After Killing Her Kids, Lindsay Clancy Told Chaplain ‘I Am So Glad My Children Are Safe’ from Hospital Bed

Chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh testified that she met with Clancy more than 200 times following the killings.

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A hospital chaplain testified that Lindsay Clancy said she was “so glad my children are safe”

Sheila Cavanaugh, the chaplain, testified that she met with Clancy more than 200 times after the latter killed her own children

Cavanaugh also testified Clancy reported hearing a voice in her head

A chaplain who met with Lindsay Clancy more than 200 times after she killed her three children testified about the first thing Clancy said to her.

“I am so glad my children are safe,” Clancy said, according to Sheila Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts

Clancy was treated at Brigham and Women’s after she fatally strangled her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan — in their Duxbury, Mass., home before cutting her wrists and jumping out of a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt on Jan. 24, 2023.

Cavanaugh was called to testify as a defense witness at Clancy’s closely watched murder trial on Thursday, Aug. 20. Her testimony was streamed live by the Associated Press.

When Cavanaugh first met Clancy, the latter was intubated and unable to speak.

But during a subsequent meeting a week after the killings and after the tube had been removed, Cavanaugh was holding Clancy’s hand when she said she was glad her children were safe.

Cavanaugh testified that she responded theologically, telling Clancy the children were “safe in heaven.”

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Cavanaugh then testified that Clancy spoke about having heard a voice and that “if she did not follow the command neither she nor her children would be safe.”

During cross-examination, prosecutors noted that Cavanaugh did not write down that Clancy had heard voices in her records.

Clancy does not deny that she killed her children. But the defense is claiming she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and overmedication, arguing that she was thus not criminally responsible.

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The prosecution maintains that Clancy deliberately killed her children.

Cavanaugh was the only witness called Thursday before the jury was sent home early.

After the jury left the courtroom, Judge William Sullivan held a preliminary charge conference to discuss potential jury instructions.

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