What Lindsay Clancy Told the Chaplain Holding Her Hand

Lindsay Clancy's murder trial is nearly over, and Day 17 belonged to one witness: Sheila Cavanaugh, the Brigham and Women's chaplain who sat with Clancy the day her breathing tube came out. Clancy's first words that morning are the most haunting piece of testimony this trial has produced, and this episode opens with them.

Cavanaugh described about fourteen hospital visits, then roughly two hundred more at Tewksbury Hospital over three years. Across those visits, she testified, Clancy kept returning to a male voice that commanded her to kill her children and herself. Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague's cross-examination landed hard: none of Cavanaugh's notes mention any voice. But the burden in this courtroom runs one way — the Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clancy was criminally responsible when she strangled her three children, acts no one disputes. Defense psychologist Paul Zeizel spent over thirty-five hours with Clancy and testified he found no evidence of malingering. And the phone forensics the state used to argue planning also captured Clancy searching about insomnia, bipolar disorder, and the symptoms of postpartum psychosis in the days and weeks before January 24, 2023.

With closing arguments expected the week of August 24, Tony lays out the choice in front of the jury: distrust a chaplain with no stake in the case, believe a three-year lie no witness supported, or accept that the voice was real.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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