Lindsay Clancy Trial: Forensic Psychologist Says It Wasn't Psychosis After All

The insanity defense in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial ran into its toughest witness yet today: Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a forensic psychologist testifying for the prosecution. Clancy, 34, of Duxbury, Massachusetts, is accused of strangling her three children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 7-month-old Callan — with exercise resistance bands inside the family's Summer Street home on January 24, 2023. She faces three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation, has pleaded not guilty, and her attorney Kevin Reddington argues she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis and psychiatric overmedication when it happened.

Heilbrun evaluated Clancy three years after the fact and testified that she tends to underreport or minimize her symptoms — an odd thing for a prosecution witness to concede, and worth noting he didn't downplay her suicide attempt at all. He called it serious, said she remains on one-to-one suicide watch at Tewksbury, and said she's still considered at risk today. Where he broke from the defense is on motive: he testified he doesn't think psychosis drove the killings — he thinks Clancy was trying to spare her children from suffering after she took her own life. He noted her symptoms appeared only during the offense, with no accompanying delusions, and that the voice repeating "this is your last chance" registers to him as intrusive thoughts rather than a command hallucination. He also flagged that her first words to her husband afterward were "I tried to kill myself" — not a reference to any voice.

It's the kind of testimony that doesn't need commentary to land. The trial continues in Plymouth Superior Court.

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