Psychologist who evaluated Lindsay Clancy in hospital set to continue testimony in her murder trial. Follow live updates. – The Boston Globe
The psychologist who was the first visitor allowed to see Lindsay Clancy after she killed her children in January 2023 is expected to continue testifying in the Duxbury woman’s murder trial on Wednesday.
Paul Zeizel told jurors on Tuesday that days after the killings, he spoke with Clancy, who was handcuffed to a bed in the intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with two state troopers standing guard outside her door.
Zeizel said Lindsay immediately asked him if she could call her then-husband, Patrick Clancy. Zeizel listened on speaker as the couple spoke for the first time since she strangled the children in the basement of their Duxbury home.
“She told Patrick that she loved him very much,” Zeizel told jurors. “She said that she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice, but she had to kill her children and then kill herself.”
Zeizel was among four witnesses called to the stand by the defense Tuesday in an effort to convince jurors that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled her children and should not be held criminally responsible.
Clancy, who is paralyzed from the waist down, has been held without bail at Tewksbury State Hospital, where she continues to receive treatment.
Should jurors acquit her in Plymouth Superior Court, she would not go free but would be sent to a state psychiatric hospital where she’d come up for periodic reviews to determine whether she can live safely in the community.
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Mothers, nurses attend Clancy trial in solidarity — 8:50 a.m.
By Chloe Craft, Globe Correspondent
Each day the trial of Lindsay Clancy resumes, a small group of spectators, mostly women, settles among the gallery to bear silent witness on behalf of mothers who have struggled with their mental health after giving birth.
Some worked in the health care field; others include an airline employee, a stay-at-home mom, a real estate agent, and a retiree. Almost all are mothers from New England who are spending their free time at the courthouse because they, or someone they cared about, experienced postpartum anxiety, depression, or other perinatal mental health conditions and feel it is important to humanize the Clancy family’s story.
How Tuesday’s testimony unfolded — 8:43 a.m.
By Shelley Murphy and Camilo Fonseca, Globe Staff
Lindsay Clancy was handcuffed to a bed in the intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with two state troopers standing guard outside her door, when a psychologist showed up to evaluate whether she was competent to stand trial for killing her three children 11 days earlier.
The psychologist, Paul Zeizel, testified at Clancy’s murder trial Tuesday that he was the first visitor allowed to see her after the slayings in January 2023, and only after her lawyer obtained a court order. She immediately asked to call her husband, according to Zeizel, who handed her his cellphone.