A SHOCKING NEW DETAIL ABOUT LINDSAY CLANCY’S MIND AT THE MOMENT SHE K!:LLED HER CHILDREN HAS LEFT THE COURTROOM STUNNED
Lindsay Clancy believed she was doing her three young children “a favor” by killing them, a prominent forensic psychiatrist told the jury Friday — before the defense rested in the heartbreaking case.
Dr. Phillip Resnick — who testified in the high-profile Andrea Yates infanticide case — said the Duxbury, Massachusetts mom had a distorted belief that if she killed herself, the lives of little Cora, Dawson and Callan would be so awful without her that she needed to kill them too.
“In her mind, she believed she would be doing her children a favor by having them go to heaven with her rather than remain on Earth without her doing the mothering,” Resnick testified. “Her mind was distorted like that.”
From left, Cora, Callan, and Dawson Clancy at a Christmas tree farm in late November 2022 — two months before their deaths.Plymouth Superior Court
Clancy, now 36, “believed her children would be miserable. And she couldn’t imagine them continuing to exist and have a decent life without her being there as a mother,” the psychiatrist told jurors.
“So in that sense, she did what she believed was morally right, even though she understood that ordinarily killing a child is against the law, she believed that she was doing what was right for her children with her distorted psychotic symptoms and her children’s need for her.”
Resnick explained that out of the five categories people usually fall into when they kill their kids, the mom only matched up with two: altruistic filicide and acutely psychotic filicide.
But Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, “was clearly psychotic on that day,” Resnick said of Jan. 24, 2023 — when she strangled her children with exercise bands before slitting her wrists and neck and throwing herself from a second-story window at her home.
Resnick testified that Clancy heard a “command voice” that forced her to carry out the heinous acts.
“She had what is known as a ‘delusion of influence’,” Resnick said. “Not only did she hear a command, but she felt her body was taken over by an external force where she was in a dream state and did not have control of her own body.
“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” the psychiatrist claimed.
Lindsay Clancy with her infant son, Callan.Plymouth Superior Court
Resnick also testified for the defense at the first and second trials for Andrea Yates in 2002 and 2006 — a mom who drowned her five kids and was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Similar to Clancy’s trial, Yates’ case sparked emotional public debate over severe postpartum mental illness and whether the legal system or medical community failed her.
Yates was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental health facility.
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, wants his client to be found not guilty by reason of insanity — on grounds she was experiencing severe postpartum psychosis.
Reddington rested the defense case when Resnick wrapped up. The defense called 10 witnesses total, including Clancy’s mother and sister, her friends and several doctors.
Lindsay and then-husband Patrick Clancy with their children, Cora, Dawson and Callan in the fall of 2022.Plymouth Superior Court
Prosecutors began their rebuttal case after calling their own forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Avram Mack, who claimed Clancy went through a major depressive episode leading up to the murders.
Mack — who met with Clancy on April 10 and 11, 2026 — denied that Clancy had psychosis or bipolar disorder, claiming he didn’t see any signs of mania or hypomania in the records he reviewed for her.
Prosecutors have claimed that Clancy knew what she was doing and carefully planned the killings — arguing she wasn’t in the throes of psychosis, but rather was tired of taking care of the kids.
Mack claimed that Clancy “methodically” carried out the killings in an organized fashion and did the same when she attempted suicide.
Mack described Clancy’s misery living at Tewksbury Hospital, where she has been held throughout her case, testifying that she doesn’t have much interest in eating or personal hygiene, especially given she needs help to shower as a paraplegic.
“She described feeling depressed. She described feeling miserable, not wanting to be alive,” Mack testified.
He claimed the stressors Clancy feels are from “the remorse and sadness of the events that this case is about, her separation or estrangement from her then-husband, her being separated from the world, her physical injury.”
Mack also testified that Clancy told him how she took her kids one by one to her basement — starting with Dawson — and wrapped their necks with the bands as she instructed them, “Go to God.”
Clancy also told Mack the male voice in her head instructed her the day of the killings, “You should kill the kids. This is your last chance, so you can kill yourself,” the psychiatrist testified.
The jury is due back Monday morning for more testimony from Mack and potentially two other witnesses.
SOURCE: NEW YORK POST
https://nypost.com/2026/08/21/us-news/lindsay-clancys-distorted-mind-convinced-her-she-was-doing-her-children-a-favor-by-killing-them-psychiatrist-reveal/
