Before killing her kids, Lindsay Clancy searched about hallucinations, psychosis and ways to die

The trial of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy has turned to her search history about mental health concerns and medication side effects in the weeks before she strangled her three children in January 2023 (AP) — Lindsay Clancy searched online about hallucinations, psychosis and the side effects of several drugs she was prescribed in the weeks before she strangled her three young children in January 2023, according to an analysis of her phone data presented at Thursday’s murder trial in Massachusetts. Clancy looked up suicide methods, bipolar disorder and insomnia at the end of December 2022 and, in January, went in search of information on postpartum depression.

She also wrote a detailed note in October 2022 expressing doubts about her parenting choices, second-guessing her decision to stop breastfeeding her 8-month-old, and reconsidering plans for a fourth child. The defense says she was in the grip of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, a rare condition that can alter a woman’s sense of reality after childbirth. A forensic psychiatrist diagnosed Clancy with those conditions following the killings.

In her note, the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse seemed most concerned with not being able to give her youngest child the same attention as her first two, ages 3 and 5. “I’m terrified of something happening to my kids or doing something wrong to mess up their development,” Clancy’s note read. “Our generation is inundated with information about every aspect of parenting.

For the last five years, I’ve just filled my mind with all things parenting and it’s just unhealthy.” ___ EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

___ Clancy has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy. Their father found the children in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, south of Boston. Their mother was lying in the yard after jumping out a second-story window, and remains paralyzed from the waist down.

Text messages with her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, show them juggling the routines of parenthood. Massachusetts State Police cellphone forensics expert Tim Chiappini read aloud texts between them from the day of the killings. They checked in on each other and Lindsay Clancy expressed relief that one of their children’s kidneys were OK.