Lindsay Clancy Blamed 'A Male Voice' for Ordering Her to Kill Her Children: Court Testimony
Two witnesses in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy say she told them a male voice told her she needed to kill her children and herself.
Clancy, 36, is on trial for killing Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in the family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. After killing the children, she tried to kill herself by slashing her wrists and neck and leaping from a second-floor window. She was paralyzed from the waist down, according to The Boston Globe.
Clancy’s attorneys claim she was not responsible for the killings because she suffered from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors say she knew what she was doing.
The case has spurred a surge of interest on social media and is even the subject of a fundraising campaign to raise money for Clancy’s parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove.
Women on TikTok: “Lindsay Clancy is innocent!”
Lindsay Clancy’s attorney: pic.twitter.com/8D9eU3xQsH
— David Santa Carla 🦇 (@TheOnlyDSC) August 20, 2026
On Tuesday, psychologist Paul Zeizel, a defense witness, testified that he visited Clancy while she was hospitalized after the January 2023 crimes. He said she called her husband, Patrick, and Zeizel listened to the conversation on speakerphone.
“She told Patrick that she loved him very much,” Zeizel testified. “She said that she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice, but she had to kill her children and then kill herself.”
Dr. Paul Zeizel, a clinical and forensic psychologist, took the stand on Tuesday, testifying that Clancy said she heard a male voice “ordering her … to kill her children.”
Dr. Zeizel visited Lindsay Clancy in the hospital following her children’s deaths. He also testified that… pic.twitter.com/YreroKczcP
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 19, 2026
The trial included allegations from a state trooper who testified that a theory had emerged among prosecutors that the claim of hearing voices originated with Zeizel, who told Clancy to lie.
However, the trooper later admitted there was nothing to support that allegation.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked Zeizel if he told Clancy to lie.
“Absolutely not,” Zeizel said.
On Thursday, Day 17 of the trial, Sheila Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, testified along similar lines, according to the Boston Herald.
“She had heard me for a couple of days, we had prayed together,” Cavanaugh said, referring to Clancy’s initial arrival when she had a breathing tube inserted that prevented her from speaking.
Cavanaugh said that on her first visit when Clancy could speak, “Her emotional state was very neutral, a flat affect, but I remember vividly the first thing she said to me,” Cavanaugh said, according to ABC News.
“We had been praying together, and so when I went in on Tuesday the 31st, she said to me as I held her hand to comfort her, ‘I am so glad my children are safe,’” Cavanaugh said.
She said her reply was, “Lindsay, your children are safe. They’re safe in heaven with God.”
“And I held her hand throughout that conversation, and we prayed for them,” Cavanaugh testified.
Cavanaugh testified that Clancy talked several times about hearing a male voice.
“The voice, according to Lindsay, told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe,” Cavanaugh said. “She alluded to the fact that it was a male voice, and it was persistent.”
The chaplain said that she met with Clancy more than 200 times, according to the Boston Herald. The meeting where Clancy mentioned the male voice took place before her first encounter with Zeizel, the newspaper noted.
“The voice conversation came up several times during our visits,” she said.
On cross-examination, however, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague highlighted the omission of any “voice” mention in Cavanaugh’s notes of her meetings with Clancy.
“You wrote very detailed notes,” Sprague said, according to the Boston Herald. “In all of these notes, you never once [wrote] that she told you that she heard a voice?”
“The chaplain notes are not verbatim,” Cavanaugh said. “I’m there to bear witness to their suffering.”
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