Trial

Judge sends Lindsay Clancy trial jurors home after chaplain testimony

Thursday, August 20, 2026 3:21PM

Zeizel describes Lindsay Clancy's phone call to husband after killings

According to Zeizel, during the second call, also made over speaker phone, Lindsay Clancy told her husband "she loved him very much."

Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial were sent home after an hour of testimony Thursday morning.

Judge William Sullivan told jurors to expect a long day Friday.

"It's going to be a short day, but also gear up for a longer day tomorrow," Sullivan said. "If you're going to hold it against anybody, hold it against me."

Clancy is facing three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of her 5-year-old daughter Cora, 3-year-old son Dawson, and infant son Callan at her family's home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury on Jan. 24, 2023. She has pleaded not guilty.

During a brief cross examination, chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh was pressed about why her notes did not mention that Clancy was hearing a voice in her head.

"In all of these notes that detail every time you interact with her, you never once wrote that she told you she heard a voice or what that voice said, correct?" asked prosecutor Jennifer Sprague.

"Correct," Cavanaugh, who pushed back and noted that her notes were not verbatim. "I'm not there to evaluate the patient. I'm there to bear witness to their suffering."

Cavanaugh said he continues to meet with Clancy, having visited her approximately 200 times at Tewkesbury State Hospital.

Cancy's defense attorney Kevin Reddington has argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled her three children and attempted to take her own life.

Defense lawyers do not contest that Clancy was responsible for the deaths of her three children. Instead, they argue she should not be held criminally responsible for their deaths because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.

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