Add The New York Post on Google Lindsay Clancy told her husband in a bone-chilling phone call after strangling their kids that she heard a male voice telling her to “kill her children and kill herself,” a shrink testified Tuesday.
Clancy, 36, had asked hospital psychologist Paul Zeizel if she could borrow his phone Feb. 6, 2023 — 13 days after killing her and her then-husband’s three young children, the expert told jurors in Plymouth, Mass., court.
Clancy then phoned spouse Patrick Clancy from her hospital room at Brigham and Women’s, where she was being held and recovering from a suicide attempt after strangling the kids with exercise cords.
“She told Patrick that she loved him very much,” Zeizel testified. “She said she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice, that she had to kill her children and kill herself.”
Zeizel said he first visited Clancy in the hospital two days earlier — but that Patrick did not answer when she tried him that day.
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The shrink was called to testify by Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, who asked Zeizel if he had suggested that Clancy lie to her husband about hearing voices.
Reddington wants the jury to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity based on the fact she was allegedly afflicted with severe postpartum psychosis worsened by a slew of powerful psychiatric medications her doctors prescribed her.
But prosecutors claim Clancy carefully planned the slayings, proving she couldn’t have been experiencing psychosis at the time.
Jurors have already heard testimony from her psychiatrists and other medical providers who said they didn’t believe she was in a psychotic state.
She also never told any of them about hearing voices, prosecutors have repeatedly emphasized.
But Reddington has suggested that Clancy was likely hiding the severity of her mental break before the slayings out of fear she would lose custody of her kids.
Dr. Donald Condie, a psychiatrist called by the defense earlier Tuesday, said Clancy may have been “worried that her children would be taken away from her if she reported severe symptoms.”
Condie said he had never spoken with Clancy and only reviewed her medical records while admitted he was merely speculating about her state of mind at the time.
The Duxbury killer mother cried during the testimony of another defense witness Tuesday, Dr. Elizabeth Laposata, as she was questioned about the fatal injuries of Clancy’s children.
Laposata told the jury that since Clancy used elastic exercise bands to strangle her kids, they probably lost consciousness in 10 seconds and died minutes later.
The doctor also testified that Clancy likely hit the ground head first when she later threw herself out of the window of her bedroom on the second floor of her home — the fall causing her to break her spine in multiple places. Clancy is now a paraplegic and wheelchair-bound.
Another shocking moment came Tuesday when Condie told the jury Clancy ran a race just hours after delivering her third child, Callan, in May 2022.
Reddington made inconsistent statements at trial about when Clancy ran the 5K. He agreed with a witness Tuesday that Clancy did it the day of her delivery.
The first witness Tuesday was Clancy’s former mother-in-law, Sue Clancy, who prosecutor Hanan Buckingham bizarrely asked if she was Catholic and knew murder was a “mortal sin.”
Judge William Sullivan immediately cut off the answer to the question and had the lawyers come to side bar, and Buckingham didn’t ask further questions along those lines afterward.
Sue — Patrick’s mom — testified that Clancy was “very nurturing, very loving. She was a wonderful mom.”
But the ex-mother-in-law said she knew that Clancy had been battling with mental health in the months before the slayings and added that she had assisted Clancy in getting into perinatal clinic.
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“She was begging for help,” Sue told jurors. “Lindsay was struggling, and we were all very concerned.”
Clancy killed Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan while Patrick was out running errands. The pair divorced, and Patrick has since remarried.
The jury is due back in court Wednesday morning when Zeizel is expected to continue testifying.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
