Editor’s note: Coverage of this case is disturbing. Scroll with discretion.
PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial entered its fifth and likely final week Monday, with prosecutors working to dismantle the defense claim that severe postpartum psychosis drove her to strangle her three young children.
Closing arguments could come as early as this week, with jury deliberations potentially following. Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, is charged with murdering Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in January 2023.
Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, argues she should not be held criminally responsible because she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis and hearing voices at the time. The state is now presenting rebuttal experts to counter that account.
Rebuttal experts take the stand
Psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack, the first rebuttal witness, testified that Clancy was not suffering from psychosis and understood that what she was doing was wrong. On Monday morning, Reddington cross-examined Mack, working to undercut his qualifications to opine on criminal responsibility.
The second rebuttal witness, forensic psychologist Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, told jurors he diagnosed Clancy with post-traumatic stress disorder — stemming from the killings themselves — along with bipolar II disorder, a milder form of the illness.
Heilbrun said reaching a diagnosis was complicated by the many conflicting labels other clinicians had applied over the years. Hospital records from the three years since her arrest showed depressive episodes but little evidence of mania, he said, and her positive response to bipolar medications helped settle his conclusion.
An inner voice, not a hallucination
Heilbrun, who interviewed Clancy in April, described the “horrible intrusive thoughts” she reported beginning in late November and early December 2022 — a dark inner voice telling her that her brain was damaged, that she should kill herself, and at times that she should harm her children.
The crucial distinction, he testified, is that Clancy experienced those thoughts as her own internal voice rather than an external one — which would have suggested hallucination and psychosis. The only time she described hearing an external, male voice, he noted, was on Jan. 24, 2023, the day of the killings.
The defense will have the chance to cross-examine Heilbrun when the prosecution finishes its questioning, with Judge William Sullivan telling jurors testimony would resume after the lunch break.
Crowds line up in pink
Interest in the case has not faded: roughly 60 people, most of them women dressed in pink, queued outside the courtroom Monday hoping for one of the five rows of gallery seats.
Reporting in this story is based on courtroom testimony as covered by the New York Post. The photograph is a file image from earlier in the proceedings.
