Testimony ends in Lindsay Clancy triple-murder trial; closing arguments set for Thursday

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Testimony in the Lindsay Clancy triple-murder trial ended Wednesday after prosecutors rested their rebuttal case, moving the case to its final phase. Closing arguments and jury deliberations are expected Thursday.

The final witness was Dr. Gregory Saathoff, an FBI psychiatrist, who testified that Clancy could still appreciate right from wrong and control her behavior when she killed her three children. He pointed to what he described as “preparatory planning,” including phone searches, mapping the distance from the family’s home to a restaurant, and carrying out the killings while her husband was out of the house.

“The fact that this was done without any witness present during a time where she had asked a potential witness to go on a longer errand – also I thought was significant,” Saathoff said.

Closing arguments, jury instructions and deliberations are expected Thursday. Each side will have up to an hour for closing statements.

Clancy, a 36-year-old former nurse, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder in the deaths of her children Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months. The jury will be able to consider first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter charges.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys agree that Clancy fatally strangled her children with exercise bands and then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a window at the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023. The central question for the jury is whether she was “criminally responsible” — whether she appreciated the wrongfulness of her actions and was able to follow the law.

Prosecutors called more than 70 witnesses, arguing that Clancy “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she killed her children. They noted that she sent her husband out to run errands before the killings and that, when she woke up in a hospital afterward, she was “horrified” and asked for an attorney.

Her defense called 10 witnesses, arguing that Clancy was a good mother who suffered from postpartum psychosis. In the months before the killings, she had been prescribed more than a dozen psychiatric medications and had checked herself into hospitals several times for depression, anxiety, insomnia and suicidal thoughts.

The trial’s first witness, Patrick Clancy, her former husband, testified about her downward spiral, describing a period filled with hospital visits and about a dozen medications for insomnia, anxiety and depression. Her struggles began in September 2022 as she prepared to leave her children and return to work as a labor and delivery nurse.

“She just had a really hard time being separated from them,” Patrick Clancy testified.

She postponed her return to work as her mental health troubles intensified in late 2022, particularly after she took Zoloft in October. She experienced intrusive thoughts, checked herself into a hospital in December and spent part of the New Year’s holiday in another hospital, he said.

“Medication stole my motherhood and my life,” Clancy wrote in a note on her phone.

Her doctors testified that she did not have a suicide plan, did not have thoughts of harming others and did not show signs of psychosis. The day before the killings, she met with her psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Tufts, and “said she was doing all right,” Tufts testified.

On January 24, 2023, Clancy asked her husband to pick up takeout food and medicine, leaving her and the children at home. When he returned, he found his wife bleeding in the backyard and his children in the basement with exercise bands around their necks. According to a first responder, he shouted, “She killed the f**king kids!”

About a week later, Lindsay Clancy called her husband from the hospital and said she had heard a voice, Patrick Clancy testified.

“She didn’t talk about our kids, she talked about what she went through,” he said. “She said she heard a man’s voice telling her that if she didn’t do it now, she would lose her chance – or something like that.”

Several psychiatric experts who examined Clancy after the killings gave conflicting accounts of her mental state. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist testifying for the defense, said Clancy was “frankly psychotic” during the killings and called the voice she reported hearing an auditory hallucination.

“Not only did she hear a command, but she felt that her body was taken over by an external force where she was in a dream state and did not have control of her own body,” Resnick said. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.”

In contrast, Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a psychologist testifying for the prosecution, said Clancy knew right from wrong and was in control of her actions. He expressed skepticism about the hallucination, noting that Clancy never reported hearing a voice before or after the killings.

“To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about,” Heilbrun said.

Both experts described the killings as “altruistic filicide” — a term used when a parent kills a child out of love.

“When she decided at some point that she was going to put a stop to (her life), then she had to answer the question of what to do about the kids, and she didn’t want to leave them, and she was convinced they would suffer without her,” Heilbrun testified.

He said Clancy still takes multiple psychiatric medications and remains a suicide risk. “She is still grieving. She is still in mourning,” he said. “She used language like, ‘I have lost everything and I don’t want to be here.’”

Clancy did not testify. She is partially paralyzed as a result of her suicide attempt and is being held at Tewksbury Hospital.

If found guilty of murder, she faces life in prison. If the jury finds her not guilty by reason of insanity, the court would begin the process of committing her to a mental health facility.

The case has put a renewed spotlight on postpartum mental health and the challenge of diagnosing and treating conditions like postpartum psychosis. The trial has also become a stark reminder of the stakes in cases where severe psychiatric distress intersects with the criminal justice system.

The verdict may hinge on whether the jury accepts the prosecution’s portrait of a defendant who planned the killings and understood their wrongfulness, or the defense’s account of a mother experiencing a psychotic break. For now, the decision rests with the jurors, who are expected to begin weighing the evidence after Thursday’s closing arguments.