Lindsay Clancy didn't have acute psychosis when she killed her 3 children, psychologist says

Lindsay Clancy did not have acute psychosis when she killed her three children but rather took their lives so they wouldn’t “suffer” after she took her own life, a forensic psychologist testified Monday in her murder trial.

Kirk Heilbrun said he ruled out acute psychosis with command hallucinations because he didn’t believe Clancy when she said she heard a voice telling her to “kill the children so you can kill yourself.”

“The way she described this as happening is that she heard a voice that she’d never heard before, experienced a hallucination and she’s never experienced it since. But she only experienced it for the 18 minutes or so that it took to kill the children,” Heilbrun testified. “To put it mildly, that would be a very, very unusual pattern or manifestation of how this kind of thing comes about. Very unusual.”

A key issue at trial is Clancy's mental health. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that Clancy killed the children in January 2023 but says she shouldn’t be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

After killing her children, Clancy jumped from a second-floor window and remains paralyzed from the waist down. Heilbrun testified that he concluded that Clancy killed her children because she wanted to kill herself but didn't want to leave them behind.

“One of the things that she said when I asked about what happened, is that in the course of strangling each child, she said, `Go to God, baby. Go to God,'” he said. “That was part of her expectation that she and the children would be together in heaven with God.”

Heilbrun also mentioned Clancy's Catholic faith, prompting a request for a mistrial from Reddington that Judge William Sullivan denied.

He later instructed the jury to disregard the reference to “the religion that the defendant was raised with,” calling it “an absolutely inappropriate area of testimony.”

Heilbrun is the latest prosecution witness to say that while Clancy was mentally ill, she still knew that what she was doing was wrong.

On Friday, Dr. Avram Mack, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that he found no evidence of mania or hypomania to support a bipolar diagnosis — or of psychosis — leading up to the killings. He said Clancy was experiencing severe mental illness when she killed her children but that it was a continuation of the depression she had experienced for months in which she was able to control impulses and distinguish right from wrong.

However, Heilbrun said he did determine Clancy has bipolar 2 disorder, while saying it was difficult to diagnose at least in part “because of all the diagnoses in the records and all the symptoms that she experienced.” People with bipolar 2 disorder experience cycles of depression and hypomania, which is less intense than the mania experienced with bipolar 1 disorder.

Earlier in the trial, the jury heard that Clancy had sought treatment for mental health problems from multiple providers and even had admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors say the former labor and delivery nurse planned the killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family.

Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old. Closing arguments are expected later this week.

The condition that Clancy's attorney says she had when she killed the children, postpartum psychosis, is more serious and less common than postpartum depression.

The last witness to testify for the defense before prosecutors began calling rebuttal witnesses was Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and expert in filicide, or the killing of a child by a parent.

Resnick testified Friday that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she killed her children and was not in control of her actions. “It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” he said.

That echoed another defense witness, psychologist Paul Zeizel, who concluded Clancy “had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act.”

Judge William Sullivan admonishes the prosecution after their witness Dr. Kirk Heilbrun brought up the Catholic religion during his testimony about the mental state of Lindsay Clancy during Clancy's murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Defendant Lindsay Clancy listens to forensic psychologist Dr. Kirk Heilbrun testify about the voices she says she heard before she strangled her three children during her murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Defendant Lindsay Clancy talks with her lawyer Kevin Reddington. during her murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Lindsay Clancy's parents Paula And Mike Musgrove listen to testimony during Clancy's murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington, seated with client Lindsay Clancy, listens to testimony by forensic phycologist Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, a prosecution rebuttal witness during Clancy's murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Forensic Phycologist Dr. Kirk Heilbrun speaks on the witness stand during Lindsay Clancy's murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

Lindsay Clancy grins after her attorney Kevin Reddington concluded his cross examination of rebuttal witness Dr. Avram Mack during her murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)

EUTAW SPRINGS, S.C. (AP) — Standing beneath the spreading branches of a massive live oak, historian Garrison Marcoux tries to imagine what this scarred, struggling tree saw 245 years ago.

Did one of the British soldiers encamped at this South Carolina crossroad near the end of the Revolutionary War sit in the oak's shade to recuperate from the series of attacks in American Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene's “war of posts?” Did he or his comrades take cover behind its then slender trunk and fire at the onrushing Continental Army?

Perhaps a soldier took his last breath beneath its canopy, watering its roots with his blood.

“I’m a spiritual person,” Marcoux, with the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust, said as workers clamber among the limbs above. “To say that a place that experienced a lot of violence and intense emotion and things like that doesn’t hold some kind of energy is probably not likely. I think that energy exists where something like this happened.”

This is a “witness tree.” And it now faces its own fight for survival.

After multiple attempts to stave off its death over the decades, it is being choked by the chains and cables meant to support it. Preservationists are working to save this unique, living reminder of an oft-overshadowed chapter in U.S. history.

Arborists estimate that the tree was about 50 years old on Sept. 8, 1781, when British and colonial forces clashed during the Battle of Eutaw Springs — considered by historians to be the last open field engagement of the American Revolution.

“It’s very rare to have a witness tree, especially from the Revolutionary War,” Marcoux said on a recent sultry morning as gnats and mosquitoes buzzed around his head. “To have the tree that witnessed this battle and still standing is short of a miracle.”

Among the officers were famous names like Lt. Col. Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee and Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, better known as the “Swamp Fox.”

About 2,500 Americans attacked the roughly 2,000 British and Loyalist troops camped around a fortified brick house. Greene, who had a horse shot out from under him during the battle, called Eutaw Springs “by far, the hottest action I ever saw, and the most bloody for the numbers engaged.”

Lt. Col. Alexander Stewart, the British field commander that day, later wrote to Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis, “I assure you the Action was bloody and obstinate.”

There were 1,461 killed, wounded, captured or missing. Both sides would claim victory.

“That tree probably took a few lead balls itself,” says arborist Aron Landsaw.

The combatants would move on. The oak remained — and faced several more battles of its own.

Hung with swaying Spanish moss, its branches festooned with bright-green resurrection fern, the tree reaches 45 feet (13.7 meters) into the sky, its canopy spreading about 130 feet (40 meters). Its trunk is 72 inches (1.83 meters) in diameter at breast height.

The twin springs that gave the Revolutionary War battle its name are no more, inundated by the 1940s project that flooded the Santee River basin for hydroelectric power and flood control. Development in the 1960s swallowed up much of what the lake project spared.

The tree survived it all.

Then, about 50 years ago, lightning struck the oak’s crotch, splitting the tree nearly in two. Workers lashed the broad branches together with steel cables and chains.

But the mechanisms that saved the oak are now slowly killing it.

As the tree grew, the metal bands cut into the trunk and branches, in some places disappearing beneath a scar-like covering of bark.

“The chains and cables are actually choking it out,” says Landsaw. “It can’t pull nutrients up from the soil.”

Preservationists hope to reverse that.

South Carolina 250 and the American Battlefield Trust joined forces to hire New York state-based SavATree for the project as the U.S. marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Crews recently used a supersonic air tool to de-compact the ground around the tree’s roots, then injected a kelp mixture to add nutrients to the soil. The day of Marcoux’s visit, SavATree workers hammered little blunt lightning rods into the main branches, connecting them with shiny copper cables that converge on a longer copper rod pounded deep into the ground about 10 feet (3 meters) from the trunk.

“If lightning does hit it, it’ll run down the copper cables and dissipate into the ground,” says Landsaw, a consulting arborist with SavATree.

Next, workers will install new cables, bolted into the five main branches, to stabilize the tree before removing the old supports.

“There’s going to be a center hub in the middle that connects all these cables and allows the tree to sway with the wind and move around when it needs to,” Landsaw explains.

Landsaw says this is the most significant project he's ever worked on.

While he can't promise the tree will live another three centuries, Landsaw is confident it will be around to inspire new generations of Americans.

“We’re focusing on another 100 years at least,” he says. “Hopefully longer.”

The story has been updated to correct that SavATree is based in New York state, not Maryland.

Jake Love, left, and Bryce Whitney of SavATree pound a copper lightning rod into the ground beside a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Jake Love, left, and Bryce Whitney of SavATree pound a copper lightning rod into the ground beside a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Spanish moss sways among the steel cables installed around 50 years ago to help stabilize a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The sun rises behind a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Andrew Giordano, plant and tree health care specialist, installs copper lightning rod cable in the branches of a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)