PLYMOUTH, Mass. (Court TV) — A psychologist testifying for the defense told a Massachusetts jury that Lindsay Clancy suffered from postpartum psychosis and believed that people around her were able to hear her thoughts.
Lindsay Clancy sits in court on Aug. 19, 2026. (Court TV)
Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of murder in the deaths of her children. Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, were strangled to death with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s home on Jan. 24, 2023. Clancy has not denied killing her children, but has said that she was suffering a mental health crisis at the time and is not legally responsible for her actions.
Dr. Paul Zeizel, a critical defense witness, began his testimony on Tuesday afternoon and returned Wednesday morning to describe his encounters with the defendant.
Zeizel first met Clancy after her attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked him to visit the defendant at the hospital. “You (Reddington) were worried about her mental health, given the significant event that had just taken place a few days earlier,” Zeizel testified. “You were concerned that she had absolutely no ability to have visitors. Visitors were not permitted to meet with her, from family members to friends to a priest. No one was able to see her.”
With a court order, Zeizel was able to see Clancy on Feb. 4 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. While Clancy’s breathing tube had been removed, she was immobile and covered with wires on the bed; she also had handcuffs on her right wrist. “She told me that she remembered what happened, but it was very fuzzy and foggy at the time,” Zeizel said. Clancy’s questions soon turned to her husband, and she asked if she could use Zeizel’s phone to reach out to him. “She wanted to know how he was doing. She wanted to know if she could call him and find out where things are with her and with him and how he was faring and to just speak with him.”
Paul Zeizel testifies in Lindsay Clancy’s trial on Aug. 19, 2026. (Court TV)
Clancy was able to relay her husband’s number; he didn’t answer the call on Feb. 4 and the defendant left a voicemail. When Zeizel returned to visit her on Feb. 6, she asked to try calling her husband again. This time he picked up. “She had told Patrick that she loved him very much,” Zeizel said. “She was unable to express a lot of emotion, but she expressed love for him, and she said that she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice, but she had to kill her children and then kill herself.”
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham seized on the phone call while cross-examining Zeizel on Wednesday, arguing that Clancy’s ability to recall her husband’s phone number was indicative of a sane mind.
“Hallucinations are like waves at the beach: they come and go,” Zeizel said, explaining to the prosecution and the jury that psychosis is intermittent and not constant. Zeizel testified that it was plausible for Clancy to have been suffering from postpartum psychosis but still be able to function normally in society. “She said she had ‘horrible thoughts.’ She felt that people could actually hear her thoughts. The thoughts were so loud that strangers could hear them.”
Doctors who treated Clancy before her kids’ deaths previously testified that she presented with symptoms of postpartum depression and anxiety, but never indicated any signs of psychosis.
