The former husband of convicted Texas child killer Andrea Yates says another accused child killer, Massachusetts nurse Lindsay Clancy, should be spared serving a jail sentence if she had severe mental health issues when the alleged murders occurred.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, on January 24, medics were called to the Clancy family’s residence off Summer Street in Duxbury after the defendant’s husband, Patrick, arrived home and found the children unconscious.
The two oldest kids, identified as 5-year-old Cora Clancy and 3-year-old Dawson Clancy, were later declared deceased at a hospital.
A day later, the couple’s third and youngest child, 8-month-old Callan Clancy, also died. The defendant jumped out of a second-story window in a reported attempted suicide after the attack but survived. She’s currently in a Boston hospital.
Twenty-one years earlier, in Houston, Texas, Yates drowned her five children while battling postpartum psychosis, schizophrenia, and postpartum depression. Yates was initially convicted of the murders and sentenced to life behind bars, but in 2006, the conviction was overturned on grounds of insanity. She’s now in a psychiatric care facility.
Speaking with News Nation’s Chris Cuomo, Rusty touched on the possibility of Clancy also having postpartum psychosis. It’s something investigators are currently looking into, although she’s never been clinically diagnosed.
“Andrea was a wonderful mother,” Yates said. “At the time, I did not know that she’d been psychotic, I did not know what psychosis even was or what the symptoms were.
“The next step of forgiveness (for other people), I’d say, is understanding it’s a sickness, that but for her sickness, she would never, ever, ever would have harmed our children.”
“It’s part of their reality as anything else. They can’t distinguish, you know, between those thoughts and those images and those voices and anything else.”
Watch the full interview below.
Meanwhile, at the Plymouth County Court in Massachusetts on Tuesday, Clancy’s defense lawyer argued that she was not in her right state of mind when the attacks occurred.
Reddington said not only was Clancy on numerous medications at the time but she’s now paralyzed from the waist down after trying to take her own life.
“She can’t walk…she can’t even go to the bathroom,” he said, noting that her emotional state was also “not well at all.”
“She needs significant medical treatment,” the lawyer added while pushing for his client to be transferred to a rehabilitation center.
According to The Boston Globe, Reddington said the defendant had been taking the following prescribed medications, in part, when the killings occurred:
- Ambien
- Klonopin
- Valium
- Prozac
- Lamictal
- Ativan
- Remeron
- Seroquel
- Zoloft
Prosecutors alleged that Clancy was sane and made sound decisions on the day of the alleged murders, including making a snowman with her children and calling her husband to pick up a takeout food order.
She remains in a Boston hospital while recovering, but is expected to be transferred to a rehabilitation center at some point. She’s facing murder, strangulation, and assault charges.
Check back for updates.
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[Feature Photo: (l) Lindsay Clancy/Plymouth County Court via Boston Globe; Lindsay and Callan Clancy/Facebook]
