Andrea Yates: A Cry in the Dark

Freedom February 2002
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A CRY IN THE DARK
By Suzanne O'Malley

Her crime—drowning her five children in a bathtub—was unthinkable. But was it understandable? How did a clean-living, all-American woman like Andrea Yates snap? Suzanne O'Malley takes a hard look at a disturbing case that's riveted America.

Andrea Pia Yates is barely visible when I enter Judge Belinda Hill's packed Houston courtroom. Then her bright orange jumpsuit—with the words 'County Jail' stenciled across the back—grabs my eye as surely as her unthinkable crime captured the national consciousness. Last June, Yates drowned her five children one by one in the bathtub of her suburban Houston home.

The defense team has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. But Harris County District Attorney Charles Rosenthal Jr. believes that, after three months of antipsychotic medication and treatment in the jail's psychiatric unit, she is competent to stand trial. He is asking for the death penalty in a state that leads the nation in executions and a county that leads Texas in putting people on death row. The immediate business at this competency hearing, Assistant District Attorney Joe Owmby explains to the jury of 11 women and one man, is whether "Yates is rational today—not was she rational at the time of the crime."

Mention the name Andrea Yates and you'll start an avalanche of questions and opinions. Say she did go crazy: Maybe she drowns one child—but five? That takes conviction; it's not like someone who instantly regrets pulling a trigger. A 7-year-old is strong—how could she drown him? Did she drug him first? Didn't the husband notice his wife was psychotic? Where was her family? Her doctors? Child Protective Services? Where, some would like to know, was God?

After days of observing Andrea, talking to her family, and examining more than 2,000 pages of records from doctors, nurses, therapists and social workers, the answers become clearer. So does the fact that the murders of Noah, John, Paul, Luke and Mary Yates might have been prevented if even one thing had gone right.

The few who have heard Andrea's 90-minute taped confession call it chilling. Andrea, 37, first drowned 2-year-old Luke, followed by Paul, 3, and John, 5. She carried each child's body to the master bedroom, placed it on the bed, and covered it with a sheet. As she was drowning 6-month-old Mary, Noah, 7, confronted her. "What's wrong with Mary?" he asked and then, realizing what was happening, fled. Andrea chased Noah through the house, dragged him to the tub, and drowned him alongside his dead sister. There is no evidence that any of the children were drugged.

Next, Andrea telephoned the police, saying cryptically, "It's time."

Then she called her husband, Russell (Rusty) Yates, an $80,000-a-year computer expert for the Space Shuttle Vehicle Engineering Office of NASA. "You'd better come home," he recalls her telling him. "Is anyone hurt?" he asked, alarmed by her tone of voice. "Yes," she said. "The children. All of them."

Until her breakdown, Andrea had a seemingly spotless record as a daughter, sister, wife and mother. The youngest of five children and a high school valedictorian, Andrea Kennedy graduated from the University of Texas School of Nursing at Houston with a BSN degree. For eight years, she worked as a nurse at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. She was studious and shy, and didn't date seriously until she was 23. One of her first experiences of depression followed a failed relationship when she was 24.

She met Rusty when they were neighbors in an apartment complex. Raised near Nashville, he played football and was active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at DuPont Senior High School. His classmates voted him Mr. DuPont—an ideal representative of their school. At Auburn University his gridiron career, like that of many high school athletes, ended. In and outside the courtroom, he is rarely without the thick-bound volume of his wife's medical records. He wears his wedding band.

After their first child, Noah, was born in 1994, Andrea became a stay-at-home mother and quickly had two more sons. She did not use birth control; she and Rusty agreed to accept as many children as God sent their way. When his job required a six-month stint in Florida, the family put most of their belongings in storage and accompanied him, living in a trailer home. Back in Houston, Rusty says, they'd forgotten why they ever needed half the things they'd stored. They moved into a customized Greyhound bus, described by Rusty as a 350-square-foot motor home.

With the birth of her fourth child, Luke, Andrea was—like many new mothers—breast-feeding every three hours and sleeping only a few hours a night. On June 16, 1999, she called Rusty at work because she was extremely anxious. When he arrived home, Andrea was shaking and had difficulty speaking. "I need help," she said.

The next day Rusty took his wife and children to the home of Andrea's elderly parents, where he thought "she feels comfortable" and would have support, he later told a social worker. But that afternoon, while the family napped, Andrea took 40 trazodone tablets—a medication with a strong sedative quality—that had been prescribed for her father. That overdose could have killed her, but her mother found her in time to rush her to Houston's Ben Taub General Hospital's emergency room.

Yates was transferred to the psychiatric unit of Methodist Hospital, where James Flack, M.D., diagnosed her with "major depressive disorder, single episode, severe." This marked the beginning of a spiral into full-blown psychosis that was never adequately treated.

A Cry in the Dark continues...

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More To Do:

	Russell Yates Talks to Oprah
	What would cause a new mother to kill her baby, or herself? Learn more about postpartum psychosis.
	Read about Marie Osmond's battle with postpartum depression.

Read more about Andrea Yates in the February 2002 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Subscribe now!