A judge has ordered The New Yorker to hand over all its audio recordings of an interview with a Boston husband whose wife allegedly strangled their three children in 2023.
Plymouth Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan sent a summons Monday to the magazine’s publisher, Condé Nast, for interview recordings of the young children’s father, two of his relatives, and two friends, all of whom spoke to the New Yorker for an October piece on Lindsay Clancy, the Boston Globe reported.
Clancy, who is charged with the murders of her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan, is set to face trial in January 2016.
Her husband, Patrick, spoke to the magazine for a piece in which he opened up about Lindsay, who claimed that she was driven to the murders in a fit of postpartum depression.
Lindsay had sent him out for an errand on the day of the slayings, Jan. 24, 2023, and used the time to strangle all three of her young children, prosecutors said.
In the interview, Patrick revealed that his wife had called him after the killings and said that she heard a voice telling her to kill her children and then herself because it was her “last chance.”
He claimed: “She did not sound like my wife,” and hung up the call after about a minute.
Lindsay later tried to die by suicide by jumping out the window of their Duxbury, Mass., home but survived and was left paralyzed.
He also told the magazine that his wife “misses her kids.” He added, “I know sounds crazy to some people. But that’s the reality.”
Patrick’s wife pleaded not guilty to all three counts of murder.
The request for the New Yorker’s interview recordings come as prosecutors work to challenge the defense’s argument that Lindsay was overmedicated and experiencing psychosis at the time of the killings.
The judge has also granted prosecutors permission for any relevant interview notes, text messages, voicemails, and emails that the New Yorker or the story’s reporter Eren Orbey, legal filings show.
Sullivan ordered the 34-year-old mom, who is currently being held without bail and is likely to pursue an insanity defense, to submit a psychiatric examination by medical professionals of the prosecution’s choice.
