After nearly a month of testimony, jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial are hearing Tuesday from the final witnesses in a case that has largely been about her mental state when she strangled her three young children.
Testimony resumed from a forensic psychologist hired by prosecutors to evaluate Clancy's psychiatric history and assess the defense claim that she was suffering from acute postpartum psychosis when she killed the children at their Massachusetts home.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
Kirk Heilbrun told jurors Monday that he believed Clancy took her children's lives so they wouldn’t “suffer” after she killed herself. He said he didn't believe Clancy's claim that she hallucinated a voice telling her to kill the children, the other possibility he considered.
“Everything I did as part of this evaluation, 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,” Heilbrun said Tuesday.
Heilbrun also said he concluded that Clancy was “criminally responsible” for the killings of her children.
“She retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including her children,” he said. “Her moral awareness of this killing was influenced by her strong desire to die and, if she was dead, not to leave her children behind.”
Clancy's lawyer, Kevin Reddington, will get a chance Tuesday to question Heilbrun about his conclusions. Prosecutors are then expected to call at least one more expert witness before the trial moves on to closing arguments, likely no earlier than Wednesday.
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard from other medical experts, called by the defense, who said Clancy wasn't responsible for her actions because she had lost her grip on reality due to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth.
In the months before killing her children, Clancy had sought treatment for mental health problems from multiple providers and admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital.
After killing her children, Clancy jumped from a second-floor window. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors say the former labor and delivery nurse planned the killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the January 2023 deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old.
