On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates’ husband left for work, leaving her behind with their five children: Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months. Yates had been receiving psychiatric treatment for several mental health conditions, and her husband had been told that she needed round-the-clock supervision.
Once she was alone, Yates drowned each of her children in the bathtub. After drowning John, Paul, and Luke, Yates put them in her bed. She left Mary in the tub. At this point, 7-year-old Noah came in and saw Mary. He asked his mother what was wrong with the baby but soon ran. Yates caught him and drowned him, too, leaving him in the tub and placing Mary on the bed in John’s arms.
Yates, 37 years old when the crimes occurred, called 911 multiple times without giving an explanation before calling her husband, begging him to come home from work. Yates was arrested and charged with five counts of capital murder, People reported, and she soon confessed to the crimes.
Yates’ defense argued that her postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia led her to murder her children, arguing that she should be sent to jail but to a mental health facility. In 2002, she was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.
Following the verdict, Yates’ defense attorneys appealed the verdict, which was overturned following a prosecution witness giving materially false testimony. The witness had claimed an episode of “Law & Order” showing a woman who drowned her children had aired shortly before Yates committed the crime. No such episode existed at the time, but “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” did air an episode based on the Yates case in 2004, years after the murders and the first trial. A new trial was granted, and in 2006, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to Kerrville State Hospital in Texas.
Before the second trial, Yates told a psychiatrist that she had purposefully waited for her husband to go to work because she knew he would have stopped her from drowning the children. Yates’ husband told the same doctor that when he returned home that day, he found their dog had been locked up when it was normally allowed to run free. The psychiatrist surmised that Yates had locked up the dog to prevent it, too, from making it difficult for her to kill the children.
“Although she was remanded to the mental facility more than 15 years ago, Yates can undergo a review every year to see if she is competent to leave the facility,” People reported. “Now 57, Yates opts each year to waive her right to be reviewed. PEOPLE confirms that she has never undergone review, choosing instead to continue treatment. Details of her treatment have not been released.”
Last year, Yate’s defense attorney George Parnham told ABC News that Yates is “where she wants to be. Where she needs to be.”
“And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?” he added.
He also told People in 2016 that Yates spends her days making crafts and then selling them anonymously, with the proceeds going to the Yates Children Memorial Fund, which was created by Parnham and his wife and helps women with mental health issues, particularly postpartum depression.
Yates’ husband divorced her several years after the murders, but told Oprah in 2015 that he forgave his ex-wife for her crimes.
“Forgiveness kind of implies that I have ever really blamed her,” Rusty said then. “In some sense I’ve never really blamed her, because I’ve always blamed her illness.”
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies for breaking news, investigative reporting, sports, podcasts, in-depth analysis, books, and entertainment for a reason: because we believe in what we do. We believe in our country, in the value of truth and the freedom to speak it, and in the right to challenge tyranny wherever we see it. Believe the same? Become a member now and join our mission.
Source: Dailywire
