As the Lindsay Clancy murder trial moves closer to jury deliberations, the focus has increasingly turned to one critical question: What was happening inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind on January 24, 2023? In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m continuing my coverage of the Lindsay Clancy trial and examining the latest testimony, including emotional accounts from family members, digital forensic evidence, mental health records, and sharply conflicting opinions from forensic experts. The defense presented testimony supporting the argument that Lindsay was experiencing psychosis and lacked the capacity to fully understand the wrongfulness of her actions. The prosecution’s experts offered a very different interpretation, arguing that although Lindsay suffered from significant depression and anxiety, her actions demonstrated organization, awareness, and criminal responsibility. As a forensic nurse death investigator, I’m looking at this case the way I approach an investigation: evidence first, clinical patterns second, and the human cost always at the center.
The Lindsay Clancy trial continues, and with each new day of testimony, the questions surrounding this case seem to become even more complicated.
In this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, I’m continuing my coverage as the defense presents its case and the jury hears from family members, mental health professionals, and forensic experts offering very different perspectives on Lindsay’s state of mind.
As a forensic nurse death investigator, I’m especially interested in what happens when experts examine the same evidence and reach very different conclusions. What does the testimony tell us? What questions remain unanswered? And how will the jury ultimately determine where severe mental illness ends and criminal responsibility begins?
I’ll also take you inside some of the more unexpected moments in the courtroom and share my perspective on what stood out to me as the trial moves closer to its conclusion.
There is a lot to unpack in this week’s testimony, and some of it may change the way you look at this case.
Through it all, I’ll continue to keep Cora, Dawson, and Callan at the center of this story as we follow the evidence and wait to see what comes next.
Content Note: This episode discusses the deaths of children, suicide, self-harm, postpartum mental illness, and other subjects that may be difficult for some listeners.
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Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
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Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
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Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey, guys. I'm coming to you today from my med spa, so it's a little bit different.
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I think I was here last week, and I feel like I'm here all the time.
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So many of you know that I have a med spa in Denton, Texas, and I do a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and then I also work as an injector three days a week.
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So, I'm typically here on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and then I... See my new little fella right here. He's so cute. I need to name him.
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But going to be adding more when I finish my nurse practitioner degree. School starts back in about three weeks, and I have a quick little four-day trip to Mexico planned between now and then.
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So that ought to be fun. I need a trip where I don't have to do homework. Seem like every time I travel, I've got homework to do, and it's not very relaxing, as many of you who are in school know.
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Anyway, I wanna cover a little bit about what has happened in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial since August seventeenth.
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So, August seventeenth through August twenty-fourth, I'm speaking as a forensic nurse death investigator, and I followed every day of this case.
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I haven't been able to watch every minute of it, but I follow it the same way I review a scene or a medical chart: evidence first, clinical pattern second, and the human cost, especially the three children, always at the center.
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So, my voice is not here to root for a verdict.
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It's here to lay out what the record actually shows so that anyone listening can understand where this trial stands and why it matters just beyond one courtroom.
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Now, on August seventeenth, the prosecution rested, so that was after nearly seventy witnesses, and then the defense began.
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What followed was five intense days of family testimony, competing forensic experts, a rejected TikTok witness, early jury dismissals, a mid-trial motion for a mistrial, and the clearest statements about yet what was happening inside Lindsay Clancy's mind on January twenty-fourth of twenty-twenty-three.
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Lindsay has not taken the stand. Closing arguments are expected as early as tomorrow. Now, the jury has not yet begun to deliberate.
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Let's walk a little bit through it carefully day by day, and we're gonna go a little bit through, like, what each witness said and what happened.
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So, on August seventeenth, the prosecution rested, and the defense opened with family members.
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The Commonwealth's final witness was digital forensics specialist Ian Wiffin of Cellebrite, and he actually detailed data from Lindsay's iPhone and her Apple Watch.
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Searches in the days before the killings for symptoms of postpartum psychosis, psychosis symptoms, and ketamine for suicidal ideation.
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Apple Maps queries for the restaurant and CVS on the afternoon of January twenty-fourth went over heart rate readings ending at fifty-seven beats per minute at around five twenty-three PM and stair climbing data around five thirty-three PM.
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Now, the defense challenged the gaps in the data after those times and what could reliably be inferred from them. Now, with that, the prosecution rested.
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Now, the defense began immediately as you would assume that it would, and a former coworker got on the stand and described Lindsay as kind, compassionate, very dedicated as a nurse, and a very devoted mother, again, who constantly sought parenting advice from her coworkers.
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And then Lindsay's sister came on, Allison Ozga, and she is a licensed social worker.
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She testified that by December of twenty-twenty-two, Lindsay was reporting daily suicidal ideations, feeling numb and hopeless.
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And after leaving McLean Hospital in early January, Lindsay told her that she was starting to feel a little better, so she was a little more optimistic.
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Now, Lindsay's mother, Paula Musgrove, testified through tears that she loved her grandchildren with all of her heart, and she described texts from Lindsay in the fall of twenty-twenty-two.
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One of those texts said, "I'm really sick. Something's wrong. I'm afraid to be alone." And she recalled Lindsay saying that the medications were basically destroying her mind.
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In December, she expressed thoughts of harming the children. And now these were not clinical abstractions.
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These were a mother and a sister who had watched a capable nurse and a very loving parent unravel in real time.
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Now, August eighteenth was day fifteen, and the former mother-in-law and early medical witnesses actually testified.
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Susan Clancy is Patrick's mother, and she was a labor and delivery nurse actually herself for thirty-eight years, and she took the stand.
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She described Lindsay as very nurturing, very loving, a wonderful mother, and she said she loved all three of her children deeply.
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She also said that Lindsay reached out in November of 2022, and she was very sad at that time. She was unable to sleep.
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She was clearly struggling with what looked like postpartum depression, and she was basically begging for help, and she said that we were all very concerned, and she told the jury that.
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Now, on cross-examination, the prosecutor asked whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin in the Catholic Church.
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The question was immediately struck, and the judge later made clear that religion was not a proper area of inquiry, and I do not know why they went there.
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The defense also called additional medical witnesses that day who spoke to Lindsay's treatment history and the severity of her symptoms in the months before the killings.
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August nineteenth was day sixteen, and Dr. Paul Zeisel and the blocked TikTok witness testified on this day. Dr.
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Paul Zeisel is a clinical and forensic psychologist who met with Lindsay more than sixty times beginning in early February 2023, and he became the first major defense expert.
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Now, he described borrowing his phone so Lindsay could call Patrick from the hospital.
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When Patrick eventually answered, Lindsay told him that she loved him, that she had heard a male voice ordering her, that she had no choice. She had to kill the children and then herself.
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Now, Zeisel diagnosed bipolar disorder, and he testified that psychotic symptoms can come in waves.
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A person can actually appear functional while still experiencing hallucinations or thought disorder.
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And he told the jury that in his opinion, Lindsay had lost substantial capacity both to appreciate the wrongfulness of her acts and to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law.
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Now, he also noted that psychological testing administered by the government's very own experts showed no evidence that she was faking and no evidence that she was exaggerating her symptoms.
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So, in the middle of the day, the judge held a lengthy hearing outside the jury's presence, and this was on a proposed defense witness.
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Emily Thorndike, who is a TikTok creator and also a former McLean Hospital employee, had posted a video criticizing staffing and care at the facility.
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So, the judge ultimately barred her from testifying because she had left McLean in twenty twenty-one and had no personal knowledge of Lindsay's care at all in early twenty twenty-three because she was already gone.
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So, the jury was then sent home early for unforeseen circumstances, and that kind of freaked everybody out. The judge told them, though, not to speculate.
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And on August twentieth, which was day seventeen, a hospital chaplain, Sheila Cavanaugh, actually testified about conversations with Lindsay after the killings.
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So according to the chaplain, Lindsay spoke of her children being safe in heaven.
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And outside the courthouse that day, hundreds of supporters dressed in pink actually gathered, chanting and raising awareness for maternal mental health.
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The visual contrast, pink ribbons and believe signs outside, graphic clinical testimony inside, was impossible to ignore.
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Day eighteen was August twenty-first, and this was the day that the defense actually rested. So, it was a pivotal day. The defense called Dr.
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Philip Resnick, and he is one of the most experienced forensic psychiatrists in the country on parents who kill their children.
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He has evaluated roughly eighty cases very similar to this and consulted on matters including the Andrea Yates case.
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So, Resnick testified that Lindsay actually was frankly psychotic on January twenty-fourth.
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He said she experienced a command hallucination, which was a voice telling her that this was her last chance to kill the children so she could kill herself, and that she felt her body was taken over by some sort of external force, kind of like a puppet or as if she were in a dream state.
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So, he characterized the killings as altruistic filicide.
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In her distorted mind, she believed she was protecting her children by taking them with her to heaven rather than leaving them without a mother.
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And he also concluded that she lacked substantial capacity both to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct and to conform her behavior to the law.
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Now, after Resnick finished, that's when the defense rested. The prosecution immediately began its rebuttal, and Dr. Abram Mack, who is also a psychiatrist, offered the opposite conclusion.
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He diagnosed a significant depressive episode and anxiety disorder but said that he found no evidence of psychosis or mania, and he testified that Lindsay retained the capacity required for criminal responsibility.
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He pointed to the organized way that the children were actually taken one by one, the decision to send Patrick out of the house, and the fact that she did not tell Patrick on the phone that day that she needed help.
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Or was having harmful thoughts. Behaviors, he said, actually showed awareness that others would disapprove.
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Now, cross-examination by defense counsel was pointed challenging Mack's experience with postpartum psychosis and actually challenging his interpretation of the medication history.
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August twenty-fourth was day nineteen, and this was the day that prosecution actually continued its rebuttal with Dr. Kirk Heilbrun.
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He's a clinical and forensic psychologist who spent about a hundred and eighty hours reviewing records and more than ten hours actually evaluating Lindsay. Now, he diagnosed bipolar two disorder.
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During testimony, he began discussing Lindsay's Catholic upbringing and the concept of suicide as a mortal sin.
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Now, defense attorney Kevin Reddington immediately objected and moved for a mistrial, arguing intentional misconduct by the prosecution and again injecting Roman Catholic faith into the trial.
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Judge William Sullivan denied the mistrial motion but did reprimand the prosecution, and he instructed the jury in very strong terms to disregard that portion of the testimony.
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The day was ended early. Now, this was the second time that religion had surfaced. Earlier, the mortal sin question to Susan Clancy had already been struck.
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So, where the case stands right now, as of the afternoon of today, August twenty-fourth, the defense has rested after calling roughly ten witnesses over the last five days.
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The prosecution's rebuttal is ongoing. Closing arguments are expected as early as tomorrow, which will be Tuesday, and then the case will go to the jury.
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Now, Lindsay has not testified and will not testify. The three children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan remain the silent center of every day of this trial.
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Now, a forensic nurse death investigator's view of this phase is the physical facts have never been in serious dispute.
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So, we know the children died by ligature strangulation with the soft exercise bands.
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Lindsay sustained catastrophic spinal injuries consistent with a fall from a second-floor window after cutting her wrists and her neck.
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And what the last eight days have placed squarely before the jury is interpretation basically of her mental state.
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Two highly experienced forensic experts, Resnick and Mack, looked at largely the same body of clinical notes, the same digital searches, the same medication records, and the same interviews, and actually reached completely opposite conclusions.
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One sees frank psychosis, hallucination, and loss of capacity, and the other sees severe depression with retained ability to know right from wrong and to act with purpose.
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Now, a forensic nurse death investigator notes that command hallucinations and altruistic delusions are recognized features in some cases of postpartum psychosis.
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Also, rapid polypharmacy can worsen agitation and impair reality testing, and the absence of any contemporaneous clinical warning that the children should not be left alone with Lindsay is part of the evidentiary landscape.
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We also know that psychological testing administered by the government's very own experts showed no evidence of malingering.
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The ultimate question of capacity belongs to the twelve people who will actually deliberate.
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And so, our role is to keep the clinical patterns and the physical evidence clear so that human cost is never abstracted away, the human cost that never leaves the room.
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Every day Lindsay is wheeled into court, the physical price of that night is visible, and every time the children's names are spoken, the irreversible loss is present.
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Now, outside, supporters in pink have gathered to insist that maternal mental health must be treated as the emergency it can become. And inside, the evidence keeps returning to the same hard truth.
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A mother who sought help repeatedly still reached a point of catastrophic decompensation, and three children are gone.
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Now, I will continue to follow this case every remaining day of the trial with the same standard that I bring to any death investigation.
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The evidence comes first, and then the clinical patterns second, and the three small lives that ended too soon always at the center. So, thank you again for listening.
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I know that we are all patiently awaiting the outcome on this trial. Again, I love personally watching Court TV. I've been a fan forever.
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And I know that there are a lot of mixed emotions about this. I see a lot of Facebook posts, and a lot of people can't believe that Lindsay Clancy is being defended in any way by anyone.
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And then there are other people who recognize postpartum psychosis and postpartum depression and defend her. So, there's just completely different opinions on this case.
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Again, the question is not whether or not she committed these crimes, the question is whether or not she understood what she was doing at the time.
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I wanna mention again the murder mystery dinner, and we're so overly excited about this, and I would love for y'all to go to my website and to my Facebook page, Pushing Up Lilies, and look at the different options to sponsor.
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Again, we are working in collaboration with several different companies to help with domestic violence recognition and prevention and overdose prevention, and we are pairing with the Rowland family and participating in North Texas Overdose Awareness Day.
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Now, this happens August 31st at 6:30 PM on the lawn of the Denton County Courthouse on the square, and it's presented by ROO, Reacting to Opioid Overdose. We do have a space there.
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We will be giving away free Narcan. We will be providing overdose awareness stickers, as well as Pushing Up Lilies merchandise.
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Now, in twenty eighteen, the Rowland family created North Texas Overdose Awareness Day in memory of Randy Rowland, and they've hosted this event each year with the help of friends, organizations, and businesses, and the city and county of Denton.
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This has been a meaningful community event with ever-increasing awareness and attendance, and the Rowlands are thankful to everyone for their support, and Pushing Up Lilies is proud to be there and proud to be a sponsor of this event.
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Now, I will also tell you that the company that is going to be providing our murder mystery dinner that we've been talking about and that we all absolutely cannot wait for is Keith and Margo's Murder Mystery Texas.
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And I wanna tell you about them. If you've been listening to the podcast, I know you already love murder mysteries. This one you can actually be a part of.
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Murder Mystery Texas does live interactive murder mystery dinner shows all over DFW. And you're not just watching the actors actually solve the crimes, you're working the case.
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You find clues, you question suspects, and you build your case to see if you can figure out whodunit. And there are two ways to do it.
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You can actually come to them for one of their public dinner shows, or they will come to you. They do private birthday parties, company celebrations, award banquets, and conventions.
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Everything from about fifteen people in somebody's living room to hundreds of guests at a big event. And they adapt the mystery to your group, your location, and your occasion.
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So, if you wanna see upcoming dates, locations, prices, or make reservations for your own party, or if you want a quote for a private murder mystery, go to murdermysterytexas.com.
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That's murdermysterytexas.com. And I know that you are gonna love the presentation that they put on for us on October tenth. Tickets are selling fast, y'all.
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I know it's hard to believe, but tickets are going quickly. So, we definitely want you to be a part of this. There are a limited number of tickets. This venue only seats eighty-eight.
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Again, it's gonna be held at Studio One Forty-One in Krum, Texas, and it's going to be catered by Our Blended Table. Delicious food. Absolutely delicious. Y'all are gonna love it.
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You're gonna love the venue. It's very quaint. It's small. Absolutely perfect for this event. And we are very excited that Murder Mystery Texas, Studio One Forty-One, Our Blended Table...
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And let's not forget Jan Bynum. She's gonna be our wonderful speaker.
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And again, you'll have the opportunity to ask her questions about her daughter, Kelli Ann Cox, who was abducted and murdered by a serial killer back in nineteen ninety-seven.
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So, it's a heartbreaking story, but it's one that hits close to home. She was a UNT student. She went to UNT here in Denton.
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There's a beautiful statue of her holding her daughter in front of the university. I love that they did that. I don't think it was easy for Jan to make that happen, but I love that they did that.
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And I'm super excited to hear her testimony and to hear her talk about her sweet daughter, Kelli Ann, and what happened to her, and to open the floor up for questions about that horrible event that happened.
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And I'm sure that y'all are excited and can't wait to talk to her. I love that she has agreed to come.
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So come meet Jan, come meet me, come enjoy the murder mystery, come enjoy the food, and enjoy being around and conversing with others who love true crime as much as you do.
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We would love to see the people in the Krum community and also people from outside in the Dallas area.
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We're gonna continue to follow the Lindsay Clancy case There is a lot of domestic violence and a lot of murder-suicides going on right now.
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I'm sure that y'all have noticed just in the news, it's crazy. Still trying to connect with other people to be interviewed.
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So, if you know anyone that was a part of any of these DV stories or anything going on in the news now, connect them with me.
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There is a place to go to on my website, the very top, you can actually click if you want me to come be a speaker, if you would like to be a guest host on the podcast, or if you know anybody that you think has a story to tell, or if you have a story to tell, I'd love to hear from you.
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Again, that option is on my website, www.pushinguplillies.com. And something else, be sure and keep a lookout for upcoming new merch. I have ordered some new things.
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Again, October 24th, we will be at Denton's Day of the Dead Festival, and we will be a vendor there.
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So, we will have Pushing Up Lilies merchandise, and I'll also have some great Day of the Dead stickers that I had printed up just specifically for that event. But there'll only be a limited number.
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There'll be 200. So be sure and stop by our booth and get one of those. They're super cute. They have the sugar skull on them and the date and then Pushing Up Lilies.
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So anyway, thank y'all so much for listening. There's a lot of events coming up. If you have a story to tell, again, I would love to talk to you.
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If you or a family member has been involved in anything that you wanna talk about, just vent. My audience would also love to meet you and speak with you.
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So, law enforcement, if you have any stories that you want to discuss, be sure and reach out, and I'll be glad to speak with you, and we can talk about your cases, upcoming cases, or whatnot.
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I would love to start having some Zoom forums to have people, like, join in where we can kind of bounce things off of each other. And don't forget the subscription box. It's still available.
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I've sold several recently for birthday presents. It's a really cool birthday present. So anyway, I look forward to talking to y'all next week.
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We will keep you up to date on the Lindsay Clancy case. Y'all take care of each other and be safe. See y'all soon. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
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Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.