Jurors in Lindsay Clancy's trial visit the home where she killed her
children
[August 01, 2026]
BY LEAH WILLINGHAM
DUXBURY, Mass. (AP) — Jurors walked through the Massachusetts home where
Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, a rare visit Friday that
let them see firsthand the place where an outwardly ordinary family life
unraveled into tragedy.
After being driven past two businesses relevant to the narrative of the
January 2023 killings, jurors were escorted in groups of six to view the
inside of the house, including the basement where the children died.
During the roughly 40-minute visit, the jury also saw the yard where
Clancy was found after jumping from a second-story window.
Journalists were kept away by a police barricade, but court officers
could be seen through the trees escorting jurors to and from the bus
along the site of the Clancy family’s former driveway. The home now has
a new owner.
Clancy herself did not attend the visit to the home, which she hasn't
seen since the day of the killings. Her lawyers argue she was in the
grip of postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the
stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
Jurors in U.S. criminal cases often are expressly told not to visit the
scene of the events in question. There are a number of rationales for
not doing so — among other things, the site may have changed in the
interim between an alleged crime and a trial.
But courts sometimes allow juries to make a supervised excursion as a
group, for reasons that can include assessing distances or features that
aren’t thought to come across fully in photos.
Such excursions have happened in a number of high-profile cases,
including the 2023 murder trial of South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh,
the 2022 sentencing trial of Parkland, Florida, school shooter Nikolas
Cruz, the 2015 Massachusetts murder trial of former New England Patriots
player Aaron Hernandez and the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
Jurors in Clancy's trial retraced the route her then-husband, Patrick
Clancy, took when she asked him to pick up takeout food and medicine for
daughter Cora on the night of the killings. He returned to find the
children dead and his then-wife badly injured and bleeding in the yard.
[to top of second column]
|
Defendant Lindsay Clancy listens during her murder trial at Plymouth
Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., on Thursday, July 30, 2026. (CJ
Gunther/The Boston Herald via AP, Pool)
The panel was driven past the restaurant — about 5.5 miles (9
kilometers) from the family’s former home in Duxbury, a town south of
Boston — and the pharmacy, about a mile (1.6 km) from the house.
Prosecutors say the errands were a ruse to get her husband out of the
house. They say Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, acted
intentionally and is criminally responsible for the deaths of children
Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months.
Her lawyers don't dispute that she killed the children, but they say she
had bipolar disorder and her condition worsened while she was on
antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child. She
believed a voice was telling her to “kill the children so you can kill
yourself,” according to her lawyers.
Lindsay Clancy remains paralyzed from the waist down after using
multiple methods to try to end her life that night.
If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If
found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be
committed to a state mental health facility.
___
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed from New York.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved
 |
