Andrea Yates
Andrea Yates, born on July 2, 1964, in Houston, Texas, is known for the tragic murder of her five children on June 20, 2001. Raised in a devout Roman Catholic family, Yates initially experienced a happy childhood and achieved academic success, becoming a registered nurse after her education. However, her life took a downturn as she struggled with severe mental health issues, exacerbated by the pressures of motherhood and her husband's strict religious beliefs, which emphasized traditional gender roles and large families.
Yates's mental health deteriorated after the birth of her children, leading to multiple hospitalizations and a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. Following the death of her father and her refusal to take medication while pregnant, her condition worsened. In a tragic act, she drowned her children—Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary—in the family's bathtub, believing she was saving them from eternal damnation.
Yates was initially convicted of capital murder but had her conviction overturned in 2005 due to flawed testimony during her trial. In a subsequent trial, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has since been undergoing treatment at a mental health facility. The case sparked widespread debate on mental illness, parenting, and the influence of fundamentalist beliefs, with many questioning the role of her husband, Russell Yates, in her mental decline. The case remains a poignant reflection on the complexities surrounding mental health and familial obligations.
Subject Terms
Andrea Yates
- Born: July 2, 1964
- Place of Birth: Houston, Texas
AMERICAN MURDERER
MAJOR OFFENSE: Murder of her five children
ACTIVE: June 20, 2001
SENTENCE: Life sentence; conviction overturned in 2005
Early Life
Andrea Pia Kennedy, known by her married name of Andrea Yates (AN-dree-ah yayts), was born on July 2, 1964, in Houston, Texas. Raised in a Roman Catholic family, she had a happy childhood. She was high school class valedictorian, and she jogged and swam regularly. After graduating from Milby High School in 1982, she attended the University of Houston and University of Texas at Houston, where she majored in nursing. She worked as a registered nurse at a Houston cancer center from 1986 until 1994.
She met Russell “Rusty” Edison Yates in Houston in 1990. They were married on April 17, 1993. Rusty Yates was employed as an engineer with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Andrea Yates continued to work as a nurse until she had her first child, Noah Jack, in 1994.
The couple lived in a house in Houston until 1993; they then lived in a travel trailer and bus. Yates bore four other children and had one miscarriage. She reportedly became increasingly reclusive and overtly religious while she homeschooled her children. Her husband subscribed to a fundamentalist philosophy of marriage, insisting that his wife defer to him, give up her job, and not use birth control. The couple believed that a woman’s children would go to hell for her sins if she did not repent, and Yates was consumed with guilt for her inability to deal with her struggles with mental illness. The family did not have babysitters. Rusty Yates, who later admitted that he never changed a diaper for any of his children, left all childcare to his wife.
Criminal Career
During the course of their marriage, Yates was treated for her deteriorating mental state. After the birth of her first child, she reported seeing Satan and images of death. She became increasingly thin, evasive, detached, isolated, and consumed with religious righteousness; she attempted suicide during depressive episodes. She first attempted suicide on June 17, 1999, by overdosing on pills. She was treated in a psychiatric unit and was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. She was released with a prescription for antidepressants, but she did not take the medication.
Yates stopped feeding her children and began to report hallucinations to her husband. She later threatened to slit her own throat with a knife and was hospitalized after going into a catatonic state. While there, she was successfully treated with antipsychotic medication and therapy for postpartum depression. Before she was released from the hospital, doctors warned her that having more children could put her health at risk. As she cared for her four children in the family bus, she became increasingly obsessed with fundamentalist Christian teachings.
At the urging of his wife's family, Rusty Yates purchased a home in late 1999. Yates's mental state appeared to improve dramatically. However, in March 2000, she stopped taking her medication because she was pregnant again. Four months after the birth of her daughter, Yates's father died suddenly, sending her into a deep depression. She mutilated herself, lost her appetite, stopped caring for her children, and refused to speak to her family.
After two more brief hospitalizations and treatment with antipsychotic medications, Yates was again released. Two days after a meeting with her psychiatrist, she took her children one by one to her bathroom, where she drowned them; she then laid them out on her bed. Her four sons and one daughter--Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary--were aged from six months to seven years. Yates then calmly called police to request an officer and then called her husband and told him to come home.
Legal Action and Outcome
Yates was charged with five counts of capital murder for the drowning of her children. She gave a detailed confession to police, saying that she killed her children to save them from Hell. During her seventeen-day trial, numerous psychiatrists testified that Yates was not competent, was mentally defective, and was in a psychotic state when she killed her children. California psychiatrist Park Dietz, a prosecution witness, testified that Yates was mimicking an episode of the television series Law and Order during which a woman was acquitted of killing her children by drowning them.
Yates was convicted of capital murder on March 12, 2002, for the deaths of three of her children but was spared the death penalty. Instead, she was sentenced to life in prison on March 15. Americans were torn over the verdict, with many arguing for treatment for her mental illness instead.
In early 2005, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed Yates’s conviction after finding that Dietz’s testimony about the Law and Order episode was factually incorrect; no such episode ever aired. The appeals court found that Dietz’s testimony might have influenced the jury. A new trial was ordered.
On January 9, 2006, Yates pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder charges. On July 26, a jury of six men and six women found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Yates underwent several months of evaluation prior to being assigned to Kerrville State Hospital, a mental health facility, for treatment in January 2007.
Yates has been eligible for annual competency reviews to determine if she can leave Kerrville State Hospital. Her attorney said in 2022 that she waived every hearing.
Impact
The Yates case was a polarizing one for many Americans and brought discussions of homeschooling, the isolation of the mentally ill woman, and the role of fundamentalist Christianity in the tragic deaths of the children into a public forum. Some, including many feminists, characterized Rusty Yates as an abuser for “forcing” his wife to continue to have children despite warnings from medical professionals. Rusty was also vilified by public opinion, as many considered him an accessory to his children’s deaths. Others were shocked that a mother could bring such lethal harm to her own children.
Rusty in turn blamed the deaths of his children on poor medical care of Yates and on insurance companies; he supported his wife throughout her trials but maintained that her insanity case was “built on lies.” Yates’s family blamed Rusty for her mental deterioration and called him insensitive and apathetic. They supported charges of negligent homicide and child endangerment being brought against Rusty, but prosecutors never pursued these charges. Rusty divorced Andrea in March 2005. He remarried in March 2006.
Bibliography
Hanson, Kait. "Andrea Yates, Who Drowned Her 5 Kids, Declines Release Hearing from Mental Hospital, Again." Today, 6 Apr. 2022, www.today.com/parents/moms/andrea-yates-mental-hospital-review-rcna23250. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.
O’Malley, Suzanne. Are You There Alone? The Unspeakable Crime of Andrea Yates. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Spencer, Suzy. Breaking Point. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002.