Dr Kirk Heilbrun told the jury on Monday that when he was interviewing the 𝘬iᩚll, he noted she was Catholic and said to her, ‘Isn’t sᩚuᩚiᩚcide a mortal sin?’
Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, objected and the judge ordered a sidebar.
After a short break, the court resumed and Reddington asked the judge for a mistrial.
He accused the prosecution of intentional misconduct based on the line of questioning regarding mortal sin.
Judge William Sullivan denied the motion but told the jury that they must disregard the statement.
‘This has obviously been a long trial for everyone involved,’ Reddington said.
But he said that this marks the that the state has asked the question around mortal sin – bringing up religion.
Lindsay Clancy, 36, is on trial for the murders of her three children
Judge William Sullivan denied the motion, but told the jury that they must disregard the statement
Last week, the prosecution asked Patrick’s mother, Sue Clancy, if she was Catholic. When she said yes, ᴀssistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham asked her if she knew that murder was a mortal sin.
Reddington did not request a mistrial last week but he said that he feels that he has to because the state has done it again.
‘At this point, this is a concern I have. This is over the top,’ Reddington said. ‘I believe it was intentional misconduct.’
This marks the second time that the state has brought up the matter of mortal sin. Under state law, a witness’s religious beliefs or opinions are not admissible to attack or support the witness’s credibility.
Dr Kirk Heilbrun testified on Monday that when he was interviewing Clancy, he noted she was Catholic and said to her, ‘Isn’t sᩚuᩚiᩚcide a mortal sin?’
The judge denied the motion but said that he would tell the jury they must disregard it. He also warned the state that they need to ‘strongly’ talk to the witness.
‘[Religion] cannot be considered. It must be disregarded,’ the judge said firmly to the jury. Several jurors looked surprised.
The jury was then excused for the day.
Heilbrun testified that he believed Clancy was not in psychosis when she killed the children, but was severely suicidal.
He said that Clancy’s 18-minute singular ‘auditory command hallucination’ at the time that she killed her children was one that she had never experienced before, which was ‘highly unusual’ in his expert opinion.
Heilbrun also said that the phrase Clancy said to her children when she killed them also points to altruistic filicide.
Clancy’s defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, accused the prosecution of intentional misconduct
Lindsay Clancy, 36, strangled five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan with exercise bands inside the family’s Duxbury, Mᴀssachusetts, home in January 2023.
Altruistic filicide is the killing of one’s children out of love, when the disturbed mind believes that they would be better off ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.
Clancy said to her children as she strangled them, ‘Go to God, baby,’ according to Heilbrun.
He said that was part of her expectation that she and the youngsters would be together in heaven.
‘She was raised as a Catholic and this as I understand Catholic considerations that’s not necessarily what happens,’ Heilbrun said.
‘But when I ask her about that, when I said, “Isn’t sᩚuᩚiᩚcide a mortal sin?”‘ he continued before Reddington’s objection.
Heilbrun’s testimony comes after defense witness Dr Phillip Resnick said on Friday that Clancy was ‘frankly psycH๏τic’ when she killed her children.
Resnick also noted that he believed that Clancy was driven either by ‘altruistic filicide’ or ‘acutely psycH๏τic filicide.’
Before Reddington filed for the mistrial, he was seen conferring with his team inside the courtroom, including psychologist Dr Paul Zeizel and his son Patrick Reddington.
He also spoke with his longtime friend and fellow attorney Jay Carney, who represented Whitey Bulger.
When asked by the Daily Mail last week whether he would ask for a mistrial over the question to Sue, Reddington said, ‘Why would I want a new trial?’
Heilbrun also said that the phrase Clancy said to her children when she killed them also points to altruistic filicide
The judge said he expects testimony from reʙuттal witnesses to continue on Tuesday, then a hearing on the charges.
Closing statements are expected on Wednesday.
Clancy, 36, is on trial for the murders of Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, at her home in Duxbury, , in 2023.
She strangled the children with exercise bands and then allegedly attempted to kill herself, but her efforts failed and left her paralyzed and in a wheelchair for life.
Clancy has admitted to killing her children but pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of insanity, citing postpartum psychosis, and is seeking to be committed to a state mєntal health facility rather than face a prison sentence.
This is a breaking news story…
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
