Killing of Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy

On the evening of January 24, 2023, three young children were fatally injured at their family's home on Summer Street in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Duxbury Police responded to a 911 call reporting an apparent suicide attempt after a woman had jumped from a second-floor window of the house. Officers found the woman's three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan — in the basement with severe injuries. Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead at a hospital that night. Callan was airlifted to Boston Children's Hospital, where he died three days later, on January 27, 2023.

The Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that Cora and Dawson died of asphyxia and that Callan died of complications of asphyxia. Massachusetts State Police and Duxbury Police investigators developed probable cause that the children's mother, Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse, strangled each child in the home before jumping from the window. The fall left her paralyzed from the waist down and reliant on a wheelchair.

Clancy was arraigned from her hospital bed on February 7, 2023, on charges including three counts each of murder, strangulation, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and she pleaded not guilty. A Plymouth County grand jury indicted her on September 15, 2023, and she was arraigned again in Plymouth Superior Court, where a judge ordered her held without bail. She has since been confined at Tewksbury State Hospital for psychiatric treatment while awaiting trial. On July 9, 2026, prosecutors dropped the strangulation counts, saying that conduct was already encompassed within the murder charges; Clancy continues to face three counts of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors have alleged the killings were planned, saying Clancy sent her husband, Patrick, out of the house on errands that created an opportunity to harm the children. Clancy's defense, led by attorney Kevin Reddington, says she was suffering from severe, undiagnosed postpartum psychosis and had been overmedicated with psychiatric drugs in the months before the killings; the defense has filed notice of an insanity defense. A judge denied a defense request to split the trial into separate phases for guilt and criminal responsibility. Clancy has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges and faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted. Jury selection in her trial was scheduled to begin July 20, 2026, in Plymouth Superior Court.