By Eric Levenson, Nicki Brown, CNN
Plymouth, Massachusetts (CNN) — The prosecution in Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial rested its rebuttal case and testimony is now over as the case moved toward its final stages.
The final witness was an FBI psychiatrist who said Clancy could still appreciate right from wrong and control her behavior when she killed her three children. He pointed to her “preparatory planning,” which included conducting searches on her phone, mapping the distance from their home to a restaurant, and then committing the killings in the timeframe when her husband was out of the home.
“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,” Dr. Gregory Saathoff said.
Closing arguments, jury instructions and deliberations are expected Thursday.
Clancy, a 36-year-old former nurse, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to three counts of murder in the killings of her children Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. The jury may also be able to consider involuntary manslaughter charges, depending on the judge’s coming ruling.
Both prosecutors and her defense agree Clancy fatally strangled her children with exercise bands, and then cut her wrists and neck and jumped out of a window, at their Duxbury, Massachusetts, home on January 24, 2023.
The key question for the jury is whether she is “criminally responsible,” a legal term meaning she appreciated the wrongfulness of her actions and was able to follow the law.
Prosecutors called over 70 witnesses as they argued Clancy “acted intentionally, rationally and swiftly” when she killed her children. They argued she still knew right from wrong at the time, noting she sent her husband out to run errands before killing the kids, and upon waking in a hospital she was “horrified” and asked for an attorney.
Her defense attorney called 10 witnesses as he argued she was a good mother who suffered from postpartum psychosis. In the months leading up to January 2023, she had been prescribed over a dozen psychiatric medications and several times checked herself into a hospital to treat her depression, anxiety, insomnia and suicidal thoughts.
Clancy did not testify in the trial.
Psychiatric experts for both the prosecution and the defense described the killings as “altruistic filicide,” or when a parent kills a child out of love.
The trial has brought a renewed spotlight to the challenges and seriousness of postpartum mental health. Clancy is now partially paralyzed due to her suicide attempt and is being held at Tewksbury hospital.
She faces life in prison if found guilty of murder. 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.
How the trial has gone so far
The trial’s first witness, Clancy’s former husband, Patrick Clancy, testified about her downward spiral, full of hospital visits and about a dozen medications to treat her 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 issues intensified in late 2022, particularly after she took Zoloft in October. She experienced intrusive thoughts, he said, and checked herself into a hospital that December and another hospital over New Year’s.
“Medication stole my motherhood and my life,” Clancy wrote in a note on her phone.
Still, she did not have a suicide plan, did not have thoughts of harming others and did not show any signs of psychosis, her doctors testified. The day before the killings, she met her psychiatrist and “said she was doing all right,” the psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Tufts testified.
On January 24, 2023, Clancy asked her husband to pick up takeout food and medicine, leaving her and the kids at the house. He came home to discover his bloody wife lying in the backyard and his kids in the basement with exercise resistance bands around their necks.
“She killed the f**king kids!” he said, according to a first responder.
About a week afterward, Lindsay Clancy called her husband from a hospital and said she had heard a voice, Patrick Clancy said.
“She didn’t talk about our kids, she talked about what she went through,” he testified. “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.”
Dueling psychiatric experts
Several psychiatric experts who examined Clancy after the killings testified about their views on her criminal responsibility.
Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist, testified for the defense that she was “frankly psychotic” during the killings, describing the voice she heard as 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,” he 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 she knew right from wrong and was in control of her actions during the killings. He also expressed skepticism of the auditory hallucination, saying Clancy did not ever report 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.
Still, both said the killings were motivated by 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.
Even now, Clancy takes multiple medications for her mental health and remains a suicide risk, Heilbrun said.
“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.’”
This story has been updated with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Nicki Brown reported from Plymouth, Massachusetts, while Eric Levenson reported and wrote this story in New York.
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