Paula Musgrove broke down on the witness stand Monday as she recounted the harrowing warning her daughter Lindsay Clancy gave just weeks before killing her three children.
Musgrove, 36-year-old Clancy’s mother, testified in the fourth week of the murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts, describing her daughter’s rapid mental deterioration beginning in October 2022. The defense opened its case after prosecutors rested following three weeks of testimony. Jurors were shown emotional text messages Clancy sent to her mother during that period, pleading for help.
“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I’m really sick. Something is wrong,” Clancy wrote in one message displayed to the jury. “I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I am going to get through the day… 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.”
Musgrove traveled from Connecticut to stay with the family between October and December 2022. She testified that Clancy grew increasingly fearful of sleeping alone, suffered debilitating insomnia, and became convinced that the numerous psychiatric medications she was being prescribed were “destroying her mind.” The former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital had begun experiencing severe anxiety as she got closer to returning to work following the birth of her third child, Callan.
In December 2022, while standing in the kitchen with Lindsay and her then-husband Patrick Clancy, Musgrove witnessed a devastating admission. Holding back tears, Musgrove testified that Lindsay appeared visibly nervous before telling them: “She told us she had thoughts of harming the children.”
Clancy’s sister, Allison Ozga, also took the stand Monday, corroborating the testimony and revealing that Clancy had confessed to having daily suicidal thoughts throughout December 2022. Ozga testified that she had a “gut feeling” something was off with Clancy when she saw her during Thanksgiving 2022.
“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 in her testimony. “She said yes at that point.”
Ozga recounted to the jury how Clancy’s mental health continued to deteriorate in the following weeks. Musgrove told the court that Clancy grew so fearful she began begging her own mother to sleep with her at night.
The testimony came after prosecutors presented evidence of Clancy’s digital footprint in the weeks before the killings. State Police cellphone forensics expert Tim Chiappini analyzed Clancy’s phone and testified that she searched online about hallucinations, psychosis, and the side effects of several drugs she was prescribed. She looked up suicide methods, bipolar disorder, and insomnia at the end of December 2022 and, in January, searched for information on postpartum depression.
Clancy also wrote a detailed note in October 2022 expressing doubts about her parenting choices, second-guessing her decision to stop breastfeeding 8-month-old Callan, and reconsidering plans for a fourth child.
“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…. It’s insane. For the last five years, I’ve just filled my mind with all things parenting and it’s just unhealthy.”
In the viral moment that sparked the trial, Clancy, now 36, faces murder charges for the January 24, 2023, strangulation deaths of her children—five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan—before cutting her own throat and jumping from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. Their father found the children in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home. Prosecutors maintain that Clancy planned the killings with calculated precision, arguing that she sent her husband out to collect dinner and a prescription to ensure she was left alone in the house. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that Clancy caused the children’s deaths, but argues she is not criminally responsible due to severe postpartum psychosis, postpartum depression, and disjointed psychiatric treatment. If convicted of first-degree murder, Clancy faces life imprisonment without parole. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for indefinite evaluation and treatment.
Patrick Clancy testified earlier in the trial that about a week after the killings, he received a call from Lindsay. She didn’t mention her children, he said, but “talked about what she went through. She said she heard a man’s voice telling her if she didn’t do it now she would lose her chance or something like that.”
The trial is expected to continue with additional defense witnesses in Plymouth.