Saathoff testified that Clancy informed him she saved listening to the voice again and again as she led 3-year-old Dawson all the way down to the basement and strangled him with an train band, then did the identical to 5-year-old Cora and 8-month-old Callan.
“Then just as soon as it started, it stopped, when she had finished killing the children,” Saathoff mentioned. Then, he mentioned, Clancy recounted grabbing a knife from a butcher block within the kitchen, going upstairs to her bed room, reducing her wrists and neck, taking capsules, and leaping out a second-story window.
It was the primary time for the reason that trial started 5 weeks in the past in Plymouth Superior Court that jurors have been supplied a timeline of exactly when Clancy strangled her kids, and in what order, primarily based on interviews she gave Saathoff in May and June of this yr.
However, Saathoff, a senior psychiatrist for the FBI’s behavioral evaluation unit, informed jurors he didn’t imagine Clancy’s declare that she killed her kids as a result of of a voice in her head. He mentioned it was extremely uncommon for somebody to listen to auditory hallucinations solely as soon as, as Clancy claimed she did. And he testified that she had supplied completely different accounts in regards to the slayings to her husband and different psychiatrists.
“What was significant to me is she had not spoken about hearing voices before that,” mentioned Saathoff, who can be a professor at University of Virginia School of Medicine. “That was unusual and also what was very unusual was the fact that the voice stopped with the death or the strangling of her youngest son, Callan.”
Saathoff was the third witness known as by prosecutors to rebut protection psychological well being consultants who testified final week that Clancy was affected by a postpartum psychotic episode when she killed her kids and shouldn’t be held criminally accountable.
Judge William F. Sullivan informed jurors that Saathoff, who will resume testifying Wednesday, is the prosecution’s final witness. Closing arguments are anticipated Thursday.
Clancy, 36, who was paralyzed from the waist down by her suicide try and seems in courtroom in a wheelchair, has admitted killing her kids. However, she has pleaded not responsible to a few counts of first-degree homicide, asserting an madness protection.
Her lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has argued that she was affected by postpartum psychosis on the time of the slayings, was unable to understand the wrongfulness of her conduct, and lacks felony accountability as a result of she was unable to obey the legislation.
Prosecutors allege the murders have been premeditated and carried out with excessive atrocity and cruelty by Clancy, who needed to kill herself as a result of she was drained of her life. She determined to take the kids together with her as a result of she didn’t belief anybody else to take care of them.
Clancy’s former husband, Patrick, testified earlier within the trial that Dawson was sitting on the sofa consuming hen nuggets and inexperienced beans when he left to choose up drugs for Cora and dinner for him and Lindsay.
He testified that he known as his spouse from CVS to ask whether or not a generic model of the treatment for his or her daughter was acceptable, however she didn’t decide up. But he mentioned she known as him proper again, and it appeared as if she’d been “in the middle of something,” and he guessed she was giving the kids a shower. When he returned house, he found she had killed them.
On Tuesday, Saathoff questioned Lindsay Clancy’s declare that she was standing by the open fridge door, getting hen nuggets to cook dinner for her kids, when she heard the voice telling her to kill the kids.
He famous that Patrick Clancy’s testimony that Dawson was consuming hen nuggets when he left was supported by crime scene pictures beforehand proven to jurors.
Saathoff urged these statements present that Lindsay Clancy’s account is unreliable.
“In this case the widely divergent reports … raise questions about what she is telling me and how things are happening,” he mentioned. “Certainly that’s a cause for significant concern.”
Saathoff informed jurors that he concluded that Clancy “had certainly suffered with symptoms of mental illness, depression, and anxiety,” in addition to suicidal ideation and intrusive ideas.
But he testified that Clancy supplied a distinct timeline to a psychiatrist who evaluated her for the protection about when she heard the voice on the evening of the slayings.
Shelley Murphy may be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her @shelleymurph. Travis Andersen may be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Lea Skene may be reached at lea.skene@globe.com. Follow her on X @lea_skene.