Priest Raced To Lindsay Clancy's Hospital Bed Hours After Her Three Children Were Found Dead
Hours after Lindsay Clancy's three children were found dead in their Duxbury home, the priest who had baptized two of them stood at her hospital bedside and told the unconscious mother, "Jesus loves you." Three years later, that bond surfaced in open court as Clancy fights to avoid a second murder trial.
Case at a glance
- Lindsay Clancy — Mother accused of killing her three children, accused
- Patrick Clancy — Father of the three children
- Cora Clancy — Age 5, victim
- Dawson Clancy — Age 3, victim
- Callan Clancy — Age 8 months, victim
- Robert "Bob" Deehan — Priest, Holy Family Church, Duxbury, Massachusetts
Next: The parties are due back in front of Judge Sullivan on November 16, when he is expected to address how prosecutors intend to proceed and may move toward the March 2027 trial date he has signaled. Clancy's attorneys have indicated they plan to appeal the double jeopardy ruling, and Sullivan's mandatory retirement next June adds pressure to settle the schedule soon.
The text that sent a priest racing to her bedside
On the night of January 24, 2023, prosecutors say Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old Callan — inside the family's home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She then jumped from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the chest down.
That night, Father Robert "Bob" Deehan, a priest at Holy Family Church in Duxbury, got a text from Matt Bensman, the parish's director of family faith formation. Deehan later said he was "taken aback" by the message and realized the day off he had planned would instead be spent with a family in crisis, according to a 2024 documentary on the case cited by The Sun.
The next morning, Deehan prayed through the drive to the Clancy home, unsure how to comfort a father who had just lost all three of his children. He went to Patrick Clancy first, then on to the hospital, where Lindsay was fighting for her life.
At her bedside, with Clancy unconscious, Deehan administered the Catholic Anointing of the Sick and an apostolic pardon. He told her, "Jesus loves you," The Sun reported, citing the documentary.
Baptisms, a vigil and a father's eulogy
Deehan's connection to the family went back further than that night. He had baptized the Clancys' middle child, Dawson, and had baptized Callan, the youngest, at Holy Family Church only months before the killings.
In the days that followed, Deehan helped organize a candlelight vigil that drew more than 500 mourners. He later presided over the children's funeral, where he read a eulogy written by their father, Patrick.
"Wherever you might be, Lindsay, I'm going to track you down. I'll be there with you." — Father Bob Deehan, on Billy Bush's Hot Mics podcast
Who's who in the Clancy case
Lindsay Clancy, 36, is a former nurse charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children. She remains at Tewksbury State Hospital, where she has been held since 2023, paralyzed from the chest down.
Patrick Clancy is the children's father and was married to Lindsay at the time of the killings. He has separately sued several of Lindsay's healthcare providers, arguing they failed to act on warning signs before the deaths.
Father Bob Deehan, the priest at the center of this story, has continued visiting Clancy at Tewksbury for more than three years, according to the Daily Mail. He has also stayed in touch with Patrick, reaching out on the children's birthdays and other significant dates.
Judge William Sullivan presided over the trial and is handling the case's aftermath. Kevin Reddington and Martin Weinberg represent Clancy, Jennifer Sprague is the lead prosecutor for the Plymouth County district attorney's office, and Michael Péguy Desronvil was the lone holdout juror whose vote produced a mistrial.
What the trial record shows
Clancy pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. Her defense has never disputed that she killed the children; instead, it has argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and could not be held criminally responsible.
Prosecutors have acknowledged Clancy had mental health problems but argued she acted deliberately and understood her conduct was wrong. After a five-week trial, the jury split 11-1 in favor of finding her not guilty by reason of insanity, and on September 4 Judge Sullivan declared a mistrial.
On November 9, Sullivan denied a defense motion to dismiss the charges on double jeopardy grounds, ruling there had been "manifest necessity" for the mistrial — a legal standard meaning every other option for reaching a verdict had been exhausted. He also denied a request to question the holdout juror or obtain his phone records and jury questionnaire, and he declined to impose a gag order on the attorneys.
Sullivan has indicated he is inclined to set a trial date in March 2027. The Plymouth County district attorney's office has not formally committed to retrying Clancy.
What witnesses and attorneys have said in court
During the trial, Sheila Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Brigham and Women's Hospital who testified she met with Clancy more than 200 times, described a visit about a week after the killings. "I am so glad my children are safe," Clancy told her, Cavanaugh testified on August 20, according to The Sun. Cavanaugh said she responded that the children were safe in heaven, and testified that Clancy later described hearing a voice telling her she and her children would not be safe unless she followed its command. Prosecutors challenged the testimony, noting Cavanaugh had not documented the alleged voices in her medical notes.
Deehan's bond with Clancy surfaced directly in court when Reddington told Sullivan in August: "Father Bob is a Roman Catholic priest who baptized these kids, who is very, very close to Lindsay." Reddington said the relationship went beyond the religious, describing a personal bond between the priest and his client.
Deehan has said publicly that Clancy remains devastated by the loss of her children and thinks about them "almost constantly," he told the Daily Mail in August 2026. On Billy Bush's Hot Mics podcast the following month, he recalled a promise he made to her during her recovery at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital: "Wherever you might be, Lindsay, I'm going to track you down. I'll be there with you."
After the mistrial, the holdout juror, Desronvil, said he had no doubts about his vote. "Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she knew exactly what she was doing and planned," he said, according to The Guardian. Jury foreperson Roni Carlson gave a different account of the deliberations to NBC10, saying the holdout "admitted he had reasonable doubt" and that she began filling out not-guilty paperwork before he reversed himself on the final vote.
What Vinnie has said about this case
“When we watched Lindsay Clancy's criminal case, there was a theme that came from Kevin Reddington and it was a theme that everyone talked about that Lindsay Clancy's doctors were horrific.”
Vinnie Politan on his show, “Patrick Clancy's Lawsuit Is Already in Trouble” (October 28, 2026)
“Lindsay Clancy loses again and loses in a big way inside of the courtroom and this is now becoming a routine here for Kevin Reddington.”
Vinnie Politan on his show, “Lindsay Clancy Loses Again” (October 26, 2026)
What happens next
The parties are due back in front of Judge Sullivan on November 16, when he is expected to address how prosecutors intend to proceed and may move toward the March 2027 trial date he has signaled. Clancy's attorneys have indicated they plan to appeal the double jeopardy ruling, and Sullivan's mandatory retirement next June adds pressure to settle the schedule soon.
How this plays in court
The core fight at any retrial will be the same one that deadlocked this jury: whether Clancy's documented mental state at the time of the killings meets Massachusetts' legal bar for criminal responsibility, or whether — as prosecutors argue — she acted deliberately and knew her conduct was wrong.
Chaplain Cavanaugh's testimony about a voice Clancy described is likely to draw renewed scrutiny at a second trial; prosecutors have already flagged that the alleged command was never recorded in contemporaneous medical notes, a gap the defense will need to address without Clancy testifying herself.
The defense's disclosure of Deehan's closeness to Clancy illustrates a dynamic any jury will have to separate from the law: sympathy for a defendant's suffering is not a legal defense, and jurors will be asked to weigh clinical evidence of psychosis against the specific knowledge-of-wrongfulness standard an insanity acquittal requires.
The dueling post-trial accounts from the holdout juror and the foreperson show why Judge Sullivan declined to reopen that inquiry; courts generally guard jury deliberations from after-the-fact examination because allowing it would let the losing side attack any verdict by picking apart a juror's reasoning once the case is over.
- The Sun: Priest Raced To Lindsay Clancy's Hospital Bed Hours After Her Three Children Were Found Dead
- The Guardian: Lindsay Clancy back in court seeking to dismiss murder charges after mistrial
- WBUR: Judge considers argument to dismiss Lindsay Clancy's case
- CNN: Judge denies Lindsay Clancy’s motion to dismiss murder charges, paving the way for potential retrial