Janette MacAusland walked into Dedham District Court Thursday morning for a probable cause hearing that did not happen. Four and a half months after her two children were found dead in their beds on Edgemoor Avenue in Wellesley, the Commonwealth still cannot say, on paper, how they died. The state medical examiner has not issued a cause or manner of death. The hearing was continued to October 29.
Her lawyer, Joseph Krowski Jr., called the admission a “pretty startling concession” from prosecutors. Then he said the thing that will follow this case for as long as it lasts: his client is “not Lindsay Clancy 2.0.”
Both statements deserve a closer look, because each of them tells you something about where this prosecution is going.
What was supposed to happen Thursday
MacAusland, 49, was arraigned in Dedham District Court on May 6 on two counts of murder in the deaths of Ella, 6, and Kai, 7. A not guilty plea was entered on her behalf. Judge Jeanmarie Carroll ordered her held without bail and granted a defense request that she be housed at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee rather than the Norfolk County jail. Krowski told the court he had met his client for the first time about twenty minutes before the hearing.
A probable cause hearing was set for July 13. On July 9 the defense moved to continue it, and the motion was allowed. That produced Thursday’s date.
A District Court cannot try a murder case. Its job in a case like this is to decide whether there is enough evidence to bind the defendant over to the Superior Court, where the case would be tried. The standard is not the low threshold that justifies an arrest. Under Myers v. Commonwealth, 363 Mass. 843 (1973), the judge views the case as if it were a trial and asks whether there is enough credible evidence to send it to a jury. If a trial court would be bound to acquit on the evidence presented, the complaint is dismissed.
That is the theory. The practice in Massachusetts murder cases is different, and it explains why Thursday’s hearing was always unlikely to go forward.
Why murder cases almost never get a probable cause hearing
First-degree murder is a “capital crime” under the Massachusetts Rules of Criminal Procedure, meaning it can be prosecuted only by grand jury indictment. The District Court complaint is a placeholder. The real charging document is the indictment, and once a grand jury returns one, the District Court case is almost invariably dismissed and the probable cause hearing becomes moot. The Supreme Judicial Court said as much in Corey v. Commonwealth, 364 Mass. 137 (1973), and it has been the working rule for half a century.
So the normal sequence in a Norfolk County murder case is this: arraignment in District Court, a probable cause date set a few weeks out, and an indictment returned before that date arrives. The defendant is then arraigned again in Superior Court and the District Court file closes. Defense lawyers know the probable cause hearing will not happen. Prosecutors know it too. The hearing date functions as a deadline for the grand jury, not as a hearing.
That is what makes Thursday unusual. MacAusland was arrested April 24. It is now September. In a case where the defendant is alleged to have told a police officer “I strangled them and then I tried to kill myself,” there is still no indictment, and the reason given in open court is that the medical examiner has not finished.
Why the medical examiner matters this much
A grand jury does not need a confession to indict for murder. It does need evidence that a killing occurred, and the ordinary way to prove a killing is a medical examiner’s finding of the cause of death and a manner of death of homicide. In a strangulation case that finding rests on autopsy evidence: injury to the structures of the neck, petechial hemorrhages, and the exclusion of other causes. A confession that the children were strangled is evidence, but a defendant’s statement that she strangled someone is not proof that strangulation is what killed them. Prosecutors who indict without the autopsy invite exactly the kind of challenge a careful defense lawyer would bring.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has a documented history with turnaround. A 2017 State Auditor’s report found the office was not completing toxicology examinations, autopsy reports and death certificates within the 90-day window its accrediting body requires. In 2023, Boston 25 reported that the office had excluded two underperforming examiners from the data it submitted to the National Association of Medical Examiners and had used a 94-day window instead of the required 90. The accrediting body’s president said neither practice was permitted. Those are old numbers, and the office’s staffing has grown considerably since 2018. Whether they explain a delay in a two-victim child homicide from one of the state’s wealthiest towns is a question nobody answered Thursday. The Norfolk District Attorney’s office did not comment.
Krowski did: “We’re a little frustrated that it’s taking this much time to advance this case.”
That is a defense lawyer complaining that the prosecution is too slow. It is not a common sight, and it is a clue about strategy.
“Not Lindsay Clancy 2.0”
Lindsay Clancy was tried this summer in Plymouth County for killing her three children in Duxbury in January 2023. Her defense was that she was not criminally responsible because of postpartum psychosis. The jury deliberated seven days and could not agree. Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial on September 4, and District Attorney Timothy Cruz has not yet said whether he will retry her. We covered the mistrial and what happens next.
Every reporter in Dedham on Thursday was going to ask about Clancy. Krowski got ahead of it, and what he actually said was more careful than the headline. He said the Clancy trial had opened “a discussion, a discourse opened up in this country about whether or not we want to criminalize mental illness,” and that he hoped the Norfolk District Attorney “takes a different approach in how we prosecute women suffering from profound mental health problems.” He said it was “pretty obvious” his client had a history of mental illness. And he said this about defenses: “Until I get all of the information, I’m not prepared to say anything about any potential defenses. But everything is on the table.”
Read together, those four statements do three things.
They tell the DA’s office he wants to talk. “A different approach in how we prosecute” is not an argument to a jury. It is an argument to a prosecutor, about charging decisions and what a resolution short of a first-degree murder trial might look like. The office he is talking to is in transition: District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey is not seeking reelection, and the decision about how to handle this case will belong to whoever succeeds him.
They preserve the criminal responsibility defense without committing to it. Massachusetts does not use the narrow M’Naghten test. Under Commonwealth v. McHoul, 352 Mass. 544 (1967), a person is not criminally responsible if, because of mental disease or defect, she lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the law. The second branch, the volitional one, is where Clancy’s defense lived, and it is available in a case where the defendant appears to have understood exactly what she had done. We explain the standard in our guide to not guilty by reason of insanity.
They distinguish the facts. This is the part of “not Clancy 2.0” that is literally true. Clancy’s defense was built on a specific, time-limited condition that follows childbirth and has a substantial medical literature behind it. MacAusland is 49. Her children were 6 and 7. There is no postpartum window. Whatever her mental health history turns out to be, it will have to be proved on its own terms, and the defense will not have the benefit of a diagnosis the public already recognizes from a televised trial.
The custody case underneath the criminal one
The fact pattern the Commonwealth will be working with is not a psychiatric emergency in the weeks after a birth. It is a divorce.
Samuel MacAusland filed for divorce in Norfolk Probate and Family Court in October 2025, after nine years of marriage. He sought custody of the children and control of the Wellesley home. Janette MacAusland filed a counterclaim in November seeking the same things. On April 16 the two filed a joint motion asking the court to appoint a guardian ad litem to investigate legal custody and the parenting plan and make recommendations. The appointment was made on April 21. A pretrial conference was scheduled for May 5.
Three days after the guardian ad litem was appointed, on the night of April 24, MacAusland arrived at her aunt’s house in Bennington, Vermont, bleeding from a gash across her throat. According to court documents, she told her aunt she had killed her children and that she “wanted the 3 of us to go to God together but it didn’t work.” She said she had driven to the Quechee Gorge Bridge and tried to jump, but could not. Bennington police asked Wellesley police to check the house. Officers found Ella and Kai dead in a bed at about 9:50 p.m.
She was held in Vermont as a fugitive from justice, appeared by video from the Marble Valley Correctional Facility in Rutland on April 27 in a suicide prevention jumpsuit, and waived extradition. Her Vermont lawyer, Jeff Rubin, said she had “decided that the best thing is to get back to Massachusetts as soon as possible and address these charges.” It then took more than a week to move her, a delay the Globe reported as unexplained.
The custody timeline cuts both ways, and both sides know it.
For the prosecution, a mother who kills her children days after a neutral evaluator is appointed in a custody fight is a mother with a motive, and motive evidence is admissible. It also supports deliberate premeditation, one of the three theories of first-degree murder in Massachusetts. A drive to Vermont, a bridge, and a family photo found on her person are the kind of details a prosecutor uses to argue that a person knew what she had done and planned what came next.
For the defense, the same timeline is the record of a person under extraordinary strain, and Massachusetts law gives mental impairment a role short of a full criminal responsibility defense. Under Commonwealth v. Gould, 380 Mass. 672 (1980), a jury may consider a defendant’s mental condition in deciding whether the Commonwealth has proved deliberate premeditation, and in deciding whether a killing was committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty. That is not a defense to murder. It is a route from first-degree murder, which carries life without parole, to second-degree murder, which carries life with parole eligibility. In a case where the defendant has confessed, that distinction is the whole ballgame.
What “everything is on the table” leaves open
Krowski has not said his client is not criminally responsible. He has said he does not have the information yet. That is the correct position for a lawyer who has been on the case since May, has most of the file under impoundment, and has not seen an autopsy report. The Globe reported that most of the court records are impounded and that several defense motions were filed under seal.
Three things to watch between now and October 29.
Whether an indictment comes first. If the medical examiner delivers, expect a Norfolk County grand jury to return indictments before the October date, a Superior Court arraignment to follow, and the District Court case to close. If the October date arrives with no indictment, the Commonwealth will have to either put on a probable cause hearing, which it does not want to do, or ask for another continuance, which Krowski has already signaled he will resist.
The charging theory. First-degree murder in Massachusetts can rest on deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, or felony murder. A strangulation of a child is the kind of killing prosecutors routinely charge under extreme atrocity or cruelty. Which theories the indictment names will shape the trial.
Competency and evaluation. Nothing in the public record indicates a competency evaluation has been ordered. A judge may order one under chapter 123, section 15, at any point where there is doubt about a defendant’s ability to understand the proceedings and assist her lawyer, and the Globe’s account of the Vermont hearing, where she asked jail staff for the date and asked the judge to confirm she was the defendant, is the kind of detail that draws attention. Whether anyone raises it is a defense decision.
What is not in dispute
Kai was a second grader at Schofield Elementary School. Ella was in kindergarten there. Their mother was an acupuncturist and massage therapist who had founded a trauma-relief acupuncture program after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and was affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital. A family babysitter, Cale Darrah, told reporters: “Never could I have imagined that she would do something like this. She seemed to just deeply love her children like any other mother.”
REACH Beyond Domestic Violence, the Waltham-based agency that serves the Wellesley area, issued a statement in April asking the public to “avoid speculation and allow the legal process to unfold.” That remains good advice, and the legal process has now told us how long it will take: at minimum, until the medical examiner says how two children died.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which handles mental health emergencies generally and not only suicide. REACH’s confidential hotline is 1-800-899-4000.
What happened at the MacAusland hearing on September 10?
The probable cause hearing in Dedham District Court was continued to October 29, 2026, because the state medical examiner has not yet provided the cause and manner of death for Ella and Kai MacAusland. No evidence was taken.
What is a probable cause hearing in Massachusetts?
A District Court hearing to decide whether there is enough evidence to send a felony case to the Superior Court for trial. The standard is whether a trial judge, on the evidence presented, would have to send the case to a jury. In murder cases the hearing is usually mooted by a grand jury indictment before it takes place.
Why has Janette MacAusland not been indicted yet?
Prosecutors said in court that the medical examiner has not issued a cause and manner of death. An indictment for murder ordinarily rests on that finding. The Norfolk District Attorney’s office has not commented further.
What did her lawyer mean by “not Lindsay Clancy 2.0”?
Joseph Krowski Jr. distinguished the facts from the Clancy case, which turned on postpartum psychosis, while saying his client has a history of mental illness and that “everything is on the table” as to defenses. He also urged prosecutors to take “a different approach” to women with serious mental health problems.
Is she claiming insanity?
Not yet. Massachusetts calls the defense “lack of criminal responsibility,” and her lawyer has said he will not discuss potential defenses until he has the full file. Most of the court record is impounded.
Where is she being held?
Without bail. At arraignment the judge granted a defense request that she be housed at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee.
What happens on October 29?
The case returns to Dedham District Court. If a grand jury has indicted her by then, the District Court case will be dismissed and she will be arraigned in Norfolk Superior Court. If not, the court will either hold the probable cause hearing or continue it again.
Hearing details and defense statements as reported by The Boston Globe, September 10, 2026. Arraignment details from The Boston Globe and Boston.com, May 6, 2026. Custody timeline from Norfolk Probate and Family Court records as reported by The Boston Globe, NBC Boston and Boston 25 in April 2026. Vermont proceedings from VTDigger and WCAX, April 27, 2026. Medical examiner history from the Office of the State Auditor (2017) and Boston 25 Investigates (June 2023). Case law verified against CourtListener. Janette MacAusland is presumed innocent, and no fact alleged by the Commonwealth has been proved. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.