Exclusive | Is Lindsay Clancy really a murderer? Her oldest and closest friends open up to The Post

In the depths of the pandemic, mother of three Chelsea DeFina set up a Zoom group to help fellow moms keep each other accountable in their fitness journeys.The attendees were an eclectic mix and included a woman named Lindsay Clancy. DeFina knew Lindsay from her middle school cheer squad and remembered her fondly as a sweet girl.She hadn’t seen her in person in more than a decade, so she was excited when she joined.Lindsay, who was pregnant with her third child, soon impressed DeFina and the other group members. She would attend nearly every session, working out even when she was seven or eight months pregnant.

Sometimes her oldest two kids, a girl and a boy, would pop into the frame, “working out” alongside the ladies.“She was an inspiration,” DeFina said.When Lindsay gave birth to another boy in May 2022, she stopped checking in.DeFina reached out, but didn’t hear back. “I assumed she was busy keeping up with a newborn and toddlers,” said DeFina.

“I didn’t believe it when I learned that it happened.It didn’t make sense.”What happened: On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a 33-year-old nurse, wife, and mom, asked her husband, Patrick, to run an errand near their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. While he was gone, Lindsay strangled her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — with exercise bands from their home gym. Then she cut her neck and wrists with a knife, swallowed prescription pills from her nightstand, and threw herself out of a second-story window.A 911 call bore witness to the worst moments of Patrick Clancy’s life, when he returned home and discovered the scene.“His screams seem[ed] to get louder and more agonized as time passed,” court records state.Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead at the hospital.

Doctors were able to get Callan’s heart beating again, but tests revealed he had no brain activity. After three days on life support, Callan died three days later.By then, the news of the Cla...