Lindsay Clancy’s tragic case has taken a chilling turn as a forensic psychiatrist revealed she endured a “delusion of influence” during the harrowing incident that claimed the lives of her three young children.
Testifying on August 21, Dr. Phillip Resnick described Clancy’s state as being overtaken by an invisible force. “It was as though she was trapped in a dreamlike trance, her actions no longer her own,” he explained on the 18th day of Clancy’s high-profile murder trial. “It was akin to being a puppet, with an unseen hand guiding her every move.”
Dr. Resnick, renowned for his expertise in high-profile cases involving Jeffrey Dahmer, Casey Anthony, and Andrea Yates, assessed Clancy months after the tragic events. On January 24, 2023, Clancy strangled her children—five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan—in their Duxbury, Massachusetts residence. He diagnosed her with bipolar II disorder accompanied by severe depression.
He further testified that the mental state she exhibited on that fateful day aligned with postpartum psychosis, “as it was initiated postpartum and she was unmistakably psychotic at that time.”
Clancy has entered a plea of not guilty, with her defense attributing her actions to postpartum psychosis. The prosecution, however, contends that her acts were deliberate and calculated.
Resnick addressed how Clancy may have appeared functional to some, despite her declining mental state.
Clancy “did her best” to downplay the extent of her depression outside of her family, Resnick testified, adding that her ability to function normally for part of that fateful day—building a snowman with her kids, taking Cora to a doctor’s appointment—did not rule out psychosis.
“Psychosis can indeed wax and wane,” he pointed out. “In fact, she said she was having a better day than other days.”
That changed, Resnick testified, when Clancy had a “command hallucination” while her husband, Patrick Clancy, was out running errands, which was the window in which she killed their children.
“About one third of voices are called ‘command hallucinations’—that is, an instruction to do something,” he said. “The majority of those commands are benign, but might be ‘open a window,’ ‘get a glass of water,’ it might be something much more ominous, such as to kill oneself or harm someone else.”
According to Resnick, Clancy felt she had to “obey” instructions to kill her children and cut her throat and wrists before jumping out a second-floor window. The injuries left her paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
“She was just following the command,” he said, “rather than being able to make any decision to do it or not.”
Resnick said Clancy’s actions met the criteria for two types of filicides: altruistic and acutely psychotic.
The first is when a parent who plans to take their own life kills their children believing they would be worse off without them. The second, he said, is when a parent kills by “simply acting on their psychotic beliefs.”