Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney scored a late win when the prosecution’s own psychiatric expert conceded the state’s opening statement minimized the accused child-killer’s mental state.
The bombshell exchange came on the final day of testimony in Clancy’s five-week murder trial in Massachusetts, as defense lawyer Kevin Reddington read prosecutor Shanan Buckingham’s July 27 opening statement to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Saathoff and asked whether he believed it was accurate. Saathoff, 67, called as the state’s final witness, flatly rejected the prosecution’s framing.
“I think that statement that you read really minimizes what [Clancy] was going through,” Saathoff answered in court.
The statement Reddington read painted Clancy as a calculating mother who deliberately chose violence after rejecting psychiatric help. Buckingham had told jurors that Clancy “made a calculated decision” and “was a woman who no longer liked the life she thought she wanted.” The prosecutor described Clancy as someone who “chose to manipulate her providers, seek out a quick and easy fix when she was feeling depressed and anxious and when she didn’t get what she expected she chose the alternate route.”
Buckingham’s opening statement continued with the claim that Clancy “would seek a different doctor, she would change medications after days, she disengaged from treatment when she didn’t like the plan.” The prosecutor concluded that “after only four months in treatment, she made a choice, a deliberate and intentional decision, that she did not want to try anymore and because no one could take care of her kids the way she wanted them to, she had to take them with her too.”
Saathoff’s admission undercut the prosecution’s central narrative just before the case moves to closing arguments. The forensic psychiatrist had been called by the state to evaluate Clancy’s mental state around the time she allegedly strangled her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan — in their Duxbury home on January 24, 2023.
The defense has argued that Clancy, 33, was suffering from severe postpartum depression and psychosis when she killed the children and attempted suicide by jumping from a window. Prosecutors have countered that Clancy was lucid enough to plan the killings and cover her tracks, including searching online for ways to kill her children while making her husband believe she was improving.
Clancy survived her injuries and has pleaded not guilty. Her estranged husband Patrick Clancy, who found the children and his injured wife, testified earlier in the trial about discovering the scene and calling 911.
In the viral moment that launched the case into national headlines, Patrick Clancy told police he returned home from running errands to find his wife had jumped from a second-story window and their three children were unconscious in the basement with exercise bands around their necks. The children were pronounced dead at the hospital. Lindsay Clancy was hospitalized with spinal injuries before being arrested and charged with two counts of murder, one count of strangulation, and three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations following closing arguments.