Lindsay Clancy's $54,000 Expert Said This After the Beast Question

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:11)
Getting closer to the end of the Lindsay Clancy trial, and in one of the final days, Kevin Reddington looked at the prosecution's expert witness on August 25th and asked him a question that had nothing to do with psychiatry. Would you agree with me, sir, that before you met Lindsay in Tewkesbury, you pretty much had an idea that this woman was a beast who killed her three kids? Kirk Heilbrun didn't hesitate. I would not agree with you at all, he told Reddington. I did my best to have an open mind. Over the next several hours, the man the Commonwealth hired to prove Lindsay Clancy is criminally responsible, told twelve jurors, she tried hard to get help, that she was a good mother, that she's still grieving her children. And then he told those same jurors she knew what she was doing when she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan. By the time the prosecution's final witness finished, the jury had heard something else, a crack in the voice. That's the only thing standing between Lindsay Clancy and a life sentence. And that crack started with a bowl of chicken nuggets sitting on a couch. Heyburn had been on the stand since Monday. He'd interviewed Clancy for roughly 10 hours over three days at Tewkesbury Hospital, reviewed more case records than he'd ever had in his career, and concluded she had bipolar II disorder, not psychosis. On August 25th, he delivered the conclusion the prosecution brought him in for. Clancy was criminally responsible. She retained an awareness of the illegality of killing others, including killing her children. But Heyburn didn't stop there. That's probably where the prosecution was like, great, get him off the stand. And then he said more.
His full opinion carried a qualification the prosecution may wish had stayed in his notes. Her moral awareness of the wrongfulness of this killing, he testified, was influenced by her strong desire to die. And if she were dead, not to leave her children behind. It's not a clean verdict, nothing about this case is clean. That's a man telling jurors that Lindsay Clancy retained just enough moral awareness to be legally responsible, maybe, while acknowledging that her judgment was bent by ass despair and a mother's refusal to abandon her children even in death. And Hebron walked through her visit to the postpartum day program at Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island in late December of 22 She wasn't accepted. The staff determined her issues were not postpartum related. Reddington suggested the hospital turned her away because she was overmedicated. Hebron described Clancy as someone who had spent most of her life disciplined and even a strong student, a hard worker. Between October 22 and January 23, he testified, she seemed to be doing her best, talking to doctors, talking to therapists. And it wasn't enough. Then he said what the prosecution almost certainly didn't need on the record. She is still grieving. Hebron told the jury, she's still in mourning for those kids. He continued, she used language like I have lost everything and I don't want to be here. I would not think of Lindsay Clancy as someone who is really self-centered or oriented only to herself. She is grieving her children.
Reddington's cross-examination was designed to make the jury distrust the man who just delivered that verdict. He started with the money. Hebron testified that he had billed 180 hours at $300 an hour, approximately $54,000 so far. With the final number expected to be higher, Reddington walked the jury through Hebron's extensive resume and then found a hole in it. Had Hebron ever written a single article about a woman experiencing postpartum psychosis? He had not. The expert that was brought in to talk about postpartum psychosis didn't really have a lot of experience with postpartum psychosis, allegedly. When was the last time he treated a patient with the condition?
Around 1982, 44 years ago, Reddington brought up a decades-old article Hebron had co-authored with his father as a research assistant. Initially describing it as being about postpartum psychosis, Hebron corrected him, it was about schizophrenia. Oh, it wasn't even about that. Reddington corrected the error, but the damage was already framed for the jury. The prosecution's lead expert on whether Clancy had postpartum psychosis had no published work on this subject and hasn't treated it in over four decades, never really even treated it at all.
He also flagged that both Hebron and the prosecution's first expert, Mack, are affiliated with the same firm, Patrick Dietz and Associates, two prosecution experts from the same shop, two different diagnoses, which is interesting, and a combined bill the Commonwealth is still paying.