Margaret Hamp, the labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital who had worked with Clancy for about seven years, stopped by the courthouse today.
She was just taken inside the courtroom – likely to see Clancy – by Reddington’s private investigator Bob Jones.
She was in for only a few minutes before he escorted her back out again.
Hamp was the first defense witness who described her as ‘compassionate’ and ‘really good at being a nurse.’
‘She was really compassionate. She was kind. She was the kind of nurse you wanted taking care of you,’ Hamp testified.
She also testified about a conversation they once had about Andrea Yates.
There was a patient who came to the hospital and had plans to harm herself when she was pregnant.
Clancy had just started that summer at the hospital and they spoke about postpartum mental illnesses, she said.
The nurse said she asked her if she knew about the Andrea Yates case.
Clancy said she didn’t. When Hamp told her, she said that Clancy had cried and asked: ‘How could a mother hurt her children?’
Clancy’s case has been compared to Yates.
Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in Texas in 2001. Her attorneys said she suffered from postpartum psychosis and believed killing her children would save them from hell.
Her initial murder conviction was overturned, and in a retrial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state mental hospital.
