It’s been just 15 months since Patrick Clancy’s three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, were killed by their own mother in her battle of postpartum psychosis. This week, to honor his late children, the 33-year-old completed the Boston Marathon.
With tears in his eyes, Patrick Clancy crossed the finish line Monday wearing his daughter’s bow and a bracelet for each of his sons.
“I love my kids, they’re wonderful people,” Patrick Clancy told WCVB after he crossed the finish line. “Everybody loved them. They had short lives — but they had good lives.”
The dad wore a bright blue and orange checkered Miles for Miracles jersey. On the back, it read in handwritten letters: “In memory of Cora, Dawson & Callan. Every mile, every day.”
After completing the 26.2 mile race in just under four hours, Clancy called the marathon “therapeutic,” and said that his children were his “motivation.”
“It was a lot of work and my legs really hurt, but I’m more proud of all the money we raised for charity,” Clancy told WCVB after crossing the finish line. He was able to raise more than $75,000 for Boston Children’s Hospital in honor of his late kids.
The father of three also carried a resin with his children’s handprints on it that Boston Children’s Hospital — where Callan died days after the attack — had given him last year, he said in a statement on the hospital’s page.
“In the short time they were here, my kids brought me so much joy and couldn’t have made their dad prouder,” Patrick wrote on the hospital’s fundraising page. “It goes without saying that losing them has been devastating and it’s a heartbreak that I’ll live with forever, but I’ve committed myself to honoring their memory by trying to bring positive change. In many ways, I’m just trying to be more like them.”
Lindsay Clancy Allegedly Murders the Couple’s 3 Children
In January 2023, Clancy’s wife Lindsay, a labor and delivery nurse, allegedly strangled the three children at home before surviving an attempted suicide when she jumped out a second story window of the home.
Patrick Clancy had reportedly left home to get take-out food for the family when the incident occurred. He was gone just 25 minutes.
When he returned home, he found his wife injured, and his three children “unconscious, with obvious signs of trauma,” Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said Wednesday, CBS News reported.
The two older children, Cora and Dawson, died at the hospital soon after the incident. The couple’s 8-month-old, Callan, died days later as a result of the trauma.
