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.”