Dr Kirk Heilbrun says he believes Clancy took children’s lives so they wouldn’t ‘suffer’ after she killed herself

With just days to go before the murder trial for Lindsay Clancy concludes, a forensic psychologist called by the prosecution testified on Monday that he did not believe she was experiencing acute psychosis when she killed her three children.

Kirk Heilbrun, who reportedly performed psychiatric tests on Clancy in April, told the court that he questioned her claims that a hallucinated voice commanded her to commit the act, and that he believed she took their lives so they wouldn’t “suffer” after she killed herself.

Algorithms are responsible for fever pitch content surrounding trial, including misinformation, experts say

As the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children, starts to wind down, a now international discussion on social media about the case has hit a fever pitch as viewers examine details of the trial and question the state of maternal mental healthcare in the United States.

Amateur sleuths and armchair psychologists have been creating content throughout the several weeks of the trial, pointing out perceived discrepancies in evidence. They’ve pointed to Clancy’s last recorded heart rate and body temperature as “smoking guns”, suggested that Patrick Clancy, Lindsay’s ex-husband and father of the children, actually committed the crime, despite no legal evidence to back up the claim.

Paula Musgrove stated her daughter had said medications were ‘destroying’ her mind and she was becoming ‘paranoid’

The defense in the Lindsay Clancy filicide case called the defendant’s mother as one of its first witnesses Monday, after three weeks of prosecution evidence laid out, in often harrowing detail, events surrounding Clancy’s killing of her three children.

Under questioning from defense attorney Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s mother, Paula Musgrove, testified that her daughter’s statements and actions had unsettled her in the months leading up to 24 January 2023.

Clancy’s live-streamed trial has become fodder for amateur sleuths to push viral conspiracy theories that threaten to undermine efforts to de-stigmatize illness, experts say

Meghan Cliffel was riding the subway in New York City in December 2015 when she became convinced the entire city belonged to a cult that was plotting to kill her and her two daughters. When she got back to her Manhattan apartment she believed the talking heads on the television were speaking to her directly, threatening her, and that the refrigerator was emitting poisonous gas. Her husband, she feared, was part of the cult too.

“I punch him in the face trying to get to the kids,” Cliffel recalled, “Then I’m ultimately trying to get to the roof of our building because I believe if I get up there and show I’m willing to jump, that that’ll show my loyalty to the cult and hopefully stop this whole thing.”

Prosecutors pointed to internet searches made on the family computer in the months before the killings to make their case

Prosecutors revived a theory in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial case this week, suggesting she had faked a suicide attempt after allegedly strangling her three children.

While prosecutors have been arguing that Clancy acted intentionally and should be held criminally responsible, her defense has said she suffered from postpartum psychosis.