In a significant testimony during Lindsay Clancy’s trial, a forensic psychologist shared his belief that Clancy was fully aware of her actions when she took the lives of her children.
Offering his expert opinion for the prosecution, Dr. Kirk Heilbrun affirmed to the court that Clancy should be held criminally responsible for her deeds.
Now standing trial, 36-year-old Clancy faces charges for the tragic murders of her three children—Cora, aged five, Dawson, who was three, and Callan, just eight months old—committed at their Duxbury, Massachusetts home in 2023.
The devastating events unfolded as she used exercise bands to strangle the children, after which she reportedly attempted to end her own life. Her suicide attempt was unsuccessful, resulting in paralysis and confining her to a wheelchair permanently.
While Clancy has confessed to the killings, she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, attributing her actions to postpartum psychosis. Her defense seeks her placement in a state mental health facility over serving time in prison.
Dr Heilbrun, who interviewed Clancy in April this year and has spent 180 hours working on the case, believes that she was suffering from a mental defect of bipolar disorder and sleep problems during the tragic incident, not psychosis.
But he said that she retained an awareness of the illegality including of killing her children.
She was aware of the illegality and moral wrongfulness of what she was doing, he testified.
Prosecution expert Dr Kirk Heilbrun told the Lindsay Clancy jury that in his opinion, she is criminally responsible for strangling her children
Dr Heilbrun, who interviewed Clancy in April this year and has spent 180 hours working on the case, believes that she was suffering from bipolar disorder and sleep problems during the tragic incident, not psychosis
This was a serious suicide attempt and altruistic filicide rather than psychosis, in his opinion.
‘Although this depression and hopelessness influenced her decision, she retained control over when, where and how she carried it out,’ he testified.
It is his opinion that she was criminally responsible on January 24, 2023.
Dr Heilbrun testified to several reasons that he did not believe she was psychotic.
She said she was ‘horrified’ when she woke up in the hospital – something he said shows she was thinking about what happened.
There were also inconsistencies in her statements about the voice, he said.
He said that in the days after the killings she said that the voice told her it was her ‘last chance’ and also that the children would suffer without her. She later said the voice did not tell her the children would suffer without her.
He also said that it would be ‘very unusual’ for her to be able to have the phone call with her husband, Patrick Clancy, in the middle of a psychotic episode. Patrick had called her from CVS when he went to pick up children’s medicine.
Clancy is on trial for the murders of Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, at her Massachusetts home in January 2023
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington asked the judge for a mistrial after Heilbrun testified he asked Clancy if she knew suicide was a ‘mortal sin.’
Heilbrun also suggested that Clancy was experiencing peritraumatic dissociation – where someone goes through a traumatic set of circumstances and so it feels like things are unreal.
‘You feel as though you’re watching yourself,’ he explained.
The expert testified that it can sound psychotic because someone can feel as though they lack decision-making but it is more about going through a traumatic set of circumstances.
Her strangling her children could be an example of that because that was very traumatic for her, he said.
During the strangulation, he said that Clancy made several decisions.
‘Why the basement? Who of the children goes first? What do you say to the children to keep them from panicking?’ he said.
Dr Heilbrun testified that where the children were killed, how they were strangled, what to use, the order with which to kill them, and the way to try to kill herself were all decisions she made.
‘She was going through what she called, “no thinking, no decision-making, only responding to the voice,”‘ Heilbrun said.
Heilbrun said Clancy’s actions was a serious suicide attempt and altruistic filicide rather than psychosis
‘There are just many ongoing decisions that have to be made to accomplish a killing like this in just 18 minutes.’
On Monday, Heilbrun also said that the phrase Clancy said to her children when she killed them also points to altruistic filicide.
Altruistic filicide is the killing of one’s children out of love, when the disturbed mind believes that they would be better off dead.
Clancy said to her children as she strangled them, ‘Go to God, baby,’ according to Heilbrun.
He said that was part of her expectation that she and the youngsters would be together in heaven.
‘She was raised as a Catholic and this as I understand Catholic considerations that’s not necessarily what happens,’ Heilbrun said.
‘But when I ask her about that, when I said, “Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?”‘ he continued before Reddington’s objection.
That remark led Reddington to file for a mistrial, which the judge rejected but struck the comment from the record.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.