Prosecution: A woman planned the murder of her 3 children

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — A Massachusetts woman used exercise bands to strangle her three children in the family home in a well-planned assault while her husband was away for about 20 minutes to get medicine from a pharmacy and take-out food , said a prosecutor during his arraignment on Tuesday.

Pleas of not guilty have been entered in the name of Lindsay Clancy, 32, for charges including two counts of murder, three counts of strangulation and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Clancy, with a surgical mask over her face, was rushed to Plymouth District Court from a distance from hospital, where she is recovering from spinal injuries sustained when she jumped out of the window of the house. She will probably never walk again, her lawyer said.

Judge John Canavan III did not set monetary bail or send her to jail, but ordered that she remain in hospital until she was well enough to be transferred to a rehabilitation center .

She did not speak except to say “Yes, your honor” when the judge asked if she could hear the proceedings.

The prosecution and defense have painted starkly divergent pictures of Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, in the weeks and days leading up to the alleged assault of her children at the family home of Duxbury.

The children were found by their father with the exercise bands still around their necks. Cora, 5, and Dawson, 3, were pronounced dead in hospital. Seven-month-old Callan was also taken to hospital where doctors restored his pulse but could not restore brain activity. He died days later, prosecutors said.

The deaths shocked the coastal town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Boston.

The prosecution said Clancy behaved and appeared normal to everyone she interacted with, including her mother and husband.

On the day of the murder, she asked her husband if he wanted takeout and went online to measure how long it would take him to get to a restaurant and pick up medicine for the children from the pharmacy, said said prosecutor Jennifer Sprague.

“She planned these murders, gave herself the time and privacy to carry out the murders, and then she strangled each child where they should have felt safest – at home with their mother. “said Sprague. “She did it with deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity and cruelty.”

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington, who indicated he was planning an insanity defense, painted a portrait of a woman struggling with mental illness, who had been prescribed a dozen drugs to try to heal her. control.

“This is not a situation, your honor, that was planned by any means,” he said. “It was a situation that was clearly the product of mental illness.” Clancy may have suffered from postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis, he said.

Reddington hired a psychologist to evaluate him.

The prosecution countered that Clancy had already been assessed by mental health professionals and told that she did not have postpartum depression and had no symptoms of postpartum depression.

Clancy’s husband Patrick forgave his wife in a post on a fundraising site to help with medical bills, funeral services and legal aid.

“She has recently been portrayed largely by people who have never met her and who never knew who the real Lindsay was,” he wrote. “Our marriage was wonderful and grew diametrically stronger as her condition rapidly worsened. I was as proud to be her husband as I was to be a father and I constantly felt lucky to have her in my life.