Lindsay Clancy’s Mother Recalls Her Chilling Confession Weeks Before Children’s Deaths

Two women who knew Lindsay Clancy best took the stand on Monday, August 17, and described the slow unraveling of a struggling mother who was pleading to be helped.

Lindsay, 36, is on trial for strangling her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan, inside the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023.

Lindsay’s mother, Paula Musgrove, and sister, Allison Ozga, described watching her grow increasingly anxious, paranoid and suicidal in the months leading up to the children’s deaths.

According to Fox affiliate KUSI-TV, Musgrove, sounding emotional at times, described her daughter as a dedicated, loving mother whose mental health began deteriorating in October 2022, about three months before Lindsay killed her children and attempted to take her own life.

A text message shown to the jury during the livestream shared by CBS News showed Lindsay reaching out to her mother that fall: “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 am going to get through the day. It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.”

Musgrove also recalled a more alarming moment in December, when she stood in the kitchen with Lindsay’s then-husband Patrick Clancy and her daughter appeared nervous, saying she needed to tell them something.

“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove testified, according to PBS News.

Musgrove, who lived in Connecticut, often stayed with Lindsay in Massachusetts that fall, and said her daughter grew scared to sleep alone and came to believe her medications “were destroying her mind,” per the outlet.

Ozga testified that by the end of December, Lindsay had told her she’d experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.

The testimony came in the fourth week of Lindsay’s murder trial, shortly after prosecutors rested their case. Prosecutors argue Lindsay, a former labor and delivery nurse, planned the killings and got her husband out of the house by sending him for takeout and to the pharmacy.

Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, doesn’t dispute that she killed the children, but argues she isn’t criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder, which he says was worsened by prescribed antidepressants.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide or struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available 24 hours a day through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.