PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) —Paramedics and police officers described a chaotic and emotional scene at a Massachusetts home in court on Thursday, detailing the moment they found three dead children in the basement.
Lindsay Clancy sits in court on July 30, 2026. (Court TV)
Lindsay Clancy, 35, does not deny that she killed her three children, but has argued through her attorney that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled the victims. Prosecutors have charged the defendant with three counts of murder in the deaths of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, arguing that the killings were not the result of insanity, but the result of a woman wanting to rid herself of her children.
Prosecutors presented police officers and paramedics inside the Plymouth courtroom on Thursday, asking each to recount their experience arriving at the Clancy home on Jan. 24, 2023.
Patrick Clancy, who has since divorced the defendant, called 911 after returning from running errands to find Lindsay Clancy on the ground outside their home. She was covered in blood and was unable to move after jumping from a second-story window of the couple’s home. As first responders arrived at the scene and began to treat Lindsay Clancy, Patrick Clancy went into the house because the defendant allegedly told him that their children were in the basement.
Duxbury police officer Stephen Hall wipes away tears as he testifies on July 30, 2026. (Court TV)
“I heard a loud scream from outside,” Duxbury police officer Stephen Hall testified. He and another officer ran into the house and down to the basement, where they found Patrick Clancy with Dawson.
“[Patrick Clancy] looked up and he screamed, ‘She killed the f—ing kids!'” Officer Brian Josephine testified on Thursday. “My first instinct was to kind of grab [Dawson’s] head and tilt it to the side, see if I can get a pulse. But, I mean, based on my training and experience from previous incidents, I knew this wasn’t going to be good…Based on my observations, I knew there wasn’t really much I could do.”
Josephine described Dawson’s face as white, with blue lips and bloodshot eyes. Callan’s and Cora’s bodies were found in another area of the basement in similar condition, he said. Cora also had dried blood around her mouth and “there was a relatively large area of blood on the floor,” Josephine told the jury.
A blue exercise band is seen near Callan Clancy’s pajamas. (Court TV)
Lindsay Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, objected to the prosecution’s “repetitious” testimony as they presented each witness with the same photos from the Clancy home showing the exercise bands used to strangle the children on the floor of the basement alongside medical debris and the children’s pajamas.
While Reddington told the jury in his opening statement that Lindsay Clancy cut herself with a knife and threw herself out of a window after killing her children in a suicide attempt, prosecutors have been trying to show that the defendant wasn’t really trying to take her own life. Josephine and Hall conceded that the cuts to Lindsay Clancy’s neck and arms, which she allegedly inflicted on herself with a knife, did not need immediate attention, were not life-threatening and had stopped bleeding profusely by the time first responders arrived.
The trial is expected to continue for the next six to eight weeks; if Lindsay Clancy is convicted of murdering her children, she faces a life sentence.
