Prosecution Experts Reject Clancy's Postpartum Psychosis Defense

Prosecutors in Massachusetts have closed their case against Lindsay Clancy's insanity defense, putting on two expert witnesses who told jurors the former labor and delivery nurse knew what she was doing when she strangled her three children.

Clancy, 36, is charged with first-degree murder in the January 2023 killings of Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan at the family's home in Duxbury. She does not dispute the killings. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, citing postpartum psychosis, and is seeking commitment to a state mental health facility instead of prison.

Her trial in Plymouth Superior Court, before Judge William Sullivan, reaches its final day of evidence Wednesday after five weeks of testimony.

What the Prosecution's Experts Said

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague finished her direct examination of Heilbrun on Tuesday morning. Heilbrun compared what Clancy described on the night of the killings to "peritraumatic dissociation" — a trauma response that can look like psychosis but does not strip a person of the capacity to make decisions.

"You are watching yourself go through something," Heilbrun told the jury, saying Clancy "talked about feeling like it wasn't her, like she was watching herself… No thinking, no decision making, only responding to the voice."

He said he considered psychosis but landed elsewhere: "The evidence much more strongly, in my opinion, supported the second explanation, which was the serious suicide attempt accompanied by killing the children out of love." Clancy had a mental disease or defect — bipolar II disorder — but retained her appreciation of the wrongfulness of her actions and showed self-control, he testified. His conclusion: she was criminally responsible.

Saathoff, a University of Virginia forensic psychiatrist who has worked with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, told jurors he reviewed medical and police records, spoke with Patrick Clancy and interviewed Clancy twice. "She was very pleasant, very responsive to questions that I asked on both occasions," he said.

Like Heilbrun, Saathoff called it unusual that Clancy reported an auditory hallucination only on the night of the killings — not before, not after. He said she acted on the voice immediately and that it stopped as soon as she strangled the children. "Committing the act is not curative of the voice," he said. "I've never seen that."

He also flagged inconsistencies. Clancy told him she heard the voice after a phone call with her then-husband; she told another evaluator she heard it right after he left the house, that it grew more intense, and that it told her the children would suffer if she did not kill them. "Widely divergent reports," Saathoff said, "raise questions about what she is telling me."

The Defense Push-Back

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington went after Heilbrun's credentials on cross-examination, asking whether he had ever treated a woman with postpartum psychosis. Heilbrun pointed to a therapy group of four or five severely mentally ill women who had killed their children — work he did at a Florida hospital in 1982. "And this was 44 years ago?" Reddington asked. "Yes," Heilbrun answered.

Reddington then walked Heilbrun through Massachusetts General Hospital's criteria for postpartum depression and psychosis. Heilbrun conceded Clancy had all the depression symptoms and most of the psychosis symptoms, including thoughts of killing her children. On redirect, he said Clancy never shared those homicidal thoughts or her suicide plans with her healthcare providers.

Defense experts have testified that Clancy's deteriorating mental health in the months before the killings, plus the voice she says she heard that night, show she was psychotic. Her lawyers are asking the jury to consider involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder as well.