Patrick Clancy relocated and remarried after the deaths of his 3 children, while launching a charity focused on perinatal mental-health care.

“It was a good summer.”

That is how Patrick Clancy remembered 2022 while testifying in Massachusetts’ Plymouth District Court on July 29. He and his then-wife Lindsay — already parents to a daughter Cora, then 4, and son Dawson, 2 — had just welcomed their third child, Callan, that May.

The family enjoyed trips to Cape Cod and spending time together at their home in Duxbury, an affluent suburb located 20 miles outside Boston.

By that fall, however, things had begun to change in the Clancy household. “Lindsay’s mental health started to deteriorate,” Patrick said in court.

Then, on Jan. 24, 2023, Patrick arrived home to an unthinkable scene: his wife had strangled their three children and attempted to take her own life.

Days later, Patrick released a statement asking people to forgive his wife for her actions.

“My family was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Patrick wrote. “I took so much pride in being Lindsay’s husband and a dad to Cora, Dawson, and Callan.”

He wrote that Lindsay was “generously loving and caring towards everyone,” and that “the very fibers of her soul are loving.”

He added: “All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace.”

In the aftermath of the killings, Patrick packed up his things, began divorce proceedings and quietly began to rebuild his life.

Before Everything Changed

He had grown up with two sisters just 10 miles north of Duxbury in the town of Scituate, and was an avid sailor. When it came time to attend college, he opted to stay local and attended Salve Regina University, an hour and a half south in Newport, R.I.

It was after college that his sister and cousin set him up with Lindsay Musgrove, a young nurse who had recently moved to Boston from Connecticut.

On New Year’s Eve of 2015, Patrick proposed to Lindsay at the site of their first date. They were married near Lindsay’s childhood home in December 2016, and a year later Lindsay and Patrick welcomed their first child on Christmas Eve — a daughter they named Cora.

Their son Dawson followed two years later. While Lindsay was still pregnant with Dawson, the couple bought their Duxbury home.

Lindsay was working as a labor and delivery nurse at the time, while Patrick was in tech sales, splitting his time between a home office in the basement and work trips selling software that kept him on the road throughout the year.

In November 2022, Patrick had one such work trip, traveling to New York City for two days.

He returned home on the evening of Nov. 3, 2022, and the very next day traveled to San Francisco for a four-day trip, taking his oldest child, Cora, along with him.

Patrick’s decision to spend a week away drew criticism from some who questioned why he left his wife alone with their children while, by his own account, she was struggling with mental health issues. But he testified that “nothing bad happened” while he was gone.

The Distance Between Them

Since the killings of their children weeks after his return, Patrick has had only limited contact with Lindsay. He told The New Yorker he heard from her for the first time a day or two before her Feb. 7, 2023, arraignment, when Lindsay left a voicemail saying that she loved him.

A day later, they had a minute-long phone conversation, Patrick told The New Yorker. Lindsay told him she heard a voice commanding her to kill their children and that it was her “last chance,” Patrick said: “She didn’t sound like my wife.”

Six months later, Patrick called his wife at Tewksbury Hospital, the state-run mental health institution where she has been since Jan. 2023, on her 33rd birthday, he told The New Yorker.

Starting Over

But by then, Patrick had already begun to rebuild his life. After making solo trips to Latin America and Europe, he put the family’s house in Duxbury on the market and moved to New York City, where he rented an apartment in the Upper East Side and took a new position as a business applications sales executive at Microsoft.

He also filed for a divorce and started dating again. By February 2024, he was in a relationship with Dr. Rachel Danis.

A reproductive specialist who works for a practice in Brooklyn, she moved into Patrick’s Upper East Side apartment in 2025, a friend of the couple told PEOPLE, and in April 2026, they got married in Central Park.

It was a small ceremony attended by close friends and family, according to the friend, who was a guest at the couple’s nuptials.

Danis has spoken publicly about her own fertility journey. In September 2024, she was a guest on the Fertility Forward podcast. “I remember when I first froze my eggs, I felt like, I mean, even sometimes still, I feel like this black sheep. I think for women, it’s just really hard,” she said. “We have so much pressure to balance career and personal growth, but like we’re riddled with this fertility stuff.”

Keeping Cora, Dawson and Callan Close

Danis is now involved in the many fundraising and charitable endeavors Patrick has undertaken since the deaths of his children, most notably The Heard Foundation, which he launched with his two sisters Erin and Laura in 2024.

“Born from profound loss and bound by love, the Heard Foundation was founded in memory of Cora, Dawson, and Callan Clancy,” reads the charity’s website.

The aim of the organization is to “reimagine perinatal mental-health care” and ultimately “build a dedicated treatment center where parents can heal with dignity and support,” while also working to “foster a culture of kindness and connection so no one struggles alone,” per the website.

Danis was by Patrick’s side when he returned to Duxbury in June 2025 to take part in the group’s first major project — building a playground near his former home.

Photos show Danis and Patrick working with volunteers to build the facility, followed by a formal ribbon cutting.

Guests that day saw the names of Patrick’s three children written on a sign when they entered the playground, along with the words Cora would say to her father before she went to bed every night: “Thank you for a beautiful day in the neighborhood.”

On July 27, Patrick and Lindsay came face-to-face when he traveled from New York to her murder trial in Plymouth, Mass., two towns over from Duxbury.

A reluctant Patrick was the first witness called by prosecutors to take the stand, despite being listed as a witness for the defense.

He maintained his composure throughout his two days of testimony, but struggled to fight back tears when asked to describe his children on July 27.

“Cora was into princesses and she had a lot of friends. She just liked taking care of people,” Patrick said.

Dawson, he said in court, “was into firefighters and trucks and liked the television show Paw Patrol.”

And his youngest, Callan, “was just a happy baby,” he testified.

Just 10 feet away, his ex-wife, who now uses a wheelchair after injuries suffered during a suicide attempt after she killed the children, was sobbing.

Patrick and Lindsay did not make eye contact, and when he was finally excused from court after that second day of testimony, he looked straight ahead as he exited the room.

Source: https://people.com/how-patrick-clancy-rebuilt-life-after-losing-everything-12059654