Lindsay Clancy Trial: Prosecution's Own Expert Testifies to Months of Warning Signs

Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a forensic psychologist called as a prosecution rebuttal witness, spent hours on the stand laying out a timeline that doesn't do the prosecution any favors in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy — the Duxbury, Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 7-month-old Callan, with exercise resistance bands inside the family's Summer Street home on January 24, 2023. Clancy faces three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation, has pleaded not guilty, and is mounting an insanity defense centered on severe postpartum psychosis and psychiatric overmedication.

Heilbrun opened by explaining retention bias — the tendency to lean toward whichever side hired you for the evaluation — before detailing his own work: roughly 180 hours reviewing police records, medical records, court documents, and surveillance footage, plus 10.5 hours testing and interviewing Clancy and 1.5 hours in collateral interviews. He testified that before September 2022, Clancy's medical history was limited, mostly some anxiety. After October 2022, that anxiety and depression worsened, and by December 2022 she was experiencing intrusive, unwanted thoughts about harming herself and, occasionally, the children — thoughts he was careful to distinguish from auditory hallucinations.

On the diagnostic question, Heilbrun said he found no record of mania or hypomania that would point to bipolar disorder, despite Tewksbury Hospital's chart carrying that diagnosis for three and a half years. His own diagnosis: bipolar II. He also walked the jury through the legal standard for criminal responsibility — mental disease or defect, capacity to know the conduct was wrong, and ability to conform behavior to the law. After the killings, Clancy allegedly attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. The trial continues in Plymouth Superior Court.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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