Lindsay Clancy Trial: Dr. Kirk Heilbrun Testifies — She Never Warned Anyone She'd Harm Her Kids

Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a forensic psychologist called as a prosecution rebuttal witness, spent another day on the stand 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 bands inside the family's Summer Street home on January 24, 2023. Clancy faces three counts of murder and three counts of strangulation. She has pleaded not guilty and is mounting an insanity defense, with attorney Kevin Reddington arguing she was in the grip of severe postpartum psychosis and psychiatric overmedication at the time of the killings.

Cross-examination resumed after a morning recess, and Reddington kept working the same angle he's been on for days — how severe was this, really, and why hasn't Heilbrun published on postpartum psychosis specifically. He walked through a list of symptoms and got Heilbrun to agree they line up with postpartum depression, all of which Clancy reported having. On redirect, Heilbrun pushed back on the framing: those same symptoms, he said, also track with major depressive disorder, general depression, and bipolar II — and he testified he's had more case material here than in any matter he's ever handled. He clarified Clancy wasn't experiencing thought broadcasting; she believed her own intrusive, unwelcome thoughts were somehow audible to others. The prosecution then had him confirm the harder fact: Clancy never told a single healthcare provider she wanted to hurt her children, repeatedly denied suicidal ideation, and showed no observed or reported signs of psychosis before that day. On re-cross, Heilbrun held the line — no lying, no faking, no malingering, on any of it.

Prosecutors are expected to argue Clancy understood the nature of her actions despite the defense's mental-health claims. After the killings, Clancy allegedly attempted to take her own life by jumping from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Her husband, Patrick Clancy, was out of the home running errands at the time and has since relocated to Manhattan. The trial, underway in Plymouth Superior Court, is expected to last several weeks.

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