Psychologist Testifies Lindsay Clancy Heard Male Voice Commanding Her to Kill Children

Defense testimony in Plymouth Superior Court established that Lindsay Clancy was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and auditory hallucinations when she killed her three children at her Duxbury home in January 2023. Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Paul Zeizel testified during the fourth week of her murder trial that psychological testing administered by a government doctor found zero evidence that Clancy was faking or exaggerating her psychiatric symptoms.

Dr. Zeizel evaluated Clancy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital shortly after she attempted to end her own life on Jan. 24, 2023, by jumping from a second-story window—an act that left her permanently paralyzed below the sternum. Describing her physical and mental state in early February 2023, Zeizel testified that Clancy remained handcuffed to her hospital bed with a memory of the killings that was “fuzzy and foggy” while recovering from surgery.

Zeizel said Clancy knew who she was but didn’t know where she was and wasn’t sure of the time. She asked about Patrick, how he was doing and whether she could speak to him. Two days later, she spoke to Patrick using Zeizel’s cellphone.

“She told Patrick that she loved him very much,” Zeizel testified. He said Lindsay Clancy then told Patrick “that she heard a male voice ordering her,” telling her she had no choice but to kill her children and then herself.

The auditory command hallucination described to Dr. Zeizel marked the culmination of a severe mental health crisis that began in the fall of 2022 following the birth of her third child. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington presented medical records showing that between October 2022 and January 2023, Clancy was prescribed 13 different psychiatric medications—including Prozac, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, and trazodone—and had voluntarily admitted herself to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, for psychiatric treatment weeks before the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan.

Clancy’s former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, testified Tuesday that the Massachusetts labor and delivery nurse was “begging for help” and terrified of her prescription medication regimen. Jurors were shown text messages from Nov. 30, 2022, in which Clancy texted her mother-in-law that she was “terrified of taking meds tonight” and feared she was developing a dependence on benzodiazepines because she could not sleep without them.

Further testimony from Clancy’s mother, Paula Musgrove, and sister, Allison Ozga, detailed how Clancy experienced daily suicidal thoughts and intense paranoia leading up to the tragedy. Musgrove told jurors that in December 2022, Clancy explicitly confessed to her mother and then-husband, Patrick Clancy, that she was having thoughts of harming her children, prompting her family to seek emergency psychiatric care.

Under Massachusetts mental health legal standards, a criminal defense based on a lack of responsibility requires proving that a defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect that rendered her incapable of appreciating the criminality of her actions. While prosecutors argued Clancy planned the killings because she sent her husband out on errands that evening, Dr. Zeizel testified that psychotic symptoms fluctuate and that individuals experiencing acute psychosis remain fully capable of performing routine tasks such as driving a car or making a phone call.

If found not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, Clancy will be committed to a state mental health facility. If convicted of murder, she faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.