Neglectful Husband Leaves Mentally Ill Wife Alone

Neglectful Husband Leaves Mentally Ill Wife Alone

At what point could you forgive a mother for taking the lives of all five of her kids? How much would you personally weigh mental health into your decision to forgive? What kind of responsibility would you place on her husband for refusing to follow clear medical treatment plans for his wife and allowing her to go off the medication that kept her from harming herself and others? Today we cover not only an incredibly tragic case, but one that changed how America looks at mothers with mental health issues.

Andrea Yates was born in Hallsville, Texas, the youngest of five kids of Jutta Karin Köhler, a German immigrant, and Andrew Emmett Kennedy, whose parents were Irish immigrants. Andrea’s battles with her mental health started very early. She suffered from disordered eating, specifically bulimia, during her teenage years. She also suffered from depression and dealt with thoughts of self-harm around the age of 17. However, her mental health issues didn’t negatively impact her studies. In 1982, Andrea graduated from Milby High School, located in Houston’s East End, where she was the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and an officer in the National Honor Society.

After high school, Andrea went on to complete a 2-year pre-nursing program at the University of Houston and graduated from the University of Texas Health Science Center. For 8 years, Andrea worked as an RN at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. In summer 1989, she met Russell “Rusty” Yates, who worked as an engineer. The two quickly moved in together, and after dating for 4 years, were married on April 17th, 1993.

Andrea stopped working soon after they were married. Rusty and Andrea were very religious. Although they were not affiliated with any church groups in the area, they regularly held Bible study at their house three nights a week. The couple purchased their first home in Friendswood, Texas, and soon began to start a family. Andrea and Rusty planned to have as many kids as nature would allow, and their first son, Noah, was born on February 26th, 1994.

Prior to Noah’s birth, Rusty accepted a job offer with NASA in Florida, and the family relocated to a small mobile home in Seminole. Shortly after Noah was born, Andrea began experiencing hallucinations where she was using a knife to harm someone. The Yates family soon welcomed their second son, John, into the world on December 15th, 1995. Sadly, Andrea suffered a miscarriage in 1996. By the time their third son, Paul, was born on September 13th, 1997, the family had relocated back to the Houston area and purchased a GMC motor home to reside within.

One would think that living inside of a motor home with two adults and three kids would be a tight fit, but nevertheless, the Yates family welcomed their fourth son, Luke, into the world on February 15th, 1999, and Andrea began to homeschool her older sons outside of the RV. Shortly after the birth of Luke, Andrea began to show signs of postpartum depression. On June 16th, 1999, Rusty found her shaking and chewing her fingers. The following day, Andrea overdosed on Trazodone, which is a medication used to treat depression, and Andrea was subsequently admitted to Methodist Hospital psychiatric unit where she was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder.

Soon after her release, Andrea begged Rusty to let her die and again attempted to take her own life by holding a knife up to her neck. She also began to scratch bald patches into her scalp and scrape the skin from her legs with her nails. This time hospitalized at the Memorial Spring Shadows Glen facility, she was given a cocktail of medications, including Haldol, which is an antipsychotic. Andrea’s condition improved immediately, and she was provided with a prescription upon her release.

Prior to her release, Andrea was officially diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia. Her first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, urged the Yateses to not have any more kids, as it would guarantee future psychotic depression out of Andrea. Two attempts on her life was enough, and Rusty moved the growing family into a small house for the sake of Andrea’s mental health. The transition between RV life and an actual place to put down roots and raise her sons seemed to temporarily stabilize the young mother.

However, Andrea and Rusty did not heed Dr. Starbranch’s warning. Andrea stopped taking her Haldol in March of 2000 and gave birth to her daughter Mary on November 30th, 2000. Andrea seemed to be coping well as a mother of five until the death of her father on March 12th, 2001. This tragic incident sent Andrea into a spiral. She began mutilating herself and reading the Bible in a feverish manner. She also began neglecting her daughter Mary and forgetting to feed her. She once more began to self-harm by pulling out her own hair and believed that there were spy cameras in her home. She also believed that television characters were directly telling her that she is a bad mother.

It became so bad that Andrea needed to be hospitalized yet again. This time at the Devereux Texas Treatment Network where she was under the care of Dr. Mohammad Saeed, who released her into the care of her husband. On May 3rd, 2001, Andrea’s mental health began to deteriorate once more. After filling up her bathtub during the middle of the day, she was once again hospitalized at the Devereux Texas Treatment Network. Her psychiatrist determined she was probably contemplating to take her own life once more and had filled the tub to drown herself. Other sources indicated that Andrea actually admitted that she had planned to kill her kids.

On June 4th, Dr. Mohammad Saeed discontinued Andrea’s prescription for Haldol, which had been working for her previously. He advised her to start thinking positive thoughts and that this would help her situation despite her prior diagnosis. On June 20th, 2001, Rusty left their home in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake City to go to work, which was against Dr. Saeed’s specific instructions to supervise her around the clock. Rusty’s mother, Dora, was supposed to show up an hour later in order to look after Andrea and her five grandkids.

However, during that span of 1 hour that Andrea was left alone with her kids, the unthinkable happened. Andrea entered the family bathroom and filled the tub and then one by one drowned her sons and her only daughter. She first started with 5-year-old John, then 3-year-old Paul, and then 2-year-old Luke, placing their lifeless bodies in her bed. She then gathered up Mary, who was only 6 months old at the time, and drowned her and left her floating in the bathtub. Finally, 7-year-old Noah entered the bathroom and asked what was wrong with Mary, who was floating lifelessly. Noah ran and put up a fight, but soon met the same demise as his siblings. Andrea repeated the process of laying them in her bed, this time with Mary in John’s arms.

Andrea called emergency services requesting an officer but would not tell the operator why. Afterwards, she contacted Rusty and told him to come home immediately. Andrea provided a full confession and admitted to killing all five of her kids, and Rusty enlisted family friend and attorney George Parnham to represent her. Andrea advised forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner that she waited for Rusty to leave for work before filling the bathtub because she knew that he would have stopped her from doing so.

Afterwards, police found the Yates family dog locked up in a crate, which was unusual as he was normally allowed to roam free about the home. Rusty advised Dr. Welner of this, which led him to allege that she locked the dog in the crate to prevent him from interfering with the drownings, thus demonstrating premeditation. Although the defense expert testimony agreed that Andrea was psychotic, Texas law requires that in order to successfully assert an insanity defense, the defendant must prove that they could not discern right from wrong at the time of the crime. Both Andrea and Rusty’s comments to Dr. Welner dashed those hopes.

On March 12th, 2002, a Harris County jury rejected the insanity defense and found her guilty on two counts of capital homicide in the deaths of Noah, John, and Mary. Interestingly, she was not tried in the deaths of Paul and Luke. Although the prosecution had sought the death penalty, the jury refused that option. Harris County, Texas, is known for carrying out death sentences. If this county were a state, it would only be behind Texas and Virginia for the most death sentences carried out since 1977. The trial court sentenced her to life imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice with the eligibility of parole in 40 years.

Later that same year, the Yates Children Memorial Fund was established to raise awareness of postpartum depression and psychosis. Andrea’s prison stay was not without complication. However, she twice attempted to take her own life via starvation, which required round-the-clock monitoring and hospitalization. While in prison, Andrea stated that she had considered killing her kids for 2 years and that they thought she was a bad mom, as well as claimed that her sons were developing improperly. She told her jail psychiatrist, “It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren’t righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell.”

Andrea continued to have hallucinations in prison, claiming to have seen satanic teddy bears and ducks. In 2004, Rusty Yates filed for divorce, stating that he and Andrea had not lived together as a married couple since the day of the homicides. The divorce was granted on March 17th, 2005, after which Rusty began dating his future wife, Laura Arnold. As part of the divorce settlement, Andrea received $7,000 in cash, the right to be buried next to their kids, and a nursing chair. She would also be eligible to receive a portion of Rusty’s retirement benefits from NASA.

During her imprisonment, Andrea’s lawyer, George Parnham, had been filing appeals on her behalf. And on January 6th, 2005, a Texas Court of Appeals reversed her convictions. State District Judge Belinda Hill approved a $200,000 bond on the condition that Andrea voluntarily commits herself to Rusk State Hospital. You might be wondering how this came about. Well, California psychiatrist and prosecution witness Dr. Park Dietz admitted that he had given materially false testimony during the trial. In his testimony, Dr. Dietz had stated that shortly before the homicides, an episode of Law and Order had aired featuring a woman who drowned her kids and was acquitted by reason of insanity.

But Park Dietz was sorely mistaken, and his error was pointed out by author Suzanne O’Malley, who had been covering Andrea’s trial for a variety of news sources, including O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and NBC News. O’Malley had previously been a writer for Law and Order and was quick to point out that no such episode existed during this time. It is important to know that Park Dietz was known for testifying as an expert witness most commonly for the prosecution in court cases. He had been involved in many high-profile cases such as Jeffrey Dahmer, OJ Simpson, Ted Kaczynski, and the Menendez brothers.

Dietz was widely criticized by other professionals in the mental health field for being too harsh and unforgiving towards mentally ill defendants as well as being accused of presenting opinion as fact. Dietz stopped treating clients in the early 80s. He claims he had last seen a client who had postnatal depression in 1977, over 20 years prior to this case. It should also be noted that he couldn’t say for certain if he ever saw a patient that had postnatal depression with psychotic features. Dr. Dietz had a strange conception of insanity. He believed Andrea was not insane because she knew what she was doing was wrong. He said that he was sure of this because Andrea believed Satan told her to kill her kids instead of God, thereby justifying that if a person was told to do something by Satan, they would know right from wrong. But if God told them to do something, they do not know right from wrong.

To my knowledge, there is nothing in current psychological literature that weighs the validity of psychosis on the origins of a religious character giving a command. If one wanted to connect Andrea’s motivations to the media, the movie Se7en would be logical, as she did state that she was thinking of the movie the day she committed the homicides and believed she committed all seven deadly sins. The problem with mental health testimony is that it can lend to a lot of speculation and opinion. The defense could not clearly give an answer to Andrea’s insanity other than the fact that she was insane. Whereas the prosecution gave a clear statement, but it was false. The clarity of the statement alone was enough to win over a jury.

As we tend to see with human nature, cohesiveness in explanations is far more appealing than accuracy. The jury who convicted her stated that they were persuaded by Park Dietz’s testimony, Andrea’s own assertion that she was sinning, the fact that Andrea could describe what she did, and the fact that she called the police made the jury believe she was thinking clearly. The appellate court was unanimous in its decision that the jury may have been influenced by Dr. Dietz’s false testimony and therefore a new trial would be necessary.

On January 9th, 2006, Andrea entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. And on February 1st, 2006, she was granted release on bail on the condition that she be admitted to a mental health treatment facility. During her 2006 trial, Dr. Saeed testified that he advised Rusty to not leave Andrea unattended. However, it was revealed that he began leaving her alone with the kids in the weeks leading up to the drownings for short periods of time in an attempt to improve her independence. Rusty had announced at a family gathering the weekend before the drownings that he had decided to leave her home alone for an hour each morning and each evening so that Andrea would not become totally dependent on him and his mother Dora for her maternal responsibilities.

Soon, Andrea’s relatives began to speak up in her defense. Her brother, Brian Kennedy, told Larry King that Rusty told him in 2001 while transporting Andrea to the Devereux treatment facility that all depressed people need was a swift kick in the pants to get them motivated. Her mother, Jutta Kennedy, expressed shock when she heard of Rusty’s plan, stating that Andrea wasn’t stable enough to care for the kids, noting that Andrea demonstrated she wasn’t in her right mind when she nearly choked Mary by trying to feed her solid food at 6 months old. Rusty stated to the media that he was never told by psychiatrists that his wife was psychotic, nor that she could harm the kids. And had he known otherwise, they never would have continued to have any more, which directly contradicts the instructions that were provided to the couple by Andrea’s first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch.

However, Andrea revealed to her prison psychiatrist, Dr. Melissa Ferguson, that prior to her last birth, she had told Rusty that she didn’t want to conceive any longer because Dr. Starbranch had said that she might hurt her kids. Rusty, she said, simply asserted his procreative religious beliefs, complimented her as a good mother, and persuaded her that she could handle more kids. Rusty went on to pin the blame on Dr. Mohammad Saeed, stating that Andrea was too sick to be discharged from her last stay in the hospital in May of 2001, and that he should not have discontinued her prescription for Haldol. He added that he noticed the staff lower their heads as if in shame and embarrassment, turning away without saying a word.

However, the hospital had no other choice due to the 10-day psychiatric hospitalization insurance constraints of their insurance provider. Rusty also contended that the 450 mg of Effexor that Andrea had been taking, which was twice the recommended dosage, was responsible for her violent and psychotic behavior. Although homicidal ideation was added to the warning label in 2005, it is considered a very rare side effect. Different doctors providing expert testimony during the trial suggested that although twice the recommended dosage, 450 mg of Effexor was not an uncommon prescription and that the discontinuation of Andrea’s Haldol could have been the culprit.

Media outlets began to point the finger at a man named Michael Woroniecki, who was a transient preacher whom Rusty had met while attending Auburn University. They claimed that the preacher was partially responsible for the drownings due to his fire and brimstone message found in his newsletter called the Perilous Times, which the Yates family had received and which was entered into evidence at the trial. The newsletter contained a poem which laments the disobedient kids of the modern mother worldly and ends with the question: what becomes of the children of such a Jezebel? Jezebel is a biblical figure most commonly associated with spiritual deception.

Woroniecki claimed that his contact with the Yates family was intended to help them strengthen their marriage and find the love that his own family had found in Jesus. However, his teachings also preached that women derived from sin and that the hellbound mothers would see their kids burn in hell. Even the prosecution used the preacher in its case against Andrea, claiming that the pressure to follow Woroniecki’s lifestyle by living on a bus with five kids was a factor in Andrea’s two previous attempts on her life. Rusty Yates denies the impact of Woroniecki and said that he was not close with him in the months leading up to the drownings.

On July 26th, 2006, after 3 days of deliberation, Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to the North Texas State Hospital Vernon campus, a high-security mental health facility where she received medical treatment and was a roommate of Dena Schlosser, another woman who committed infanticide by killing her daughter. This is actually the same facility that houses Otty Sanchez. You’ll remember our Otty Sanchez coverage back in February.

In January of 2007, Andrea was moved to the Kerrville State Hospital, which is a low-security mental facility in Kerrville, Texas. In May of 2012, Andrea filed a petition to attend weekly church services outside of the hospital, but she was denied. In February of 2014, Andrea and her doctors at Kerrville State Hospital requested that she be allowed to attend supervised group outings with other patients. The request is later withdrawn due to media attention and public scrutiny. Andrea’s lawyer, George Parnham, still thinks of her as a daughter and talks to her often. He’s still practicing in his 80s, and he’s happy that Andrea’s case has changed how people view mental illness, especially when it comes to the law. His only wish for Andrea is that she’s comfortable and happy, and she is. Her case comes up for review for release every year, and she waives it every single time. Andrea’s first words to Parnham were, “Please don’t leave me alone.” And he hasn’t.

It would be irresponsible if we didn’t talk about Rusty Yates and his involvement with Andrea’s care. Now, before you cover your ears and scream that you don’t want to hear our opinions, like so many people are quick to let us know in the comments section, please note that a big problem in telling this case from the timeline of events is that it doesn’t delve into how Rusty had at least some control over the outcome of this situation. It is important for us to give you the full picture of the story in order to do right by these poor kids that had their lives taken from them in such a senseless manner.

But I’d like to take this time to ask you what you feel the level of responsibility is that Rusty had here. We’re in no way implying that Rusty intended to orchestrate the deaths of his kids at all. Neither of us think that. And under the purview of the law, Rusty Yates did nothing wrong at all. However, we have seen plenty of comments in Rusty’s interview with Oprah Winfrey that signal that many of you think otherwise. So, to you, the listener, do you feel that Rusty’s insistence to continue to have Andrea conceive was a responsible thing to do despite clear doctor advice that any future births would result in a major likelihood of postpartum psychosis?

What about letting Andrea stop taking her antipsychotic meds that are necessary when one has a schizophrenia diagnosis? Was it sensible of him to expose Andrea to a religious figure like Michael Woroniecki despite her mental health diagnosis? Is it a responsible act of a father to leave his mentally unstable wife with a history of self-harm alone with the kids despite doctor’s orders that she should never be alone with them unsupervised? Is this someone who did right by his wife and kids? Do you feel that these were a series of careless mistakes on his part or is it something more? Let us know in the comments down below. And finally, it should be noted that Rusty’s second wife, Laura, whom they married in 2006, filed for divorce in 2015. They have one son together. Additionally, Law and Order finally did make an episode loosely inspired by Andrea’s case in 2004 titled Magnificat.