Commonwealth v. Clancy

2383CR00198 · Plymouth Superior

Commonwealth v. Clancy, July 29, 2026

WednesdayreportedcommonwealthDay 2 of 28

Patrick Clancy's second and final day: the January 24 errand minute by minute, the discovery of the scene, the 911 call played with the cameras off, two five-minute corroboration witnesses from the CVS and the restaurant, and a long defense cross-examination on the prescribing record and on the days he had left her alone with the children.

Key points
  • THE 911 CALL WAS PLAYED, AND IT IS THE COMMONWEALTH'S SINGLE MOST POWERFUL PIECE OF EVIDENCE. It was played under the media order Sullivan allowed before evidence began, on Patrick Clancy's own motion: the courtroom camera off, no recording, no reproduction, no public release. Reporters could describe it and did. The witness was excused from the room before it played and recalled afterwards for cross-examination.
  • THE COMMAND HALLUCINATION ENTERED THE CASE THROUGH THE COMMONWEALTH'S OWN FIRST WITNESS, AND ON THE COMMONWEALTH'S TERMS. Patrick Clancy testified that Lindsay told him about the man's voice in a phone call from the hospital about a week after the killings, that she talked about what she had been through rather than about the children, and that she had never previously said she was hearing a voice. That is exactly the attack ADA Buckingham foreshadowed in her opening on July 27 — weigh the source, the timing and the substance — and the Commonwealth put it in front of the jury itself rather than waiting for the defense.
  • THE TWO FIVE-MINUTE WITNESSES ARE THE COMMONWEALTH'S NORMAL-FUNCTIONING CASE IN MINIATURE, AND THE DEFENSE DID NOT TOUCH THEM. Angela Krause and Saria Sweeney each spoke to the defendant by telephone within roughly an hour of the killings, and each was asked one question that mattered: did she sound impaired. A very normal interaction, no slurring, no difficulty making herself understood, nothing out of the ordinary. Neither was cross-examined. Whatever the defense case on criminal responsibility becomes, this evidence stands unchallenged.
  • AGAINST THE COMMONWEALTH, ON CROSS: THE ANSWER TO THE PILL-COUNT CASE. On July 27 the Commonwealth put it to this witness that a great deal was prescribed and not much taken. On July 29 Reddington took the same witness through the diary in which the defendant recorded what she took and how it affected her, established that she always took her medication as instructed, and then got the concession that the bottles the Commonwealth had shown him — the ones from his truck console — were discontinued prescriptions he was disposing of because the doctors had changed them. Without that context, he said, it paints a different picture. The two days have to be read together.
  • AGAINST THE COMMONWEALTH, ON CROSS: THE OPPORTUNITY ARGUMENT. Reddington set the days Patrick was away in late 2022, leaving the defendant alone with the children, against the roughly half hour she had on January 24. Asked whether she could have done it then if she had wanted to, the witness answered: in theory. The point cuts at deliberate premeditation without needing any expert.
  • A FACTUAL CORRECTION TO THE COMMONWEALTH'S OPENING STATEMENT, FROM THE COMMONWEALTH'S OWN WITNESS. He testified that the anniversary dinner and massage the Commonwealth described in its opening did not happen and that they had stayed home. The defense made it one of three grounds of a motion to strike filed the same day.
  • THE MOTION TO STRIKE WAS FILED AND, SO FAR AS ANY OUTLET READ REPORTS, NEVER RULED ON. Three grounds: the order in which the Commonwealth told the jury the children were killed, said to imply a hatred of one child over the others; the anniversary dinner and massage; and the description of the defendant's internet searches as searches for ways to kill rather than about methods of suicide. The third ground matters beyond this day — on August 13, 2026, Sgt. Kyle Pavao testified that no searches for ways to kill were recovered.
  • WHOSE SUICIDE SEARCH IT WAS, ASKED AND ANSWERED THREE DIFFERENT WAYS IN ONE DAY. On direct that morning Patrick Clancy said he did not view a suicide-related website in August 2022. On cross he accepted Reddington's account that he had been looking up the country musician Tom Hall and landed on a page about methods of suicide inadvertently. On redirect the Commonwealth suggested the defendant was the more likely source of those clicks. The same sequence — Facebook, a Spotify search for Hall, his Wikipedia page, the methods page — was put to the jury in forensic detail on August 13, 2026 as having happened on August 23, 2022 on a Microsoft Surface Pro belonging to Patrick Clancy and signed into his Google account. Boston 25 dates it August 22 in this day's coverage; the Boston Globe calls the device a shared tablet and Boston 25 a laptop.
  • TWELVE FEET, NOT TWENTY. On redirect the Commonwealth put the drop from the bedroom window to the ground at twelve feet. Patrick Clancy had told the 911 dispatcher twenty. Reported by Boston 25 alone.
  • THE JANUARY 24 CLOCK NOW HAS TWO INDEPENDENT NON-FORENSIC CORROBORATIONS. Krause's call and Sweeney's 5:10 p.m. order and 5:54 p.m. pickup come from business witnesses with their own records, not from a phone extraction, and they bear on the timing dispute recorded in evidence.json under jan24-times.
  • THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY WAS LOST AND THE REASON IS NOT ON THE RECORD. The jury was sent out at 12:05 until two o'clock and the Plymouth Fire Department was called to a medical emergency in the courthouse, with EMTs taken to the district attorney's office. Nobody has reported who was involved. Everyone was back when court resumed.
  • THE OUTLETS DISAGREE ABOUT THE SHAPE OF THE AFTERNOON. CBS Boston and Boston 25 both have the cross ending at about 15:45 to 15:48 and a redirect by ADA Sprague after it; the Boston Globe's blog marks no redirect at all and runs the questioning to 16:19. CBS Boston's 15:59 entry implies a recross nobody describes. The end of the witness's evidence is given as 16:12, 16:15 and 16:19 by three outlets.

Witnesses (3)

Patrick ClancyCommonwealth
Husband of the defendant at the time; father of the decedents. Second and final day of testimony; the Commonwealth's first witness.
Direct: Sprague Cross: Reddington
  • SECOND AND FINAL DAY. He had been called on July 27 and was still being examined when court rose that afternoon; court did not sit on July 28. Direct resumed on the morning of July 29 — the Boston Globe stamps it 09:28, Boston 25 09:32 and CBS Boston 09:33 — and he was excused subject to recall between about 10:11 and 10:17 so that the 911 call could be played without him in the room. He was recalled at about 14:14 for cross-examination and left the stand between about 16:12 and 16:19.
  • THE FIRST QUESTION OF THE MORNING WAS THE SUICIDE SEARCH. The Globe records him testifying that he did not view a suicide-related website in August 2022. That answer is the setup for the Commonwealth's position and it is the one Reddington went back to in the afternoon.
  • His last sight of Dawson was the boy on the couch eating chicken nuggets as he left; ABC7 adds green beans.
  • THE CVS ERRAND. Lindsay wanted a stool softener for Cora, a request that was not in their earlier texts and that she sent by name at about 5:15 p.m. WHAT THE PRODUCT WAS IS REPORTED FOUR WAYS: a stool softener (Boston Globe), medicine for the children (CBS Boston), Miralax or Pedia-Lax (CBS Boston, Oxygen), and 'Pedialight' as Boston 25's reporter rendered it. About three minutes' drive to the Kingston store. Video showed him entering at about 5:32 p.m. and going to the pediatric aisle.
  • THE CALL FROM THE STORE. He rang her at about 5:33 to 5:35 because what they were looking for was not on the shelf. She did not answer and called back about a minute later. Very brief. She said a generic was fine. She sounded quiet and busy and he assumed she was giving the children baths. He agreed she had no trouble recalling why he was at the store. He left at about 5:37.
  • THE RESTAURANT. About ten minutes from the CVS to ThreeV in Plymouth. Video showed him going in. The order had been called in under his name and he said he was looking for the bag with his name on it. He did not recall what he was doing on his phone in the line. Boston 25 puts the pickup at 5:54 p.m.
  • THE DRIVE HOME AND THE HOUSE. Ten to twelve minutes. He parked in the driveway, next to Lindsay's Kia SUV on Boston 25's account, came in by a side door, began taking his boots off and put the bags on the kitchen island. The house was really quiet. He called out and got no answer. The basement door was shut; he opened it and the light was on, which he said was normal because Lindsay always left it on, and got no answer calling down. He rang her phone — the Globe stamps it about 6:09 p.m. — with no answer, and went upstairs thinking the children might be in the bath.
  • THE LOCKED DOOR. The bedroom door was locked. That, he said, was when he knew something was wrong. He got it open and saw blood everywhere and the window open, with wind blowing in. The blood was over every surface and on the doorknob and looked as though it had been sprayed with a hose. He took a step or two, turned round and went outside. He identified a photograph of some of the blood.
  • FINDING HER. She was face up in the back yard directly below the bedroom window, with deep cuts to her wrists and a red line across her neck. Asked what had happened she said she had tried to kill herself. Asked where the children were she said the basement. He testified she gave him no indication they were hurt.
  • FINDING THE CHILDREN. First responders arrived within minutes while she went in and out of consciousness, and he ran down to the basement. Cora was face down with a band round her neck, which he removed; Callan was next to her with a band; Dawson was in the office with a band. He gave CPR, moving back and forth between them. Of Dawson: he knew he was gone. Prosecutors put a model of the basement rooms on the monitor and had him walk the jury through them; East Idaho News describes it as a 3D animation of the basement layout.
  • AGAINST THE DEFENSE, AND THE REASON THIS WITNESS MATTERS TO THE COMMONWEALTH. About a week afterwards she called him from the hospital. She did not talk about the children; she talked about what she had been through. He testified she said she heard a man's voice telling her that if she did not do it now she would lose her chance, or something like that — and that she had never previously said she was hearing a man's voice. Boston 25 records him saying she called it a moment of psychosis. CBS Boston records him saying he did not know what psychosis was until after this happened. This is the first report of the command hallucination in the case chronology and it comes a week late, from the defendant, to a lay witness, on the Commonwealth's direct examination.
  • TWO MORE ANSWERS FOR THE COMMONWEALTH, on ADA Jennifer Sprague's direct. Nobody had ever told him not to leave the children alone with Lindsay. She had never said she was going to harm or kill them.
  • CROSS — THE MOTHER. Reddington opened on that ground. Cora was named for the first baby Lindsay helped deliver as a nurse. She was very dedicated: she read the children books, made up songs for them, took them to music classes. Asked what kind of mother she was: she was very dedicated, she did everything. Asked whether she loved Dawson: she loved him very much. Asked whether she resented him: no. Photographs of the house went up — art projects and stickers, month-by-month photographs of Dawson, every room given over to the children — and then her social media posts, including a Cape Cod holiday in the summer of 2022 that he called a good summer, with Patrick identifying the children in her posts. Boston 25 records Clancy openly sobbing during that passage.
  • CROSS — THE DETERIORATION. A gradual decline from the fall of 2022, increased stress and anxiety. Dr. Jennifer Tufts in the fall of 2022. The nurse practitioner Julie Paul, recommended by his own mother, herself a labor and delivery nurse, who was at the practice about a week before referring Lindsay on. ABC7 reports him saying many of the appointments from the summer of 2022 were twenty-minute Zoom sessions with nurse practitioners. Benzodiazepines were added; she was affected very negatively and was getting worse. His own hope had been simple: he just wanted her to get sleep and feel better, and Zoloft seemed to match her insomnia, with stretches of forty-eight hours without sleep. On Seroquel, ABC7 reports him saying the idea was that it would help her sleep, but she did not get better, she got worse.
  • CROSS — DECEMBER AND THE HOSPITALS. In December she was extremely sleep deprived and highly anxious, sometimes rocking back and forth on the sofa with her head under a pillow; the dose went up and she got worse. The Women and Infants program on December 20, 2022: the team decided it was not the right fit, she called him to come back for her, and he took Dawson skiing after dropping her off. He took her to the Massachusetts General emergency room — their second trip to an ER — and on to McLean on January 1: she was scared and did not want to go, and he told her she had to. Five days, discharged January 5. He visited twice a day. He saw her playing with clay and coloring, mostly nurses about and people sitting watching television, and there was a problem with her medications not arriving that had to be sorted out. Her medications changed after she came home.
  • CROSS — THE ANSWER TO THE PILL-COUNT CASE. This is the defense's reply to the direct examination of July 27, in which the Commonwealth put it to him that a great deal was prescribed and little of it taken. Reddington established that Lindsay kept a diary of what she took and how it affected her. The Globe describes a notebook in her handwriting containing a postpartum depression and anxiety information sheet and a January 2023 entry recording that she had slept well alongside intrusive thoughts. CBS Boston describes an entry dated December 8 recording that she slept well after taking valium, and the following day's recording that she slept well and had horrible intrusive thoughts; CBS Boston's blog gives the year of that entry as 2023, which cannot be right, but nothing read states the correction. Put to him that she always took her medication as instructed, he agreed. Boston 25 records Reddington showing him the notebook and asking whether he knew she had been advised to keep a nighttime diary of her drugs and their effects; he said he was not aware of that.
  • CROSS — THE BOTTLES. The defense showed empty prescription bottles from her nightstand drawer, prescribed December 2022 and January 2023, and returned to the bottles the Commonwealth had put in front of him, kept in the console of his truck. He said he was getting rid of those because the prescriptions were being changed, not because she was seeking drugs, and that without that context it paints a different picture. Asked whether she went to doctors to get drugs because she was an addict, he said she was not trying to get off her medication, she was trying to get on the right medication. He also said, on the compliance question, that he was not standing next to her every time she took a pill and that the understanding was that she took it as directed.
  • CROSS — THE OPPORTUNITY ARGUMENT. Reddington established that Patrick had been away in late 2022 — New York in November on CBS Boston's and Boston 25's accounts, and the Globe also has a San Francisco trip with Cora during which Lindsay had the other children and, in his words, nothing bad happened — along with a ski trip and a brunch, leaving her with the children for days at a time, and set that against a three-minute trip to CVS and a thirty-minute trip to the restaurant. CBS Boston records the question put plainly: if she had wanted to kill the children she could have done it then, when he was out. He answered, in theory.
  • CROSS — A CORRECTION TO THE COMMONWEALTH'S OPENING. He testified that the anniversary dinner and massage described in the Commonwealth's opening statement did not happen and that they had stayed home. The same point is one of the three grounds of the defense motion to strike filed the same day.
  • CROSS — THE SUICIDE-METHODS PAGE. Reddington asked whether he knew who Tom Hall was, the country musician who died by suicide in 2021, and put it to him that he had been looking Hall up and had landed on a page about methods of suicide inadvertently. Boston 25 records him confirming that account. THE DEVICE AND DATE ARE REPORTED DIFFERENTLY: the Globe places the search in August 2022 on a shared tablet, Boston 25 dates it August 22, 2022 and puts it on his laptop. On direct that morning he had told the prosecutor he did not view a suicide-related website in August 2022.
  • REDIRECT. CBS Boston and Boston 25 both record a redirect examination by ADA Jennifer Sprague beginning at about 15:48 to 15:49. Boston 25 records the prosecutor putting the drop from the bedroom window to the ground at twelve feet rather than twenty, which is the figure Patrick had given the 911 dispatcher. CBS Boston records the Commonwealth suggesting that Lindsay was the more likely source of the clicks that reached the suicide-methods page. CBS Boston then has the defense finishing its questioning at 15:59, which implies a short recross; no outlet describes what was asked on it. The Boston Globe's live blog does not separate the redirect out at all.
Angela KrauseCommonwealth
General manager, CVS pharmacy, Kingston. Took the defendant's telephone call about a children's laxative on the afternoon of January 24, 2023.
Direct: Not reported which prosecutor examined her. Cross: None. The defense asked no questions.
  • Called at about 11:42, immediately after the recess that followed the 911 call, and on the stand roughly five minutes.
  • She was working the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift at the Kingston CVS on January 24, 2023.
  • She took a telephone call from a woman asking whether the store had a children's constipation product in stock. WHAT SHE WAS ASKED FOR IS REPORTED VARIOUSLY as Pedia-Lax, as Miralax, and, in Boston 25's live blog, as 'Pedialight'. Oxygen's compilation of the January 24 timeline puts that call at 4:48 p.m., which matches the 4:48 p.m. call to a CVS store in Det. Chiappini's January 24 timeline as reported on August 13, 2026.
  • THIS IS THE POINT SHE WAS CALLED FOR. Asked whether the caller sounded impaired, she said it was a very normal interaction; the caller had no difficulty making herself understood and her voice was not slurred at all.
  • A store surveillance image was shown to the jury. She had given police the receipt for the purchase, which showed the laxative and a packet of Wild Berry Skittles.
  • NO CROSS-EXAMINATION. The defense did not test her at all.
Saria SweeneyCommonwealth
Hostess handling takeout orders at the ThreeV restaurant, Plymouth. Took the defendant's takeout order on the evening of January 24, 2023. Her surname is reported inconsistently — see her testimony entries.
Direct: Not reported which prosecutor examined her. Cross: None. The defense asked no questions.
  • Called at about 11:51 and on the stand under five minutes.
  • Her shift at the restaurant began at 4:45 p.m. on January 24, 2023.
  • She took a call at 5:10 p.m. from a woman ordering a risotto and a Mediterranean power bowl, left under a man's name for pickup.
  • She identified Patrick Clancy as the man who collected the order, at 5:54 p.m.
  • THIS IS THE POINT SHE WAS CALLED FOR. She found nothing out of the ordinary about the call and could understand the caller clearly.
  • NO CROSS-EXAMINATION.
  • HER NAME IS SPELLED FOUR WAYS ACROSS THE COVERAGE: Saria Sweeney (Boston 25, Oxygen), Saria Shelgren (Boston Globe), Sweeney Schelgren (CBS Boston) and Saria Sweeney Shelgren (boston.com). This file uses Saria Sweeney and records the variants rather than picking a winner.

Exhibits and evidence

Rulings and objections

Procedural