Warning: This story contains disturbing details and recounts a suicide attempt.
Patrick Clancy revealed chilling details of the day he returned home to find “blood everywhere” in his bedroom.
His ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, faces trial for the murder of the couple's three children in Massachusetts, on the east coast of the United States.
In his testimony Wednesday, Patrick recalled that the house was unusually quiet and said the bedroom was locked.
“That's when I knew something was wrong,” he said.
The man found his ex-wife lying in the yard after she jumped out of a second-story window, with “deep cuts on her wrists and a red line across her neck.”
According to the Prosecutor's Office, Lindsay attacked herself after strangling her children with elastic exercise bands in the basement of her home in January 2023.
The accusation
Lyndsay Clancy has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children: Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months old.
Her lawyers allege that she “suffered from psychosis at the time” and do not deny that she committed the murders.
The woman attended both days of her ex-husband's testimony sitting in a wheelchair, after being paralyzed after jumping out of the window.
When he testified Wednesday, she looked visibly moved.
During the hearing, Lyndsay held her lawyer's hand, her head turned to the side, wiping away tears.
Prosecutors questioned Patrick Clancy in great detail about the incidents that occurred that day, in an attempt to convince the 12-member jury that the woman made a “calculated” decision to kill her children.
Patrick recalled that on January 24, 2023, he left his home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and returned later with food delivered.
Finding the house “unusually quiet,” he checked several rooms, briefly including the basement, before going upstairs and discovering the bedroom door was locked.
Inside the bedroom, Patrick said he saw blood “everywhere.”
Prosecutors presented photographs of the bedroom and then questioned Patrick about his description, asking him to confirm that there was no blood photographed on the walls or bedding.
“Correct,” he replied. “On those walls and on the bedding,” he stressed.
With this line of questioning, the prosecution attempts to cast doubt on the authenticity of Lindsay Clancy's suicide attempt.
At a preliminary hearing in 2024, Jennifer Sprague, the lead prosecutor in the case, called the cuts on the defendant's neck and wrists “minor scratches” and suggested that Lindsay “slid” down the side of the house instead of jumping.
Patrick said he then ran down the stairs and out onto the street, where he found his wife on the floor with cuts on her wrists and neck. He then called the emergency services.
Sprague, the Plymouth County district attorney, questioned Patrick about the severity of the cuts and asked him to confirm whether he had told emergency services that he did not believe it was necessary to put pressure on his ex-wife's wounds.
He said he ran to the basement immediately after emergency services arrived and his wife told him the children were there.
“I was face down.”
Patrick stated that when he got to the basement, the first thing he saw was his daughter Cora.
“I had a band around my neck,” he said, referring to an elastic exercise band. “I was face down.”
“I immediately ran towards her and tried to take the band off,” he said. But she “didn't respond.”
Then she saw 8-month-old Callan next to her, with an elastic exercise band also around his neck.
Patrick said he then looked for Dawson and found him in his office, also with a band around his neck.
“I knew he had passed away,” she said. He said he was “back and forth” among the children, trying to revive them until emergency services arrived and took over.
“The voice of a man”
Patrick testified in court that his wife told him, about a week after the crimes, that she had heard “a man's voice” ordering her to kill the children.
He added that he had not heard of psychosis until then.
Prosecutors presented evidence, including the children's bloody pajamas, before playing a recording of Patrick's 911 call, sending Lindsay into an emotional spiral.
He lowered his head into his hands and began to cry uncontrollably before the court adjourned.
Prosecutors will call additional witnesses and said they expect the trial to last several weeks.
If convicted, Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
If she is found not guilty due to lack of criminal responsibility, she will be committed to a state mental health facility.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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