5 takeaways from Patrick Clancy’s interview with The New Yorker

Lindsay Clancy “misses her kids,” her husband Pat told The New Yorker. “Which I know sounds crazy to some people. But that’s the reality.”

Patrick Clancy, whose wife allegedly killed their three small children in Duxbury last year, has opened up to The New Yorker about life after the unthinkable tragedy, insisting he did not marry a “monster.”

Lindsay Clancy is facing three counts each of murder and strangulation in the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan Clancy. While prosecutors allege Clancy carefully planned the Jan. 24, 2023 killings, her lawyer has argued she was overmedicated and suffering from postpartum depression when she allegedly strangled her children with exercise bands and attempted to take her own life.

Pat Clancy was out running errands at the time and returned home to find his wife badly injured, their children mortally wounded.

“I wasn’t married to a monster — I was married to someone who got sick,” he told The New Yorker for an in-depth article published Monday.

Here are some of the article’s highlights.

Pat Clancy looks back on the killings

The Clancy kids were off from school on Jan. 24, 2023, and Lindsay Clancy was in charge of childcare, according to the article. She took Cora to a doctor’s appointment, reportedly convinced her daughter’s stomachache was indicative of a possible liver problem. According to the article, Pat Clancy hoped a visit to the pediatrician would “bring Lindsay back to reality.”

Lindsay Clancy texted him around 5 p.m. to ask if he would pick up Pedia-Lax for Cora and takeout for dinner. He said just a few weeks earlier, he would have been reluctant to leave his wife alone; Lindsay had allegedly been struggling with her mental health following the birth of their youngest child, admitting herself to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, for several days in early January.

“If I could go back in time, I’d have called McLean and said, ‘Take her away, lock the door. Keep her in there for a year if you have to,’” Pat Clancy told The New Yorker. But that day “seemed like a really good one.”

He returned home that evening to find Lindsay Clancy lying injured on the ground outside their Duxbury home; she told him their children were “in the basement.” According to the article, Pat Clancy removed the exercise bands from each child’s neck and begged them to breathe, attempting to resuscitate his daughter.

“What do you do when you have three kids like that?” he asked in an interview with The New Yorker. “How do you pick?”

Cora and Dawson Clancy were pronounced dead later that night. Callan Clancy died of his injuries three days later at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Clancy had concerns about his wife’s prescriptions

Lindsay Clancy’s anxiety allegedly worsened as she prepared to return to work following the birth of the couple’s third child. According to the article, she postponed her start date and got a prescription for the antidepressant Zoloft following a telehealth consultation with a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with generalized anxiety disorder.

The psychiatrist reportedly prescribed additional drugs, including the benzodiazepine Ativan, after the Zoloft caused insomnia. And when his wife’s insomnia persisted, Pat Clancy started sitting in on her virtual visits with the psychiatrist, according to the article.

“It was just, like, ‘What are your symptoms? Take these pills,’” he told The New Yorker. He said he called more than a dozen therapists but found none with immediate availability.

According to the article, Lindsay Clancy had lost her appetite and largely stopped socializing by mid-November, 2022. When the Ativan wore off in the afternoons, Pat Clancy would allegedly find his wife rocking back and forth on the couch, her heart racing.

After two consecutive nights with no sleep, Lindsay Clancy drove herself to the emergency room and received Ambien, the article said. But the Ambien didn’t help, and Lindsay Clancy began seeing a perinatal psychiatric nurse practitioner. Pat Clancy told The New Yorker the new provider was quick to prescribe more medication.

“It just sounded like she was throwing things at the wall and waiting for us to say yes,” he told the magazine.

During Lindsay Clancy’s Superior Court arraignment, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said a toxicology analysis indicated Clancy had seven prescription medications in her system when she arrived at the hospital, including several antidepressants, a mood stabilizer, and two anti-anxiety drugs.

Prosecutors also allege psychiatrists at the Women & Infants Hospital Center for Women’s Behavioral Health in Providence found no symptoms of postpartum depression when they evaluated Lindsay Clancy on Dec. 20, 2022. However, Pat Clancy told The New Yorker the doctors there were hesitant to intervene in his wife’s treatment because her prescription history made it difficult to differentiate between medication side effects and signs of an underlying postpartum disorder.

He would later tell police his wife confessed to having suicidal thoughts and thoughts of hurting their children around the same time.

“We were told by doctors, ‘If she doesn’t have a plan, and if she’s disturbed by the thoughts, then they are probably just thoughts,’” he told The New Yorker.

Pat Clancy also told the magazine none of Lindsay’s providers ever warned him about the possibility of postpartum psychosis.

Clancy didn’t contact his wife after the killings

Although Pat Clancy publicly forgave Lindsay just days after the killings, he didn’t contact her in the immediate aftermath, according to the article.

As her arraignment approached, Lindsay Clancy called her husband from a psychologist’s phone and left him a voicemail to say she loved him, The New Yorker reported. Pat Clancy picked up when she called again the next day, and Lindsay allegedly said she’d heard a voice telling her to kill the children and herself, because it was her “last chance.”

“She did not sound like my wife,” he told The New Yorker.

After that first call, the couple went six months without speaking. During another call on Lindsay Clancy’s 33rd birthday, she told her husband every day was the worst day of her life, the magazine reported.

“She misses her kids,” Pat Clancy told The New Yorker. “Which I know sounds crazy to some people. But that’s the reality.”

Pat Clancy returned to Duxbury for a memorial service on the first anniversary of the killings, calling Lindsay Clancy on the drive home to relay well-wishes from their old neighbors, the article said. According to The New Yorker, the pair had begun speaking more frequently, which allowed them to “fill in the gaps,” Pat Clancy told the magazine.

“I think one of the first things I asked was, ‘Did you plan this? Is that why you sent me out?’” he told The New Yorker. “She said, ‘No, it just was, like, a snap of the fingers.’”

He reportedly asked her if she researched “ways to kill,” as prosecutors have alleged.

“And she said, ‘Yeah, for myself, because I was suicidal for two months,’” Pat Clancy told The New Yorker.

Lindsay Clancy wants to tell her story

Pat Clancy told the magazine Lindsay Clancy wanted “nothing more” than to tell her story and had floated the idea of becoming an advocate for other mothers with postpartum mood disorders. However, her lawyer reportedly advised her not to speak to reporters before the case goes to trial.

According to the article, Pat Clancy also characterized his public statement of forgiveness — made via an online GoFundMe page — as a reaction against bad-faith narratives.

“If the prosecutor and the public had gotten it right from the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have even written that GoFundMe note,” he told The New Yorker.

Pat Clancy has sold the Duxbury house

According to the article, Pat Clancy took an extended leave from his remote job at Microsoft after the killings and joined a sailing club, ran the Boston Marathon in memory of his children, began volunteering as a guide for visually impaired runners, and took a solo trip to Central America and Europe, staying in youth hostels to avoid running into vacationing families.

He also sold the family’s former home in Duxbury and moved to an apartment in midtown Manhattan.

“There’s no house anymore,” Clancy told The New Yorker. “There are no kids. All that’s left is me and Lindsay.”

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.