PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — Prosecutors say text messages and internet searches prove a Massachusetts mother purposefully murdered her children, but her defense says they prove exactly the opposite.
Lindsay Clancy, 36, is charged with murder in the deaths of her three young children. Her attorney has conceded that the defendant strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, with exercise bands in the family’s home, but said that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time and is not criminally responsible for her actions.
Lindsay Clancy sits in court on Aug. 13, 2026. (Josh Reynolds/AP/Pool)
Prosecutors began presenting digital evidence in the case on Thursday, as Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Kyle Pavao testified about a visit to a website called “suicide methods” on Aug. 23, 2022. Pavao said a Microsoft Surface Pro in the Clancy home was used at 9:40 a.m. that day and navigated to the suicide website after first searching for singer Tom Hall, who took his own life in 2021.
“That’s it?” Lindsay Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked. “That’s your testimony? That’s why you’re here today? To talk about a search that was involving Tom Hall?”
Reddington had Pavao confirm to the jury that the Surface Pro device belonged to the defendant’s husband, Patrick Clancy, and that the defendant herself had been at a doctor’s appointment for her son, Dawson, when the search was performed at the couple’s home.
Trooper Timothy Chiappini, who analyzed the extraction from the defendant’s cellphone, testified for the prosecution that Lindsay Clancy had searched “can you treat a sociopath” three days before her children were killed. Prosecutors had Chiappini read from a journal Lindsay Clancy kept on her phone, created on Oct. 25, 2022, and modified on Nov. 3. “I’m sad and depressed,” the note read. “I’m sad that I stopped breastfeeding. I feel not as connected with Cal now. 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 that. I was feeling so depressed last evening when Cora and Dawson came home from school…I want to feel love and connection with all my kids. I’m also probably having a bit of an internal conflict because my whole life I’ve wanted to have a lot of kids.” A second note, created on Dec. 22 and modified on Jan. 23, the day before the children were killed, said, “Medication stole my motherhood and my life…prescription medication stole me from my own body.”
Before the Clancy children were killed, Lindsay Clancy had sent her husband to pick up dinner from a restaurant and stop at CVS. Prosecutors pointed to a search on Apple Maps plotting the distance and time from the Clancy home to the two locations as evidence of the defendant’s clear thinking and intent to kill her children.
Reddington walked Chiappini through other records from Jan. 24, including a photo Lindsay Clancy took of Cora and Dawson with the snowman they made that day, and Patrick Clancy’s response, “You’re a good mama.” Reddington also noted several searches that prosecutors had failed to highlight from Lindsay Clancy’s device, including a search for “hallucinations” on Jan. 19 and “intrusive” on Jan. 20. Between searches for medications and psychological symptoms, the defendant appeared to search for more mundane terms, like “premade goodie bags” on Dec. 31 and “best kids movies.”
Court will be dark on Friday; testimony resumes Monday morning.
