clancy was the kind of mom who paid attention to every little detail when it came to her children.

For Christmas, she dressed her daughter Cora, and her middle son, Dawson, in matching red plaid shirts, adorning Cora's hair with a festive bow and accenting Dawson's look with a little gray bowtie.

On the first day of school last September, Lindsay, 32, made sure Cora, 5, and Dawson, 3, had new backpacks and everything they needed for kindergarten and preschool.

She proudly posted online a picture from the first day of school, showing the beaming siblings with their dad, Patrick, 34, and 7-month-old little brother Callan, on the front steps of their Duxbury, Mass., home, just 30 minutes south of Boston.

Lindsay Clancy. Lindsay Marie Clancy Facebook

A longtime labor and delivery nurse, Lindsay kept in shape by pushing Dawson in his stroller, with Cora peddling next to her on her red tricycle that perfectly matched the color of her tiny bike helmet.

"She was always working out and going everywhere with her kids," says Michelle Connor, 32, who was on the cheerleading team with Lindsay at Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn., and kept up with her on Facebook.

"She was that mom that you always wanted to be," Connor says.

Now the woman who took so much pride in being a good mom has been accused of killing her three kids during what her lawyer says was a psychotic break. After allegedly killing her children, Lindsay allegedly slit her wrists and neck, then leapt from her second-story bedroom window in an attempt at suicide, prosecutors say.

Hospitalized and paralyzed from the waist down from her fall, Lindsay faces a slew of charges including two counts of murder and three counts of strangulation in connection with the deaths of her three children.

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She has not yet been charged with murder in Callan's death. She pleaded not guilty to all the charges from her hospital bed during her virtual Feb. 7 arraignment.

Psychosis or Premeditated Murder?

On Jan. 24, Patrick came home to find Lindsay lying in the backyard after her alleged suicide attempt.

While he was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, he asked her where the kids were. She replied, "In the basement."

To his horror, he found all three children lying face-down on the floor with exercise bands tied around their necks, according to the probable cause affidavit.

"He frantically removed the bands from around their necks and begged them to breathe," Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said during Lindsay's arraignment.

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Plymouth County prosecutors say the killings were premeditated and that Lindsay waited until Patrick was out of the house running errands she had asked him to complete to allegedly murder the children.

"She planned these murders, gave herself the time and privacy needed to commit the murders, and then she strangled each child in the place where they should have felt the safest — at home with their mom," Sprague said during the arraignment. "She did so with deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity and cruelty."

But Lindsay's defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, says this tragic situation "is a product of mental illness."

Lindsay, he said in court, was being treated for anxiety and postpartum illness following Callan's birth last May with up to 13 psychiatric medications that may have caused her to have suicidal and homicidal thoughts and suffer a psychotic break.

Lindsay was prescribed "some pretty heavy medications," he told PEOPLE. "It was a toxic soup."

While Lindsay has been the subject of harsh criticism on social media, others, including Connor, know that women often struggle after giving birth.

"You have this new baby," she says, "and you're supposed to be happy you have a baby. And it's not always like that."

What concerns her, she says, is that Lindsay repeatedly asked for help.

"You have someone who's educated in science, and a nurse and knows what to look for, and she's asking for help and getting help, but what didn't happen?" she says. "What help did she not get that she should have had? It's scary."

Lawyer Says Lindsay Was 'Overmedicated'

After giving birth to Callan, Lindsay sought help from doctors because she was feeling anxious and depressed.

She saw a doctor who prescribed an antidepressant and other drugs, says Reddington. That caused her to have an adverse reaction, she wrote in a social media post last fall.

"She kept complaining about how she was feeling," says Reddington.

Between October and January, he says, she was prescribed more drugs, including sedatives, sleep aids, mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety pills in various combinations, he says.

Calling Lindsay "overmedicated," Reddington said that during the time that she was being prescribed these medications, "They both would go back to the doctor, and then they would tell her to get off the [medicine] and start up on something else," he says.

"They didn't even get her to wean off of it before starting her on something else," he says. "If that didn't work, they'd change it.

"It went like that into January."

On Jan. 1, Lindsay checked herself into McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, and was released five days later after being taken off some of the drugs and put on others, he says.

When she got out, she still felt unwell, and kept going back to doctors to let them know that, Reddington says.

Lindsay's next court date is scheduled for May 2.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text "STRENGTH" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.

Updated by Christine Pelisek

and Wendy Grossman Kantor