Roughly 300 supporters dressed in pink gathered outside a Massachusetts courthouse during Lindsay Clancy's triple-murder trial, a display that has drawn sharp criticism from those who say the real victims, three dead children, are being forgotten.
The rally Thursday outside Plymouth County Superior Court marked the largest public show of support during the nearly month-long trial of Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse charged with murdering her three children, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan, in the basement of the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023. Clancy's defense does not dispute that she killed the children. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, argues she should not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.
The prosecution sees it differently. Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham told jurors in opening statements that Clancy was "not a woman in the throes of psychosis" and that she "gave herself the time and privacy needed to commit the murders."
"They were strangled, deliberately and meticulously, killed by this defendant. One by one, she grabbed exercise bands around each one of the kids' necks and pulled until their little bodies were limp and lifeless."
That was Buckingham's account to the jury. Closing arguments could come as soon as Monday. If convicted, Clancy faces life in prison without parole.
Renee Kimball, the Maine woman who organized the rally, told The U.S. Sun she created the event in the middle of the night after watching Clancy break down during cross-examination.
"I think we all remember the moment that Lindsay was in shambles in the courtroom after some difficult questions from the prosecution during testimony and that stuck with me. I felt like she must feel so alone."
By 4 a.m. the next morning, Kimball said, the event "had gone global." She arrived at the courthouse around 6:30 a.m. Thursday and found dozens of women already lined up an hour before the rally was set to begin. The crowd swelled to hundreds, men and women, many wearing pink ribbons in their hair and buttons reading "Peace for Lindsay" and "Justice for Lindsay." Kimball estimated roughly a quarter of the crowd was men.
Supporters stood in silence facing the courthouse, then gathered in a circle for a prayer and made heart shapes with their hands. Kimball described it as "the most peaceful gathering of that scale that I've ever seen." She said she tracked simultaneous rallies in Canada, Australia, Ireland, Greece, Germany, Korea, Peru, and Portugal on spreadsheets she built to coordinate the effort.
When Reddington arrived at the courthouse, the crowd cheered. Kimball said the defense attorney drove in with his window down and nodded at the supporters. The New York Post reported Reddington told reporters Clancy is "so beat up and just so sad" during the trial.
The rally's stated purpose was to raise awareness about what organizers called systemic failures in mental health care, particularly for women experiencing postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is estimated to affect one to two women per 1,000 deliveries and is far more severe and less common than postpartum depression, according to Breitbart.
Kimball framed the children's deaths as the direct consequence of that failure, not something to be set aside from it.
"And a lot of people are asking, what about the children? But they are the forefront of this message because nobody wants another family to face what their family is facing now."
But that framing sits uneasily with many observers. Fox News noted that critics have raised concerns that Clancy's three child victims are being overshadowed by the outpouring of support for their mother. Three children, the oldest barely in kindergarten, the youngest not yet a year old, are dead. Their father, Patrick Clancy, found their bodies in the basement after stepping out briefly to run errands. He has since quietly remarried and rebuilt his life while the trial proceeds.
Whatever failures the mental health system may bear, the uncomfortable reality is that a woman strangled three helpless children one by one. The prosecution has presented evidence that Clancy acted with deliberation. Buckingham told jurors Clancy gave herself the time and privacy to carry out the killings. Trial testimony revealed that Clancy had searched disturbing phrases on her phone before the day of the killings.
The defense has built its case around the argument that Clancy was desperately seeking help and was failed at every turn. In the months before January 24, 2023, Clancy met with several healthcare providers, was prescribed 13 different psychiatric medications, was hospitalized for suicidal ideation, and called suicide hotlines that turned her away. Her family has testified that she was "begging for help."
Reddington told the jury in opening statements that Clancy "did not get the medication, did not get the medical treatment that she so deserved" and that "she was suffering from psychosis at the time that she went down to that basement." He added: "She had no motive; she loved her children."
Clancy has claimed she heard a male voice tell her, "This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself." A psychologist who met with Clancy after the killings testified about those claims. A hospital chaplain, Sheila Cavanaugh, who AP News reported has visited Clancy more than 200 times since the deaths, testified that when Clancy first regained consciousness she said, "I'm so glad my children are safe", suggesting, the defense argues, a dissociated mental state.
After the killings, Clancy cut herself and jumped from her second-story bedroom window in an attempt to end her own life. She has been held at a state mental health facility under constant one-on-one monitoring ever since. If acquitted by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, she would remain in a state mental health facility.
April Vincent, a 52-year-old paralegal and mother of two from East Providence, Rhode Island, drove more than an hour to attend the rally after hearing about it on TikTok. She told The U.S. Sun she "saw myself in Lindsay."
"I, myself, had postpartum depression with both my pregnancies... I was married to a man who was not very good to me, and I had been afraid to speak out loud the feelings I was having about myself and being scared about how I was going to be able to take care of this tiny human I created with no help."
Vincent said she is "heartbroken that here we are 25 years later, and we are still having people afraid to speak up" and called the mental health system "critically broken." She recounted meeting a therapist at the rally who said she had seen "firsthand how difficult the system makes it for medical professionals to do their jobs adequately," and a man who lost his sister to postpartum depression ten years ago. Another woman flew in from Florida.
Jeanne Zaborski, a 72-year-old retired nurse from Rockland, Massachusetts, told reporters: "I hope Lindsay gets the care she needs and deserves and other women will come together like we did today."
Reddington himself has channeled the same frustration. He told reporters outside the courthouse that women go to doctors who "give them this pill and give them that pill, treat them for 15, 20 minutes and send them on their way. It's just not right." Kimball said it appears the defense attorney "is angry at the mental health systems for failing her."
The defense rested its case Friday after calling Clancy's mother, sister, former mother-in-law, and expert witnesses. The prosecution brought rebuttal witnesses the same day. Roughly 80 witnesses testified over the course of the four-week trial. Patrick Clancy described his ex-wife's psychiatric decline when the trial opened.
Closing arguments are expected Monday or Tuesday. Jurors will decide whether the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible when she took three lives in that Duxbury basement.
Mental health failures are real. Postpartum psychosis is real. But so are three dead children who had no voice, no rally, and no choice. A crowd in pink does not change what happened in that basement, and it should not change what happens in that courtroom.
