60 Minutes Transcript: Patrick Clancy

Over the last few months, a murder trial in Massachusetts has become a national obsession and a cultural Rorschach test. The story of Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse who killed her three children and then attempted suicide, has created a vortex of online theorizing and suspicion, and generated furious arguments about the relationship between mental illness and criminal fault, the ways in which the medical system fails mothers and how men and women understand one another.

At its heart, though, it's a story about a family and the worst tragedy imaginable. Tonight you'll hear from the father, Patrick Clancy, for the first time since the trial – talking about how he tried to rebuild a life in the shadow of unbearable grief, and why he wants to put the focus back on the memory of his children, Cora, Dawson and Callan.

In the fall of 2022, when Callan was 5 months old, Patrick noticed that Lindsay was struggling.

Patrick Clancy: It was October and-- she went a few nights without sleeping.

Patrick Clancy: She came downstairs one morning, and she said-- "I didn't sleep at all last night." And so I said-- you know, "That's awful. And-- I'll-- I'll take the kids to school. You just focus on-- getting caught up on sleep."

Ross Douthat: Did you know anything about postpartum mental illness before this experience started?

Patrick Clancy: No. I could piece together what it was like to be really, really anxious or depressed, but I didn't know how to manage a postpartum illness. I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive. So I'm-- I'm sure there are things that I didn't see.

Patrick and Lindsay Clancy were living in the seaside town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. They were married six years. Months after the birth of their third child, Lindsay made repeated emergency room visits. She admitted herself to a program for patients with postpartum depression and was discharged after a day of treatment. She was also prescribed an escalating number of prescription drugs. Patrick said he struggled to help his wife navigate the medical system.

Patrick Clancy: I think December. December was-- it was a big struggle for her-- just a huge lack of sleep, deep, deep depression, intrusive thoughts, and-- at the end of that month she went to the hospital.

It was New Year's Eve when Lindsay checked herself into McLean Psychiatric Hospital. She was treated for depression, and days later she was released. The family celebrated Cora's birthday on January 7th.

Seventeen days later, the unthinkable. After taking Cora to a doctor's appointment earlier in the day, Lindsay asked Patrick to run an errand and pick up dinner - and when he returned home, he said he found her lying in the backyard, her throat and wrists cut, paralyzed after jumping from an upstairs window. In the basement he said he found his children strangled. Cora and Dawson were dead. Callan somehow survived and was airlifted to Boston Children's Hospital.

Patrick Clancy: So, I didn't have all the details of Callan's condition. I just knew that they got a heartbeat back. So I remember-- (SIGH) that night, I-- I-- I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live.