The 911 call

Added 2026-09-05 from the day 2 transcript [S257]. Patrick testified he had difficulty connecting: "I don't know the exact time, but it took a few minutes because my phone was switching between Wi-Fi and 911. So I I almost just started calling out for the neighbors, but eventually it went through." He also said of one statement, "I later learned that I said that on the 911 call," indicating he does not independently recall parts of it. This wiki's reasoning: a few minutes of failed attempts sits between his 6:09 pm arrival and the ~6:11 pm connection and compresses what he did in between. ASR grade; verify before quoting.

Status of the recording, read this first

The audio is under a court restriction and this dossier does not contain it, link to it, or transcribe it beyond what was reported from open court.

On a motion by Patrick Clancy, allowed the Friday before trial day 2, Judge Sullivan ordered that "The media shall not, record, display, reproduce, distribute or otherwise disseminate" the 911 call or the children's autopsy photographs. Court TV's courtroom camera was ordered off while it played. [S3][S6][S47]

The call was separately admitted into evidence by a ruling on 2026-06-29. [S12]

The case is now heading toward a possible retrial, and the restriction was sought by the bereaved parent whose voice is on the recording. Copies circulating online exist in defiance of that order. Everything below is drawn from what reporters in the courtroom described and from sworn testimony about the call, which is public.

What the call was

Patrick Clancy dialled 911 at roughly 6:00 p.m. on 2023-01-24, after returning home from the takeout and pharmacy errand, finding the bedroom bloodied and the window open, and finding his wife on the ground outside. [S3]

Duration: about six minutes. [S3]

The call was still active when responders arrived, and remained active as he went back into the house and down to the basement looking for the children. [S40][S47]

Its structure, as described by reporters present

Reconstructed from CBS Boston's Kristina Rex, who was in the courtroom, and from Court TV's retrospective. [S3][S40][S47]

1. Outside, with Lindsay. He is asking for help for his wife, who is on the ground with wrist and neck injuries, going in and out of consciousness. Heard on the call: - "Did you fall out the window, Linds? Did you fall? Is there something on your neck, Lindsay?" - "Where are the kids, Lindsay" - He tells the dispatcher his wife has attempted suicide.
2. Her answers, as he testified: "I tried to kill myself," and, asked where the children were, "basement." She did not indicate they were hurt or in danger. [S3]
3. Inside, the basement. The recording continues as he goes into the house and finds the children. Reporters present described his screams as gut-wrenching. Court TV: he "could be heard screaming in agony and shock as he found his children." [S40][S47] - "She killed the kids!" [S3][S6] - A Court TV headline renders this more strongly as "she killed the f-ing kids." [S45, headline only, unconfirmed against the audio]
4. Then CPR. He testified he went "back and forth" between the three children performing CPR until responders arrived, and that he untied the band from each as he found them. [S3][S40]

Responding Duxbury officers testified they heard him shouting from the house that he could not wake his children: "I can't wake them up, I can't get them up!" [S18][S29]

How it was handled at trial

• Patrick Clancy was removed from the courtroom before it was played. He left the witness stand and the courtroom. [S40][S47]
• It was played on trial day 2, Wednesday 2026-07-29. [S3]
• Clancy gripped Reddington's hand and cried through it; she was later wheeled out sobbing with her face in her hands. Jurors and gallery spectators were also in tears. Sullivan ordered a recess immediately after. [S3][S40][S47]
• During the period the call was played and the jury was out, Plymouth Fire responded to the courthouse for an unspecified medical emergency; EMTs entered the district attorney's office. All 18 jurors were present when court resumed about 80 minutes later. The nature of the emergency was never disclosed. [S3]
• Fox's coverage refers to a "heated courtroom exchange over 911 call, crime scene photos" setting the stage for the trial, indicating the admissibility fight was contested pretrial. The details of that argument are not in this corpus. [S70, headline reference]

What each side did with it

• The Commonwealth used it in opening: the home was "eerily quiet" when he returned, he found the children with the bands still around their necks, and he screamed "She killed the kids." [S6] It also established the scene, the timing of his return, and her statements at the scene.
• The defense used the call against a Commonwealth expert. Reddington attacked Dr. Heilbrun for not having listened to the tape, and put it to him that Clancy could only make grunting noises, contradicting Heilbrun's account that she had spoken to her husband. Heilbrun: "I would be surprised, yes." [S17]

That last exchange matters. It means the call bears on a contested question, her verbal capacity in the minutes after, and that at least one Commonwealth expert formed an opinion without hearing it.

The Commonwealth's motion to admit it, 2026-06-11

The prosecution's own description of the call, from its motion in limine: [S141]

• His statements "describe the defendant's condition when she was found, what the scene looked like, what her injuries were, the status of her injuries and how quickly the police responded to the scene."
• He "stayed on the phone after first responders arrived, and the call recorded the moments he discovered each of his children in the home's basement. Each had been strangled with a separate exercise band."
• The bands. "The spontaneous and excited nature of the 911 call, made prior to any reflective thought, further establishes that the bands were wrapped around each child's neck in a fashion that negates any theory that they were tied or knotted." His later interviews and grand jury testimony described knots and a looped band. The Commonwealth wanted the call precisely because it contradicted those later accounts: tied-and-walked-away versus pulled-until-death is "probative of the deliberateness of her acts and the extreme atrocity and cruelty of her acts."

Reddington, on 06-18, said he personally disagreed with playing it "just because [it's] horrific" but conceded there was no legal basis to object. The Commonwealth: "more probative than prejudicial." [S140]

The prosecution's earliest use of the call, at the 2023 arraignment, was different: Sprague said Lindsay had told Patrick by phone that she killed the children in a "moment of psychosis" after hearing "a man's voice, telling her to kill the kids and kill herself because it was her last chance." That was the later hospital call, not the 911 call. [S171]

On finding a recording online

If a copy is circulating, it is circulating against a standing court order obtained by the victims' father, in a case with a retrial pending. I have not gone looking for it and would not reproduce it here. If you need the audio itself for a legitimate purpose, the routes that do not run through that order are:

• The trial exhibit, via the Plymouth County Superior Court clerk. It is an admitted exhibit in a public criminal proceeding, and access is the court's call to make.
• A public records request to the Duxbury Police Department or the relevant PSAP for the original 911 audio. Massachusetts treats 911 recordings under G.L. c. 6A, s. 18 with significant restrictions, and an active prosecution is a common ground for withholding, so this may well be refused, but it is a lawful route.
• The DA's office, which controls the evidence in an active case.

Any of those produces an answer with a chain of custody. A file from a social media repost does not, and in a case where the audio is being argued about, provenance is the whole point.

Open questions about the call

• The full transcript is not public and is not in this corpus.
• Whether she is audible on it at all, and if so whether she speaks words or only makes sounds. This was directly contested with Heilbrun and never resolved in the coverage available. [S17]
• The pretrial argument over its admission, resolved 2026-06-29. [S12][S70]
• Whether Patrick's own 911 audio will be handled the same way at a retrial.