Andrea Yates (born July 2, 1964) a former Houston, Texas resident, is known for killing her five young children on June 20, 2001 by drowning them in the bathtub in her house. She had been suffering for years with very severe postpartum depression and psychosis. Her case placed the M'Naghten Rules, a legal test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States. Yates's 2002 conviction of capital murder and sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years was later overturned on appeal. On July 26, 2006, a Texas jury ruled Yates to be not guilty by reason of insanity. She was consequently committed by the court to the North Texas State Hospital, Vernon Campus, a high-security mental health facility in Vernon, Texas, where she received medical treatment and was a roommate of Dena Schlosser, another woman who committed filicide. In January 2007, Yates was moved to a low security state mental hospital in Kerrville, Texas.
Overview
Andrea Yates was born in Houston, Texas to Jutta Karin Koehler, a German immigrant, and Andrew Emmett Kennedy, whose parents were born in Ireland. Andrea has one older brother, Andrew. Kennedy attended Milby High School, where she graduated as class valedictorian in 1982. After meeting Russell "Rusty" Yates, a computer programmer for NASA, at Auburn University in 1984, the couple married on April 17, 1993 and moved to the community of Clear Lake City, in southeast Houston.
Although Andrea was originally raised Roman Catholic, she and Randy announced at their 1993 wedding that they "would seek to have as many babies as nature allowed", a cornerstone of their newly shared religious beliefs, which were formed by the itinerant preacher Michael Peter Woroniecki. In 1998, after three children and one miscarriage, Andrea began showing outward signs of exhaustion.
In May 1998, the Yateses were in Florida, and they visited there with the family of their preacher. Woroniecki verbally chastised Andrea and her husband, telling them that despite many years of counsel under his ministry, they were still "headed for hell." Russell would soon have a falling out with Woroniecki over the dilapidated bus he had purchased from the preacher while in Florida, but Andrea would continue to correspond with the Woronieckis through to the spring of 1999, when she received several condemning and pressuring letters from them.
In July 1999, Yates succumbed to a nervous breakdown, which culminated in two suicide attempts and two psychiatric hospitalizations that summer. She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. She was successfully treated and discharged in January 2000.
Her first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, testified that she urged the couple not to have more children, as it would "guarantee future psychotic depression". The Yateses conceived their fifth and final child approximately 7 weeks after her discharge.
Yates' mental illness resurfaced in March 2001, the same month her father died. Yates became so incapacitated that she required immediate hospitalization. On April 1, 2001 she came under the care of Dr. Mohammed Saeed. She was treated and released. On May 3, 2001, she degenerated back into a "near catatonic" state and drew a bath in the middle of the day; Andrea would later confess to police that she had planned to drown the children that day, but had decided against doing it then. Andrea was hospitalized the next day after a scheduled doctor visit; her psychiatrist determined she was probably suicidal and had filled the tub to drown herself.
Yates continued under Dr. Saeed's care until June 20, 2001, when her husband left for work, leaving Andrea alone to watch their five children against Dr. Saaed's instructions to supervise her around the clock. Mr. Yates' mother, Dora Yates, had been scheduled by Russell to arrive an hour later to take over for Andrea. In the space of that hour, Andrea Yates drowned all five of her children.
The drownings
On June 20, 2001, after her husband left for work at 9:00 a.m., Yates filled the family bathtub and drowned her three youngest sons, Luke, Paul and John. She placed their bodies next to each other on a bed, placing an arm of each boy over another. The infant, Mary, had been in the bathroom in her bassinet, crying. When the oldest child, Noah, entered the room, Mary's body was still in the bathtub; after asking his mother what was wrong with Mary, he attempted to flee. Yates caught him and drowned him next to Mary. Yates took Mary into the other room, laid her next to the first three, and covered all four with a sheet. Yates left Noah in the tub.
Yates called 9-1-1 and calmly asked for a police officer to come, asking for an ambulance only after it was suggested by the operator. She then called her husband at work, ordering him to come home. Russell pressed her until she told him she had hurt the children. When Russell rushed home, he found police and medical personnel had already surrounded his house.
Russell was kept waiting outside for five hours as the medical examiner processed the children's bodies.
Yates received the officers at the door, telling them she had just killed her children. She led them to the master bedroom where they found the four youngest children covered with a sheet, lying face up on the bed, eyes still open. Noah was discovered by another officer face down in the bathtub. Yates calmly explained what she had done, and offered no resistance to the officers as she was led away.
All five children were buried on June 28, 2001.
Trials
Although the defense's expert testimony agreed that Yates was psychotic, Texas law requires that, in order to successfully assert the insanity defense, the defendant must prove that he or she could not discern right from wrong at the time of the crime. In March 2002, a jury rejected the insanity defense and found Yates guilty. Although the prosecution had sought the death penalty, the jury refused that option. The trial court sentenced Yates to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole in 40 years.
On January 6, 2005, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the convictions, because California psychiatrist and prosecution witness Dr. Park Dietz admitted he had given materially false testimony during the trial. Dietz stated that shortly before the killings, an episode of Law & Order had aired featuring a woman who drowned her children and was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity. Author Suzanne O'Malley, who was covering the trial for Oprah magazine and had previously been a writer for Law & Order, immediately reported that no such episode existed; the appellate court held that the jury may have been influenced by his false testimony and that thus a new trial would be necessary. (Later, in 2004, Law & Order: Criminal Intent did air the episode "Magnificat", based in part on Yates' case.)
On January 9, 2006, Yates again entered pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity. On February 1, 2006, she was granted release on bail on the condition that she be admitted to a mental health treatment facility.
On July 26, 2006, after three days of deliberations, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity, as defined by the state of Texas. She was thereafter committed to the North Texas State Hospital - Vernon Campus. In January 2007, Yates was moved to a low security state mental hospital in Kerrville, Texas.
Responsibility for children's deaths
Russell Yates
According to trial testimony in 2006, Dr. Saeed advised Russell Yates not to leave his patient unattended. Without consulting the doctor about his plans, and against medical advice, Mr. Yates began leaving his wife alone with the children in the weeks leading up to the drownings. Russell had announced to a family gathering the weekend before the drownings that he had decided to leave Andrea home alone for an hour each morning and evening, so that she would not become totally dependent on him and his mother for her maternal responsibilities. Andrea Yates' brother, Brian Kennedy, told Larry King on a broadcast of CNN's Larry King Live that Russell expressed to him in 2001 while transporting her to Devereux treatment facility that all depressed people needed was a "swift kick in the pants" to get them motivated. Mrs. Yates' mother, Jutta Karin Kennedy, expressed shock when she heard of Russell's plan while at the dinner gathering with them, saying that she wasn't stable enough to care for the children. She noted that her daughter demonstrated she wasn't in her right mind when she nearly choked her still-toothless infant Mary by trying to feed her solid food. According to authors Suzy Spencer and Suzanne O'Malley, who investigated the Yates story in great detail, it was during a phone call Dr. Saeed made to Russell Yates during the breaking news of the killings that he first learned that Andrea was not being supervised full time.
On August 16, 1999, during an office visit with the Yateses, Andrea's first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, says she was shocked to disbelief when the Yates expressed a desire to discontinue Andrea's medications so that she could become pregnant again. She warned and counseled the couple against having more children, and noted in the medical record two days later, '"Apparently patient and husband plan to have as many babies as nature will allow! This will surely guarantee future psychotic depression."' Nevertheless, Andrea Yates became pregnant with her fifth child, Mary, only 7 weeks after being discharged from Dr. Starbranch's care on January 12, 2000. Despite Russell Yates' statements to the media that he w
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