Ruth Hearson remembers the day in 2018 when the young couple and their baby girl moved into the home opposite on Summer Street.

She took them brownies and welcomed them to the neighborhood - a quiet tree-lined road in the coastal suburb of Duxbury, Massachusetts.

At the time, Lindsay, Patrick and Cora Clancy seemed like any other young family raising their children on the South Shore. A year later, they welcomed a son, Dawson, and baby Callan came along in 2022.

To 81-year-old Hearson, who has lived on Summer Street for five decades, the Clancys 'were a terrific family.'

Though they largely kept to themselves, Hearson would take the children Christmas gifts and often saw their doting parents playing with them outside.

One time, she remembers a deer jumped over the road from her yard into theirs while Cora and Patrick were playing. 'I shouted over: "Hey Cora, did you see the reindeer?"' she told the Daily Mail.

Standing in the doorway of her house directly facing what was once the Clancy family home, Hearson laughed at that fond memory. Her face then quickly fell. 'It's heartbreaking,' she added, shaking her head.

'I think about how old the children would be now. They will always be five and three and eight months old.'

On January 24, 2023, Lindsay strangled the children in the basement with exercise bands.

She then tried to take her own life, slashing her wrists and neck and jumping from a second-floor bedroom window.

More than three years later at trial, prosecutors say Clancy was a mother who methodically planned the killings. The defense say she was a mother in the grips of postpartum psychosis after months spent seeking help for her deteriorating mental health.

Her fate now lies in the hands of 12 jurors following a grueling trial in the neighboring town of Plymouth.

But around Duxbury, residents are still grappling with disbelief that such an unthinkable tragedy could have happened on their doorsteps.

Nicknamed 'Deluxe-bury' thanks to its waspy residents, the idyllic town is one of the wealthiest in the state with high-end oceanfront homes and a sailing culture.

As neighbor Mark Short said, it's the perfect place to raise a family: 'There's community. If someone is shoveling snow from their driveway, you help. But at the same time we're not on top of each other.'

'There's a lot of old money - and also a lot of new money,' Laura Raposa, owner of the Foodsmith cafe in south Duxbury, said.

'People get married, have children and settle here. It's a very nice town.'

The Clancys very much fit that mold.

Patrick, a Microsoft executive and Lindsay, a labor and delivery nurse, 'looked like the typical young Duxbury family,' Raposa said.

Their picture-perfect, middle-class life shattered in January 2023.

Almost everyone the Daily Mail spoke to around Duxbury - roughly a dozen neighbors, local residents, young families and workers in the quaint downtown - empathized with Lindsay and believed she was a loving mother who had become severely mentally unwell.

'Lindsay is already in jail for the rest of her life in her mind, regardless of where she is,' one elderly neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

'She's already been convicted in her own mind. She'll never be the same.'

For those along Summer Street, that day when sirens shattered the peaceful neighborhood is one they will never forget.

Standing at her kitchen window, the anonymous neighbor once had a direct view of the swing-set in the Clancys' backyard.

'From what I could gather, they were a happy family - always smiling. The kids always looked healthy, well-fed, happy,' she said.

'You see shows like Dateline, and you never think it will happen in your neighborhood.'

In the aftermath, there was an outpouring of grief and shock in the community, with teddy bears and bunches of flowers piling up at a makeshift memorial outside the home.

Around town, purple ribbons were tied around trees and lampposts.

Local cafes sent meals to emergency responders and the children's daycare teachers.

At Holy Family Church, where Callan was baptized just three months earlier, Father Bob Deehan held a prayer service two nights after the killings.

'People supported one another,' he said. 'There was great shock, sadness and confusion. People just did not understand how this could happen here.'

The trauma fanned out far beyond the family. 

Along Summer Street, a young boy whose home faced the back of the Clancy house witnessed the tragedy.

'He was watching TV at the time. He saw Lindsay on the ground in the yard,' neighbor Mark Short said.

The boy also heard Patrick's 'ungodly yell' when he found his children's bodies.

'It really affected him,' Short said.

That family later sold their house and moved.

First responders also struggled with what they had witnessed. Firefighters held a therapy session at the parish hall. Some reportedly left their jobs.

Ruth Hearson remembers seeing the carpets being ripped out of the basement - the place where the children had died.

Hearson's own mother struggled with postpartum depression after having 13 children and miscarrying five, and was sent to a psychiatric hospital for electrotherapy, she said.

'So believe me, I sympathize with Lindsay... She was so lost,' Hearson said.

Before the killings, Clancy had been prescribed 13 different medications by various health providers treating her anxiety, depression, insomnia and other health problems. 

Hearson also had harsh words for the prosecutors pursuing murder charges.

'They have no empathy whatsoever,' Hearson said. 'Lindsay is in hell already. She's been punished enough. I pray that the jury will see the real truth.'

Another anonymous female neighbor was similarly upset about 'the circus' the state has made of the tragedy.

'It wasn't her that did it. It was demons from the hallucinations and medication,' the neighbor said. 'My heart breaks for her. Even though what she did was unthinkable, she wasn't in her right mind.

'If she was on the right concoction of medications it could have been a whole different outcome.'

Both Lindsay and Patrick have filed separate lawsuits against the healthcare providers who treated her in the months before the killings, alleging their failures contributed to his children's deaths. 

The providers have denied the claims.  

'She was asking for help,' a local store worker and mother said.

In her view, the case should never have gone to trial: 'It's a misuse of justice. She's already in hell and that's not going to change. Whatever happens her life is forever over.'

Today, the teddies and flowers outside 47 Summer Street have long gone. The faded purple ribbons have been taken down.

But there are some lasting reminders of the tragedy.

The Clancy Family Playground built by Patrick in his children's honor opened in June 2025 at Wadsworth Field Park - a five-minute drive from the family home.

A photo of Cora, Dawson and Callan welcomes children to play. There is a panel reading Cora's favorite saying, 'Thank you for a beautiful day in the neighborhood', a fireman panel for Dawson, and a colorful toddler area for Callan.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, two small children played happily there with their father.

But for their mother Chelsea Bracky, it was impossible not to think about the tragedy that had led to the park's creation.

'It carries a bit of heaviness visiting,' she said.

As a mother with children similar in age to Callan and Dawson, it is 'eye-opening and scary' to think what happened.

'I didn't even know what postpartum psychosis was,' she said.

For her and her husband, it made them aware of the risks of postpartum mental health issues when she became pregnant.

'When I was expecting, it was something we spoke about - that it could happen to me and the possible signs to look out for,' she said.

Last fall, a maternal mental health and wellness center, SOLEO, also opened in Duxbury.

Barbara Whitney, who works at the store Frost & Found, often hands out its fliers to customers.

'When this happened, people weren't just horrified about the loss of the children. People also felt it should never have happened,' she said.

'Now, women speak out more about their struggles. There is more awareness of mental illness.'

And for the Clancys former neighbors on Summer Street and the local residents around 'Deluxe-bury,' that greater awareness about for postpartum mental health is the only possible good to come from this tragedy and trial.