Witnesses

Totals reported: "more than 70" [S2]; "more than 80, 74 Commonwealth and 10 defense" [S29]. Nearly 200 names were on the pretrial witness list [S6].

Part of that gap is explained: on 2026-08-04, outside the jury's presence, the defense stipulated to chain of custody for blood, fluids, the bands and DNA. Reddington said the stipulation "relieves the government of having to bring in dozens, if not more, witnesses." [S33] So the pretrial list was never going to be called in full.

This file names 66 witnesses of the 85 CBS counted, 74 for the Commonwealth including three rebuttal experts and 10 for the defense over five days [S107][S116]. The Globe counted 84 [S68]. CBS numbered the Commonwealth's witnesses as they were called: Sarah Carney was the 58th on 08-07, Julie Paul the 61st on 08-11 [S100][S102]. The lists at trial's start ran to 182 and 65 names [S111].

Roster

All dates are 2026. Every row is TEST.

The six forensic experts are treated separately in 05-experts.md.

Fact witnesses of consequence

Patrick Clancy TEST

See 02-timeline-patrick.md. Called first by the Commonwealth, cross-examined at length by the defense, and load-bearing for both. [S3][S6]

The first responders TEST

Hall, Josephine, Hussey and Stratton established the physical scene without contest: three children in the basement, each with an exercise band around the neck, only Callan with a faint pulse, and Lindsay outside with wrist and neck wounds after the fall. Hall wept on the stand. STIP [S18][S29]

Dr. Kimberly Springer, state medical examiner TEST

Performed all three autopsies. Callan's cause of death: complications of mechanical asphyxia; he died three days later. Testimony on Cora and Dawson included head injuries associated with neck trauma. Autopsy photographs were shown to jurors on individual screens and barred from public release. Clancy wept through it and said "I can't do this"; the trial paused twice. At least one juror was seen crying. [S7][S10][S12]

Dr. Lindsay Rosshirt, pediatrician TEST

Saw Cora for a routine annual physical the morning of 01-24 and recommended MiraLAX. All three children were healthy; Dawson had a controlled peanut allergy, Cora controlled asthma. She never observed postpartum issues in Lindsay, who appeared an attentive parent. [S10]

Both sides used her. The Commonwealth: Clancy conducted a normal medical appointment hours before, and the MiraLAX recommendation became the pharmacy errand. The defense: the pediatrician saw nothing, which fits a pattern of clinicians missing what was happening. [S10][S28]

Dr. Jhilam Biswas, forensic psychiatrist TEST

Met Clancy in hospital on 2023-01-26, two days after. She was on a ventilator and could not speak, so she wrote her answers on paper. She wrote that she was "horrified" and asked for an attorney, and also wrote "is my body broken," "are my legs straight," asked whether she could have visitors and where her family was. Biswas found her anxious but understanding the questions, with no signs of psychosis or hallucinations. On cross: the interaction lasted 20 to 30 minutes. [S57]

The Commonwealth used the "horrified" note and the request for counsel in argument as evidence she appreciated what she had done. PROS [S60]

Det. John Santos, MSP TEST

Testified to what was in a kitchen cabinet: books and notebooks on postpartum depression and anxiety, a postpartum anxiety workbook with nothing filled in, a notebook listing medications and when to take them, another with handwritten medication notes and dates, and the book Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts. Diary entries read aloud included "I want help. I want to be well." [S57]

Margaret Hamp, labor and delivery nurse colleague TESTdefense

Described Clancy becoming emotional helping strangers give birth: "She would just say, 'That was so beautiful.'" Recalled a day early in Clancy's career when their unit treated a pregnant patient planning to harm herself: "I asked (Clancy) if she had ever heard of the Andrea Yates case and she hadn't. I explained that to her and she cried, and she said: 'How could a mother hurt her children?'" [S58]

Sherri Crook, MSP Crime Lab blood-spatter analyst TEST

The most consequential physical-evidence witness for the Commonwealth. No evidence blood sprayed into the bedroom at any point; the drips and puddles were "more suggestive of someone standing still and letting blood run down onto the floor than someone slashing an artery." This contradicts Patrick's "sprayed, almost like with a hose" and underpins the argument that she never truly intended to die. [S33]

Dr. Cristina Carpio, trauma surgeon, South Shore Hospital TEST

Received Clancy as a Level 1 trauma patient after a roughly 20-foot fall, with a core temperature of about 82.1 F and complex, unstable thoracic spine fractures, and med-flighted her to Brigham and Women's. On the self-inflicted wounds: they went through skin and exposed fat, but were "superficial," she "did not have deep cuts on her wrists," and the lacerations needed no further treatment. She is the closest thing in the record to a direct answer on the severity of the cuts, and she was missing from this corpus until 2026-09-05. [S237][S238]

Sheila Cavanaugh, chaplain, Brigham and Women's TEST

Board-certified chaplain, seven years; previously sixteen years at Fidelity Investments, latterly as a senior vice president; master's in theology. She first saw Clancy the morning of 2023-01-25, "covered in medical armor." On 2023-01-31, the day after extubation, Clancy told her "I am so glad my children are safe," and alluded to having heard a voice: male, persistent, commanding that if she did not follow it, neither she nor her children would be safe. Cavanaugh went on to visit her about 200 times at Tewksbury, and testified the voice came up several times.

Why the date matters. This places a description of the voice on 2023-01-31, four days before Zeizel first reached her on 02-04 and six before the 02-06 call to Patrick, and from a witness retained by nobody. It is the earliest account of the voice in the corpus and it substantially weakens any argument that the voice first appears downstream of the defense team.

Sprague's cross, which is the answer to that. Cavanaugh documented Clancy's emotional states and specific fears in her notes and never recorded anything about the voice, though she said it came up repeatedly. She attributed the omission to chaplain-patient confidentiality. So the earliest account is also undocumented, and comes from a witness who by trial had visited the defendant roughly two hundred times. TEST Cavanaugh [S220]

Note the tension with the clinicians. On 2023-01-30 Dr. Shah recorded that she denied hallucinations and was organized and goal-directed [S57]. On 2023-01-31 she described a voice to the chaplain. One day apart.

Ian Whiffin, forensic examiner TEST

The Commonwealth's final witness, of Cellebrite, previously an expert in the Karen Read trial. Corrected 2026-09-05 against the Day 14 transcript [S210]: the watch reported heart rate to 5:23:52 pm (57 bpm, against her own daily range of roughly 50 to 122 and an average in the "high 80s, early 90s"); the iPhone logged flight climbs at 5:03 pm and 5:33 pm and stopped logging at 5:38 pm. Flight climbs record ascents only, never descents. The iPhone was last unlocked at 5:13 pm and never again after 5:16 pm; the 5:34 pm outbound call of about 14 seconds was placed from the lock screen. On cross Reddington established the post-5:38 blackout and impeached him with his own June 2025 blog post on Apple Health accuracy. The tightest timestamps in the case. [S39]

Sgt. Dan Lawlor, MSP TEST

Guarded her hospital room door at Brigham and Women's, where she was allowed no visitors and no contact. Testified that Zeizel was admitted on a court order Reddington had obtained, and that the door was closed during the visit. On cross he agreed he understood the prosecution's theory to be that Zeizel encouraged Clancy to call Patrick and claim she heard voices. On redirect, Buckingham established Lawlor had never discussed the theory with prosecutors; his understanding came from the lead detective. [S38]

Det. Sgt. Andrew Chiachio, MSP TEST

Mapped Patrick's route, pulled CVS and ThreeV surveillance, executed the 2023-06-12 warrant for the shingles, collected DNA at Tewksbury on 2024-05-15, and served a warrant on the Facebook account "Lindsay Marie Clancy" and the "Parenting For Littles" group. On cross he confirmed investigators searched extensively for evidence of child abuse and found none. [S10]

The digital forensics pair TEST

Pavao on the laptop and Chiappini on the phone supplied the Commonwealth's planning evidence and, on cross, some of the defense's best moments. The suicide-methods visit of 2022-08-23 was on a computer that belonged to Patrick, and Pavao could not say who was searching. [S3][S7] The phone evidence is set out in 01-timeline-night-of.md.

The friends, family and teachers TEST

A striking feature of the Commonwealth's own case: nearly every lay witness it called described a devoted mother. Rossi, "I observed a wonderful mom who loved her kids." Hennigan, "very loving caring mother," and "Lindsay was always hopeful." DeCollibus, "warm, kind, loving." Christopher Clancy, a "devoted mother," and an "all-American family." Williams, "a loving mother who cared for her children." [S10][S29]

The same witnesses supplied the deterioration: weight loss, insomnia, sleeping in the basement, brain fog, a blank stare at Thanksgiving, and Clancy telling DeCollibus at Cora's birthday party on 01-23 that she felt like "a zombie." [S10][S29]

Two moments from this group carry real weight:

Christopher Clancy and the dinner invitation. He testified that he and his wife were invited to dinner at the Clancy home on the night of the killings and declined because they had other plans, agreeing to meet that Friday instead. Elicited by the Commonwealth. [S44]

Amy Bevins and the rehab visit. She visited in March 2023. ADA Sprague: "At any point in time did she mention the death of her children?" Bevins: "No." Sprague: "At any point in time did she break down in tears and cry about her children?" Bevins: "No." On cross, Reddington had her clarify that the subject was never raised at all: "I remember also being told not to bring that up specifically. I figured that could be due to the recommendation of mental health providers." [S44] This is the same fight that recurs over Resnick's daily-crying testimony and Mack's flat-affect observation: whether her restraint was absence of grief or instructed silence.

Susan Clancy, former mother-in-law TESTdefense

A former labor and delivery nurse who helped connect Lindsay to South Shore Health's Perinatal Behavioral Health Program. "She was begging for help." Her testimony triggered the Catholicism line of questioning that produced the trial's second mistrial motion. See 07-legal-issues.md. [S15][S16]

Sheila Cavanaugh, chaplain TESTdefense

Met Clancy roughly 200 times across multiple facilities. Testified Clancy "alluded to hearing a voice" which "told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe," and recounted her saying "I am so glad my children are safe." She noted her chaplain notes are not verbatim transcripts and did not document the voice disclosure in the hospital records. That omission was available to the Commonwealth's inconsistency argument. [S15][S29]