Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of a Duxbury mom on trial for allegedly murdering her kids, was excused from the witness stand Wednesday before prosecutors played the 911 recording of him discovering his three young children strangled in his basement.
The father had come home on a January night in 2023 after picking up take out and one of the kids’ medicine to find the house unusually quiet. Heading upstairs, he found his bedroom door locked.
“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” Patrick Clancy said on the stand.
When he finally got inside, he found the room covered in blood, the bed pushed away from the wall, and the window opened.
The 911 call — which was played in open court after Patrick Clancy was excused — picks up when he finds his then-wife and the defendant Lindsay Clancy outside below the second-story window, lying on the ground with cuts to her neck and wrists, and appearing to come in and out of consciousness.
She had jumped out of the window and fallen about 20 feet, Patrick Clancy tells the 911 operator.
“My wife tried to commit suicide,” he told the dispatcher.
Sirens can be heard getting louder and louder and when first responders arrived, he tells someone, “I need to go check on my kids.”
On the stand, he told the prosecutors he didn’t realize that he’d stayed on the line with operator, and for a few moments, the call only records the sounds of him running inside and down the basement stairs.
“Guys,” he calls out.
Then, he starts to scream.
He screams the children’s names: Cora, 5, and Dawson, 3. Eight-month-old Callan, he would find a few moments later, he testified.
All three children had exercise bands tied around their necks. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague held up each band in court to show the jury, after Patrick Clancy was excused.
“Come to the basement right now,” he says to the operator. “She killed the kids.”
“She killed the kids?” the dispatcher says, almost a question, then says to himself more quietly, “Holy (expletive)!”
After the 911 called ended, at least one juror was crying, along with several people in the audience.
The judge called a recess.
Lindsay Clancy was sobbing in court, with her head folded over the table. As she was pushed out of the courtroom in her wheelchair – the fall from the window paralyzed her – she said, “Oh my God.”
This story is developing… Check back for updates.
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