A forensic psychologist provided pivotal insights during Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial, shedding light on her perceived “moral awareness” when she tragically ended her children’s lives.
Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, called by the prosecution as a rebuttal expert, conducted an extensive evaluation of Clancy in April 2026. This assessment took place more than three years after the devastating incident where Clancy allegedly strangled her children before attempting suicide.
Charged with three counts of first-degree murder, Clancy has entered a plea of not guilty. Her defense contends she was in the grips of postpartum psychosis, while prosecutors maintain she was fully aware of her actions.
In his testimony on August 25, Dr. Heilbrun concluded that Clancy was indeed suffering from a “mental disease or defect” during the tragic events. He diagnosed her with “bipolar II disorder depressive symptoms,” exacerbated by insomnia and adverse side effects from her medication.
Yet, despite these mental health challenges, Dr. Heilbrun asserted that Clancy possessed enough awareness to recognize the wrongfulness of her actions. Therefore, he testified, she should be held accountable for the deaths of her children: 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan.
“[My] opinion is that she retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including killing her children,” he testified on day 20 of the murder trial. “Her moral awareness of the wrongfulness of this killing was influenced by her strong desire to die, and if she were dead, not to leave her children behind.”
“Some of this perception was realistic—for example, ‘My children will suffer without me,’ because they would have suffered, I think,” he continued. “Some of it was distorted—for example, ‘Nobody else can care for my children.’ But her awareness of the illegality and moral wrongfulness of such killing is best appraised by understanding these acts as a serious suicide attempt combined with altruistic filicide—killing her children out of love—rather than as a response to command hallucinations [telling her to kill herself and the children].”
When asked if Clancy was able to control her actions and follow the law, he pointed to “the seriousness by her suicide attempt and her strong desire not to leave her children.”
“She demonstrated such self-control throughout the day on Jan. 24, and her actions between 5:15 and 6 p.m. that afternoon were influenced by her depression and her hopelessness about her life and her desire to end the pain she had experienced since October,” he claimed. “Although this depression and hopelessness influenced her decisions, she retained control over whether, when and how she carried it out and the inclusion of her children.”
In his testimony the day prior, Dr. Heilbrun shared details from his evaluation of Clancy. He said that while working with her, he looked for evidence of two possible reasons for the killings—acute psychosis with command hallucinations and a serious suicide attempt—and found that “most of the evidence supported” the second theory. He also noted Clancy’s ex-husband Patrick Clancy’s testimony as to their first conversation when he found her post-suicide attempt.
“His first question was, ‘What did you do?’ And her response was, ‘I tried to kill myself,’” the psychologist recalled. “Now, I thought that if she had actually experienced this command hallucination, that she might’ve said something like, ‘I did what I had to do,’ ‘I did what the voice said,’ or something like that. But no, she said, ‘I tried to kill myself.’”
He also discussed Clancy’s description of the command hallucinations she attests she experienced.
RELATED: Kaiju No. 8’s Thrilling Comeback Set for September 5 – Mark Your Calendars!
“The way she described this as happening is that she heard a voice that she had never heard before and experienced a hallucination, and she’s never experienced it since, but she only experienced it for the 18 minutes or so that it took to kill the children,” Dr. Heilbrun said on the stand. “To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about—very unusual.”
“I’m always very careful when someone tells me that they experienced a symptom only during the course of committing an offense,” he added, arguing that “it provides a convenient way of lessening your own culpability.”
During cross-examination, Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington questioned Dr. Heilbrun on his clinical experience, with the psychologist admitting he’d never written a paper on postpartum mental health. The attorney also put focus on Clancy’s declining mental health in the months leading up to the killings, including her continued reports of “horrible intrusive thoughts.”
Reddington additionally raised questions about Clancy’s ability to have spoken to her then-husband when he found her post-suicide attempt, noting that she’d injured her spine and throat and arguing that she could “only make grunting noises” in the 911 call, per NBC News.
Earlier in the trial, Dr. Phillip Resnick, a psychologist who testified as an expert witness for the defense, came to a different conclusion than. Dr. Heilbrun, sharing his analysis that Clancy had experienced a “delusion of influence” when she killed her children.
“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 testified on Aug. 21. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings.”
Dr. Resnick evaluated Clancy several months after the 2023 killings and diagnosed her with bipolar II disorder with severe depression.
He testified that on the day of the killings, her condition fit the description of postpartum psychosis “in the sense that it was a postpartum onset and she was clearly psychotic on that day.”
According to Dr. Resnick, Clancy received a command hallucination to kill her children and felt she had to “obey” instructions.
“She was just following the command,” he said, “rather than being able to make any decision to do it or not.”
According to Judge William Sullivan, closing arguments in the trial are expected to take place the last week of August, after which the jury will begin deliberations.
If found guilty, Clancy could face life in prison without parole, according to the Associated Press. If she is acquitted due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a mental health facility.