His Wife Brutally Killed Their 3 Children. So Why Does Mass. Husband Say She’s Not a ‘Monster?’

The husband of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother and nurse accused of murdering her three young children before attempting to die by suicide, has broken his silence about the January 2023 killings and expressed forgiveness for his wife.

On Jan. 24, 2023, Patrick Clancy left his family’s Duxbury, Mass., home, to pick up children’s medicine and dinner, he told The New Yorker in an interview published on Oct. 14. But when he returned, he found Lindsay seriously injured in the backyard and the couple’s three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, strangled in the basement.

Prosecutors said Lindsay allegedly slit her wrists and neck, then leapt from her second-story bedroom window in an attempt to die suicide after strangling the children with exercise bands. Cora and Dawson died that day and Callan died three days later from his injuries. She has since pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and strangulation.

A defense attorney for Lindsay, who is now paralyzed from the waist down due to the fall, has said in court that the former labor and delivery nurse did not plan the killings and that they were a “product of mental illness,” citing the effects of multiple medications doctors prescribed to treat her depression and anxiety after the birth of her third child in 2022.

The medications, including Prozac, Seroquel and Trazodone, were to blame for her “postpartum depression, as well as the possibility of postpartum psychosis,” Lindsay’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, claimed in court.

In the weeks leading up to the killings, Clancy’s defense attorney also said she was feeling detached and emotionless toward her kids and had “been unable to express any happiness, or sadness, or cry.” 

Meanwhile, prosecutors have argued Lindsay killed her children with “deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity and cruelty,” PEOPLE previously reported. Prosecutors previously said in court that Lindsay allegedly wrote in a note in her phone that she “resent[ed]” her two oldest kids prior to their deaths.

In the weeks leading up to the suspected killings, the prosecution also said Lindsay had “suicidal ideations in December of 2022 … and on one occasion had thoughts of harming her children.”

The incidents allegedly prompted her to voluntarily commit herself to a psychiatric hospital in Boston on Jan. 1, 2023, according to prosecutors. Four days later, on Jan. 5, 2023, Lindsay was allegedly discharged. The hospital did not file any paperwork to have her committed as a danger to herself or others, the prosecution said.

However, Patrick, who has maintained public support for his wife since launching a GoFundMe campaign for funeral and other expenses, disagrees with the prosecution’s argument. “I wasn’t married to a monster — I was married to someone who got sick,” he told The New Yorker.

Patrick previously told police, per prosecutors, that his wife’s demeanor on the day of the killings, didn’t raise any red flags, and in fact, “the defendant was having one of her best days,” PEOPLE previously reported. 

“She was smiling and happy, and there was no indication that she was going to harm the kids,” Patrick said, per the prosecution.

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In his recent interview with The New Yorker, Patrick details what his communication has been like with his wife since she’s been in custody. He recalls a call with her a few days before her October 2023 arraignment.

“She did not sound like my wife,” Patrick told the publication of the call. The pair wouldn’t talk again for another six months. “She misses her kids,” Patrick said, according to The New Yorker. “Which I know sounds crazy to some people. But that’s the reality.”

Patrick now resides in an apartment in New York City, noting that the family’s former home in Duxbury, Mass., is set to be sold soon.

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

A date for Lindsay’s murder trial has not been scheduled. 

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.