LINDSAY CLANCY TRIAL SH0CKER: ‘PSYCHOTIC’ MOM TOLD 3-YEAR-OLD DAWSON TO ‘GO TO GOD’ BEFORE KI-LLING HER THREE CHILDREN
Editor’s note: Coverage of this case is disturbing. Scroll with discretion.
Horrific new details about “clearly psychotic”‘s heinous act — and state of mind — the night she strangled her three kids are coming to light, as Massachusetts prosecutors call their final witnesses to rebut her defense.
The Catholic killer mom told her middle child Dawson, 3, to “go to God” as she killed him — then his sister Cora, 5, and baby brother Callan, 8 months — with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s Duxbury, Mass., home in January 2023, a psychiatrist told jurors,.
Closing arguments are expected early next week.
began showing up outside Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., Thursday, as the heartbreaking case, creating a watershed moment for and how struggling new mothers.
Clancy’s defense argues she for strangling her young kids with exercise bands because she was suffering from and, exacerbated by.
The labor and delivery nurse, 36, faces life in prison without parole if convicted on the three counts of first-degree murder.
Court has wrapped for the day, but keep reading to catch up on Friday’s news from the Lindsay Clancy trial:
Lindsay Clancy told her 3-year-old son to “go to God” as she strangled him, a psychiatrist told jurors.
The final photo of Dawson Clancy, taken by dad Patrick Clancy, as the three-year-old celebrates fully dressing himself for the first time, on Jan. 24, 2023 — the day mom Lindsay killed him.Plymouth Superior Court
Lindsay Clancy during her murder trial Friday.
Dr. Avram Mack recounted what Clancy told him she did the day she killed her three kids and tried to kill herself.
“First she took Dawson down to the basement,” and wrapped an elastic exercise band around his neck, the doctor — whom prosecutors called to the stand as they make their rebuttal — said Friday.
“While that was happening she was saying out loud, ‘Go to God,’ ” Mack testified.
Clancy also said something similar to her other two kids as she took their lives, the psychiatrist said she told him.
Dawson, the middle Clancy child, was the first to be strangled by mom Lindsay Clancy, according to a psychiatrist’s testimony Friday.Reuters
“My understanding is that the sentiment ‘Go to God’ is a way of bestowing or thinking about the children as innocents, as ones who hadn’t done wrong while what she was doing was the opposite, was wrong or could be construed as wrong,” Mack said.
“So ‘Go to God’ not only was a hope for the children but a description of the situation,” he told the jury.
Earlier Friday afternoon, psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack, a prosecution rebuttal witness, testified about what Lindsay Clancy told him a male voice said to her before she killed her kids.
“The voice said, ‘You should kill the kids. This is your last chance so you can kill yourself,’” Mack told the 18-person jury.
Closing arguments are expected to get underway early next week.
The jury was sent home for the weekend during the testimony of psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack.
He is expected back on the stand Monday morning around 9 a.m.
Lindsay Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington is now grilling psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack about his credentials and expertise.
“Where in [your CV] does it say that you ever came within breathing distance of a pregnant woman…?” Reddington said.
“Where in [your CV] does it say that you ever came within breathing distance of a pregnant woman…?” Clancy attorney Kevin Reddington probed prosecution rebuttal witness Dr. Avram Mack on Friday.AP
“I remember being at the Brigham [and Women’s Hospital in Boston] as a resident … that was 2001,” Mack responded.
“I see myself as a generalist who has a couple areas of focus,” Mack said, noting he eventually went into working in pediatrics.
Mack said in his entire career he’d worked with “roughly 10” women who had experienced the rare phenomenon of postpartum psychosis.
Lindsay Clancy “methodically” killed her kids and tried to kill herself, showing she had the mental capacity of knowing what she did was wrong, a psychiatrist testified during prosecutors’ rebuttal.
“She was engaging in activity methodically, which highlights to me that there was an ability to conform behavior for living in a household,” Dr. Avram Mack said of Clancy’s activities on the day of the murders.
Lindsay Clancy “methodically” killed her kids (including son Dawson and daughter Cora, pictured), showing she had the mental capacity of knowing what she did was wrong, a psychiatrist testified Friday during prosecutors’ rebuttal.Facebook / Lindsay Marie Clancy
Prosecution rebuttal witness Dr. Avram Mack answers questions Friday in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
“The deaths were done methodically, one by one, in a way that was organized and that was intended to achieve a particular goal,” Mack said.
Clancy was also methodical and organized when she attempted to commit suicide, the psychiatrist said.
“She retained the capacity that is required for having criminal responsibility for these actions,” he said.
The jury is back from the lunch break, and prosecutor Shanan Buckingham is continuing her questioning of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack, a witness for the prosecution.
From left, defense attorney Kevin Reddington, and Plymouth County ADAs Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham return to their desks after a sidebar with Judge William Sullivan in the Lindsay Clancy murder case in Plymouth Superior Court on Friday.
Dr. Avram Mack testifies during the Lindsay Clancy trial Friday.AP
committed the worst crime imaginable when she killed her three children.
She was disturbingly methodical about it, tying an exercise band to a door in the basement of the family home and strangling each of her babies, Cora, then 5, Dawson, then three, and Callan, then just seven months, one at a time.
Lindsay Clancy, seen during her murder trial on Aug. 10, committed the worst crime imaginable when she killed her kids.via REUTERS
Lindsay Clancy left her three children — her youngest son (Callan, not pictured) not yet dead — alone in the last moments of their desperately short lives, as she went upstairs to try and take her own.Facebook / Lindsay Marie Clancy
How did she not stop, when they must have protested with fear and incomprehension?
And then, even more disturbingly, left her three children — her youngest son not yet dead — alone in the last moments of their desperately short lives, as she went upstairs to try and take her own life.
The killer mom sobs as a medical examiner describes the autopsy of her daughter, Cora, 5, at trial on Aug. 12.Mark Stockwell/Boston Herald via AP, Pool
The only explanation is that she is a monster, of course.
Or perhaps it isn’t.
Judge William Sullivan just dismissed the jury for lunch as prosecutor Shanan Buckingham was questioning Dr. Avram Mack, a forensic psychiatrist for the prosecution.
The jury is due back around 2 p.m.
Judge William Sullivan speaks to the jury in Plymouth Superior Court on Friday.USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Dr. Avram Mack, a forensic psychiatrist testifying for prosecutors, said he believes Lindsay Clancy had a major depressive episode in the four months leading up to when she strangled her three kids.
Psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack testifies Friday as a witness for the prosecution’s rebuttal to Clancy’s defense.AP
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham is questioning Dr. Mack as she makes her rebuttal case after the defense rests.AP
He said she also had anxiety disorder but he didn’t believe she suffered from psychosis or a manic or hypomanic episode before the murders.
Clancy’s defense claims she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and heard a voice telling her to kill her children and commit suicide.
Dr. Avram Mack, a forensic psychiatrist testifying for prosecutors, is telling the jury about Lindsay Clancy’s miserable existence at the hospital where she is currently being held.
Lindsay Clancy, seen at her trial Friday, was “clearly psychotic” the day she strangled her three kids, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick told the jury.USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Mack evaluated Clancy on April 10 and April 11, 2026 at Tewksbury Hospital.
He said Clancy “wasn’t interested in the food there,” and “wasn’t very interested in her own hygiene and grooming,” Mack told the jury.
“Showering is embarrassing,” the psychiatrist explained, noting she needed help to shower because she’s paraplegic.
“She described feeling depressed. She described feeling miserable, not wanting to be alive,” Mack said.
He said 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.”
Prosecutor Shanan Buckingham called the first rebuttal witness in the state’s case against Lindsay Clancy, Dr. Avram Mack, a forensic psychiatrist.
Lindsay Clancy’s defense case has wrapped up after her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, called 10 witnesses.
“Lindsay Clancy rests her case,” Reddington said.
Prosecutors are now putting on a rebuttal case.
Lindsay Clancy looks on as Reddington sits down at the defense table after raising an objection to a line of testimony during her trial Friday.
Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington questions a trial witness Friday.USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Lindsay Clancy had a warped — but altruistic — reason for killing daughter Cora and sons Dawson and Callan, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick.
Resnick testified that she had a distorted belief that if she killed herself, her children’s lives would be so awful without her that she should kill them too.
From left, Cora, Callan, and Dawson Clancy at a Christmas tree farm in late November 2022, two months before their deaths.Plymouth Superior Court
“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.
“Her mind was distorted like that.”
Clancy “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,” Resnick said.
“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.”
Forensic psychiatrist Phillip Resnick, testifying Friday for, has worked on a slew of other major US cases.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testifies on Friday.AP
Resnick worked for prosecutors on the cases of, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes, and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, he told the jury.
Timothy McVeigh (center) is led from the Noble County Courthouse by FBI agents in Perry, Oklahoma, on April 21, 1995.AFP via Getty Images
American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is pictured.Sygma via Getty Images
He also testified in defense at both of the killer Texas mom’s trials in the early aughts, in which she was accused of drowning her five kids.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick told the jury that Lindsay Clancy was “clearly psychotic” the day she strangled her three kids.
Resnick said Clancy had bipolar disorder with severe depression and a postpartum onset at the time she strangled Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, with exercise bands in the basement of their Duxbury, Mass., home.
The Clancy children, from left, Callan, Dawson and Cora.Plymouth Superior Court
“She was clearly psychotic on that day,” Resnick said.
He said that on Jan. 24, 2023, Clancy heard a “command voice” telling her to carry out the heinous acts.
“She had what is known as a ‘delusion of influence,’ ” Resnick told jurors Friday.
“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.”
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick was the first witness testify Friday.
He’s appearing over a video feed that has a lag and which has frozen a few times.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick takes the stand to testify for Lindsay Clancy’s defense.AP
The judge called a short break to see if the technical difficulties could be fixed.
Resnick is a defense witness who worked with Lindsay Clancy. The doctor in the after she killed her five children in Texas in 2001.
In February 2023, only two weeks after Clancy killed Cora, Dawson and baby Callan, Yates’ husband and the father of the five children she drowned in their bathtub, — and urged people not to judge the father, Patrick Clancy.
Andrea Yates at a hearing on July 27, 2006, in Houston. She was committed to the maximum-security North Texas State Hospital in Vernon, Texas.AP
An undated family photo shows Andrea and Rusty Yates with four of their five children (from left, John, Luke, Paul and Noah) in Clear Lake, Texas. Yates confessed on June 20, 2001 to murdering her children by drowning them in a bathtub.Getty Images
Testimony could wrap up Friday at Lindsay Clancy’s high-profile murder trial following four weeks of testimony and roughly 80 total witnesses from the prosecution and the defense.
Yesterday was a short day of trial with testimony from just one witness, a chaplain who has visited with Clancy more than 200 times in the years since she strangled her three kids — and to whom a week after she killed them, Chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh told jurors Thursday.
The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy continues in Plymouth, Massachusetts.AP
Testimony could wrap up Friday at Clancy’s high-profile murder trial following four weeks of testimony and roughly 80 total witnesses from the prosecution and the defense.AP
Closing arguments are tentatively slated for either Monday or Tuesday.AP
Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, is expected to call one more witness, and the prosecution is slated to call three more rebuttal witnesses.
Closing arguments are tentatively slated for either Monday or Tuesday.
Lindsay Clancy’s supporters — mostly women, but not all — stood in line for a seat in the court gallery at her murder trial Friday, as the defense is expected to wrap up its case.
outside the Plymouth County Superior Courthouse in Plymouth, Mass.,, for a planned vigil meant to encourage the mom of three, who tragically strangled them all while suffering from a slew of mental illnesses, including postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder that her doctors failed to properly diagnose and treat, according to the defense.
Supporters of Lindsay Clancy enter Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Clancy’s supporters — mostly women, but not all — stood in line for a seat in the court gallery at her murder trial Friday, as the defense is expected to wrap up its case.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Lawyer Kevin Reddington, defending Clancy, is flanked by reporters as he arrives at Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
A line of supporters of Lindsay Clancy enters Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Peaches Greatwin of Concord, NH, stands in line to enter Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, August 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Peaches Greatwin of Concord, NH, a supporter of Lindsay Clancy, waits in line to enter Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Clancy is on trial for the death of her three children.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Supporters of Clancy enter Plymouth Superior Court on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Clancy tragically strangled her kids while suffering from a slew of mental illnesses, including postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder that her doctors failed to properly diagnose and treat, according to the defense.Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Source: https://nypost.com/2026/08/21/us-news/lindsay-clancy-trial-august-21/
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