Commonwealth v. Clancy

This is the Commonwealth's strongest factual material. Two forensic examiners testified to extractions, and the artefacts are timestamped to the second.

• 16:13:23-16:14:50Apple Maps opened and a route planned from the house to the ThreeV restaurant.Whiffin report (Exhibit 1566)
• 17:13:16Device unlocked and Safari used to search PDLX; text to Patrick about liquid stool softener at 17:15.Whiffin report
• 17:15:12Device locked. This is the final unlock event of the day.Whiffin report
• 17:33Incoming call from Patrick at CVS.Whiffin report / testimony
• 17:34Outgoing call to Patrick lasting 14 seconds, placed while the device was still locked, consistent with a callback from a missed-call notification rather than a deliberate unlock.Whiffin report
• 17:38:33No further device activity after this point.Whiffin report
• 16:46Search for children's MiraLAX; CVS website visited at 16:47 and an outgoing call to a CVS store at 16:48.Det. Chiappini, August 13, 2026, as reported by East Idaho News
• 17:063V menu search and a Pedialyte search at the same moment, the witness suggesting more than one browser tab was open.Det. Chiappini, August 13, 2026, as reported by East Idaho News
• 17:09-17:10Calls with Patrick Clancy of 11 seconds and 47 seconds.Det. Chiappini, August 13, 2026, as reported by East Idaho News

The watch is the only continuous record of the interval. It is also the most interpretively contested: the same data is read by each side to opposite effect.

• 17:03A flight climb was recorded by the phone.Whiffin report
• 17:23:52Final heart rate recorded: 57 bpm. The daily average for the defendant ran in the high 80s to low 90s.Whiffin report
• 17:33:34A flight climb registered by the phone, indicating a climb already completed.Whiffin report
• 17:38:33A second flight climb registered. No device activity follows.Whiffin report
• 2026-08-17Whiffin presented Apple Health data including walking and stair activity for the evening as the Commonwealth's final witness.WBUR
• 17:23-17:38Whiffin testified the device recorded two flights of stairs between 17:33 and 17:38, and gave the final heart rate as 57 bpm at 17:23.Whiffin, August 17, 2026
• On cross, the defense established that a phone or watch battery can die or a device be powered down, so absence of data does not establish absence of activity.Reddington cross of Whiffin, August 17, 2026

The quantified results cut in more than one direction, and the defense's own framing of over-medication sits awkwardly with benzodiazepine levels that came back lower than expected.

• Quetiapine (Seroquel) slightly elevated, described in testimony as roughly double what might be expected, but neither toxic nor lethal.Dr. Justin Brower, NMS Laboratories, August 5, 2026
• Lamotrigine, mirtazapine and trazodone all at therapeutic levels.Brower, August 5, 2026
• Diazepam and lorazepam LOWER than expected.Brower, August 5, 2026
• Nordiazepam, oxazepam and temazepam present. All three are diazepam metabolites, so five benzodiazepine detections do not indicate five separate medications.MSP Crime Lab, Exhibit 183
• Ethanol and cannabinoids negative.Exhibit 183
• Brower observed that people attempting suicide by overdose usually take far more than was found here.Brower, August 5, 2026
• Toxicology on all three children detected NO substances. They were not drugged.Alicia Zimmerman, MSP Crime Lab, August 4, 2026
• The crime lab identifies drugs but is not equipped to say how much of a drug was in a person's system. Griffiths's benzodiazepine testing and Yelle's general screen were both identification only.Hilary Griffiths and Lisa Yelle, MSP Crime Lab, August 4, 2026
• Griffiths identified benzodiazepines in both blood and urine and listed four substances for the jury, telling them that one of them, diazepam, breaks down into the other three. Boston 25's account of Yelle's screen says five drug substances. A count of detections is not a count of medications.Griffiths and Yelle, August 4, 2026
• Both witnesses agreed that samples routinely go to outside laboratories for quantification, that here that work was done by NMS Labs, and that several NMS employees were on the Commonwealth's witness list. East Idaho News describes it as a private laboratory in Pennsylvania.Griffiths and Yelle, cross-examination, August 4, 2026
• No alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine, marijuana or opiates were detected. Elicited on the defense's own cross-examination.Griffiths, cross-examination by Reddington, August 4, 2026
• East Idaho News dates Griffiths's crime lab toxicology report February 24, 2023.East Idaho News, August 4, 2026
• The defense did not cross-examine the analyst who reported no substances in the children.Alicia Zimmerman, August 4, 2026

Documented with unusual precision, and the defense's forensic pathologist addressed the mechanism separately.

• Right wrist: multiple lacerations, one 3cm deep and closed with three sutures; the remainder cleaned and dressed.Eitan Negri PA, Brigham and Women's, August 5, 2026
• Left wrist: a single 2cm linear cut closed with one suture.Negri, August 5, 2026
• A cut running the full width of the neck was photographed at South Shore Hospital.Det. Maffeo, July 31, 2026
• On arrival none of the wrist or neck cuts were actively bleeding, and on his training he did not think they needed first aid.Ofc. Stephen Hall, July 30, 2026
• The defense raised whether the cold and the time she had spent lying on the ground had restricted her blood flow. Reddington called the night wicked cold; the witness agreed cold can restrict blood flow and said he could not say what effect, if any, hypothermia had had on whether blood seeped through the wrist bandages or the openings of the neck brace. This came on the cross-examination of Dougherty, not of Ofc. Hall; an earlier version of this record attributed it to Hall, who was not cross-examined at all.Daniel Dougherty, Duxbury Fire Department, July 30, 2026
• The paramedic who described the neck cuts as superficial did not know at the time that she had a burst fracture of the cervical spine, had fractured ribs, or was hemorrhaging.Robert Costanzo, Pembroke Fire Department, July 30, 2026, on cross-examination
• The Commonwealth put it on redirect that the wrist wounds were not sutured at the hospital until the following day and that the neck wound was never sutured.ADA Jennifer Sprague, questioning Dougherty, July 30, 2026
• Blood recovered from the house shingles and the ground below the bedroom window matched the defendant.Katarina Stashyn, MSP DNA, August 5, 2026
• Severe hypothermia on arrival at South Shore Hospital.Dr. Michael Vulfovich, August 17, 2026
• Multiple fractures in the cervical and thoracic spine, consistent with a fall from a second-story window.Vulfovich, August 17, 2026
• Cardiac arrest after transfer to Brigham and Women's, requiring two rounds of CPR.Vulfovich, August 17, 2026
• Injuries consistent with self-injurious behavior, but intent could not be determined. The judge barred him from opining on whether the attempt was genuine.Vulfovich, August 17, 2026
• Dr. McDonough characterized the neck and wrist cuts as superficial, not requiring measures to stabilise blood flow.Dr. Kelly McDonough, August 3, 2026
• Dr. Carpio also characterized the neck and wrist cuts as superficial, alongside complex spinal fractures, hypothermia and low blood pressure.Dr. Cristina Carpio, August 4, 2026
• Carpio's report described cuts that went through skin into exposed fat but did not reach muscle, artery or tendon; she saw no deep cuts on the wrists. As the defendant's body temperature was brought up with a forced-air warming blanket, the lacerations needed no further treatment.Dr. Cristina Carpio, August 4, 2026
• On cross-examination Carpio said she had not known that her patient coded shortly after arriving at Brigham and Women's, that she needed massive transfusions there, or that staff there used tubes to remove blood from her chest. East Idaho News alone records Reddington establishing that Clancy was a Level 1 trauma patient, that her core temperature was 82 degrees and that she had a spinal transection at T5-T6 with instability. On redirect Carpio said Clancy was stable before the transfer.Carpio, cross-examination and redirect, August 4, 2026
• The Commonwealth's bloodstain analyst agreed on the prosecution's question that the transfer stains on the window sill and shingles could have come from someone leaning on the sill before going out, or hanging from it - the Commonwealth's alternative to a jump. On cross she agreed the sill stain was equally consistent with bloody hands placed on the sill, that the drip stains at and in front of the bedroom mirror were consistent with cast-off blood thrown from a knife drawn across a throat, and that anyone descending the shingles in contact with them the whole way would have left a transfer running all the way down.Sherri Crook, MSP Crime Lab, August 4, 2026
• Crook worked from crime scene photographs and Hartnett's reports rather than from the house, and could not say in what order the stains were made. The red-brown stain in the snow below the window was too diluted to yield information.Crook, August 4, 2026
• The linear transfer stain on the nightstand, left by the bloody edge of the knife, shows the knife was moved.Crook, August 4, 2026
• Neither the knife recovered from the second-floor bedroom nor the three exercise bands yielded a fingerprint of any value for comparison.Trooper Jonathan O'Loughlin, August 4, 2026

The defense case rests substantially on reported psychotic symptoms. The Commonwealth's answer, run consistently across three days, is that the clinical record does not document them.

• Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale scores of 23, then 17, were in evidence. Scores above 13 indicate probable depression; 23 is severe.Rebecca Jollotta, August 11, 2026
• At intake on November 22, 2022 the defendant reported no suicidal or homicidal ideation, no hallucinations and no delusions; the documented concern was inability to sleep.NP Julie Paul, August 10, 2026
• Jollotta testified the defendant never articulated a plan or intent to take her own life and indicated she was safe.Jollotta, August 11, 2026
• Dr. Tufts, who saw her fourteen times by telemedicine through to the day before, testified she never presented as psychotic and that Tufts did not diagnose bipolar disorder.Dr. Jennifer Tufts, August 10, 2026
• A psychologist testified the defendant reported hearing a male voice ordering her to kill the children.August 18, 2026
• A hospital chaplain testified to the same reported command — a persistent male voice which she said Clancy described as warning that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe — from about fourteen visits at Brigham and Women's beginning the day after the killings and roughly two hundred more since. Her own chaplaincy notes in the hospital record, which document each interaction and are specific about Clancy's fear of never walking again, her saying she was deserving of what had happened, her application for disability benefits, her hopes for a Spaulding discharge and a card game with her mother, contain no reference to any voice. She testified the notes are not verbatim transcripts, that she is not medically trained, and that there are limits on what she records from privileged spiritual communication.Sheila Cavanaugh, August 20, 2026
• Dr. Zeizel conceded on cross that nothing in the medical records recorded her reporting voices telling her to kill herself, only that she wanted to die.Dr. Paul Zeizel, August 19, 2026
• A forensic psychiatrist who saw her on January 26, 2023 found no documented signs of psychosis, while agreeing on cross that psychosis can fluctuate.Dr. Jhilam Biswas, August 3, 2026
• Hospital psychiatric records of January 29, 2023 describe organized, goal-oriented thought; on February 19 she denied hallucinations and suicidal intent.Dr. Sejal Shah, August 3, 2026
• The McLean psychiatrist who managed her discharge weeks before had never treated a patient with postpartum psychosis.Dr. Alia Goodheart, August 7, 2026

Used by both sides. The Commonwealth points to what was searched; the defense to what was not.

• A website concerning suicide methods was visited on August 23, 2022, five months before, and three weeks before the first entry in the treatment chronology.Sgt. Kyle Pavao, August 13, 2026
• A search on December 5, 2022 about what to do when a psychiatrist over-prescribes.Pavao, August 13, 2026
• Searches on January 19, 2023 for symptoms of postpartum psychosis, and for psychosis symptoms.Whiffin report
• A search on January 20, 2023 at 20:28 asking whether a sociopath can be treated.Det. Chiappini, August 13, 2026
• No searches for ways to kill were recovered. The laptop examined belonged to Patrick Clancy.Pavao, August 13, 2026
• The MiraLAX search of January 24 is accounted for: the family pediatrician saw Cora that morning for a routine physical and suggested it.Dr. Lindsay Rosshirt, August 6, 2026
• The suicide methods page of August 23, 2022 was reached from a Facebook visit at 9:40 a.m., a Spotify search for the country singer Tom Hall, a Google search for Hall and a link on his Wikipedia page about his self-inflicted gunshot wound, and was followed by a click to a Wikipedia page about the Grafton Bridge in New Zealand, in a section about jumping. The device was a Microsoft Surface Pro belonging to Patrick Clancy, signed into his Google account.Sgt. Kyle Pavao, August 13, 2026
• Further searches on the same device in December 2022, drawn out by the defense: what to do when a psychiatrist overprescribes; whether bipolar disorder can be temporary; whether benzodiazepines can reveal bipolar disorder; how long detox programs run; what dialectical behavior therapy is; what mania is; ketamine for benzodiazepine withdrawal; ketamine therapy.Pavao cross-examination, August 13, 2026
• On the phone, drawn out by the defense on cross: schizophrenia, psychosis, hallucinations, intrusive thoughts, postpartum depression, insomnia, sleep, suicide, bipolar disorder, McLean Hospital, and a long list of prescribed medications including Seroquel, trazodone, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Lamictal, ketamine, Ativan, amitriptyline, benzodiazepines and, per NBC Boston, Klonopin under its generic name. None of it was raised on the Commonwealth's direct examination.Det. Chiappini cross-examination, August 13, 2026
• Searches Chiappini did not recall finding and could not confirm came from the defendant's phone, which Reddington said the records show: where the carotid artery is, how to slit one's throat to die, and whether the airbags on a Kia Sorento can be turned off.Chiappini cross-examination, August 13, 2026