‘Something is wrong’: US mother’s text months before killing children

"Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I'm really sick. Something is wrong."

Warning: This story contains details that may be distressing for some readers.

Ms Clancy was a former labour and delivery nurse known as a dedicated and loving mother to three children aged five and under.

But her mental health had begun to decline after the birth of her third son, Callan.

Despite repeatedly seeking help from medical professionals, she continued to report a poor mental state.

By December, she had confessed to her mother and then-husband that she had thoughts of harming her children.

A few weeks later, Ms Clancy had killed all three children and attempted to end her own life.

On January 24, 2023, Ms Clancy took her daughter, Cora, to a doctor's appointment and sent her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, photos of their children throughout the day.

When Mr Clancy returned home later that day after running errands, he discovered Ms Clancy lying paralysed in their backyard.

He found their two eldest children dead from strangulation in the family basement. Callan, who was eight months old at the time, died in hospital a few days later.

Whether Ms Clancy killed her children is not in dispute at her triple-murder trial currently underway in the US state of Massachusetts.

Her defence lawyer, Kevin Reddington, argues she was a loving mother who was overcome by postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

He says Ms Clancy repeatedly sought help from medical professionals and was prescribed several psychiatric medications that made her spiral "out of control".

When her family testified for the defence this week, they described a woman who was anxious, paranoid and suicidal.