Aug. 20, 2026

Killer Mom Trial: Psychiatrist Testifies Lindsay Clancy Had Postpartum Psychosis

Killer Mom Trial: Psychiatrist Testifies Lindsay Clancy Had Postpartum Psychosis

It was a surprisingly short day in court, but it was a powerful one for the defense. Dr. Paul Zeizel told jurors that Lindsay Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and that she had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act. Also, the judge in the case ruled a TikToker could not be called as a witness in the case and then abruptly and mysteriously ended court early, saying there was an “unforeseen circumstance” that they “did not see coming.”

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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Thursday, August twentieth, and only one witness was on the stand and the Lindsey Clancy murder trial on Wednesday. That witness said, maybe the most important thing for the defense that the jury is going to hear and with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. He landed the plane for the defense. She's not responsible for this.

00:00:28
Speaker 2: He made it very clear he actually gave his official opinion. He said, my opinion is that she did have, indeed a mental disease or defect. She had bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis in addition, and here it is she was unable to conform her behaviors to the rule of law, and she had no appreciation for the wrongfulness of her act.

00:00:52
Speaker 1: Mike drop And there was a guy sitting up there in glasses with doctor in front of his name, that Frankly Robes comes off as a credible guy. One word. Now, I know the prosecution described to come after him and discredit him in some ways. He has handled himself well enough up their robes that he just comes off as believable.

00:01:15
Speaker 3: He did.

00:01:16
Speaker 2: You said, you were watching intently the cross examination, and we'll get into the specifics of that, but they couldn't. She couldn't rattle him. And that is what prosecutors try to do, or what defense attorneys try to do upon cross examination, especially if you have somebody who just gave compelling, powerful, credible evidence that goes against what your theory is. You gotta find a way to shake him up, discredit them, make them look weak or unsure. And they tried their best, but failed. In our opinion, they did. They did get some concessions from him, but by and large, doctor Paul Zazelle was an incredible, powerful, probably the best witness the defense has put today. How old you say he is old enough to be someone's grandfather, to have had enough experience, yes, yes, to have enough experience in this field to believe that he knows what he's talking about.

00:02:12
Speaker 1: Robes. It is really tough, and I don't know how much the jurors are going to You could just juxtapose their images, the defense psychiatric expert versus the prosecutions a young woman who had been on the job for one month when she first met and even that young woman, I said, juxtaposed just the image they look It could.

00:02:32
Speaker 2: Be after Jeffer tough versus yes, doctor Paul's eyaac it could be his.

00:02:37
Speaker 1: Daughter and Robes just hearing them and the confidence granddaughter. He's done this enough to where he's just composed being he knows how, and he's looking at the jury. Sometimes that freaks me out. I'm not a big fan of it because it seems performative. But he gets asked a question and he turns to the jurors and looks all of them in their eyes as he's answering Robes. The guy knows what he's doing, and it does I wonder how that plays for the juror. This guy comes off differently than some of the others that have been up here.

00:03:05
Speaker 3: You make such a good point.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: I never thought about juxtaposing him with the prosecution's star psychiatric expert, who said and claimed she was a postpartum psychosis depression expert and she had never met one patient who had postpartum psychosis. She was just eviscerated by the defense.

00:03:27
Speaker 1: Isn'tno the phrase they use oftentimes in these types of trials, the battle.

00:03:31
Speaker 2: Of the experts, absolutely, and this one more than most because we're trying to figure out no. One's questioning whether or not Lindsey Clancy murdered her children. They're trying to figure out if she was criminally responsible. So it is and solely does depend on what the experts have to say about this mental disorder and whether or not she had it. And doctor Paul Seizel, he was very good at explaining to the jury that it's not unusual for someone to be able to perform routine tasks while also being in a psychotic state. He went over the day of the killings, the fact that she was able to take core to the doctor, that she built a snowman with her kids, that she was able to communicate with Patrick, her then husband, about picking up the grocery or picking up the food, and the drug store. He said, all of this can be done while someone is in a psychotic state. It's consistent with everything he's seen.

00:04:21
Speaker 1: But to a lay person, Ropes, this was very important because it doesn't make sense to all of us. Wait a minute, she was out of her mind and on these meds and then behaving perfectly normally. Rose, that was important to say. It's still hard to comprehend.

00:04:36
Speaker 2: But he's telling me that that is consistent with psychosis. So I thought that was very very impactful. A couple of things. When the prosecution cross examined him, they did get some interesting points across to the jury. They got him to admit that when she had that phone call with Patrick, he was there.

00:04:56
Speaker 3: It was his cell phone that she used.

00:04:58
Speaker 2: He does not recall her asking about the kids. Then she asked, how many times has Lindsay told you since the incident that she's heard a voice. He had to admit that she's never once said she heard a voice after the murders?

00:05:14
Speaker 1: What did they land their plane? If you will? And the significance of that is that normal? Is that odd? Is the voice supposed to continue? Do these become one off events? Oftentimes? I didn't hear the prosecution at least land that point.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: Maybe she was afraid to ask, because it would have been wonderful to have heard a follow up to say so, she was in a state of psychosis hearing voices, and then once she murdered her children, she just stopped hearing voices and came out of the state of psychosis. You want us to believe that, That's what I wanted the prosecutor to say next, but she didn't for whatever reason.

00:05:52
Speaker 1: So even if it might have been a very good point. I was left trying to figure it out on my.

00:05:56
Speaker 2: Own, and that is often the case that we see, or at least that we have seen with this prosecution. Now. I also thought it was effective that she brought up and she went and she labored through this because she went through all the anniversaries. How Lindsay spent her days at the hospital. It was recorded by the hospital. So this isn't we heard this or doctor say, this has all been recorded in the hospital records where she is staying, where she's been staying since the killings. And they described Callen's first birthday. I even thought about that, Wow, her baby hadn't even had his first birthday. So what she did on Callen's first birthday, Dawson's fourth birthday, Cora's seventh, the first anniversary of the murders.

00:06:41
Speaker 3: Then she went through the twenty twenty five.

00:06:44
Speaker 2: Birthdays, and she had all of the reports from the hospital. She was watching TV playing Domino's visiting family described as pleasant.

00:06:54
Speaker 3: So she had all of.

00:06:55
Speaker 2: These glowing, seemingly fun activities and moments on these what you would think would be dark, horrific. I'm in feudal position types of days for a mother who lost her children.

00:07:09
Speaker 1: Uh okay, I don't know how effective it is because that same woman you're telling me about that you're saying was watching looney Tunes from the hospital bed, is the same woman I saw this judge stop this trial several times for because she's over there wailing. I mean, which one play? Who is the real one? Who's faking? Who's what? I just didn't see And I guess I get it, and the prosecution is trying to get us the piece together some things. But is that overwhelmingly convinced me that, aha, this woman it was a plot because see she's able to watch Wheel of Fortune at the hospital.

00:07:47
Speaker 2: I get you, and what they see, what the jurors are seeing with their own eyes, I would think would have a greater impact then hearing a few reports that she wasn't basically beside herself or sobbing uncontrollably on anniversaries of her children's birthdays. So I don't know how much of that is going to actually matter, but it was effective. The only other thing that the prosecution tried to do against our doctor, doctor Zaizel is question the press conference that he gave and the fact that he said he deeply cared for her. They tried to make him seem like he was performative, where he was one sided.

00:08:29
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, just completely.

00:08:33
Speaker 2: Persuaded by her and his affection for her to be testifying to something that isn't actually true. But I don't think that worked at all. They did try to pursue that angle.

00:08:44
Speaker 1: It discredited him. It wasn't working, and he was just solid. They just wasn't there. And there were times it seemed like the prosecutor was thrown off because she thought she had him on something. He would say, Nope, that's not true.

00:08:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's maybe why she got a little gun shy in the follow ups, because he was so effective at handling them.

00:09:02
Speaker 1: You know what was also effect this is his experience on his part. When he was asked a question, he didn't elaborate, he didn't offer an explanation. She said, didn't you blah blah blah, Nope, that's not true, and just sat there so it left her fumbling, So you didn't nope, and then forced her to then go out of her way to find a question to follow up to get an explanation. That was effective as well. I don't know if he was coached by the defense attorney to do this, or he just had years of experience in doing this.

00:09:32
Speaker 3: Probably both.

00:09:34
Speaker 2: I mean that made yes, it was It threw her off and then she wasn't able to do what she had intended to do, which was to discredit him. So he was a There was, like you said at the top, only one witness who took the stand, but he was a powerful one. When we come back, we're going to tell you what happened after the doctor stepped down, because the jury went out.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: But oh, things were not over.

00:09:57
Speaker 2: That TikToker came in to the courtroom.

00:10:02
Speaker 3: And welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ.

00:10:12
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a short day in court because we got that abrupt, mysterious ending. But it was very interesting because after the doctor, the forensic psychiatrist stepped down, we had Emily Thorndike walk into the courtroom outside of the jury's presence. She's that woman who is or used to work at McLain Hospital. Is Emily Thorndike, all right, that is her name, and she is a licensed clinical social worker. She used to work at the hospital where Lindsay Clancy admitted herself shortly before the killings. And she was making TikTok videos because she was watching the trial, saying that's not the hospital that I know that I worked at, and talked about the staffing shortages, how it was not a great place to work, and how she probably didn't receive the care she deserved. And so, yeah, the defense wanted her to testify to the jury about her experience at that very hospital.

00:11:08
Speaker 1: Which was comical to think that someone sitting at home sending out social media posts and ends up being a prime player in this trial.

00:11:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, wouldn't her social media? Everything would blow up and probably already has. But this took out to me. When she took the stand, she talked about how she lives in New York City, but she summers on Cape Cod and then said I'm spoiled like that. When she said that, it was almost like a sure thing she was not going to be testifying a trial. I don't figure that landed well with the judge. Probably that was, as the kids say, cringey. But yes, she did say that she watched the trial. The last witness she saw was Patrick's friend, and then she said she was sequestered because Kevin Reddington, the defense attorney, contacted her and said she might be a potential potential witness. But yeah, after all the back and forth, obviously the prosecution objected they did not want her testifying. But she did say that the staffing on the hospital over the holidays, this is pretty significant. Only one doctor was there to see all the patients on weekends and holidays, and she said that doctor would only spend a few minutes with each patient. There was no in depth analysis or treatment going on. And for someone who was in Lindsay Clancy state to think that she was in a hospital that only had one doctor who barely saw.

00:12:33
Speaker 1: Her, Oh did they What was the normal staffing? I wouldn't know on a normal weekend or a normal week I don't know. Is it usually four? It could be ten, I don't know. But one doesn't seem like a lot, especially during the holidays. Don't people really have some serious like there's an uptick? Is there not?

00:12:47
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:12:48
Speaker 2: So that is strange and that would have been probably very interesting for the jury. But yes, the judge denied that she could be called to the stand, but he did say that, and his reasoning was because he felt like there was limited value to her testimony because she was not working there when McLean was at the hospital.

00:13:07
Speaker 1: Had the flyer ran and figured that out?

00:13:09
Speaker 3: She left, Well, she was on Cape cod she wasn't very far.

00:13:11
Speaker 2: Sorry no, but she she left the hospital a full year before Lindsay Clancy was admitted.

00:13:19
Speaker 3: So that makes sense that she wouldn't be allowed the.

00:13:21
Speaker 1: Exact thing we said. We were questioning, like, is he serious?

00:13:24
Speaker 3: Why is he even wasting the time?

00:13:26
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. He has to make sure she has every right to or the defense I mean has every right to put up a robust defense.

00:13:32
Speaker 2: Yes, so the judge is allowing the defense to submit records about what the staffing was like at the hospital when Lindsay was there. So that makes sense. So look, and then they were expecting the next witness to be called, only to have that mysterious announcement by the judge. And so when he said this is not something we saw coming, it actually sounded like an alien invasion. I don't even know what it might be, something very mundane and nothing we'll ever hear about again. But just the way he said it, it made it seem very ominous.

00:14:01
Speaker 1: It felt no offense. It's not offensive, but it felt Trump like in that sometimes Trump will let stuff out publicly saying, y'all don't even know what I know, right, and it scares the hell out of you. So the judge is very, very dramatic. It's not a big deal, don't worry about it, don't hold it against anybody. But man, it's this. We don't see this one coming. I'm like, what the hell is he talking about? Yeah, so I don't know.

00:14:26
Speaker 2: We may never get an explanation as to what that all was, but we will be watching again at nine am. We're expecting doctor Margaret Spinelli to take this stan. She's another forensic psychiatrist and she's a postpartum psychosis expert.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: We'll see if she actually really is one.

00:14:42
Speaker 1: Finally we'll get one. All right.

00:14:44
Speaker 2: We'll have all of that, of course for you tomorrow as we watch today. But in the meantime, I made me roboch alongside TJ.

00:14:51
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.