A former Massachusetts nurse charged with murdering her three young children has filed a lawsuit alleging a ‘voice’ in her head instructed her to harm them and take her own life. Lindsay Clancy, 32, is accused of strangling Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan at their family home in Duxbury on January 24, 2023, before attempting suicide.
According to the lawsuit, the voice told Clancy: ‘You should harm the children, you should kill yourself, you will never be the same, the only option is to die.’ The legal action, filed in Norfolk Superior Court, claims mental health providers failed to recognise warning signs and provide adequate treatment as her condition deteriorated.
Clancy, a former labour and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, survived her suicide attempt but is now paralysed from the chest down and uses a wheelchair. She is being held at Tewksbury State Hospital awaiting trial, scheduled for this summer.
The lawsuits, filed separately by Clancy and her husband Patrick, accuse multiple providers of wrongful death and medical negligence. They allege that in the months before the killings, Clancy sought help for severe anxiety and postpartum depression but was prescribed medications that worsened her condition, leaving her sleeping only three hours a night and triggering suicidal thoughts.
Patrick Clancy’s lawsuit claims his wife told doctors she was having ‘horrible thoughts’ about harming the children in the days before the tragedy. Lindsay Clancy’s lawsuit also alleges her psychiatrist spent only about 17 minutes with her per appointment, including a visit the day before the killings.
‘Lindsay Clancy did everything a mother in her situation could do,’ her attorneys said. ‘She recognised something was wrong. She sought medical treatment. She went to emergency rooms. She called crisis hotlines. She admitted herself to hospitals.’ The lawsuits seek unspecified damages and a jury trial.
