Where the Accounts Disagree
Recorded conflicts between outlets and between witnesses, set out with both positions and their sources, and left unresolved. 75 conflicts recorded.
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The contested question is minute-by-minute conduct. A three-hour gap on the MiraLAX search is not a rounding difference, and both accounts came from Commonwealth witnesses four days apart.
MiraLAX search at 14:02; ThreeV takeaway search at 16:13; the 14-second call at 17:34.
Children's MiraLAX search at 16:46; 3V menu search at 16:43; unanswered call from Patrick at 17:33 and a 14-second call from the defendant at 17:35.
Whiffin, testifying August 17, 2026, gave the last unlock at about 17:13 with a children's laxative search and a text to Patrick; stairs climbed between 17:33 and 17:38; Patrick's unanswered calls at 17:33 and 18:09. These match the case reference.
Boston 25's contemporaneous account of the same testimony gives Whiffin's January 24 searches as Kids Miralax at 4:02 p.m., takeout 3V at 4:13 p.m. and CVS at 4:47 p.m. The 3V and CVS times match the case reference (16:13, 16:47); the MiraLAX time does not (14:02), and 4:02 p.m. sits close to Chiappini's 4:46 p.m.
East Idaho News's transcription of Chiappini's own timeline report for 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on January 24: Apple Maps search for 3V at 4:13 p.m.; children's MiraLAX at 4:46; CVS website at 4:47; call to a CVS store at 4:48; call to Patrick at 4:53; 3V menu and Pedialyte at 5:06 with more than one tab open; calls of 11 seconds at 5:09 and 47 seconds at 5:10; Pedialax at 5:13; a message to Patrick about Pedialax at 5:15; a call from Patrick at 5:33; a 14-second call from her at 5:34. The 4:13 and 5:13 figures match the case reference's 16:13 Apple Maps entry and 17:13 PDLX entry; the 4:46 MiraLAX figure still does not match the reference's 14:02.
The Boston Globe, reporting the same testimony live, gives 4:13 p.m. for the Apple Maps search for ThreeV, texts shortly after 4:50 p.m. about takeout and the menu, and the laxative and menu searches shortly after 5 p.m. with more than one tab open, and a text about the laxative at 5:15 p.m. It gives no 4:43 p.m. menu search.
JULY 29, 2026 BACKFILL, AUGUST 21, 2026. Two business witnesses called on July 29, 2026 timestamp the same afternoon from their own records rather than from a phone extraction. Saria Sweeney of the ThreeV restaurant put the defendant's takeout call at 5:10 p.m. and the pickup at 5:54 p.m. (Boston 25, CBS Boston, Oxygen). Oxygen's compilation of the timeline puts Angela Krause's CVS call at 4:48 p.m. Both figures sit with Chiappini's account as East Idaho News transcribed it — a 4:48 p.m. call to a CVS store and a 47-second call at 5:10 p.m. Patrick Clancy's own evidence the same day put him entering the Kingston CVS at about 5:32 p.m. and calling the defendant at about 5:33 to 5:35, matching the 5:33 and 5:34 calls in that account. NONE OF THIS BEARS ON THE MIRALAX TIME, which is the part still open.
PARTLY RESOLVED. Whiffin's testimony corroborates the reference timeline, which makes Chiappini's reported times the outlier. One likely explanation is two separate laxative searches, MiraLAX earlier in the afternoon and PDLX at about 17:13, which reporting conflated into one. The remaining gap may therefore be a reporting artefact rather than a disagreement between examiners.
REOPENED AUGUST 21, 2026 BY THE AUGUST 17 BACKFILL. The two-searches explanation assumed Whiffin put MiraLAX at 14:02 and a separate PDLX search at about 17:13. Boston 25, reporting Whiffin live, puts the MiraLAX search at 4:02 p.m. If that is what he said, the three-hour gap is between two reports of a single witness rather than between two examiners, and the partial resolution does not hold. No outlet other than Boston 25 gives a time for the MiraLAX search on August 17, and the case reference figure has not been changed.
AUGUST 13 BACKFILL, AUGUST 21, 2026. Reading the August 13 coverage in full narrows this. Both East Idaho News and the Boston Globe, reporting Chiappini live, put the Apple Maps search for the restaurant at 4:13 p.m., matching the reference's 16:13, and East Idaho News records a separate Pedialax search at 5:13 p.m. matching the reference's 17:13 PDLX entry. That supports the two-laxative-searches reading and makes Boston 25's 4:43 p.m. menu search the outlier for that item. What remains genuinely open is the MiraLAX time: 4:46 p.m. on both Chiappini accounts against 14:02 in the reference, and 4:02 p.m. in Boston 25's account of Whiffin. The day 13 entry now records both accounts and treats neither as settled.
It affects the sequence of events at two hospitals and which physician's account attaches to which child.
Cora was pronounced deceased at 19:28 at Beth Israel Deaconess Plymouth.
Dawson was declared dead at 7:28pm after more than forty minutes of combined paramedic and hospital resuscitation.
AUGUST 3 BACKFILL, AUGUST 21, 2026. Boston 25's live blog of Dr. Snyder's testimony records that after about half an hour of treatment Cora Clancy was declared dead at 7:28 p.m. on January 24, 2023 - the same time Dr. Tenerowicz gave for Dawson at the same hospital. That is the account this note previously relied on boston.com to rule out.
boston.com, covering the same testimony, has roughly thirty minutes of CPR and Cora's death declared around 7:30 p.m. East Idaho News's account of Snyder's testimony carries no time of death at all.
REOPENED BY THE AUGUST 3 BACKFILL OF AUGUST 21, 2026. The earlier resolution rested on a single outlet's around 7:30 p.m. for Cora against Tenerowicz's 7:28 p.m. for Dawson. Boston 25, covering the same testimony contemporaneously, puts Cora's declaration at 7:28 p.m. exactly. Two children were pronounced at Beth Israel Deaconess Plymouth within minutes of each other and both physicians testified, so the accounts are not necessarily inconsistent - but no source read establishes which child the 7:28 p.m. in the case reference belongs to, and the two outlets covering Snyder do not agree. Recorded unresolved. The resolution note in data/case-reference.json and the key point on the July 31, 2026 day entry were written on the earlier reading and have not been rewritten; that is out of scope for the day being backfilled.
The defense's criminal-responsibility opinion is built on bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis. The treating psychiatrist did not make that diagnosis.
Mental disease or defect identified as bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis; unable to appreciate wrongfulness or conform conduct to the law.
Did not diagnose bipolar disorder, and never observed signs of psychosis across fourteen telemedicine appointments ending the day before.
A second defense expert gave the same picture: Clancy was psychotic on the day of the killings, the condition described as postpartum psychosis, and he gave the opinion that she was not criminally responsible. The outlets do not render the underlying diagnosis identically — the Boston Globe reports bipolar disorder with major depression, CBS Boston severe depression, mild mania and bipolar disorder in the period leading up to the killings, and East Idaho News bipolar 2 with severe depression. Reported by the Boston Globe, Boston 25, CBS Boston and East Idaho News.
The Commonwealth's rebuttal psychiatrist gave the jury the opposite diagnosis. He testified to a major depressive episode running from late 2022 into January 2023, and told the jury he found no evidence Clancy was bipolar at the time of the deaths, no mania or hypomania, and no reason to diagnose bipolar disorder in the absence of manic episodes. He also said she did not present psychotic symptoms, treating her fears that medication had damaged her and that she would lose her children as worries matching things she had actually experienced rather than as fixed false beliefs meeting the definition of a delusion, and said the onset of her symptoms fell well outside the postpartum period as the DSM describes it — the Boston Globe giving that limit as largely four weeks after birth. Separately he told the jury there is no reason psychosis in itself stops a person knowing right from wrong. The no-bipolar finding is carried by five outlets: the Boston Globe, Boston 25, East Idaho News, CBS Boston and Fox News Digital.
On cross-examination the defense went at the no-mania finding with its own long-standing example. The Boston Globe at 14:59 reports Kevin Reddington asking Mack whether Clancy running a road race some weeks after giving birth would indicate manic behavior, and Mack answering that it would not; asked about other forms of exercise and about decluttering, Mack answered that such things would not in and of themselves indicate mania. The road race is the example Reddington put to the perinatal nurse practitioner on August 11, 2026 as possible manic behavior, and a defense expert put the 5K entered around the youngest child's delivery to the jury as bearing on an undiagnosed manic onset. Reported by the Boston Globe alone.
A Commonwealth objection was sustained-or-overruled on a defense question about a bipolar diagnosis during Jollotta's cross on August 11, 2026; the ruling is not clear from reporting. As of the afternoon of August 21, 2026 the jury has heard two defense experts diagnose bipolar disorder with postpartum psychosis, the treating psychiatrist say she made no such diagnosis, and the Commonwealth's rebuttal expert diagnose a major depressive episode with no mania and no psychosis. This is a dispute between witnesses, not between outlets, and it is for the jury. The no-mania finding is the load-bearing part of the rebuttal case, because without manic episodes there is no bipolar diagnosis, and the defense's cross-examination of Mack on the afternoon of August 21 attacked it directly.
A command hallucination would go directly to the McHoul standard. Its absence from every contemporaneous clinical record is the Commonwealth's answer to it.
The defendant reported hearing a male voice ordering her to kill the children, relayed by a psychologist (08-18) and by a hospital chaplain who had seen her more than fourteen times (08-20).
The chaplain's own detailed notes contain no record of voice-hearing; Dr. Zeizel conceded nothing in the medical records documents voices telling her to kill, only that she wanted to die.
The chaplain's account, given in full on 08-20, does not itself state the content of the command. Every outlet carries her saying Clancy alluded to having heard a persistent male voice which told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe. None quotes her saying what the command was. NBC10 Boston, ABC News, East Idaho News and Boston 25's filed story each summarize her as having said the voice told Clancy to kill the children and then herself, matching earlier defense witnesses, but that is the outlets' gloss rather than the sentence they quote. She also testified that Clancy raised the voice several times across their visits.
The cross-examination on 08-20 went entirely to the absence of the voice from the chaplain's own notes, and to how specific those notes were about everything else. ADA Jennifer Sprague established that Cavanaugh documented each interaction in the Brigham and Women's record in detail and never once wrote that Clancy reported a voice or what it said, and Cavanaugh agreed. Sprague then read entries about Clancy's fear of never walking again and of being vulnerable to others, an entry in which Clancy said she was deserving of what had happened, a request for help applying for Social Security disability benefits, entries describing her as hopeful about a Spaulding discharge and optimistic about her physical progress, and an entry about playing cards with her mother. Cavanaugh answered that her notes are not verbatim transcripts, that she is not medically trained, that she was there to bear witness to suffering rather than to evaluate a patient, and that there are limits on what she records from privileged spiritual communication. On redirect she agreed that a word such as hopeful was her own assessment rather than a quotation; LA Magazine alone reports a recross in which Sprague noted that some entries do carry quotation marks and asked whether those were Clancy's actual words. Her answer is not reported.
The defense's psychiatric expert placed a command hallucination on the day itself, telling the jury she was not psychotic every moment and had functioned normally earlier that day until it began, and describing an accompanying delusion of influence in which her body felt taken over by an external force. At about 11:31 he put the command directly to the jury: Boston 25 reports him saying she heard a voice commanding her to engage in the killing behavior and felt she had to obey the instructions, and CBS Boston quotes him saying she not only heard a command but felt her body taken over by an external force, in a dream state and without control of her own body. He rested his criminal responsibility opinion on it, and the Boston Globe reports him accounting for the gap in the records by saying Clancy was not fully revealing about her impulses to harm her children because she feared losing them. Reported across the morning by the Boston Globe, Boston 25, CBS Boston and East Idaho News. Still an account given to an examiner four months afterward rather than anything in a contemporaneous record.
On cross-examination the Commonwealth turned the expert's own writing against the thread: CBS Boston reports ADA Jennifer Sprague putting to Resnick an article he wrote called "Faking It", in which he said command hallucinations are easy to fabricate and that people often ignore the commands when they are dangerous. No outlet reports how he answered that line. She also pressed him on why Clancy had not resisted the voice — the Boston Globe reports him answering that patients vary, some acting on such commands and some not — and put to him that Clancy heard the voice and acted on it at once, which CBS Boston reports he rejected: he said Clancy had impulses to harm her children and did resist them until the command hallucination overwhelmed her. Sprague further contrasted Clancy with Andrea Yates, who had committed herself to hospitals five times and attempted suicide twice before killing her children (CBS Boston), and disputed that the records showed Clancy crying daily, pointing to hopes Clancy had expressed of becoming a postpartum advocate and of taking part in a wheelchair marathon (CBS Boston), a line East Idaho News independently reports at about 11:45 as inconsistencies between his testimony and the hospital documentation of her emotional state and her crying. The cross ended at about 11:51 and the defense rested; no redirect examination is reported.
The Commonwealth's investigative theory that the account was coached surfaced on August 12, 2026, six days before Dr. Zeizel testified, and was disowned by the Commonwealth's own witness. Reddington asked Sgt. Daniel Lawlor whether the district attorneys contended that Zeizel told the defendant to call Patrick Clancy and say she heard voices; the Commonwealth objected, the jury was sent out for a voir dire, and when it returned Lawlor told the jury that Trooper Joshua McKelligan had described the theory to him, that it was speculation, and that there was no investigative basis for it. On voir dire, out of the jury's presence, Boston 25 and East Idaho News report evidence that the defendant used the psychologist's cell phone at the hospital to call her husband and told him she heard voices, and that he reported the call to the State Police and to the grand jury.
The Commonwealth's rebuttal psychiatrist did not dispute that Clancy reported a commanding voice — he relayed her description of it to the jury himself. Boston 25 at 14:47 reports her describing it to him as male and laughing, telling her she should kill the children and that it was her last chance so she could kill herself; CBS Boston reports the same content and calls it a loud male voice, without the laughter. Boston 25 at 14:50 adds that she told him she heard it as soon as Patrick Clancy left the house, that she denied locking the bedroom door, and that after taking pills and cutting herself she said she fell through the bedroom window. His evidence went to what the report signified rather than to whether she made it: he told the jury she did not present psychotic symptoms, that there is no reason psychosis in itself stops a person knowing right from wrong, and that the killings were methodical, organized and directed at a goal, pointing to the pediatrician visit, playing with the children, ordinary conversation and her keeping to the rules of the road as evidence of organized functioning. At about 14:44 he gave the opinion that she retained the capacity for criminal responsibility for her actions (Boston 25 and CBS Boston).
The defense's cross-examination attacked the source of the rebuttal expert's facts rather than the voice itself. East Idaho News at 14:52 and CBS Boston both report Mack accepting that his narrative of the day the children died came from Clancy herself, and Reddington pressing whether he took her account as the truth given that he interviewed her in a psychiatric hospital while she was medicated, suicidal and under a round-the-clock watch. Both outlets also report him drawing out that the district attorney's office pays Mack. Separately, East Idaho News at 14:35 reports Mack listing inconsistencies in what she told him — her denial that she locked the bedroom door, uncertainty about the cutting of the window screen, and accounts of feeding the children that did not agree. The cross-examination was still running at the latest entries checked and no outlet reports Mack being asked about the voice on cross.
Both reports post-date January 2023. Neither is contemporaneous with the events.
The defense theory is that prescribing made her worse. The quantified levels do not straightforwardly support a picture of saturation.
Medication burden was severe enough that a Rhode Island partial hospitalization program declined her over it, and she believed the drugs were destroying her mind.
Only quetiapine was elevated, at roughly double expected and neither toxic nor lethal; diazepam and lorazepam were LOWER than expected; the quantities were not consistent with an overdose attempt.
The therapist who made the referral testified she did not know why Women and Infants declined the defendant and that it would surprise her to hear the reason was over-medication. The Boston Globe reports the program citing concerns about her prescription regimen.
Arguing against an intoxication instruction at the charge conference, the Commonwealth characterized the regimen at the time of the killings as 10 milligrams of amitriptyline recently increased to 20, with no real evidence the defendant took the increase, plus a low dose of trazodone and a low dose of Valium, and said the medications the defense relies on were prescribed before the McLean admission and had been out of her system for at least three weeks by January 24, 2023. The defense's answer was that over-prescription, side effects, titration and abrupt cessation against normal medical advice are together the involuntary intoxication. This is argument of counsel, not evidence.
These break searching and joining if silently normalized. Kept explicit.
Det. Maffeo appears as 'Marcanthony' in reporting and 'Mark Anthony' in the case reference.
'NP Rebecca Gelada' in the treatment chronology is almost certainly Rebecca Jollotta, the South Shore perinatal nurse who testified 08-11 and 08-12.
Dr. Springer appears as both 'Kimberley' and 'Kimberly'.
'Kyle Carney' was briefly and wrongly conflated with Sgt. Kyle Pavao. They are different people: Carney is a college friend of Patrick Clancy.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsies on Cora and Dawson appears as Barbara Olson (Boston Globe, boston.com), Barbara Olsen (CBS Boston) and Barbara Vidal Olsen (Boston 25's filed story). The counselor is Latiesha Dukes on August 12 and Latisha or Lateisha Dukes in August 11 coverage. Nicole Bradley of the Plymouth County Sheriff's Office is Nichole to the Boston Globe.
On August 13 the country singer is Tom T. Hall to the Boston Globe and Tom Hall to every other outlet. The restaurant appears as ThreeV, Three V and 3V. The examined device is a Surface Pro laptop (CBS Boston, WPRI, East Idaho News), a laptop (Boston Globe, NBC Boston), a computer (Boston 25) and a shared tablet (boston.com). The defendant's parents are Paula and Mike Musgrove to the Boston Globe and boston.com and Paul and Mike Musgrove to CT Insider. The medical examiner is Barbara Olson to boston.com and Barbara Vidal Olson to East Idaho News. The second forensic examiner's rank is sergeant (East Idaho News, NBC Boston, WPRI), detective (CBS Boston) and trooper (Boston Globe, CT Insider); Pavao is a sergeant to Boston 25 and CBS Boston and a trooper in Boston Globe and AP photo captions. The trooper who performed the second extraction is rendered 'Trooper Rabbit' by East Idaho News and appears as Lt. Joseph Rabbitt in the case reference.
On July 29 the ThreeV hostess is Saria Sweeney (Boston 25, Oxygen), Saria Shelgren (Boston Globe), Sweeney Schelgren (CBS Boston) and Saria Sweeney Shelgren (boston.com); this file uses Saria Sweeney. The product the defendant telephoned the Kingston CVS about is a stool softener (Boston Globe), medicine for the children (CBS Boston), Miralax or Pedia-Lax (CBS Boston, Oxygen) and 'Pedialight' as Boston 25's reporter rendered it. The restaurant is ThreeV, 3-V and 3V within the same day's coverage.
The McLean psychiatrist is Alia Goodheart to boston.com, the Boston Globe, Boston 25, CBS Boston and WBUR, Ali Goodheart to East Idaho News, and Aliyah Goodhart in the treatment chronology in the case reference. The fitness club in Kingston is the Kingsbury Club to boston.com, the Boston Globe and CBS Boston and Kingsberry to East Idaho News.
On August 4 the South Shore Hospital surgeon is Cristina Carpio (Boston Globe, boston.com, Boston 25), Christina Carpio (WJAR) and Cristina Karpio (CBS Boston), and is a general surgeon to CBS Boston and boston.com and a trauma surgeon to East Idaho News. Lt. Joseph Rabbitt is Lt. Joseph Rabbit to CBS Boston. The toxicologist is Hilary Griffiths to boston.com and Boston 25 and Hillary Griffiths to MassLive. Clonazepam is rendered Klonazepam in MassLive's list of the pill bottles.
The defense case is that the family saw a woman in crisis and sought help. The Commonwealth drew out that the person best placed to escalate did not.
The defendant's sister, a licensed social worker, testified the defendant reported suicidal ideation every day for a month by late December 2022, and that she had a gut feeling something was wrong.
On cross she acknowledged she filed no report, despite being a mandated reporter. The defendant's mother testified she was not concerned for the children's safety because she was present.
The defense used it to question the thoroughness of the investigation into her medication use.
Capt. Santos testified he did not search the nightstand drawer, suggesting another searcher had probably already covered that area.
Reddington produced the drawer's contents in court, empty prescription bottles, an Apple Watch and sleep aids. Santos could not say why they were not seized.
Trooper Joshua McKelligan, the case officer, testified on the Commonwealth's direct examination that Patrick Clancy told investigators he had found further medication in a nightstand drawer while walking through the house with Reddington and had given it to Reddington rather than to the police. Sprague asked whether he had said why; McKelligan said he had not, and agreed that neither the pills nor the bottles were ever turned in to the State Police.
On cross-examination Reddington put to McKelligan that the first thing he did after taking the medication was to contact the Plymouth County District Attorney's office and tell them they could come and collect it. East Idaho News records McKelligan answering that he did not know what Reddington had said; boston.com and the Boston Globe report him saying he was not aware of the contact. Neither account has been tested against the other.
Lt. Joseph Rabbitt, who executed the search warrant, agreed on cross-examination that the warrant authorized investigators to seize prescription medication in the home, and said he did not know why none of the officers involved had seized additional bottles prescribed to Lindsay Clancy that were in a drawer of the nightstand beside her bed. boston.com describes Reddington hammering again at the drawer, which he says held additional empty pill bottles; East Idaho News records the defense point that the nightstand was not searched although the warrant was executed in the early morning, and the point being put again through Trooper O'Loughlin.
Only that the record should not attribute a contested cross-examination to the wrong advocate. The Commonwealth divides witnesses between two prosecutors and the division is otherwise consistent across the trial.
Jennifer Sprague cross-examined Dr. Elizabeth Laposata on August 18, 2026, and is named in the exchange about the absence of any injury to the top of the defendant's head.
Shanan Buckingham cross-examined Laposata, and put to her the violations found at the Rhode Island medical examiner's office.
Boston 25's account of the cross does not name the prosecutor. Buckingham is separately named by several outlets as cross-examining Susan Clancy and Dr. Donald Condie on the same day, so both prosecutors were working.
The slides are the defense's visual account of how the fall from the window produced the spinal fracture, which goes to whether the fall was a genuine suicide attempt. Whether half of that exhibit reached the jury is not a detail.
Judge Sullivan disallowed defense slides 1 to 3 and permitted slides 4 to 6.
Judge Sullivan permitted slides 4 to 6 and raised concerns about slides 1 to 3 but ultimately allowed all of them, with a recess taken to modify them.
The argument is reported — Buckingham saying the window well is drawn in the wrong place and that slide four puts the defendant landing where the window well actually is, Reddington saying the measurements are accurate — but no ruling is stated.
The argument took place with the jury out. Two of the three live blogs describe an outcome and they do not agree; the third describes none. No exhibit numbers were reported for the slides.
The Commonwealth used prior testimony of hers from a 2011 Rhode Island case to attack her consistency. How long she said unconsciousness and death take under ligature as against manual strangulation is the substance of that attack and bears on how long the killings took.
Manual strangulation: unconsciousness in 10 to 20 seconds, with a further 2 to 3 minutes of pressure before death — the figures from her 2011 testimony. Ligature strangulation: unconsciousness within 4 to 10 seconds, death within 5 to 10 minutes.
In ligature strangulation unconsciousness comes in 5 to 20 seconds, with death after continuous pressure of up to five minutes.
The Boston Globe reports the confrontation with the 2011 case and her answer that the two cases involved distinct forms of strangulation, but gives no intervals. Neither set of figures should be quoted as hers on the strength of a single outlet.
The killings were on January 24, 2023 and the whole device timeline is built on that afternoon. A voice heard the previous day would be a materially different fact, and the account is already contested because no contemporaneous clinical record contains it.
Dr. Paul Zeizel testified that on the February 6, 2023 speakerphone call the defendant told Patrick Clancy she had heard a voice on January 23 telling her she had no choice but to kill her children and then kill herself. The same account has her saying she had not been in contact with him since January 23.
Zeizel testified she told Patrick Clancy she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her she did not have any choice but that she had to kill her children and then kill herself. No date is attached to the voice.
Three outlets give the account without a date and one gives January 23. The January 23 date is not carried into the January 24 timeline in the case reference on the strength of this. It may be East Idaho News's error, or it may be what the witness said; nothing read settles it.
The Commonwealth's cross-examination of Zeizel on August 19 went to his objectivity and to whether he was both treating the defendant and working for the defense. The extent of his contact with her is part of that.
Zeizel testified he had met the defendant more than 45 times, including after her transfer to Tewksbury State Hospital.
Approximately 60 times over the last three years, including during the trial.
More than 35 hours with the defendant over dozens of visits.
Over 35 hours and over 50 visits.
Cross-examination proceeded on the footing that he had spent 35 hours evaluating her, a figure the prosecutor used twice without contradiction.
The same witness on consecutive days. The hours figure is stable at more than 35 across every outlet; only the visit count moves, from more than 45 on the first day to roughly 50 or 60 on the second. The figures may both be his — a floor given on Tuesday and a fuller count on Wednesday — or the higher numbers may be a reporting convergence. The August 19 entry records the spread rather than picking one.
The opinion that the defendant could not appreciate the wrongfulness of her act and could not conform her conduct to the law is the defense's central affirmative evidence on the only live issue in the case. Whether it came from the defense's own questioning or was drawn out by the Commonwealth changes how the day reads.
Reddington was still on direct examination through Wednesday morning; direct ended at about 10:17 to 10:20 with the criminal-responsibility opinion, and cross-examination began after it.
The forensic psychologist completed his cross-examination to start the day.
Five outlets against one, and the five include three timestamped live blogs whose entries show Reddington asking the questions up to the opinion. The August 19 entry follows the five and records CBS Boston's framing as a conflict rather than adopting it. CBS Boston's own detail elsewhere in the same story is consistent with the majority account.
Emily Thorndike's proposed evidence went to whether the defendant's four- or five-day admission to McLean over the New Year holiday gave her real clinical contact. How long staff were permitted to spend with a patient is the concrete number in that account. Her evidence was excluded, so the jury heard neither figure, but the underlying staffing records were admitted.
She said McLean's guidelines discouraged providers from meeting with mental health patients for longer than 20 minutes, because there are other things to do.
On cross-examination the prosecutor asked whether there was a rule that caretakers could spend only 5 minutes with a patient, and she said yes, her supervisors had told her that.
The two figures may describe different things — a ceiling on a therapy session as against a floor on a routine check — or one outlet may have the number wrong. No other outlet read gives a figure. Neither is adopted.
The objection stopped the question, drew a sidebar and then a recess. On the Boston Globe's account the unfinished question named the Commonwealth's three retained experts in open court and asked why the district attorney's office had taken so long to engage them; on East Idaho News's account it was an unrelated hypothetical. Those are different events.
Reddington appeared to begin asking why it took the district attorney's office so long to retain three doctors of its own, presumably Kirk Heilbrun, Avram Mack and Gregory Saathoff. The prosecution objected before he could continue.
Reddington attempted a hypothetical question about a young woman who kills her children, is in a wheelchair and is indicted. The prosecutor objected and a sidebar was called.
Both accounts place an objection, a sidebar and then a recess in the same stretch of redirect, so they may be describing two separate blocked questions rather than one. No outlet reports how either objection was ruled on. The Globe's naming of the three Commonwealth experts here is not the only place they appear together: the same paper's pre-trial witness preview of July 27 lists Heilbrun, Mack and Saathoff among the prosecution's mental health experts, along with a fourth, Dr. Margarita Abi Zeid Daou of the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. That corroborates whom the Commonwealth retained. It does not settle which question was blocked here, and it does not identify the rebuttal witnesses, since four named experts cannot fill the three rebuttal seats the reporting describes.
The sentence — being very emotional and upset because the praise heaped on McLean was misleading — is the stated reason for Zeizel's appearance at a January 2023 news conference, which was the Commonwealth's best material on his objectivity. If it belongs to the excluded witness instead, his explanation for the news conference is unsourced.
East Idaho News prints the sentence at 11:40 as Zeizel's answer on redirect about the news conference, and again at 12:55 as Emily Thorndike's explanation for posting her TikTok video.
Thorndike's explanation for the video was that what was discussed in court was not aligned with her own experience. Neither outlet reports her saying anything about praise heaped on McLean, and neither reports the sentence from Zeizel.
Most likely a duplication in the live blog rather than two witnesses saying the same thing an hour apart. The August 19 entry carries the sentence for Zeizel with an explicit caution and does not carry it for Thorndike.
The Apple Watch heart rate series is the only physiological record of the defendant's afternoon. The final reading of 57 bpm at 5:23 p.m. is agreed and is what both sides argue from. The day's peak is the shape of everything before it, and a peak of 152 describes a different afternoon from a peak of 123.
The average for the day was in the 80s and 90s and the high was 152.
The readings ranged over seconds; the highest was 123 bpm and the last was at 5:23 p.m. at 57 bpm.
The average was in the high 80s and low 90s; no peak given.
The two figures were published a minute apart by reporters in the same courtroom. East Idaho News also reports a top heart rate of 108 bpm during a morning stair climb, so 123 may be a reading from a narrower window than the whole day. Neither is adopted, and the case reference records no peak.
The Commonwealth's case on the last fortnight is that the defendant was improving. A family member who told investigators the day after the killings that her sister had seemed OK two weeks earlier is direct support for it. Whether she adopted that statement on the stand or declined to recall it changes what the jury can do with it.
Asked whether she recalled telling police the day after the killings that the defendant had seemed OK, Ozga said yes, and added that her sister's texts had seemed to indicate she was better.
Asked whether she told investigators the defendant seemed to be getting better, Ozga answered no, that she did not recall, and that she had been in complete shock.
Sprague pointed out that Ozga had previously told investigators the defendant seemed OK when they saw each other at the birthday party. Neither outlet reports the answer.
The questions the two outlets record are not identical — seemed OK at the party as against seemed to be getting better — so they may be two exchanges rather than one. Her mother was asked a materially identical question on the same afternoon and answered that she did not recall. Not resolved.
Patrick Clancy is the Commonwealth's first witness and the only lay witness to the household in the weeks before January 24. Whether the defense had begun testing his account on the first day or only on the third changes which of his concessions were volunteered on direct and which were drawn out on cross.
Patrick Clancy was already under cross-examination when Judge Sullivan adjourned at about 3 p.m. on July 27, 2026, with the 911 call not yet played.
He was still on direct examination at adjournment and would continue on direct when court resumed Wednesday, with cross-examination still to come.
Reddington's cross-examination ran roughly two hours and concluded at about 3:45 p.m. on July 29, 2026, the day the 911 call was played.
JULY 29, 2026 BACKFILL, AUGUST 21, 2026. Read in full, the July 29 live blogs put the cross-examination beginning that afternoon: the witness retook the stand at about 14:14 and Reddington began at 14:16 (Boston 25), about 14:15 (CBS Boston) or 14:18 (Boston Globe). Nothing in the July 29 coverage places any defense questioning of this witness on July 27, which leaves Boston 25's July 27 entry the only support for the earlier start.
Raised by the July 27, 2026 backfill of August 21, 2026. Three of the four accounts point the same way and Boston 25 appears to be the outlier, but no outlet has been read that places any defense questioning of this witness on July 27, and the conflict is recorded rather than resolved.
Rebecca Jollotta is the Commonwealth witness closest to the seven weeks of psychiatric treatment the defense says failed, and the concessions drawn out of her on cross are among the strongest defense material in the Commonwealth's own case. Whether her evidence ended on August 11 or continued on August 12 determines which day a researcher should search for the end of it.
Jollotta completed direct, cross-examination and the Commonwealth's redirect on August 11, 2026 and stepped down before the jury was sent home that afternoon. Five outlets covering August 11 report her stepping down that day: the Boston Globe, Boston 25, CBS Boston, East Idaho News and boston.com.
Jollotta also testified on August 12, 2026, her evidence continuing from the previous day, on the point that the defendant complained her medications were not working quickly enough and might be making her worse.
The August 12, 2026 coverage has now been read in full — the Boston Globe, Boston 25, boston.com, CBS Boston, East Idaho News and the Patriot Ledger — and none of it places Jollotta on the stand that day. East Idaho News's running witness count for August 12 goes 63 to 68 (Lawlor, Dukes, Daley, Bradley, Stonebridge, Olson), following on without a gap from Jollotta as witness 62 on August 11. The PBS NewsHour piece cited by the old August 12 entry is dated August 12 but reports Jollotta's August 11 testimony, which is the likeliest source of the error.
Raised by the August 11, 2026 backfill of August 21, 2026. The likeliest explanation is that the August 12 outlets carried a recap of Jollotta's evidence alongside the medical examiners who testified that day, and that the recap was read as fresh testimony when the August 12 entry was compiled. That is an explanation, not a finding: the August 12 coverage has not been re-read, and the August 12 entry has not been altered. Anyone reconciling these two entries should read the August 12 live blogs in full first.
RESOLVED AUGUST 21, 2026 BY THE AUGUST 12 BACKFILL. The explanation offered above turned out to be right: her evidence ended on August 11. The August 12 entry has been rewritten and no longer lists her, and the PBS source has been dropped from that day. The August 11 entry was not touched.
Callan's cause of death is the one autopsy finding on the youngest child, and a researcher searching for it needs the right sitting day.
Dr. Kimberly Springer testified between about 09:26 and 09:48 on August 6, 2026 about Callan, giving his cause of death as complications of mechanical asphyxia, with autopsy photographs shown to jurors on individual screens at 09:48.
This file's companion day summary for August 12, 2026 also placed Dr. Kimberley Springer on the stand that day on Callan's injuries and cause of death, spelling her forename differently.
Six outlets covering August 12, 2026, read in full, place six witnesses on the stand that day and Springer is not among them. East Idaho News numbers them 63 to 68 with no gap. Boston 25's filed story of August 12 says the medical examiner evidence on Callan had been put before the jury the previous week, which fits August 6.
Raised and resolved by the August 12 backfill of August 21, 2026. Springer testified once, on August 6. The August 12 entry has been rewritten and no longer lists her; the August 6 entry was not touched, and it already recorded that autopsy evidence spanned both dates — which it did, but through Stonebridge and Olson on August 12, not through Springer.
The defense case is that the treatment was uncoordinated and that the over-medication concern raised by an outside program never got back to the person prescribing. Whether the call was made and not returned, or never arrived, is the difference between a missed handoff and a failed one.
No call from Women and Infants ever reached her, and she would certainly have returned one had it come.
Put to the therapist twice on August 12, once by the defense on cross and once by the Commonwealth on redirect, in the form that Women and Infants reached out to Jollotta about the medications on the day of the December 20 interview and got no response. Dukes said she was unaware of it either way.
Dukes did not know why Women and Infants declined the defendant; the Boston Globe reports the program citing concerns about her prescription regimen, and Dukes said it would surprise her to hear the reason given as over-medication.
Recorded by the August 12 backfill of August 21, 2026. Two Commonwealth witnesses on consecutive days. Nothing read reports the Women and Infants side of it — no witness from that program has testified, and the assertion that a call was made reaches the record only as a question put by counsel, which is not evidence. Not resolved here.
Her evidence is the last clinical contact of any kind before the January gap, so the date it stops is the date the treatment record stops.
Four contacts — in person December 2, 2022, then December 5, December 12 and December 19 — plus a call on December 27 about the Women and Infants referral and a call with Patrick Clancy the same day.
Four meetings between late November and early December 2022.
The last encounter was a virtual visit on December 9 in one entry and December 19 in another, in the same live blog.
The intake was on December 2, 2023.
The referral to Women and Infants was made on December 20 and the program declined after interviewing her.
The referral was made on December 12 and the interview at Women and Infants was on December 20.
Recorded by the August 12 backfill of August 21, 2026. The December 2 to December 19 sequence is carried by East Idaho News in full and is consistent with the Boston Globe's and CBS Boston's account of four visits and a December 19 last visit; the 2023 intake year and the December 9 last visit are each carried by a single outlet and each conflicts with that outlet's own other entries. Nothing here is treated as settled and no date has been carried into the treatment chronology in the case reference.
The outlet's running Commonwealth witness number is the only continuous count of the prosecution case in any coverage, and this file cites it witness by witness. If it slips by one, every number after August 12 is off, and so is any attempt to say how far through its list the Commonwealth was on a given day.
East Idaho News numbers August 7's four witnesses 57 (Kimberlee Hardy), 58 (Sarah Carney), 59 (Alia Goodheart) and 60 (Jennifer Tufts). CBS Boston independently calls Sarah Carney the 58th prosecution witness, which agrees.
East Idaho News numbers August 12's six witnesses 63 through 68, ending with Dr. Barbara Olson as witness 68.
East Idaho News numbers August 13's three witnesses 68 (Kyle Pavao), 69 (Timothy Chiappini) and 70 (Joshua McKelligan).
CBS Boston reported at the end of August 13 that seventy witnesses had testified so far, which fits 68-69-70 for this day and not 69-70-71.
East Idaho News numbers Ian Whiffin, the Commonwealth's last witness on August 17, as its 71st.
If August 13 begins at 68 and August 17's Whiffin is 71, then 68, 69, 70, 71 is internally consistent and the August 12 count is one high from some point in that day. Nothing read identifies where. No day's entry has been renumbered; each records the number the outlet gave on the day.
AUGUST 7, 2026 BACKFILL, AUGUST 21, 2026. A second outlet corroborates the running count on August 7: CBS Boston independently numbers Sarah Carney 58, matching East Idaho News. The slip of one is therefore somewhere between August 7 and the end of August 12, and not before.
The note is the defendant's own account of her state of mind and the most quoted piece of evidence from August 13. October 2022 puts it before the psychiatric treatment chronology gets under way; late December 2022 or January 2023 puts it in the middle of the medication changes the defense says caused the deterioration. The date changes what the note is evidence of.
The note was created on October 25, 2022.
The note was written in October 2022, without a day.
The note was created in December 2022 and modified in January 2023.
The note was last updated on December 26, 2022.
CNN describes two notes: one containing the parenting passages and the affirmations, last modified in early November 2022, and a second created in late December 2022 and last modified on January 23, 2023 about prescription medication.
The likeliest explanation is that more than one note was read and that some outlets merged them, with the December-into-January dates belonging to the medication note rather than the parenting note. Nothing read states that, and it is not recorded here as resolved.
Every disputed January 24 time and every disputed search date rests on an extraction of the defendant's iPhone. If two extractions of the same device disagree, that is a reason the reported times and dates disagree, and it goes to the weight of the whole digital case.
Reddington put to Chiappini that his own extraction was an Advanced Logical extraction performed on January 30, that a Trooper Rabbit performed a Full File Extraction of the same phone, and that the two did not match. East Idaho News does not record Chiappini's answer.
No other outlet read for August 13 carries the exchange at all.
The case reference lists a Lt. Joseph Rabbitt among the people it cannot place on a confirmed date. He is not recorded as having testified.
These are the searches the defense relies on to show she recognized what was happening to her, and the Commonwealth relies on to show she knew what psychosis was. The difference between January 15, 19, 20 and 23 is the difference between a week before and the night before.
Schizophrenia searched on January 15, 2023; psychosis as both a keyword and a Google search on January 20; intrusive thoughts on January 23.
Schizophrenia searched on January 19, 2023, with psychosis the following day.
Reddington asked about the term intrusive on January 20, 2023, and the Boston Globe headlines the hallucinations search as five days before the killings, which is January 19.
Hallucinations searched on January 19, 2023; bipolar disorder on December 29, 2022 and January 13, 2023.
On redirect the Commonwealth established that the January 19, 2023 search was specifically for psychosis symptoms; the case reference records January 19 searches for symptoms of postpartum psychosis and for psychosis symptoms from the Whiffin report.
The Commonwealth's account of that morning is a chain of clicks ending at a page about suicide methods and then at a page about a bridge people jumped from. If the timestamps do not run in the order the chain requires, the chain as described cannot be read off the timestamps alone.
Facebook at 9:40 a.m., Spotify shortly after, a Google search for Tom Hall at 9:44 a.m., his Wikipedia page, the suicide methods page, then a click to the Grafton Bridge page at 9:48 a.m.
Facebook at 9:40 a.m., a Spotify search for Tom Hall at 9:44 a.m., a Google search, the Wikipedia death section, then the suicide methods page accessed at 9:54 a.m., with the Grafton Bridge hyperlink clicked after that.
On redirect Sprague fixed the Grafton Bridge visit at 9:48 a.m.; Boston 25 records the last activity on the machine that morning at 9:48 a.m. and Reddington putting the whole sequence between 9:40 and 10 a.m.
A DATE VARIANT FROM THE JULY 29, 2026 CROSS-EXAMINATION OF PATRICK CLANCY. Reddington put the Tom Hall sequence to him that day and Boston 25 dated the search August 22, 2022, one day before the August 23, 2022 date the forensic evidence of August 13, 2026 gives. The Boston Globe's account of the same cross says only August 2022. The device also differs within that day: a shared tablet to the Boston Globe, his laptop to Boston 25, against the Microsoft Surface Pro identified on August 13.
East Idaho News's 9:54 a.m. for the suicide methods page sits after the 9:48 a.m. Grafton Bridge click it is supposed to have produced. One of the two figures is likely a live-blogging slip, but nothing read says which.
The defense's answer to the suicide-methods browsing is that the defendant was out of the house taking a child to the doctor while it happened. Whether the appointment was at 9:45 or 10:15 decides whether she could have been at home for a sequence that ran from 9:40 to 9:48 or 9:54.
Reddington put the appointment at 10:15 a.m., saying the two-year-old was examined then for ear pain.
The calendar entry itself, made on August 14, 2022, was a 9:45 a.m. ear check for Dawson and a 10 a.m. vaccination for Callan.
Boston 25 records the two sides disputing whether the appointment was at 10 or 10:15, and Sprague establishing on redirect that the drive from the house to the doctor's office in Kingston takes about four minutes.
Whether the defense has had at the Commonwealth's only named rebuttal expert decides whether his opinion has been tested in front of the jury, and it bears on whether the evidence can close in time for closing arguments on Monday.
A contentious cross-examination of Dr. Avram Mack by Kevin Reddington followed his direct testimony. No time, question, answer or length is given.
Were still reporting the Commonwealth's direct examination of Mack at their latest entries when this was first recorded — the Boston Globe at 14:43 and Boston 25 at 14:50 — with no cross-examination mentioned. East Idaho News labeled the questioning after the lunch recess cross-examination at 14:20 while describing the Commonwealth as the questioner, which did not fit its own account, since Mack is the Commonwealth's witness.
RESOLVED the same afternoon. The Boston Globe reached the cross-examination at 14:50 and East Idaho News at 14:52, both reporting Reddington questioning Mack on his compensation and on his reliance on Clancy's own account; the Boston Globe adds his road-race question on mania at 14:59. CBS Boston was ahead of the other blogs, not at odds with them, which is the pattern these live blogs have shown against each other all day. Boston 25 had not reached the cross at 14:50, its latest entry. Nothing here was wrong; one outlet was simply first.
How long the Commonwealth has had its rebuttal psychiatrist bears on the defense's suggestion that the opinion was bought, which is the line Kevin Reddington opened at the end of the cross-examination before the prosecution objected. The two dates sit close together and may well describe two different events, but no outlet says so.
Mack's first communication with the prosecution came in late 2024, through a retention firm, Park Dietz & Associates.
Mack was retained by the government in early 2025. The same outlet reported at 15:22 that Mack acknowledged the Plymouth district attorney's office had contacted him through a retention firm called Park Dietz and Associates, corroborating the firm but attaching no date to that contact.
Both dates in a single answer. Los Angeles Magazine reports Mack testifying on redirect that discussions about retaining him began in 2024 and that he was formally retained in 2025.
A first approach and a formal retention are not the same event, and one outlet now reports both in one answer: Los Angeles Magazine has Mack saying discussions began in 2024 and that he was formally retained in 2025, which would let East Idaho News's late 2024 and the Boston Globe's early 2025 both be right. That is a single untimed account, and no outlet says the earlier reports describe different events, so this is recorded, not reconciled. The route is corroborated: the Globe has Mack acknowledging the district attorney's office reached him through Park Dietz and Associates.
The weight of her account of a reported command hallucination turns partly on how close and how sustained the contact was, and the same number is reported as two different things.
Fourteen visits at Brigham and Women's Hospital, further visits at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and about 200 at Tewksbury State Hospital.
More than 200 visits in total since the killings, across all of the facilities, with visits continuing at the state hospital.
About 200 meetings over roughly three years.
The day-summary for 08-20 records both readings. Neither is treated as the figure.
Whether the jury was told to disregard the chaplain's description of continuing grief bears on what the defense actually got in through this witness.
The Commonwealth objected to the characterization and Judge Sullivan ruled that it be stricken from the record.
Prosecutors objected, Judge Sullivan sustained the objection and directed Reddington to move on.
Prosecutors objected to the characterization but the judge permitted it.
Two outlets have the objection succeeding and one has it failing. No outlet reports the ground stated for the objection or any response from the defense.
The case reference records the charges as three counts of murder and nothing else, which is what the trial judge told the jurors on the first day. Two outlets add a second set of three counts on top of that and they do not name the same offense.
Three counts of murder under Mass. G.L. c. 265 s.1, with no other counts recorded. Judge Sullivan told the jurors on 07-27 that Clancy faced three counts of murder.
Three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of assault and battery.
Three murder counts and three strangulation counts, the latter carrying up to five years each.
Recorded because it is a conflict with data/case-reference.json, not resolved here. Neither extra set of counts is reported as having been put to the jury, and the verdict slip was still being argued over on 08-20.
Whether the Commonwealth got a redirect examination, and what it covered, decides whether the defense's concessions on the medication diary and on the days he was away stood unanswered when the Commonwealth's first witness left the stand.
Reddington concluded his cross-examination at about 3:45 p.m.; ADA Jennifer Sprague began a redirect at about 3:49 p.m., in which the Commonwealth suggested the defendant was the more likely source of the clicks that reached the suicide-methods page; the defense finished its questioning at 3:59 p.m.; the testimony ended at 4:15 p.m. and the judge dismissed the jurors at 4:17 p.m.
Redirect examination by the prosecutor began at 3:48 p.m. and included putting the drop from the bedroom window to the ground at twelve feet rather than the twenty the witness had given the 911 dispatcher. The witness finished at 4:12 p.m. and the court day ended at 4:13 p.m.
The blog marks no end to the cross-examination and no redirect at all, and runs the afternoon's questioning through to the witness stepping down at 4:19 p.m.
Raised by the July 29, 2026 backfill of August 21, 2026. Two outlets have a redirect and one does not distinguish it; CBS Boston's 3:59 p.m. entry implies a recross that no outlet describes. The three end times span seven minutes and are not reconciled here.
The recording is the Commonwealth's most powerful exhibit and cannot be released publicly, so its length is one of the few checkable facts about it on the public record.
About six minutes.
Seven minutes.
Recorded by the July 29, 2026 backfill. Nothing read reconciles the two figures, and the recording is under a court order barring reproduction, so neither can be checked against the exhibit.
The neck wound is one of the two injuries the Commonwealth calls superficial and the defense calls a genuine suicide attempt, and it was photographed at South Shore Hospital. Two officers who saw the same untreated wound within minutes of each other put it on opposite sides.
Cuts to both wrists and to the LEFT side of her neck.
Cuts to the wrist and to the RIGHT side of her neck, bleeding but not profusely.
Superficial cuts on the neck around the collar, side unspecified.
No outlet remarks on the difference and neither officer was cross-examined. Later evidence describes a cut running the full width of the neck (Det. Maffeo, July 31, 2026), which may make the point moot, but the two July 30 accounts are recorded as given.
The defense told the court, in open session, that the prosecutors trying a murder case had mocked the defendant as she was wheeled out of the courtroom sobbing. The district attorney's office denies the words and has given two different accounts of who spoke them. The judge made no finding either way and issued a general warning instead, so nothing on the record settles it.
Prosecutors were picked up on a hot microphone saying shut her up, referring to the defendant, during Thursday's autopsy testimony as she was wheeled sobbing from the courtroom.
The office reviewed the courtroom video. What was said was shut it off, meaning the screen displaying the autopsy photographs, not shut her up.
The district attorney's office first attributed the remark to one of its own prosecutors and then corrected that. boston.com describes the correction as attributing it to an unidentified person in the courtroom; CBS Boston describes it as an unknown court employee rather than a prosecutor.
Attribution of the Handmaid's Tale remark differs. The Boston Globe attributes to Judge Sullivan the statement that this is not The Handmaid's Tale where you tape her mouth shut and that he is not doing that at all. CBS Boston attributes the same image to Reddington, as an argument that the defendant's mouth cannot be taped shut.
The recording itself has not been reported as played in court, produced, or made an exhibit. Judge Sullivan's response was an admonition to the whole courtroom — no inappropriate or disruptive comments, microphones everywhere, immediate ejection and a bar for the rest of the trial, no warnings and no yellow cards — and no outlet read reports him finding that anything was or was not said. Recorded as two accounts, unresolved.
Hardy is one of the last people outside the family reported as seeing Cora and Dawson before January 24, and her account of them as their usual selves is part of the Commonwealth's picture of an ordinary household in the final week.
The children were dropped off at the club on January 13 and January 17, 2023, and were their usual selves, playing with dolls and coloring.
The last club visit was January 19, with Hardy describing Cora drawing pictures before pickup.
No outlet remarks on the difference and the point was not contested on cross-examination. Both accounts are recorded as given.
This is the appointment at which the defendant, on Remeron, reported intrusive thoughts described as a feeling that she was going to die, said she was close to suicidal and felt very hopeless, and told Tufts she kept reaching out to different people and then not sticking with the plan. It is also the appointment at which Tufts raised bipolar disorder and set it aside. Where it sits in December changes how fast the deterioration ran in the three weeks before the McLean admission.
December 1, 2022.
December 21, 2022.
On cross-examination the same witness was taken through the December 1, 2022 appointment and agreed that the defendant reported depression, numbness and intrusive thoughts including the feeling that she was going to die, denied being suicidal but said she was close to it, and used the word hopeless. Every outlet read on the August 10 cross places this material on December 1.
All three outlets place the Massachusetts General emergency room visit at a separate appointment on December 16, 2022, which sits between the two candidate dates. Whether Tufts described two December appointments or one is not clear from any account read. Not resolved.
NARROWED BY THE AUGUST 10 BACKFILL, AUGUST 21, 2026. The Boston Globe's account of the August 10 cross-examination places the going-to-die evidence squarely on December 1, 2022, alongside the hopelessness and the close-to-suicidal answer, and no outlet's account of that cross puts it in late December. That leaves the Globe's own August 7 report of December 21 as the outlier. Left open rather than resolved: no outlet has reconciled the two dates, and the possibility of two December appointments described in similar terms has not been excluded.
It fixes the start of the South Shore perinatal treatment, and therefore how long the defendant was under two prescribers at once. The fluoxetine start date and the November 25 medication switch are both counted from it.
A screening telephone call in November 2022 with the intake appointment booked for the following day, November 21, 2022. The Boston Globe's live blog reports the call and the next-day intake; East Idaho News gives the intake as beginning November 21; and the prescription record has fluoxetine 10mg started on November 21.
An initial screening on November 22, 2022.
This file's August 10, 2026 entry previously carried the November 22 date. November 22, 2022 is separately and independently the date of an appointment with Dr. Jennifer Tufts at which the defendant told Tufts she was being seen at the South Shore perinatal clinic, which is a possible source of the conflation. Not resolved; the entry now records the screening call and the next-day intake and flags Boston 25's date.
Only that the record should not attribute an examination to the wrong advocate. The Commonwealth divides witnesses between two prosecutors, and the same two outlets disagree the same way on the following day.
ADA Jennifer Sprague conducted the redirect examination of Dr. Jennifer Tufts on August 10, 2026.
ADA Shanan Buckingham conducted it, and put the sertraline suicide warning to the witness as applying really to adolescents.
The Boston Globe says only that it was the prosecution's redirect. The identical disagreement between the same outlets recurs on August 11, 2026 over who conducted Rebecca Jollotta's direct examination, where the Boston Globe and the Patriot Ledger name Buckingham and CBS Boston names Sprague. See also laposata-cross-examiner. Not resolved.
Three defense witnesses turn on it, including the forensic pathologist who testified on August 18. Whether the judge admitted them outright, or admitted two and reserved a competency determination on the third, and whether he reserved a voir dire on the two, changes what was still open going into the defense case.
Judge Sullivan allowed the defense to add three doctors to its witness list. He allowed the two who would describe the injuries the defendant suffered jumping from a second-story window, Dr. Elizabeth Laposata and Dr. Michael Vulfovich, but said he would hear their testimony first before deciding what the jury would be exposed to; Reddington may also call a third doctor, Dr. Donald Condie. The ruling runs three pages and finds the late addition was not an attempt to ambush the prosecutors and shows no bad faith.
The judge allowed two of the three. The third would be questioned by the judge at the end of Monday or on Tuesday to determine his competency as a witness.
The two accounts agree on the three names and on the finding of no bad faith, and disagree on which witnesses the reserved determination attached to. All three doctors did eventually testify for the defense: Dr. Vulfovich on August 17, 2026, and Dr. Condie and Dr. Laposata on August 18, 2026. Not resolved.
Only that an examination should not be attributed to the wrong advocate. The same two prosecutors are swapped by the same outlets on other days.
ADA Shanan Buckingham conducted the direct examination of Lt. Joseph Rabbitt and put the bottles in front of him one at a time.
Prosecutor Jennifer Sprague began running through the various bottles with Rabbitt identifying the counts.
The identical disagreement between the same outlets recurs on August 10, 2026 (Dr. Tufts's redirect) and August 11, 2026 (Rebecca Jollotta's direct). See tufts-redirect-prosecutor. Not resolved.
The stains on the shingles below the bedroom window are the physical basis for the competing accounts of how the defendant left the window - a jump, or a lowered descent. Whether the re-collected samples were blood at all bears on what the DNA result the following day was drawn from.
Maureen Hartnett returned to the Duxbury house on June 15, 2023 to collect samples from the red-brown stains on the shingles at the exterior back of the house, below the window. Those samples tested negative for blood, and she acknowledged the stains would have degraded over five months of weather.
Hartnett identified three shingles removed from the Clancy home that contained blood stains, taken for further analysis.
Blood recovered from the house shingles and from the ground below the bedroom window matched the defendant.
boston.com reports only that Hartnett went back because investigators requested additional testing of the shingle stains, and does not say what the testing showed. The three accounts may be reconcilable - a presumptive screen and a DNA analysis are different tests, and stains collected on the night of the killings are not the stains collected in June - but no source read says so, and nothing here is resolved.
Whether the cuts to the wrists were a serious attempt on her own life or a gesture is one of the Commonwealth's routes to arguing that the suicide was staged. The two medical witnesses the Commonwealth called on consecutive days described the same wounds in terms that do not sit together, and neither was asked about the other.
The report she reviewed described cuts that went through skin into exposed fat but did not reach muscle, artery or tendon. She saw no deep cuts on the wrists, and once the defendant's body temperature was brought up the lacerations needed no further treatment.
No cut on either wrist penetrated into the subcutaneous fatty tissue. One laceration on the right wrist, about three centimeters, was deep enough to require three sutures, and one on the left, about two centimeters, required a single suture; the rest were cleaned, dressed or taped.
Only one laceration, on the right wrist, required sutures, and it was about three centimeters deep.
On cross-examination Negri agreed with another clinician's notation putting the right wrist wound at three and a half centimeters rather than three.
The two clinicians saw her at different hospitals on different days - Carpio at South Shore on the night of January 24, 2023, Negri at Brigham and Women's on January 25 - and a wound described as needing no treatment on one night can be sutured the next day without either account being false. But the descriptions of depth are opposite in terms, and no outlet read reports either witness being asked about the other's account. Nothing here is resolved.
Which child's DNA was on which band is the sort of fact a reader carries away as settled. One outlet's account of the same testimony carries a qualification that the others drop, and the qualification is the difference between an identification and an inclusion.
Dawson appeared to contribute to the DNA profile taken from the middle of the yellow band, with Callan and Patrick Clancy also appearing as inclusions - but under the stated assumptions those individuals cannot be present in the mixture together, because relatives share a great deal of DNA. The black band was a complex mixture of three contributors with strong support for Cora.
Stashyn matched the DNA from the middle of each band to one child: Dawson to the yellow band, Cora to the black band, Callan to the blue band.
The blue band carried DNA from every member of the family, with Callan the major contributor in its middle section. This came in by the parties' stipulation rather than by testimony.
Not necessarily a conflict about what the witness said - a one-line summary of a mixture interpretation will lose the assumptions - but the two renderings support different degrees of certainty and both are recorded. Separately, a photograph identified on July 30, 2026 shows a yellow exercise band beside Dawson's body, which is physical placement rather than DNA identification.
This is the only account read of the defendant describing a medication side effect in her own words to a friend, and the defense theory is prescribed-medication-induced psychosis. Whether she said it days before the killings or two months afterwards in a rehabilitation hospital is the difference between contemporaneous evidence of drug effect and a retrospective remark.
The defendant texted her a few days before the children were killed to say a medication had caused dark thoughts, that she was being weaned off it and trying new ones, and that the tone was hopeful. On cross-examination Bevins placed the exchange toward the end of January.
Bevins stated the defendant mentioned the medication causing dark thoughts during a March 2023 visit at a rehabilitation hospital.
Bevins described both a text before the killings and a March 2023 visit at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in the same testimony, and turnto10's single paragraph may simply have merged them. Four outlets place the remark in the text. Nothing is resolved here; the day account records both.
Cora telling her teacher that her mother was in the hospital and that she missed her is the only account read of how the McLean admission looked to the children. The date fixes which admission it was.
Cora made the remark at the end of December or the beginning of January, and the defendant was admitted to McLean Hospital in early January 2023.
Cora reported that her mother was hospitalized at McLean Hospital in December 2022.
Cora told her that her mother was in the hospital and that she missed her; no date given.
This project's treatment chronology places the McLean inpatient admission in the first days of January 2023, discharged January 5. CBS Boston's December 2022 date is not corroborated by any other outlet read for that day. Recorded, not resolved.
The roster is used to attribute testimony, so two spellings of one name can look like two witnesses. These are recorded rather than silently normalised.
Mark Anthony Maffeo, Christina Carpio, Latisha Dukes, Kimberly Springer.
Marcanthony Maffeo, Cristina Carpio, Latiesha Dukes, Kimberley Springer.
The roster spelling is retained as the primary form; both are listed here so a reader searching either finds the person. Not yet checked against the docket.
This page records what the court has actually scheduled rather than what reporters expect. Two outlets attribute two different pairs of days to Judge Sullivan, and the site should not pick one.
Closing arguments could begin Monday, August 24 if all the testimony finished on Friday, August 21, and would likely fall on Tuesday, August 25 if it ran into Monday. Counsel had been told earlier that closings were likely Monday or Tuesday.
Judge Sullivan indicated that closing arguments could happen Tuesday or Wednesday, and said he would be open to giving the parties time between the end of testimony and closings. The report does not say on which day he said it.
Judge Sullivan said on Monday, August 24, after sending the jury home, that closing arguments in the case are expected on Wednesday, August 26. The same report has him saying the Commonwealth has one more witness to call after Dr. Kirk Heilbrun and that testimony resumes Tuesday.
The prosecution's final witnesses are likely to finish Tuesday, August 25 and closing arguments are expected to take place on Wednesday, August 26, the judge said. He cautioned that the timeline is subject to change.
Judge Sullivan told the jurors from the bench on Wednesday, August 26, after the Commonwealth rested, that they would hear the closing arguments and his instructions on the law Thursday morning. East Idaho News has him adding that they would then get the case for their deliberations that day; NBC Boston and the Boston Globe report the closings and the charge without the deliberations.
Judge Sullivan told the jurors on Wednesday, August 26 that they would hear closing arguments Thursday, followed by his instructions, and would then begin deliberating. The same report has him reconvening with the lawyers at 2:30 p.m. for a conference on those instructions, held without the jury.
The jurors will begin deliberating once the closing arguments and the judge's instructions are finished on Thursday, August 27. Both accounts were written after the conference on the instructions had ended, and neither reports the judge fixing the day on the record.
Once the closing arguments are over the judge will give the jury his instructions, and it is possible that the jurors begin deliberating by noon on Thursday, August 27. The report does not attribute the timing to the judge.
Overtaken in part. Testimony ran into Wednesday, August 26, so the Wednesday closings two outlets had attributed to the bench did not happen. Sending the jury home that afternoon, the judge said the closings and his instructions would come Thursday morning. What is still open is the day the jury retires. Five outlets — East Idaho News, CT Insider, boston.com, ABC7 and ABC News — have the jurors getting the case Thursday, ABC News as early as midday, against NBC News's earlier report of deliberations no earlier than Friday, which now stands alone. Closes when the closings are delivered.
The length of the postpartum window is the hinge of the cross-examination of the Commonwealth's rebuttal expert. Clancy's youngest child was eight months old on January 24, so whether the diagnostic period runs four weeks or four months from the birth changes what Dr. Avram Mack's own authority allows him to call postpartum.
Mack gave the guidelines as putting postpartum onset within four weeks of the birth, and postpartum psychosis within six, while Reddington cited guidelines allowing longer periods. The same blog repeated four weeks at 10:11.
Mack said he uses the DSM definition of the postpartum period as four months after the birth, and that making a diagnosis in psychiatry requires an authority, which for him is the DSM.
Reddington put to Mack that he has opined postpartum depression must begin within four weeks of the birth in accordance with the DSM-5, and said it could occur within a year; Mack answered that the DSM-5 is what is used in the United States. Recorded as counsel's characterization of the witness's opinion rather than as the witness's own figure. The same file separately reports Mack saying Clancy had a major depressive episode within four to five months of the birth, which measures when her episode began and not the diagnostic window.
Mack testified that the DSM defines the postpartum onset specifier as four weeks after the birth, and acknowledged on cross-examination that the World Health Organization's system uses a different window and that a proposed revision to the DSM uses six weeks. Hearst Connecticut separately renders his evidence on the postpartum window as four to six weeks.
Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, the Commonwealth's second rebuttal expert, told the jury that medical guidelines put the onset of postpartum symptoms at one to two months after giving birth. Recorded here because it is a figure for the same window from the other Commonwealth expert; the outlet reports neither the question that produced it nor what he drew from it, and does not name the guidelines.
Heilbrun expressed skepticism about whether Clancy's mental health conditions were connected to her having given birth about eight months earlier, saying he adheres to a shorter timeframe when considering the postpartum period. Recorded as the second Commonwealth expert's own position rather than as a figure for the DSM window.
Open. Four renderings of what Dr. Avram Mack gave as the DSM postpartum window — four weeks, four months, four to six weeks, and counsel's four weeks with a year put to him — stand unreconciled; the Globe's four-months entry at 10:30 is still uncorroborated. The Commonwealth's second expert, Dr. Kirk Heilbrun, has since told the jury that medical guidelines put postpartum onset at one to two months and that he adheres to a shorter period, doubting a connection to a birth eight months earlier. His figures are recorded here alongside Mack's, not as corroboration of any of them. Unresolved.
The defense case is that a psychotic illness developed on prescribed medication in the months before January 24. When Clancy first reported intrusive thoughts about harming herself, and when those thoughts first extended to the children, fixes how long that deterioration ran and how close to the killings the thoughts about the children began. Five outlets summarize the same passage of Dr. Kirk Heilbrun's direct examination, and they give four different datings.
The horrible intrusive thoughts about harming herself began in late November 2022 and continued into December, and in January she began to have thoughts about harming her children.
In December 2022 Clancy reported horrible intrusive thoughts about harming herself and at times her children, which she described as her own thoughts rather than a voice from outside her head.
The horrible intrusive thoughts began in early December, and continued through December and January, occasionally about the children.
The terrible intrusive thoughts about harming herself began in late November and early December, and later they would occasionally be about harming her children; no date is given for when they turned to the children.
Open. All of these are paraphrases of one stretch of direct examination and none quotes the witness on a date, so the conflict may be summarizing rather than substantive. What is unresolved is whether the thoughts about the children began alongside those about herself, in December, or only in January. boston.com, read in the afternoon, puts both in December, with the Boston Globe and Boston 25; CBS Boston sits between NBC News and the Patriot Ledger on the onset and leaves the children undated. No outlet reports him being pressed on the dates.
The Commonwealth's case is that the killings were the deliberate act of a woman who knew what she was doing, and the defense has built its case on a mother with no history of harming her children. Whether the Commonwealth's own rebuttal expert accepted, in front of the jury, that the February 2023 Department of Children and Families records contain no earlier instance of Clancy abusing her children is the difference between a concession and a refusal to concede on that point. Two outlets summarize the same exchange in ways that do not sit together.
Mack described reviewing Department of Children and Families records from February 2023 that included an interview with Patrick Clancy and recorded no earlier instance of Lindsay Clancy abusing her children.
Asked directly by Reddington whether there are no such records showing that Clancy was abusive to her children, Mack answered that he did not think that was necessarily the conclusion of that report.
Open. The Globe's entry is a paraphrase of what Mack said he reviewed; boston.com quotes his answer to the question put to him. They may describe different moments in the same passage rather than one moment two ways, and neither outlet reports whether Reddington pressed it further. No other outlet carries the exchange.
Heilbrun gave the length of the watch as part of his evidence that Clancy was and remains at risk of suicide, which is the ground on which he told the jury the killings were a serious suicide attempt rather than acute psychosis. How long she has been held at the highest level of risk is part of that reasoning, and the outlets do not agree on the figure.
Clancy has been on a one-to-one suicide watch at Tewksbury State Hospital for three years and still is.
Clancy was on a one-to-one suicide risk, described by the outlet as the highest risk level, for three years and remains at risk of suicide; he noted that is a long time to remain at an elevated risk.
Clancy has been on a one-on-one suicide watch for the past three and a half years, according to Heilbrun's testimony.
Not a position on the watch, recorded to keep the two figures apart: boston.com quotes him saying what really convinced him is that Clancy has been at Tewksbury Hospital for more than three and a half years with bipolar disorder as the diagnosis of record. That measures the length of her stay, not the watch.
Open. Two outlets give three years and one gives three and a half, all reporting the same witness on the same afternoon. boston.com's three and a half years attaches to the length of her stay at Tewksbury rather than to the watch, so it does not settle the conflict either way. No outlet reports the question that produced the figure. Recorded as reported, unresolved.
The pattern of the voice is the center of Heilbrun's case against the command hallucination: Clancy reported hearing it only during the roughly 18 minutes of the killings, and he told the jury that does not match how a genuine hallucination behaves. Two outlets report the comparison he drew in opposite terms, so what the jury was told a genuine hallucination looks like is not settled by the reporting.
Genuine psychotic hallucinations can be intermittent, where Clancy reported the voice speaking to her constantly for 18 minutes and never emerging before or since.
Genuine hallucinations are more consistent than intermittent, where Clancy reported hearing the voice only for about 18 to 20 minutes.
A third rendering from the same blog, recorded because it does not settle the point either: it would be very, very unusual to hear a voice during an isolated incident, and such auditory hallucinations more often come and go over a longer period of time.
Open. Both accounts run to the same conclusion — that what Clancy described does not match the usual pattern — but the property each assigns to a genuine hallucination is the reverse of the other, and the Globe's own two posts do not read alike. The outlets also differ on the length she reported, 18 minutes against 18 to 20. No transcript is available and no outlet quotes the passage in full. Recorded as reported, unresolved.
Dr. Kirk Heilbrun was called to give the jury an alternative to the defense theory of a command hallucination, and the explanation he offered instead is the substance of the Commonwealth’s rebuttal on motive. Two outlets report him characterizing that explanation in incompatible terms within seven minutes of each other, so what the jury was told about why she killed the children is not settled by the reporting.
His evaluation showed “suicide combined with altruistic filicide,” which he glossed as “killing your kids out of love”: a highly lethal and very serious suicide attempt, preceded by months of thoughts and impulses about harming herself, in which the decision to kill the children was likely an attempt to keep them from suffering without her there to take care of them.
That Clancy told her husband she had tried to kill herself, mentioning neither the hallucinations nor that the children were dead in the basement, leads him to think this was not a case of altruistic filicide — a mother killing her children because she fears for their safety or well-being once she is gone — and that it seemed instead like an extreme suicide attempt.
Clancy’s mental state on the day of the killings was more in line with altruistic filicide than with acute psychosis accompanied by command hallucinations. He defined altruistic filicide as “killing your kids out of love … so that they wouldn’t have to suffer”, offered it as the second of two possible explanations, and said of the choice between them: “Most of the evidence that I saw supported the second one, and not the first.”
The psychologist described the killings as “altruistic filicide,” the act of killing one's children out of love. CNN reports that description directly after the evidence NBC News gives as his reason for rejecting the term — that the first thing Clancy told her husband was that she had tried to kill herself, where someone acting on a command hallucination might have said something to the effect of having done what she had to do or what the voice said.
He testified that Clancy committed “altruistic filicide,” in which she believed she was sparing her children suffering by killing them before taking her own life. ABC News gives this as the explanation he offered in place of the defense's hallucination account, in a Tuesday-morning post recapping Monday.
Open, with four accounts to one. The Boston Globe, boston.com, CNN and ABC News all have him adopting altruistic filicide; NBC News has him rejecting it for an extreme suicide attempt. All five agree he called the killings a serious suicide attempt. CNN narrows the disagreement rather than settling it: it draws the name from the same evidence — Clancy's first words to her husband — that NBC News reports him using to rule the name out, so the two accounts conflict over one passage of testimony. No transcript is available and no outlet quotes the passage whole.
The testimony is the subject of the only mistrial motion recorded in this trial, and Judge Sullivan struck it and told the jury it cannot be considered. What was said matters to what the jury was told about whether Clancy believed the killings were morally wrong, which is the appreciation-of-wrongfulness half of the McHoul test. No outlet gives the exchange in full, and the accounts place the doctrine at issue on different acts.
The doctrine at issue was about murder. Boston 25 reports the witness saying he asked Clancy, a devout Catholic, whether that was a mortal sin, and later describes the issue as the mention in court that the Catholic Church considers murder a mortal sin.
The doctrine at issue was about suicide. The Boston Globe, reporting the defense’s mistrial argument, describes the witness saying he asked Clancy, who was raised Catholic, about her faith’s doctrine against suicide, and reports the prosecutor saying Clancy had told him she had knowledge that suicide was considered sinful in Catholicism, in the context of whether she knew the killings were morally wrong.
What he described was her own statements. NBC News reports him describing Clancy’s statements about her children going to God during their deaths as contrary to the belief of her Catholic religion, offered as part of his evaluation of her view of moral wrong.
The passage contained both. CBS Boston quotes the testimony itself: that part of Clancy’s expectation was that she and her children would be together in heaven with God, that she was raised as a Catholic, that as he understood Catholic considerations that is not necessarily what happens, and that he asked her “Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?” — at which point a defense objection and a sidebar cut him off.
The judge described it as an opinion about heaven. On the Patriot Ledger’s account of the argument, Judge Sullivan said the witness had testified that Clancy was raised as a Catholic and had then given an opinion on the Catholic conception of heaven.
NBC News publishes the same passage as CBS Boston, in the same terms, and reports the judge pausing the testimony at the point where the witness said he had asked Clancy whether suicide is a “mortal sin”. It places the passage in his account of her understanding of what is immoral.
NBC Boston’s recap of the day describes the comment that prompted the motion as one about the notion that suicide is a mortal sin.
A third publication of the passage, again on suicide. Hearst Connecticut’s day-19 recap reports that the witness brought up prior testimony about Clancy telling the children to “go with God” as she strangled them, and that the comments moved into the realm of the inappropriate, the judge said, when he brought up that she was raised as a Catholic and then said “isn’t suicide a mortal sin?”, at which the judge called a sidebar and sent the jury out.
The doctrine at issue was about suicide — and this is Boston 25 itself, in its own filed story rather than its live blog. It describes Heilbrun testifying about his interview with Clancy at Tewksbury State Hospital and referencing questions he asked her about suicide being a mortal sin.
A different form of the words again, and the only account of what the witness was actually saying when the objection came. WHDH’s 7News quotes him beginning “When I said suicide isn’t a mortal sin,” before Reddington interrupted with an objection, after which Judge Sullivan asked to speak with the prosecution. On this rendering he is reporting what he had said to Clancy rather than a question he had put to her.
The doctrine at issue was about suicide, and this account gives the reasoning rather than the words. Los Angeles Magazine reports Heilbrun discussing Clancy's account of saying “Go to God, baby” while strangling each child and suggesting it reflected her belief that she and the children would be together in heaven; after noting she was raised Catholic, he questioned her reasoning against his understanding of Catholic teaching about suicide, at which Reddington objected.
Narrowed again, and by the outlier itself. Boston 25's own filed story puts the doctrine on suicide where its live blog had put it on murder, so the only account on the murder side now stands against the same outlet's later reporting. Every other account of the words puts the question on suicide, and Los Angeles Magazine adds the reasoning behind it: his understanding of Catholic teaching on suicide, set against her expectation of being reunited with the children. WHDH alone has him reporting what he had said rather than what he had asked. No outlet gives his answer. The evidence has been struck.
The August 18 question was struck, and the defense relied on it on August 24 in moving for a mistrial, telling the court that this was the second time religion had been raised and that on the first occasion it had not moved for one. Which member of the prosecution team asked it is part of the record of conduct the defense called intentional misconduct.
Shanan Buckingham conducted the cross-examination of Susan Clancy and put the question. This is the account compiled here on the day, from the outlets that carried the exchange.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague mentioned mortal sin while questioning Sue Clancy, Patrick Clancy’s mother, earlier in the trial. The Patriot Ledger reports this as part of Reddington’s mistrial argument.
The prosecutor is not named. NBC Boston’s article of August 19 gives the exchange and attributes it only to one of the prosecutors; NBC News, on August 24, says only that the prosecution was cross-examining Clancy’s former mother-in-law.
Shanan Buckingham asked it. Hearst Connecticut’s day-19 recap sets the exchange out word for word and names her: Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham asked Susan Clancy whether she was an active member in the Catholic Church, Susan Clancy answered yes, and the prosecutor then asked whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin, at which Judge Sullivan immediately stopped the questioning and told the jury to strike the comments.
Shanan Buckingham asked it. Boston 25’s standalone article on the ruling reports that the earlier occasion came as a prosecutor cross-examined Patrick Clancy’s mother the previous week, names Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham, and quotes her asking whether she was an active member in the Catholic church and whether she was aware that murder is a mortal sin.
Shanan Buckingham asked it. WHDH’s 7News sets the exchange out word for word and names her: Buckingham asked the victims’ grandmother whether she was an active member in the Catholic church, the witness answered yes, and Buckingham then asked whether she was aware that murder is considered a mortal sin, at which Judge William Sullivan cut in and asked to speak with Buckingham.
Open, and the weight has moved further. Three outlets filing on the evening of August 24 — Hearst Connecticut, Boston 25’s standalone article and WHDH’s 7News — name Shanan Buckingham, and two of them set the exchange out word for word. That agrees with the account compiled here on the day. The Patriot Ledger, reporting Reddington’s mistrial argument six days later, is alone in naming Jennifer Sprague and gives no quotation. Nothing else about the exchange is in dispute: the question was put to an active Catholic on cross-examination, was objected to before it was answered, and was struck.
Whether the defendant experienced a command hallucination on January 24, or an intrusive thought she later described as a voice, is the question the criminal responsibility defense rests on. Dr. Kirk Heilbrun was asked on redirect examination how he had satisfied himself that the intrusive thoughts she began reporting in December 2022 were not hallucinations, and two outlets write his answer up in the same minute with the exception running in opposite directions.
He asked her whether what she experienced reached her as voices from outside her or as thoughts inside her own head, and she set January 24 apart from the rest: “She said except for on Jan 24, what she was experiencing were thoughts.” On this account the carve-out is hers, and January 24 is the day she did not describe as a thought.
He told the jury that a thought, however vivid, is not the same as hearing a voice and is not by itself a sign of psychosis, and that what she described experiencing at the time of the killings was thoughts rather than auditory hallucinations. On this account January 24 falls inside the thoughts and not outside them.
Open. Both accounts are of the same minute of the same answer, and the difference may be one of summary rather than of substance: he may have been relaying what she told him about the December thoughts while separately giving the jury his own conclusion about January 24. No outlet quotes the question and the answer together, and no other account of the redirect examination reaches this exchange. Recorded unresolved.
Manslaughter is the only lesser offense the jury may reach, and voluntary and involuntary manslaughter are different verdicts resting on different findings. The accounts of the same ruling at the August 26 charge conference do not describe the same instruction, and the wording was still to be settled from a fuller draft.
Judge Sullivan said he will give a manslaughter instruction and is inclined to give only one, rather than parsing between involuntary and voluntary manslaughter.
The judge would include an instruction about manslaughter, and had discussed wording letting the jury consider evidence of mental impairment or of taking prescription drugs, which Kevin Reddington did not object to. The account does not divide voluntary from involuntary.
The judge agreed to include instructions on voluntary manslaughter, but not the Bowden charge, after the defense had pushed for involuntary manslaughter as the lesser charge.
The instruction is one on manslaughter as a lesser-included offense to the three murder counts, without the two being distinguished.
Open as to the charge conference, but the delivered charge is now on the record. On the morning of August 27 the judge instructed the jury on a single, undivided manslaughter offense — that the Commonwealth prove she caused the deaths and that her conduct was wanton or reckless — and the verdict slip he held up offers guilty of manslaughter without separating voluntary from involuntary. No account read here has him naming either form in the charge itself, so what stays open is only what he told the lawyers on August 26 he would do.
How long the jury had the case before it was first excused is stated on the day page and on the Friday entry. Five accounts of the same afternoon give three different lengths and two different hours, about half an hour apart at each end.
The jury had been out a little over three hours.
The deliberation ran almost three and a half hours.
The jurors were called back and excused shortly after four.
The judge sent the jurors home shortly after four, after about three and a half hours of deliberation.
The jurors were sent home shortly before half past four.
The deliberation ran roughly four hours.
Open. No account read here gives an exact time for either the start or the end of the deliberation, and none is offered as a correction of another. On the length, CNN has a little over three hours, NBC News and boston.com about three and a half, and Hearst Connecticut roughly four; on the hour of the excusal, CBS Boston and boston.com have it shortly after four against the Boston Globe and Boston 25 shortly before half past. The day account records them all and does not choose.
The Friday entry states when the deliberations were to start again, and the accounts give two hours half an hour apart. One outlet gives both in the same file, so the difference is not simply a split between outlets.
The jurors return at nine o'clock on Friday morning.
The jurors resume at half past nine on Friday morning.
The deliberations resume Friday morning, without an hour given.
The jurors were in fact brought in and sent back out at 9:12 or 9:13 on Friday morning.
Open as to what the court fixed. Four Thursday accounts give nine o'clock and the Associated Press half past, and ABC7's Friday file carries both hours without reconciling them. In the event the two outlets in the room timed the jurors going back out at 9:12 and 9:13, and AP's file, updated at 11:21 on Friday, still gives half past nine. No account read here reports the judge fixing the hour on the record. The day entry records all of it and does not choose.
The day page states, in our own voice, that the jury put its first question to the court before ten on Friday. Three outlets report a question; a fourth, writing later, will not say one was asked, and nothing was said about it in open court.
The jury submitted a question, and the sidebar was held to take it up.
Court sat briefly and the judge called both sides to a sidebar, and the subject of it was never stated; a jury question is one possibility among others, including a request to review an exhibit.
Reconciled. The Boston Globe reported Kevin Reddington describing the jurors' question as a request to see the prescription bottles and the knife, which makes both earlier accounts right: there was a question, and what it asked for was exhibits. The Associated Press, which at 10:46 would not say a question had been asked, carries counsel's account in its 11:21 file, and CBS Boston and Boston 25 carry it as well. Nothing about it has been said in open court. The day entry records the sequence as the outlets reported it.
The day entry says an alternate could still be seated and decide the case. If the six were discharged when the twelve went out, that is not so, and the difference decides what happens should a deliberating juror be unable to carry on.
The six were not sent home. They are kept nearby but apart from the twelve and told not to discuss the case, because one would have to take the seat of any juror who could not carry on, and all eighteen were brought into the courtroom together on Friday morning to answer the judge's overnight questions.
The six alternates, three men and three women, were dismissed and so will not deliberate.
Open, and possibly a difference in wording rather than in fact: dismissed may mean dismissed from the deliberating twelve rather than sent home. The Boston Globe and the Associated Press both have the six still at the courthouse on Friday, AP with them answering the judge's questions alongside the twelve; CNN restated the dismissal claim on September 1. No account read here reports the judge discharging them. The day entry follows the accounts from inside the room and does not choose.
The jury asked on Friday morning for the prescription bottles and the knife. Whether all of that material was in evidence decides what could lawfully be sent in to the jury room, and the two accounts of it point different ways.
The bottles and the knife were exhibits admitted during the trial that had simply not gone back with the rest when the jury first retired, the pills being narcotics and the knife a weapon, and both were sent in once the jury asked for them.
On Kevin Reddington's account to Boston 25's reporter at the courthouse, one of the bottles was found in a nightstand and was not entered in evidence, and a second had been in the console of Patrick Clancy's truck and was surrendered to the police.
The Associated Press, in the file it rewrote on Friday evening, describes what the jurors asked for as bags of empty prescription bottles found in the house.
Open. Three descriptions of the same material. The Boston Globe has exhibits admitted at trial, held back from the jury room because the pills are narcotics and the knife a weapon. Boston 25 has counsel tracing one bottle to a nightstand and saying it was never in evidence, another to the truck console. The Associated Press has bags of empty bottles found in the house. The first two may describe different things: what the jury was sent, and the history of the medication as counsel recounted it. Nothing about the request or the answer was said in open court, so no account from the bench settles it.
Dawn Light's arraignment is a collateral proceeding, not part of the Clancy trial itself, but the two accounts name different courts and neither has been withdrawn.
Light was charged with aggravated intimidation of a witness and was scheduled to be arraigned in Plymouth District Court.
Light was arraigned in Plymouth Superior Court, pleaded not guilty and was released on her promise to return to court October 15.
Open. The Globe's early account said the arraignment was scheduled for District Court; CBS Boston's account of the arraignment itself names Superior Court. The Globe's later report of the arraignment names the presiding judge as Shelby M. Smith, distinct from Sullivan, who presides over the Clancy trial itself — a detail that bears on which court sat, but neither outlet states the court explicitly in that report. Unresolved.
The two versions name a different victim class of the same statute, witness versus juror, which is a material difference in a charging document even though it does not change the underlying conduct alleged.
Light was charged with aggravated intimidation of a witness.
Light was charged with aggravated intimidation of a juror.
Light was charged with intimidating witnesses, jurors, or individuals furnishing information in connection with criminal proceedings, elsewhere in the same article calling it intimidation of a jury member.
Open. boston.com's fuller phrasing matches the Massachusetts statute's own title, which covers both witnesses and jurors, but no outlet has published the charging document itself. Unresolved.
Whether the trial has ended in a mistrial or is still paused mid-declaration is the difference between the case being over and the case continuing, and the site must not assert either outcome without certainty.
A mistrial was declared, full stop.
Sullivan said he believed he had no option but to declare a mistrial and the jury was brought in to be told, but Reddington then won an hour's pause to seek a stay from the SJC before a mistrial is declared, leaving finality unresolved as of this writing.
CNN revised its account seventeen minutes later, now reporting Sullivan said he intends to declare a mistrial and has given the defense an hour to seek an emergency SJC appeal -- matching the Globe's framing rather than its own earlier one.
Resolved. A single SJC justice heard and denied Reddington's stay motion by about 2:20 p.m.; Sullivan then denied a further defense request, and both the Boston Globe and CNN reported the mistrial was declared shortly after, with the jury brought into the courtroom. The trial has ended without a verdict.
The claim that the lone holdout admitted a reasonable doubt and still would not acquit is the basis on which Reddington has called him a juror who would not follow the law, and it colors how the renewed motion for a required finding and any retrial decision are read. The only account attributed to the juror himself denies it, and that account is secondhand.
The holdout admitted in the jury room that he had a reasonable doubt, and then said he still would not find her not guilty by reason of insanity; the foreperson's note to the judge during deliberations reported the same thing.
The juror never had any doubts: he thought the evidence proved Clancy knew what she was doing and had planned it, and was cut off in the jury room as though he had doubts when he tried to lay out other theories of the evidence.
Open. The juror's own statement, issued under his name on September 17 through a representative, denies in the first person what the foreperson reported: he says he had no doubts at all. The two accounts cannot both be right and neither is checkable. Deliberations are secret, the foreperson's note to the judge has been described but not published, and his lawyer says he will give no interviews. Sullivan questioned each juror at sidebar after the note and let deliberations continue.
The motion is the first filing that puts the holdout juror's record and phone use before the court, and the date fixes what Reddington had in hand when he wrote it: the juror's record was reported on September 15 and his own statement came on September 17, so a September 16 paper sits between the two, while a Friday or Monday filing follows both.
Filed Friday, September 18; on the docket but not on the court website Monday morning.
Filed Monday, September 21.
A September 16 filing.
The document carries all three dates: it is dated September 16 above Reddington's signature, the clerk's filed stamp reads September 18, and it was released by the court and first reported on Monday, September 21.
Resolved by the document. The motion, published in full by Fox News on the afternoon of September 21, is dated September 16 over Reddington's signature and bears a clerk's stamp of September 18, and ABC News reports the court released it on Monday, September 21. The three dates in the reporting are the date typed on the paper, the date it was filed and the day it became public, each read by a different outlet. Sullivan has not ruled on it (Boston Globe, corrected 4:37 p.m.); it asks to be heard September 29.
The argument that unsealing the deadlock notes would chill future jurors is the Commonwealth's stated position on the record the double jeopardy motion depends on, and attributing it to the wrong trial prosecutor misstates who argued it.
Jennifer Sprague argued against releasing the jury notes, warning of a chilling effect.
Shanan Buckingham opposed the motion, saying events outside the courtroom had chilled jurors' willingness to serve.
Open. The quotations differ between the accounts, so both prosecutors may have spoken to the motion; no outlet read for this index says so. Sullivan took the motion under advisement.
The double jeopardy motion to dismiss is the filing that could end the case without a retrial. Whether it is already under advisement or still to be argued on November 2 changes what that hearing is for and when a ruling could come.
Argument on the motion was postponed to November 2 at the Commonwealth's request for more time to respond.
Sullivan took the double jeopardy motion under advisement.
Open. Five accounts, two of them written from the room, describe the motion being put off to November 2; WBUR's filed story alone describes it as under advisement. No outlet read for this index reconciles the two.
The Commonwealth's gag-order motion rests on Reddington's public remarks about the holdout juror. Whether this remark was about the juror or about the juror's lawyer bears on that dispute.
He said it of Edward Paltzik, the holdout juror's lawyer.
He said it of the holdout juror, without naming him.
Open. Both outlets quote the same words from Reddington's remarks to reporters outside court; they attribute the target differently, and neither account read for this index settles it.