Witness testimony was winding down on Tuesday in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman charged with murdering her three young children in 2023.
Expert witnesses for the prosecution offered their assessments of Ms. Clancy’s mental state at the time of the killings, which they said were not necessarily the result of psychosis, as the defense has maintained. The testimony focused on the trial’s central question of whether Ms. Clancy had the mental capacity for criminal responsibility that day in January 2023.
Gregory Saathoff, a forensic psychiatrist who began his testimony on Tuesday, is expected to be the final witness before lawyers present their closing arguments to the jury in Plymouth, Mass. Those arguments may come on Thursday, according to the judge, William Sullivan.
Ms. Clancy, 36, does not deny strangling her children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — at her home in Duxbury, Mass., an affluent suburb of Boston.
But she has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, maintaining that she should not be held criminally responsible for the killings because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a condition that can cause hallucinations and delusions. She faces life in prison without parole if convicted; if found not guilty, she is likely to be committed to a secure psychiatric institution for an indefinite period.
According to the testimony of multiple witnesses, Ms. Clancy has said that she heard a male voice repeatedly telling her to kill her children and herself. In the months leading up to the killings, she was reporting persistent, disturbing and intrusive thoughts.
In his testimony for the prosecution, Dr. Saathoff cited interviews he conducted with Ms. Clancy this year. Ms. Clancy said that shortly before killing her children, she had been making dinner for them when she received a call from her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, who was out running errands, Dr. Saathoff said. He added that after she had returned her husband’s call, she said she heard the male voice saying, “This is your last chance. You have to kill your kids and then kill yourself.”
Dr. Saathoff added that her accounts of that night were not always consistent.
He was one of three mental health professionals who have been called by the prosecution to testify during rebuttal, a part of the trial that gives prosecutors an opportunity to respond to claims made by the defense. While the defense has maintained that Ms. Clancy was psychotic and thus unable to control her actions at the time of the killings, the prosecution has argued that she carefully planned them.
Based on his interviews with Ms. Clancy and his examination of her medical records, Dr. Saathoff questioned on Tuesday whether she had been suffering from psychosis or another condition.
Another psychologist and witness for the prosecution, Kirk Heilbrun, finished his testimony earlier on Tuesday. He cast doubt on whether the killings should be attributed to postpartum psychosis, in part because they occurred eight months after the birth of Ms. Clancy’s youngest child.
Dr. Heilbrun, who had begun his testimony on Monday, also said that before the day of the killings, Ms. Clancy’s intrusive thoughts were “not auditory hallucinations. They were her own thoughts.”
Dr. Heilbrun said it is most likely that Ms. Clancy killed her children as an act of “altruistic filicide,” or a killing intended to prevent their suffering, before trying to end her own life.
Ms. Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, pressed Dr. Heilbrun to acknowledge that many of Ms. Clancy’s symptoms were consistent with postpartum depression and questioned the depth of Dr. Heilbrun’s experience with patients experiencing postpartum psychosis. He is expected to cross-examine Dr. Saathoff on Wednesday.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
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