Lindsay Clancy’s defense rests at trial over whether postpartum
psychosis drove her to kill her kids
[August 22, 2026]
By LEAH WILLINGHAM and MICHAEL CASEY
BOSTON (AP) — The defense rested its case Friday in the Lindsay Clancy
murder trial after eliciting several days of testimony about her mental
state before and after she strangled her three young children.
Prosecutors then began calling rebuttal witnesses in the trial, which is
likely entering its final days. Closing arguments are expected next
week.
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of
her children Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to
5 years old. They were found in the basement of the family’s home in
coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy jumped from a second-story window
after strangling the children and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse,
planned the killings.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, hasn’t disputed that she killed the
children but says she should not be held criminally responsible because
she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the
stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
He sought to bolster that defense by having the jury hear from more of
Clancy’s family members, who detailed her worsening mental health and
attempts to fix it through psychiatric treatment and medications before
the January 2023 killings. The jury also heard from a psychologist and a
hospital chaplain who met with Clancy after the killings.
The defense's final witness also testified at the trial of Texas mom
Andrea Yates
For his final witness on Friday, Reddington called Dr. Phillip Resnick,
a forensic psychiatrist and expert in filicide, or the killing of a
child by a parent.
Resnick testified that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she
killed her children and was not in control of her actions.
“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the
strings,” said Resnick, who testified for the defense in the 2006 trial
of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.
Resnick said he spent hours interviewing Clancy four months after the
killings and believed she tended to minimize rather than exaggerate her
symptoms. He said she suffered from severe depression, showed evidence
consistent with bipolar disorder and reported hearing a voice commanding
her to kill her children.
Resnick described several categories of filicide, including killings
involving abuse. Others involve psychosis or what he calls “altruistic”
filicide — a killing committed “out of love rather than hostility.” He
said he found Clancy’s case involved both of the latter categories, but
he didn’t find evidence of abuse.
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Defense Attorney Kevin Reddington begins his questioning of witness
Dr. Phillip Resnick during the Lindsay Clancy murder trial, Friday,
Aug. 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass. (Mark Chavous/The Enterprise via
AP, Pool)
Resnick said Clancy had a delusional belief that if social services
took the children or if she killed herself, her children would
suffer without her, and believed that they would be better off dying
with her and going to heaven.
“She believed that she was doing what was right for her children,”
he said.
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Jennifer Sprague, Resnick
acknowledged that Clancy did not disclose thoughts of harming her
children to medical providers who asked, but said that was “very
common because people fear their children will be taken away.”
“So it’s better to kill them than have them taken away?” Sprague
asked.
The judge struck the question.
Prosecutors say Clancy wasn't suffering from psychosis or bipolar
disorder
Prosecutors argue that Clancy contrived to get her husband out of
the house the day of the killings. They have attempted to show that
while she was getting treatment for anxiety, insomnia and
depression, she wasn't suffering from psychosis or bipolar disorder.
After the defense rested, prosecutors called forensic psychiatrist
Dr. Avram Mack as a rebuttal witness. Mack agreed that Clancy
suffered from a major depressive episode but said he found no
evidence of mania or hypomania to support a bipolar diagnosis — or
of psychosis — leading up to the killings.
Mack said Clancy recounted the killings to him, saying she heard a
loud male voice telling her to kill the children so she could kill
herself. She recalled strangling the children and saying “go to God”
as she did so, he told jurors.
Mack said Clancy was experiencing severe mental illness when she
killed her children but that it was a continuation of the depression
she had experienced for months in which she was able to control
impulses and distinguish right from wrong.
He also said, “There’s no reason that psychosis in and of itself
inhibits a person’s ability to know right from wrong.”
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