Psychologist testifies Lindsay Clancy was not criminally responsible in
killing of her 3 children
[August 20, 2026]
By MICHAEL CASEY
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Lindsay Clancy didn’t appreciate the
“wrongfulness” of killing her three children because of her mental
health issues, a psychologist testifying for the defense said at her
murder trial Wednesday.
The testimony of Paul Zeizel is the strongest evidence yet to support
the defense contentions that Clancy should not be held legally
responsible for murder because she has bipolar disorder and was in the
grip of a rare mental illness called postpartum psychosis when she
killed her three children before trying to kill herself. Zeizel began
seeing Clancy as a patient at a hospital after the deaths.
“She was unable to conform her behavior to the rule of law. She had no
appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act,” Zeizel said, adding that
she had “a mental disease or a defect.”
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of
Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old.
Postpartum psychosis is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and
hormonal changes that follow childbirth. Researchers estimate that the
condition — which is more serious and less common than postpartum
depression — afflicts 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery.
Prosecutors say the former labor and delivery nurse planned the January
2023 killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by
sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for
the family.
Clancy was not getting better
Zeizel, who said he spent more than 35 hours with Clancy over dozens of
visits and reviewed her medical records, said she went to a perinatal
clinic in December 2022 because she felt her “brain was damaged,” “she
should kill herself” and that she “is never going to get any better.”
She also showed signs of psychosis, was paranoid and feared that people
could hear her thoughts and that she would lose her children.
“She was worried that her children would be removed from her and that
she would never see them again,” he said.
But just because she was in a psychotic state, Zeizel said, that didn't
mean she couldn't do “everyday tasks of living” like driving and
searching the internet, a reference to the fact that the day of the
killings she took her daughter to the doctor, played with the children
in the snow and searched online for a pharmacy and a restaurant.
“So the fact she is not talking about the unicorns in the corner, she is
not slurring her words and she is not unable to walk, to your opinion to
a degree of medical certainty, does that mean she is not in a psychotic
state?” Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington asked.
Zeizel responded: “It does not.”
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Lindsay Clancy listens during her murder trial Wednesday, Aug. 19,
2026, in Plymouth, Mass. (Amanda Sabga/The Boston Herald via AP,
Pool)
Prosecution challenges Zeizel's credibility
On cross-examination, prosecutors pointed out mistakes Zeizel made
in his report about Clancy and questioned whether he could be
objective about her diagnosis when he was seeing her as a patient
and working with the defense including appearing with Reddington at
a news conference.
Zeizel acknowledged that there was nothing in Clancy's medical
records in which she reports hearing voices telling her to kill
herself, only that she told her caregivers that “she wanted to die.”
Prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of Clancy’s suicide
attempt. After strangling her children, Clancy jumped from a
second-story window and remains paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecution brings up the children's birthdays
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham also read from daily reports from
Tewksbury Hospital, the state psychiatric hospital where Clancy
stays, that included the anniversary of the killings and what would
have been her children's birthdays. Those reports mentioned her
parents sometimes visiting or her talking with other patients. But
they never mentioned anything she did to remember her children.
Reddington asked Zeizel if he saw anything in the record from the
hospital about her “laughing, and partying and having a good time”
while in the hospital.
“Lindsay Clancy has bad days and worse days,” Zeizel said.
Zeizel also said Clancy often talks about her children, aiming to
dispel prosecutors' contention that she never mentions them. “She
really loves them and misses them and thinks of them every single
day, almost every moment of the day,” Zeizel said.
If convicted of murder, Clancy faces life in prison without parole.
If found not guilty because of a lack of criminal responsibility,
she would be committed to a state mental health facility.
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