Plymouth County Superior Court, Tuesday afternoon, August 25, 2026. The Commonwealth saved its sharpest witness for last, and he spent the afternoon on a single detail most people had glossed over: the voice Lindsay Clancy says commanded her to kill her three children went silent the instant the killings ended.
Dr. Gregory Saathoff told the jury that in decades of work he has never seen that happen.
Who the last witness is
Saathoff is a forensic psychiatrist with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He took the stand Tuesday afternoon as the final witness in the trial, after the Commonwealth’s other rebuttal expert finished a second day of testimony.
He told jurors he interviewed Clancy over Zoom in late May and early June of this year. In those interviews she described what happened on the night of January 24, 2023: shortly after she spoke to her then-husband Patrick on the phone, while he was out picking up dinner and a prescription, she began hearing a male voice repeatedly telling her to kill her children. Saathoff repeated for the jury what Clancy reported the voice saying.
“This is your last chance, you have to kill your kids and then kill yourself.”
The observation that does the damage
Clancy reported hearing the voice only during the killings. It stopped immediately afterward. That timing is the hinge Saathoff leaned on.
“Committing the act is not curative of the voice. I’ve not ever seen that.”
Read it twice, because it is doing more work than it appears. Saathoff is not calling Clancy a liar and he is not disputing that she was ill. He is telling the jury that command hallucinations, in the clinical experience of someone who has spent a career examining them, do not behave this way. Genuine psychosis does not switch off the moment the act is complete. When a reported symptom appears exactly when it is needed and vanishes exactly when it is no longer needed, he is inviting jurors to draw the obvious inference about what kind of account they are hearing.
He raised other inconsistencies in her accounts as well. His testimony resumes Wednesday morning.
The other expert who testified today
Saathoff followed Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, the forensic psychologist and Drexel University professor whose testimony was cut short Monday when he referenced Clancy’s religion and drew a mistrial motion that Judge William Sullivan denied. Heilbrun returned Tuesday and gave the jury the sentence the defense now has to answer.
“She retained an awareness of the illegality of killing people, including killing her children. My clinical opinion is that she was criminally responsible on January 24.”
Heilbrun’s account of why she did it is not that she snapped. He told jurors she did not have a psychotic meltdown, and that she was driven by an intent to take her own life and to take her children with her, because she loved them and believed they would be better off dead than living without her. It is a description that is sympathetic and damning at once, which is exactly what makes it effective. A jury can accept every word of it and still convict.
The schedule moved: closings are now expected Thursday
Earlier Tuesday the expectation was that testimony would end that day and closing arguments would follow Wednesday. That is no longer the plan. With Saathoff returning Wednesday morning to finish, closing arguments are now expected Thursday, with the judge’s instructions and the start of deliberations after that.
In Massachusetts the defense closes first and the Commonwealth closes last. Kevin Reddington will argue knowing prosecutors get the final word before Judge Sullivan charges the jury on the standard from Commonwealth v. McHoul and on the Commonwealth’s burden to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.
Where this leaves the defense
The defense case rested on Dr. Phillip Resnick, the forensic psychiatrist from the Andrea Yates case, who examined Clancy and concluded she was suffering postpartum psychosis with command hallucinations and was not criminally responsible. The Commonwealth has now put three experts against that conclusion, and the last two have narrowed the fight to a single question: not whether Lindsay Clancy was sick, which nobody disputes, but whether the voice she describes did what she says it did.
Our related coverage: the morning session on Day 20, what each side is expected to argue in closings, the evidence for and against a guilty verdict, what a guilty verdict would mean, and what happens if she is found not criminally responsible. The running timeline is updated as the trial moves.
Questions readers are asking tonight
Who is Dr. Gregory Saathoff?
A forensic psychiatrist with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was called by the Commonwealth as the final witness in the trial and interviewed Clancy over Zoom in late May and early June 2026.
What did Saathoff say about the voice Lindsay Clancy heard?
He told jurors Clancy reported hearing a male voice only during the killings, and that it stopped immediately afterward. His response was that “committing the act is not curative of the voice. I’ve not ever seen that.”
When are closing arguments now expected?
Thursday, August 27. The earlier expectation of Wednesday shifted when Saathoff’s testimony ran into a second day. Court schedules can move again.
How many experts testified for the prosecution?
The Commonwealth’s rebuttal case included Dr. Avram Mack, Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, and Dr. Gregory Saathoff. All acknowledged mental illness while disputing that it left Clancy unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct.
Did Lindsay Clancy testify?
No. She did not take the stand. The jury has heard her account only through the experts and family members who described what she told them.
Reporting current as of Tuesday evening, August 25, 2026. This article will be updated as testimony concludes and the case moves to closing arguments.