A former coworker of Lindsay Clancy says the Massachusetts nurse was deeply emotional whenever a baby was born, often fighting back tears as she watched new mothers meet their children.
Meg Hamp, a labor and delivery nurse who worked alongside Clancy for seven years at Massachusetts General Hospital, recalled repeatedly seeing her moved to tears during deliveries.
“I often remember looking up after a baby was born, and Lindsay was my second nurse in the delivery, and just looking over at the mother and Lindsay with tears in her eyes because birth was just so emotional for her,” Hamp said Thursday on Oprah Winfrey’s podcast, which focused on Clancy’s trial and postpartum mental illness.
Hamp said Clancy appeared to feel the emotions of the mothers around her, not simply those of her own friends or family.
“She felt that for so many other women — not just her friends or her family,” Hamp said.
Hamp Says She Saw No Signs of Mental Illness
Despite working closely with Clancy, Hamp said she never noticed anything that suggested the 36-year-old was struggling with a mental illness at the time.
Clancy was later accused of fatally strangling her three young children with exercise cords in 2023.
During the podcast, Winfrey also asked Hamp about a conversation she previously described during Clancy’s trial involving Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who was convicted in 2002 of capital murder after drowning her five children.
Yates was retried in 2006 and found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state psychiatric facility, where she remains. Her case has been widely associated with postpartum psychosis.
Clancy cries in court during her trial.Boston Globe via Getty Images
Hamp explained that she had brought up Yates while discussing another patient who was experiencing mental-health difficulties.
“We had a patient on the unit that was suffering from some mental-health challenges, and there was just a lot of question around that,” Hamp recalled. She said that because Clancy was a relatively new nurse, and another nurse on the floor was also new at the time, she asked Clancy whether she had ever heard of the Andrea Yates case.
Clancy told her she had not.
“It seems like such a big case in the maternal health world, but Lindsay was at that age where she probably hadn’t lived through that — I’m a little bit older than Lindsay,” Hamp said.
‘She Loved Her Children’
Clancy killed(from left) kids Cora Clancy, Callan and Dawson.Instagram/@heardwithlove
Clancy’s recent trial ended with a hung jury after one juror refused to agree with the others on the verdict. That juror insisted Clancy was guilty of first-degree murder. Prosecutors have not publicly announced whether they will seek a retrial.
For Hamp, the possibility remains difficult to comprehend.
She said she was stunned when she first learned that Clancy’s children had been killed.
“I had a phone call from a colleague. We weren’t 100% sure what had happened, but the address was hitting the news, and I knew her address, so I knew something had happened,” Hamp recalled.
What made the news even harder for her to process was the woman she believed she knew.
“She loved her children,” Hamp said. “She lived for her children, she did everything for them. She wanted all the parenting tips. It wasn’t possible in my mind that this was a person who could murder her three children.”
‘Mental Health Can Affect Anyone’
Hamp said she was “devastated” by the possibility that Clancy could face another trial.
Asked by Winfrey what she would say to people who view Clancy simply as an evil person, Hamp paused before emphasizing how unpredictable mental-health struggles can be.
“I think [mental health] can affect anyone,” Hamp said.
She pointed to people who appear to have built the life they always wanted — attending their dream college, finding a partner, starting a family and buying a home — yet can still experience serious mental-health problems.
“It doesn’t matter where you are in life or how many boxes on your life’s bucket list you’re checking off as you go,” Hamp said. “It can impact anyone regardless of where you are in your life.”
For Hamp, Clancy’s case has underscored how difficult it can be to recognize what someone may be experiencing beneath the surface, even when their life appears to be unfolding exactly as planned.
