Lindsay Clancy’s mother-in-law says she was ‘begging for help’ before killing her children: Live updates

Patrick Clancy’s mother, Sue Clancy, testified that she noticed a change in Lindsay in the fall of 2022.

Lindsay told her she was struggling with insomnia and depression. So she helped to connect her with Nurse Julie Paul at South Shore.

‘She reached out to me in November and told me that she felt unwell,’ she said.

‘Mostly, she had insomnia, she was losing her appetite, she was very anxious and sad.’

When asked if Lindsay wanted to get better, she said ‘very much so.’

‘She was begging for help,’ Sue said.

Sue said that they were all very concerned about her.

When the state objected to the defense’s evidence, Kevin Reddington just simply went ‘no.’

ADA Jennifer Sprague argued against a diagram that Reddington wants to introduce depicting how Clancy jumped from the window. She claimed that the drawing is inaccurate, specifically the window well.

Prosecutors have tried to suggest that Clancy clung to the window ledge and dropped to the ground that night rather than jumping.

This goes toward the state’s doubts around her suicide attempt.

The defense aims to show that she jumped headfirst from the window. Clancy was left paralyzed from the waist down from the fall.

In a tense moment, the prosecution asked Sue Clancy if she was aware that ‘murder is considered a mortal sin.’

‘Are you an active member in the Catholic church?’ the prosecutor asked.

‘Yes,’ Sue answered.

‘So you are aware that murder is considered a mortal sin,’ the prosecutor continued.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington quickly interjected, ‘Objection!’

After sidebar, the judge told the jury that the answer and question were stricken and that hey should not consider them.

The first witness called to the stand by the defense today is Patrick Clancy’s mother, Sue Clancy.

‘Lindsay married my son Patrick and they had a very good relationship,’ she said.

Sue said she had a ‘very good relationship’ with Lindsay Clancy.

‘She was very nurturing, very loving, she was a wonderful mother,’ Sue said.

‘She loved her children, all of them, very, very much.’

When asked about her relationship with grandkids, she choked out one single word: ‘Beautiful.’

She would visit the grandkids roughly twice a month, she said.

As a nurse working in the labor and delivery room for 38 years, she was aware of postpartum issues in women.

Lindsay Clancy, dressed in a pink blouse and her hair in loose waves, has been brought in and seated at the defense table.

Her parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, are seated with a family friend and Dr Paul Zeizel.

Her former father-in-law, Chris Clancy, is a couple of rows behind with his priest.

There are around 15 members of the public here today – less than yesterday – but more members of the media who are here for the first time.

Court kicked off with a sidebar with the attorneys.

Four days after making these disturbing searches on her phone, Lindsay Clancy would attempt to kill herself after strangling her three children.

A GoFundMe for Lindsay Clancy’s parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, has raised nearly $1 million.

The intensely private Connecticut couple who lost all three grandchildren at their daughter’s hands have nevertheless remained beside her through everything that has followed.

Patrick Clancy’s parents, Sue and Chris Clancy, are waiting in the corridor outside the courtroom.

Sue is expected to be called as a defense witness today.

This marks the first time she has attended the trial.

Chris was at the courthouse for one day earlier in the trial, when the prosecution called him as a witness.

Margaret Hamp recounted a time when Lindsay Clancy was working when a patient was admitted who had plans to harm herself while pregnant.

‘We had a conversation. Lindsay was brand new; it was the summer she had just started, and we had a conversation about mental health in pregnancy and postpartum,’ Hamp said.

‘I asked her if she ever heard of the Andrea Yates case, and she hadn’t.

‘I explained that to her, and she cried, and she said, “How could a mother hurt her children.”’

Clancy’s case has been compared to Yates.

Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in Texas in 2001. Her attorneys said she suffered from postpartum psychosis and believed killing her children would save them from hell.

Her initial murder conviction was overturned, and in a retrial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state mental hospital.

Paula Musgrove testified that her daughter, Lindsay Clancy, previously told her and Patrick that she had thoughts of harming the kids.

In December 2022, Clancy’s mom told the jury that there was a moment where Clancy said she had to tell her and Patrick something.

She was very nervous, she said. ‘She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,’ she testified.

Musgrove said she began to notice a change in Clancy around October 2022. She added that Clancy did not appear to improve through November and December.

In one text exchange from October, Clancy asked: ‘Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit. I’m really sick.

‘Something is wrong. I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I’m going to get through the day.’

Clancy continued: ‘I started taking the medicine my doctor prescribed for anxiety, and I think it’s made things worse. It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.’

Lindsay Clancy’s sister, Allison Ozga, testified that in December 2022 Clancy told her, ‘I’m in a really tough spot.’

‘I had this gut feeling that something was off and that she was really struggling, and I asked her if she was safe,’ Ozga said while on the stand Monday. ‘She said “yes” at that point.’

She said at Thanksgiving 2022, Clancy ‘did not look good; she didn’t seem very energized. It definitely seemed off from how I’d seen her in the past.’

By December, Ozga said, ‘She reported her mood was worsening, as she described it as depression, she was having more suicidal thoughts, insomnia continued to be an issue. She was really not feeling like herself.

‘I believe the very end of the month, she told me she had had suicidal ideation every day for a month.’

Ozga testified that at Cora’s birthday party in January it looked like Clancy was ‘going through the motions’ and ‘still struggling.’

‘I think she looked like she was going through the motions of putting together a birthday party for her daughter. But she looked tired. She looked like she was still struggling.’

On cross-examination, the prosecution asked Ozga, a licensed social worker and mandated reporter, whether she ever felt concerned enough to report Clancy.

Ozga said no.