PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — Attorneys in Massachusetts are fighting to seat a jury to hear the case of a woman accused of murdering her three young children — a case that will likely stay with the attorneys and the jurors long after the verdict.
Lindsay Clancy appears in court on July 20, 2026. (Gregory Derr, The Patriot Ledger)
Lindsay Clancy, 35, has admitted in court documents that she strangled her three young children to death. She has pleaded not guilty to their murders, arguing that at the time of their deaths she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and had no control over her behavior.
Clancy admitted to using exercise bands to kill Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, before throwing herself out of a second-story window at the family’s home in Duxbury. In a civil lawsuit Clancy filed against her doctors at the time, Clancy said that she was hearing a “loud, demanding, repetitious voice” that kept ordering her to kill her children.
Her story echoes those of two other high-profile cases that saw mothers charged with killing their children: Andrea Yates and Sheryl Massip.
When Sheryl Massip was charged with the murder of her 6-week-old son in 1987, the postpartum psychosis defense was new. Massip was accused of killing her young son by first throwing him in the street in front of an oncoming car and then returning home, bludgeoning the child, and then intentionally driving over his head with the family car. After placing her son’s body in a trash can, Massip told her husband that their son had been kidnapped at gunpoint by a Black woman wearing a wig.
“My first thought was that she should rot in Hell,” Massip’s attorney, Milton Grimes, said of his first response to learning the facts of the case. When Massip’s family approached him, he was skeptical of what he was hearing. But as he left the jail that evening after meeting Massip for the first time, he thought, “She’s not a criminal. She needs help. She’s not a criminal. I’ve met enough criminals now to kind of have an instinct.”
Andrea Yates stands with her attorney, George Parnham, as the verdict is read on July 26, 2006. (AP Photo/Brett Coomer, Pool, file)
On June 20, 2011, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub; she confessed to killing them, saying that she did it to save them from Satan and her own evil influences — part of delusions caused by postpartum psychosis, according to her attorney, George Parnham.
“Andrea had no pupils; her eyes were absolutely black,” Parnham told Court TV as he recounted the experience of sitting next to the defendant in court. “I remember so well that whole situation,” he said. “She tried to scratch ‘666’ on the top of her head. She literally had a bald spot.”
The details of Massip’s crime mirror Clancy’s case in some ways: In the days before Massip killed her son, she had gone to her doctor complaining of postpartum symptoms and had been prescribed a new drug. Likewise, Clancy had gone to multiple doctors seeking help for her symptoms and had been prescribed a long list of medications by the time of her children’s deaths, including Ambien, Ativan, Benadryl, Remeron and Seroquel. Clancy said in her suit that it was when she began taking Seroquel that her mental health took “a dramatic turn for the worse.”
Grimes said that in both cases, the women may not have appeared as troubled to their families as they truly were. “From my experience, people don’t want to look insane,” he said.
Prosecutors have focused on Clancy’s behavior in the hours before she allegedly killed her children as evidence that she was sane and plotted the deaths; they say she intentionally sent her husband out to run errands so that she would have time to carry out her plan. Parnham sighed upon hearing the details. “It’s the same situation,” he said. Yates had made sure her husband was out of the house when she killed her kids. “Just because the mother waits for the husband or father to leave doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not in a psychotic break.” Parnham emphasized that in the grip of psychosis, Yates and Clancy believed they knew what was best for their children, “and she knew that her husband would try to stop her from doing what she knew would be best.”
Despite the expert testimony in both Yates’ and Massip’s cases, juries convicted both women of murdering their children. In Yates’ case, she won a new trial after a psychiatrist for the prosecution offered false testimony — and a second jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity.
Sheryl Massip is seen during her trial, with her attorney, Milton Grimes, behind her. (Orange County Register)
While waiting for the jury’s verdict in Massip, the judge remarked, “What’s taking so long to find this woman bonkers?” The jury came back with a conviction — which the judge overturned, reducing it to manslaughter and then finding her insane. “It was the biggest moment of the 200-300 trials I’ve had in my career,” Grimes said.
At a pretrial hearing one week before jury selection, Clancy’s attorney told the judge that in his “decades of trying cases, this is probably the most emotionally disturbing and challenging.” Both Grimes and Parnham agreed. Both attorneys, who are still in contact with their clients, became emotional when discussing their experience in court.
After delivering his closing arguments, Grimes said he fled from the courtroom. “I knew I had to find a hidden corner. I was able to cut around a corner and around a hidden space near the staircase, and the water just came down.” He said that Massip’s father then came up behind him, put his arms around him and said, “You did everything you could. I never thought I could find anybody to help my baby like that.”
Today, Yates remains in custody at Kerrville State Hospital in Texas. She frequently waives her annual rights to seek release, choosing instead to stay in treatment. Parnham said that Yates frequently talks to him and occasionally visits him on day trips.
Massip was not committed to a state institution but was instead ordered to undergo outpatient treatment. She remarried and had another child and is now a grandmother; Grimes says she babysits her grandchild and is healthy. Despite that, Massip is still deemed insane after a jury denied her petition for restoration to sanity in 2010. Functionally, Grimes explained, that means she needs permission to leave the state and needs to continue her outpatient treatment.
