Lindsay Clancy Trial Hears Competing Psychiatric Accounts Over Her Mental State When Her Three Children Died

Lindsay Clancy watches as her attorney Kevin Reddington prepares to interview a witness in Plymouth Superior Court (Picture: Reuters)

A central question in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial came into sharper focus Friday as two forensic psychiatrists offered sharply different interpretations of her mental state when she killed her three children at the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023.

Dr. Phillip Resnick, the defense’s final witness, testified that Clancy was psychotic and experiencing what he described as a “command hallucination” when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan. He also said she experienced a “delusion of influence” — believing an outside force had taken control of her body and left her unable to choose whether to obey the command.

The prosecution, however, presented a very different assessment. Its rebuttal expert, Dr. Avram Mack, agreed that Clancy had suffered from serious depression but said he found insufficient evidence that she had bipolar disorder or was psychotic in the period leading up to the deaths.

The competing testimony goes directly to the issue jurors will ultimately have to decide: whether Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her children.

Defense expert says Clancy was psychotic

Clancy, 36, does not dispute that she killed her three children. Her defense maintains that severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, left her unable to conform her behavior to the law.

Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist with extensive experience studying filicide — cases in which parents kill their children — told jurors that he had spent hours interviewing Clancy and reviewing material connected to the case.

He concluded that she was “clearly psychotic” on the day of the killings.

Resnick testified that Clancy reported hearing a male voice directing her to kill the children. But in his assessment, the experience went beyond simply hearing a voice.

He said Clancy described feeling as though an external force had assumed control of her body while she was in a dreamlike state.

Resnick compared the experience to being a puppet whose movements were being controlled by somebody else.

In his opinion, that mental state prevented Clancy from exercising meaningful control over her actions.

A belief that her children would be better off with her

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington interviews witness Phillip Resnick (Picture: Pool via AP)

Resnick also addressed what he believed was the distorted reasoning behind Clancy’s actions.

He testified that Clancy had developed the belief that her children would suffer if she died or if they were separated from her. According to his assessment, she came to believe they would be better off dying with her and going to heaven.

Resnick categorized the case as involving psychosis as well as what forensic psychiatry sometimes describes as “altruistic” filicide — when a parent, because of severely distorted thinking, believes killing a child is somehow protecting or benefiting that child.

He told jurors he found no evidence that the deaths resulted from a pattern of child abuse.

That interpretation is a crucial part of the defense argument that Clancy was not acting from ordinary criminal intent but from a profoundly impaired perception of reality.

Family members describe months of deterioration

Clancy’s mother Paula Musgrove observes the trial on Friday (Picture: Mark Chavous/Pool The Enterprise/AP)

The psychiatric testimony followed several days in which members of Clancy’s family described changes they observed in the months before January 2023.

Her mother, Paula Musgrove, testified that she began spending considerably more time at her daughter’s home beginning in October 2022 after Clancy expressed fear about being alone.

Musgrove also testified that by December, Clancy had disclosed thoughts about harming her children.

Clancy’s sister, Allison Osga, described learning that her sister felt emotionally numb, experienced suicidal thoughts and was seeking treatment. According to Osga, Clancy told her in late December that suicidal thoughts had occurred every day for approximately a month.

Under questioning from prosecutors, however, Osga acknowledged that despite being a social worker with mandatory reporting responsibilities, she had not believed the children faced sufficient danger in January 2023 to make a report.

Clancy’s former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, characterized her as a nurturing and loving mother who had been desperately seeking help before the tragedy.

What prosecutors say happened on January 24, 2023

Prosecutors have presented a fundamentally different interpretation of the events.

They contend that Clancy deliberately arranged for her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, to leave their Duxbury home by asking him to pick up medication and takeout food.

During his absence, prosecutors say, Clancy killed the couple’s three children.

Patrick returned home and eventually discovered what had happened. His reaction was captured during a 911 call.

Clancy subsequently went out of an upstairs window and suffered injuries that left her paralyzed. She has attended the trial in a wheelchair.

The defense argues her actions were the culmination of a severe psychiatric crisis. Prosecutors argue that evidence surrounding the timing and sequence of events demonstrates planning and awareness.

Prosecution psychiatrist challenges the psychosis diagnosis

Prosecution rebuttal witness Dr Avram Mack answers questions from the witness stand during Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial (Picture: Pool via Reuters)

After Resnick finished testifying and the defense rested its case, prosecutors began presenting rebuttal evidence.

Dr. Avram Mack, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Clancy in April 2026, agreed that she had experienced a major depressive episode. But he disagreed with key elements of the defense diagnosis.

Mack testified that he did not find evidence of mania or hypomania that would support a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. He also said he found no clear evidence of psychosis leading up to the killings.

According to Mack, suffering from psychosis would also not automatically mean someone was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.

That distinction is particularly important because the trial is not simply determining whether Clancy was mentally ill. The question is whether her illness rendered her legally not criminally responsible for what she did.

The words prosecutors say she remembered

Mack also testified about Clancy’s account of what happened inside the house.

According to his testimony, Clancy said she heard a loud male voice telling her to kill the children so that she could then kill herself.

She also reportedly remembered saying “Go to God” while killing the children.

The prosecution has used details of Clancy’s recollection and behavior surrounding the deaths to challenge the defense contention that she had completely lost the capacity to understand or control her actions.

Resnick, by contrast, testified that her ability to remember parts of the event did not change his conclusion that she was psychotic at the time.

The disagreement illustrates the unusual complexity of the case: experts on both sides acknowledge serious mental-health problems, yet reach different conclusions about their nature and their legal significance.

Earlier testimony about the reported voice

Resnick was not the first defense witness to discuss Clancy’s account of hearing a voice.

Hospital chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh testified that Clancy spoke about a male voice while receiving treatment after the deaths. According to Cavanaugh, Clancy described the voice as persistent and said it had warned that neither she nor her children would be safe if she failed to follow its instruction.

Forensic psychologist Paul Zeizel similarly testified that Clancy reported hearing a male voice telling her she had no choice but to kill the children and then herself.

Zeizel concluded that Clancy could not appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions or conform her conduct to the law at the time.

Those accounts form an important part of the defense’s effort to establish that Clancy’s reported hallucination was not simply a later explanation developed for trial.

A case now approaching its final stage

The defense rested after Resnick completed his testimony Friday. Prosecutors then moved into their rebuttal case, with closing arguments expected after that phase concludes.

Clancy faces three counts of first-degree murder.

If convicted, she could receive life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. If jurors instead find her not criminally responsible because of mental illness, she would be committed to a Massachusetts psychiatric facility for evaluation rather than sentenced to prison.

The trial has therefore narrowed toward a difficult distinction.

There is substantial testimony that Clancy was struggling with serious mental illness before her children died. What remains fiercely disputed is what that illness meant at the precise moment of the killings — whether she remained capable of understanding and controlling what she was doing, or whether, as the defense contends, psychosis had overwhelmed that capacity entirely.