BOSTON —Prosecutors sought to paint Lindsay Clancy, a Duxbury mom on trial for allegedly murdering her three children, as a “manipulator,” an accusation the defense tried to flip right back on the Plymouth DA’s office.

In opening statements Monday, Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham described Clancy as an “extremely controlling … manipulator,” who “no longer lived the life she wanted” in January 2023, when she decided to “escape” and strangle Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callum, eight months, before trying to kill herself.

She said that the prosecution would point to certain behaviors, like scheduling everything to the dot and withholding information from her then-husband and health providers. After killing her kids with exercise bands in the basement, and before trying to kill herself, Clancy briefly spoke with her husband on the phone, Buckingham also claimed.

Buckingham described the three young children, telling the jurors, “we are here ladies and gentlemen because they are not.”

But Clancy’s attorney, physically pointed at Plymouth District Attorney Tim Cruz, who sat in the front row of the courtroom, and said the office shouldn’t be trying his client, who he admits did the killings but wasn’t criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.

The trial was going to “kill the soul of this young woman,” he said. “She’s still living a nightmare.”

Looking at Buckingham, Reddington also took a dig at her opening, saying that Lindsay Clancy “knows one thousand times more than they know” about the victims in this case.

“You have to keep focus on the evidence because it’s so easy to manipulate,” he told the jury.

Clancy’s ex-husband and the children’s father Patrick was the first witness to take the stand.

He described his ex-wife’s struggles and anguish after she gave birth to their third child: he went back to work, and her own date to return to her job as a nurse loomed in the fall of 2022.

That September, she was prescribed Zoloft, an anti-depressant, but “she wasn’t really improving,” Patrick Clancy said. “She seemed to be entering a depressed state.”

Lindsay Clancy was having trouble sleeping. At one point, she admitted herself to the emergency room because she’d gone two days without sleep.

The Zoloft prescription was doubled. “She just kept getting worse and worse,” he said.

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague noted that from some of the pill bottles that Patrick Clancy had returned to authorities after the killings, only several or a few pills were taken.

“A lot of pills were prescribed,” Sprague said, “but not a lot were taken.”

“If that’s comprehensive of all the pills she was prescribed,” Patrick Clancy countered. He said that Clancy was prescribed ten different drugs, none of which seemed to help.

He described how his wife feared that she was becoming addicted to Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug, and benzodiazepines.

Then in early December, “a couple of times,” Lindsay Clancy told her husband about having thoughts of harming the kids or harm coming to them and of killing herself. But, Patrick Clancy testified, she never said she had a specific plan and said the “intrusive thoughts” were disturbing.

She went to the ER two more times because of suicidal thoughts and was admitted to McLean, but asked to be discharged at the beginning of January so that she could attend Cora’s 5th birthday.

Sprague showed photos and videos of a seemingly happy family in those following weeks: Lindsay Clancy could be seen playing with the kids at a waterpark on the Cape. In selfies, she smiled with the children.

Patrick Clancy said that he was hopeful, right before Lindsay Clancy killed the kids then tried to kill herself. “She seemed to be doing a lot better,” he said, telling the court that he never thought that she would harm the kids and thought it was OK for her to be alone with them.

“She was having one of her best days,” he said of Clancy on the day she killed the kids. Lindsay Clancy sat across from him in the courtroom in her wheelchair; she’s paralyzed from jumping out of a window during her suicide attempt.

At times during the first day of the trial, she shook and wiped at her eyes with a tissue. Clancy appeared to look away from her monitor at her desk, where the exhibits, including photos of the kids, were published.

Lindsay Clancy had taken Cora to a doctor’s appointment the morning of the killings. Patrick Clancy been working from home all day, popping his head upstairs from his basement office to see his then-wife playing with the kids, doing art projects, building a snowman.

Just before he left that evening to pick something up from CVS and grab takeout, Patrick said Dawson was sitting on the couch, eating chicken nuggets. He bounced Callum on his knee and kissed Cora on the head, then said goodbye.

Patrick described Clancy’s behavior as “normal,” right before walking out the door.

His testimony ended there for the day. It is expected to continue Wednesday morning, when Clancy’s trial resumes.

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