True Crime Society - Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub

Andrea was born Andrea Pia Kennedy on July 2, 1965 in Houston, Texas. She was the youngest of five children. Her parents were Jutta Koehler (a German immigrant) and Andrew Kennedy. Andrew’s parents were Irish immigrants.

During high school, Andrea was said to struggle with bulimia and depression and spoke to a friend about her suicidal thoughts when she was 17. She signed a friend’s yearbook as ‘the struggling butterfly.’

She graduated from Milby High School in 1982. Despite her mental health struggles, she was the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team and was also part of the National Honor Society.

After she graduated, Andrea completed a two year pre-nursing program at the University of Houston. She then went on to graduate from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.

Between 1986 and 1994, Andrea worked as a registered nurse at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Andrea did not date anyone until she was 23 years old.

In the summer of 1989, when she was around 25, she met her would-be husband, Russell ‘Rusty’ Yates. Rusty was a NASA engineer. He was also known to be a devout evangelical Christian.

The couple dated for a few years and were married on April 17, 1993.

They purchased a four-bedroom house in Friendswood, Texas, and they told friends and family that they would ‘have as many babies as nature allowed.’ “He was adamant that they were going to have six kids,” neighbor Sylvia Cole told PEOPLE. “She was really meek and easygoing, so I’m not sure if it was a joint decision.”

10 months after they were married, the first child Noah Jacob was born. That was on February 26, 1994. Around that time, Rusty accepted a job offer in Florida and the family moved to a trailer in Seminole.

After the birth of her first child, she was “very happy, very strong,” her longtime friend, Marlene Wark, told the media. She called herself ‘Fertile Myrtle.’

Their second child, John Samuel was born on December 15, 1995.

Their third child, Paul Abraham, was born on September 13, 1997.

After his birth, the family moved back to Houston and lived in a trailer. This decision was made as Rusty wanted to ‘live light.’ Rusty eventually purchased a 350 square foot renovated bus which became their home. Rusty purchased the bus from Michael Woroniecki, a traveling minister. Michael’s religious ideas influenced both Andrea and Rusty. He preached, “the role of women is derived from the sin of Eve and that bad mothers who are going to hell create bad children who will go to hell.” Andrea was so totally captivated by Michael that Rusty and Andrea’s family grew concerned.

Michael was married to a woman named Rachel. Rachel allegedly wrote these letters to Andrea. ‘You are evil. You are wicked. You are a daughter of Eve, who is a wicked witch. The window of opportunity for us to minister to you is closing. You have to repent now.'”

Their fourth child, Luke David, was born on February 15, 1999.

After Luke’s birth, Andrea’s mental health began to decline. In June, Rusty found her shaking and chewing on her fingers. The following day, she attempted suicide by taking an overdose of medication that had been prescribed to her father. She was hospitalized following the incident. After her release, “there was no concern on the hospital’s part that she was a risk to her children, so it was never assigned to a caseworker,” a spokeswoman for Harris County Children’s Protective Services said.

Andrea was prescribed antidepressants and an antipsychotic medication.

Despite being medicated, after she was released from hospital, she held a knife to her neck and begged Rusty to let her die.

Eventually, the medication began to help Andrea and her mental health improved. Rusty moved the family into a small house (wow, thanks), so that they did not have to live in a motor home any longer.

Andrea suffered a nervous breakdown in July 1999. She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis.

Some info about PPP:

Postpartum psychosis (PPP) is a rare but serious mental health condition that affects about 1 to 2 in every 1,000 mothers after childbirth. This translates to a prevalence of approximately 0.1% to 0.2%.

It is a serious mental health condition that can manifest with symptoms like delusions, hallucinations, severe mood swings, and cognitive difficulties.

After her diagnosis, her first psychiatrist, Dr Eileen Starbranch urged both Andrea and Rusty to not have any more children. Dr Starbranch said that any more births would “guarantee future psychotic depression.”

Despite this, Andrea stopped taking her antipsychotic medication in March 2000.

Their fifth and final child, Mary Deborah, was born on November 30, 2000, eight months after Andrea stopped taking her meds. Andrea had now given birth to 5 children in around a 6 year time period.

After Mary’s birth, Andrea seemed to be coping okay for the first few months. On March 12, 2001, Andrea’s father died and she began to spiral. She stopped taking all of her medication, she mutilated and cut herself, read the Bible obsessively and also stopped feeding the children. She said she felt that they had been eating too much previously. Andrea also said that she thought there were video cameras in the ceiling of their home and that people on television were communicating with her and the children.

Neighbor Mike Clay said. “They had five kids. That’s a lot of people in a small space, and she was there 24-7, and home schooling. That’s a lot to handle.”

In April 2001, Andrea went into the car of Dr Mohammed Saeed. He treated her briefly with Haldol but then stopped because he said that she did not seem psychotic. She returned to the doctor in May and was treated for ten days. She was released and told to think positive thoughts and it was recommended that she see a psychologist. .

By May 2001, her mental health had rapidly declined. She was said to be in a ‘near catatonic state’ . On May 3, 2001, Andrea filled the bathtub in the home in the middle of the day. She would later say that she had planned to drown her children that day, but decided against it. She was hospitalized again on May 4. Her psychiatrist determined that she was likely suicidal and assumed that she had planned to drown herself in the bath.

By June 2001, the family were living in Clear Lake City in Houston. Andrea was still under Dr Saeed’s care at that time.

The doctor had advised Rusty to not leave Andrea alone at all. He said that she needed to be supervised at all times. Despite this, on June 20, Rusty left Andrea alone at home with the five babies so that he could go to work. His mother, Dora, was scheduled to arrive at the home one hour after he left in order to assist Andrea.

In that hour, Andrea murdered her five children. She filled the bathtub with water.

The first child she drowned was Paul (3). She then killed Luke (2) and John (5). She laid the bodies of the boys in her bed. She then drowned Mary (6 months old). She left Mary’s body floating in the tub.

Noah – who was 7 years old – came in and asked his mother what was wrong with the baby. He started to try to run and escape but Andrea caught him. She put him in the tub and he fought for his life. He came up for air twice, but Andrea overpowered him and drowned him.

Andrea took Mary’s body and placed her in John’s arms in the bed.

Andrea called 911 and asked for police assistance.

911 Dispatcher “What’s your name?”

Andrea Yates: “Andrea Yates.”

911 Dispatcher “What’s the problem?”

Andrea Yates: “Um, I just need him to come.”

911 Dispatcher “Is your husband there?”

Andrea Yates: “No.”

911 Dispatcher “Well, what’s the problem?”

Andrea Yates: “I need him to come.”

911 Dispatcher “I need to know why we’re coming, ma’am. Is he there standing next to you?”

Andrea Yates: “No.”

911 Dispatcher “She?”

Andrea Yates: “Pardon me?”

911 Dispatcher “Are you having a disturbance? Are you ill or what?”

Andrea Yates: “Um, yes, I’m ill.”

911 Dispatcher “Do you need an ambulance?”

Andrea Yates: “No, I need a police officer. Yeah, send an ambulance.”

911 Dispatcher “What’s the problem?”

Andrea Yates: “Um?”

911 Dispatcher “Hello?”

Andrea Yates: “I just need a police officer.”

She then called Rusty and told him to come home straight away. This info is from an article titled ‘ Andrea Yates – Ill or Evil?’

“You need to come home,” she said.

Puzzled, he asked, “What’s going on?”

She just repeated her statement and then added, “It’s time. I did it.”

Not entirely sure what she meant but in light of her recent illness, he asked her to explain and she said, “It’s the children.”

Now a chill shot through him. “Which one?” he asked.

“All of them.”

When police arrived at the home, Andrea was standing soaking wet in front of the house.

“I just killed my children,” she told the officers.

Rusty arrived at the home soon after authorities got there. He was reported to have screamed ‘HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?’ and he collapsed into the fetal position.

John Cannon, the police spokesperson, described for the media what the team had found.

On a double bed in a back master bedroom, four children were laid out beneath a sheet, clothed and soaking wet. All of them were dead, with their eyes wide open. In the bathtub, a young boy was submerged amid feces and vomit floating on the surface. He looked to be the oldest and he was also dead.

Andrea was questioned by police.

“Who killed your children?” the officer asked.

“I killed my children.” Her eyes were blank.

“Why did you kill your children?”

“Because I’m a bad mother.”

Had the children done something to make her want to kill them? The officer asked.

No.

You weren’t mad?

No.

She recounted the events of that morning. She said she had gotten out of bed at 8.10am. Rusty left for work at 9am. All of the children were awake and most of them were eating cereal for breakfast. Andrea also had some cereal. Once Rusty left, Andrea filled the bathtub to three inches from the top.

She said that Noah’s last words were ‘I’m sorry.’

She told police that she believed she was not a good mother because her children were ‘not developing correctly.’ She said she had been considering hurting her children for years and she needed to be punished for not being a good mother.

The family dog had also been locked up on the day of the murders, when it was usually allowed to roam the property. It was alleged that Andrea locked the animal up so that it would not interfere with her killing the children.

The day after the murders, Andrea was evaluated by Dr Melissa Ferguson in jail. “She screamed, ‘Couldn’t I have killed just one to fulfill the prophecy? Couldn’t I have offered Mary? Are they in heaven?”‘ Dr Ferguson said.

Dr Ferguson would say that Andrea said her children were not righteous and had stumbled because she was evil, and they could never be saved because of how she was raising them. Andrea then paraphrased Luke 17:2, saying, “It is better for someone to tie a millstone around their neck and cast them into a river than to stumble,” Dr Ferguson said.

Andrea appeared before a judge on June 22, 2001. Andrea was appointed a public defender at that time. Rusty eventually spoke with an attorney who was a family friend, George Parnham. He asked George to take Andrea’s case. When he went to see Andrea for the first time after the murders, she said to him ‘You’ll be greatly rewarded.’ She told Rusty that she did not want the attorney he had sourced and told him to ‘Have a nice life.’ Rusty would later find out that Andrea had been given a sedative.

Andrea would tell officials that she heard the voice of Satan coming out of the walls of her jail cell. Dr. Lucy Puryear, a psychiatrist from the Baylor College of Medicine, said on Court TV’s Mugshots program “She was the sickest person I had ever seen in my life.”

A psychiatric examination was ordered for Andrea. One psychiatrist asked Andrea what she thought would happen to the children. She indicated that she believed God would “take them up.” He reversed the question and asked what might have happened if she had not taken their lives.

“I guess they would have continued stumbling,” which meant “they would have gone to hell.”

He wanted to know specifically what they had done to give her the idea they weren’t behaving properly. She responded that they didn’t treat Rusty’s mother well, adding that, “They didn’t do things God likes.”

The funerals for the children were held on June 27. They were all placed in small cream-coloured caskets and were open for viewing. Mary was dressed in pink.

At the end of July 2001, Andrea was indicted for capital murder in the cases of Noah, John, and Mary. Because she had killed someone under the age of six and had killed more than one person, she was eligible for the death penalty. Andrea pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

A competency proceeding began in September 2001. Her attorneys filed hundreds of pages of documentation about her mental illness. A clinical psychologist interviewed Andrea on four occasions in prison in 2001. On June 25, she had shown signs of psychosis and hallucinations. She said she had seen Satan in her cell and he was talking to her. She said that she did not want an attorney and wanted her hair cut into the shape of a crown because she believed she had 666 imprinted on her scalp.

Andrea was medicated again and by August, her condition had improved. She was able to hold a coherent conversation. She said that she believed Satan lived inside her and the way to get rid of him was for her to die.

On September 24, the jury determined that Andrea was competent to stand trial.

In October, Andrea’s attorneys asked to have her confession thrown out because she had not been competent to waive her rights and they asked the Court to declare the insanity plea, as it was stated in Texas law, to be unconstitutional, because it was not in touch with what we now know about the true nature of mental illness.

Andrea was interviewed by the prosecution’s psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, in November 2001. The interview was taped.

“I was pretty determined,” she admitted, “to do what Satan told me to do.” She also indicated that she felt that by killing her children before they went downhill morally, she was ensuring they would get into heaven. That’s the only place where they would be safe. Dr Dietz asked her several times whether she knew that what she had done was wrong and she answered yes. She had planned for at least a month to kill them at some point when she was alone with them.

Jury selection for her trial began in January 2002. Eight women and four men were selected. Seven of the jurors had children and two had degrees in psychology.

Her first trial began on February 18, 2002.

Andrea was being tried on two counts of capital murder—one for the two older boys and one for Mary.

The prosecution claimed that Andrea had drowned her five children and had known it was illegal and wrong. Dr Dietz would testify during the trial and say that Andrea had been influenced by an episode of ‘Law & Order’ in which a woman drowned her children and ended up being acquitted by reason of insanity.

The defense said that she did not know what she was doing because she had been legally insane. She’d been suffering from postpartum depression with psychotic features and her delusions had driven her to kill her children.

On March 12, 2002, after the jury deliberated for less than three hours, Andrea was convicted on the two counts of capital murder. She was not charged for the deaths of Paul and Luke. She was sentenced to life in prison. She would be eligible for parole in 2041, when she was 77. She was sent to Mountain View Unit, a state psychiatric prison in eastern Texas.

After her conviction, Andrea was hospitalized multiple times in 2003 and 2004 because she refused to eat.

In April 2004, her attorney George Parnham, filed an appeal.

On July 30, 2004, Rusty filed for divorce from Andrea.

On January 6, 2005, The Texas First Court of Appeals reversed Andrea’s conviction. This happened after Dr Dietz admitted that he had given materially false testimony during the trial. This is in regards to the alleged ‘Law & Order’ episode that influenced Andrea. Author Suzanne O’Malley, who was covering the trial for O: The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and NBC News, had previously been a writer for Law & Order and immediately reported that no such episode existed.

The court agreed unanimously that the jury may have been influenced by the false testimony and ordered that a new trial should take place.

To note – Law & Order – Criminal Intent – did air an episode years after the Yates’ murders. The episode was based in part on this case.

In March 2005, Andrea and Rusty’s divorce was finalised. She got $7,000 in cash and was also awarded the right to be buried near the children. She also received a nursing chair? Andrea was also granted part of Rusty’s NASA retirement benefits.

In January 2006, Andrea again entered pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity. She was granted release on bail in February 2006, on condition that she be admitted to a mental health facility.

Her second trial began on June 26, 2006.

During this trial, it was discussed how Dr Saeed had advised Rusty to not leave Andrea unattended. Despite this, Rusty began leaving her alone with the kids for short periods of time. He believed this would improve her independence and help her to not become totally reliant on him and his mother for her maternal duties. Her mother expressed shock when she found out what Rusty was doing, saying that Andrea was not stable enough to care solely for the children.

Andrea’s brother testified that Rusty had told him that all depressed people needed a ‘swift kick in the pants’ to get them motivated to get help.

Rusty told the media that he had never been told by psychiatrists that Andrea was psychotic or that she could harm the children. “If I’d known she was psychotic, we’d never have even considered having more kids,” he told the Dallas Observer.”

This was despite Dr Starbranch advising them against having more children. That doctor noted “Apparently patient and husband plan to have as many babies as nature will allow! This will surely guarantee future psychotic depression.”

Andrea also told another psychiatrist, Dr Melissa Ferguson that prior to their last child, “she had told Rusty that she did not want to have sex because Dr. Starbranch had said she might hurt her children.”

Rusty, she said, simply asserted his procreative religious beliefs, complimented her as a good mother and persuaded her that she could handle more children.

On July 26, 2006, one month after the second trial started, Andrea was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was ordered to go to a mental health facility. Since January 2007, Andrea has been at Kerrville State Hospital. She has the opportunity to undergo a yearly review to see if she is competent to leave the facility.

Rusty appeared on an episode of Oprah in 2015. In the time since the murders, he had married a woman named Laura Arnold. They had one son together. Laura filed for divorce in 2015. Oprah asked if he forgave Andrea.

“Yes,” adding: “Forgiveness kind of implies that I have ever really blamed her. In some sense I’ve never really blamed her because I’ve always blamed her illness.”

In 2022, People reported that Andrea has waived her yearly right to be reviewed and to therefore possibly leave the facility. They reported that she has never undergone a review and has chosen to continue her treatment.

Her attorney George said that Andrea is “happy” in the facility.

“She’s where she wants to be. Where she needs to be,” George told ABC News. “And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?”

He also said that Andrea ‘grieves for her children’ and watches home videos of them often. She also spends her time making aprons, cards and gifts in the craft room and anonymously selling them. The money goes to the PSI (Postpartum Support Inernational) Yates Children Memorial Fund, which was founded by George and his wife Mary and dedicated to women’s mental health, particularly postpartum mental health.

George has said that he often goes to Clear Lake to leave flowers on the children’s grave.

“There’s a large headstone, with pictures of the kids engraved on it,” he says.

Andrea is thankful for that gesture of kindness. “She is glad someone is putting flowers on the grave,” he says.

“She just loved those children,” he says. “And she, in her psychotic state, believed she was saving their lives, saving their souls.”

“I want the general public to be aware of the reality of women’s mental health in the criminal justice system and to be able to understand how through the eyes of a mother [experiencing postpartum psychosis], she believes she’s doing right by her children,” said George.

“Just because a person who is psychotic plans [something] doesn’t mean that they don’t meet the insanity standard,” George said.

Another article in 2024 confirmed that Andrea is still declining to be assessed and have her situation reviewed.

While Yates is eligible for a hearing to determine her sanity, she is not required to seek release. According to the courts, she can spend the rest of her life in the facility. She talks to her husband monthly, despite the fact that they divorced and he has remarried.