Andrea Yates

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Pia Yates drowned her five children — Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months — in the bathtub of the family's home in Clear Lake City, a suburb of Houston, Texas. After drowning each child, she placed their bodies on a bed, covering them with a sheet. She then called 911 and told the dispatcher: "I just killed my kids." She also called her husband Russell "Rusty" Yates at his workplace at NASA and told him to come home.

The case became one of the most widely discussed criminal proceedings involving the insanity defense in American history. It raised profound questions about postpartum psychosis, the adequacy of mental health treatment, the responsibility of those who fail to intervene in observable psychiatric crises, and the criminal justice system's capacity to distinguish between evil and illness.

Andrea Pia Kennedy was born on July 2, 1964, in Houston, Texas. She graduated as valedictorian of Milby High School, earned a nursing degree from the University of Texas School of Nursing, and worked as a registered nurse at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She married Russell Yates in 1993.

[Andrea Yates experienced severe mental health problems following the births of her children.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-the-mind-of-andrea-yates/) After the birth of her fourth child, Luke, in 1999, she attempted suicide twice and was hospitalized at the Methodist Hospital psychiatric unit. She was diagnosed with postpartum depression with psychotic features and was prescribed the antipsychotic medication Haldol, which significantly improved her condition. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, warned the Yateses not to have more children, telling them that another pregnancy would likely trigger another psychotic episode.

Despite this warning, Andrea became pregnant with Mary in 2000. As predicted, her condition deteriorated severely after Mary's birth. She was hospitalized twice in 2001 — in March and May — and was under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Mohammed Saeed at Devereux Texas Treatment Network. Dr. Saeed took Andrea off Haldol in the weeks before the drownings, a decision that was later extensively scrutinized.

In the weeks before June 20, Andrea was displaying clear signs of psychotic deterioration. She was largely catatonic, barely eating, scratching bald spots on her head, and reading the Bible obsessively. She later told psychiatrists that she believed her children were "not developing correctly," that she was a bad mother corrupted by Satan, and that she needed to kill the children to save them from going to hell.

On the morning of June 20, Rusty Yates left for work at approximately 9:00 a.m., following his regular routine. Andrea's mother was scheduled to arrive within an hour to help with the children — a plan designed so that Andrea would not be alone with the children for extended periods. In the approximately one hour between Rusty's departure and the time Andrea called 911, she drowned all five children, beginning with the three middle children and ending with Noah, the eldest, who was the only child to resist and attempt to flee.

Andrea Yates was charged with two counts of capital murder (for the deaths of Noah, John, and Mary — prosecutors strategically chose not to charge her with all five deaths to preserve the option of retrial on the remaining counts).

Her first trial began on February 18, 2002, before Judge Belinda Hill in Harris County District Court. The defense, led by attorney George Parnham, argued that Yates was legally insane at the time of the drownings due to severe postpartum psychosis with schizophrenic features. Multiple defense psychiatrists testified that she was in a psychotic state and genuinely believed she was saving her children from eternal damnation.

The prosecution called Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, who testified that Yates was sane and had known her actions were wrong. Dietz made a critical error in his testimony, stating that an episode of the television show "Law & Order" had depicted a woman who drowned her children and was found not guilty by reason of insanity — implying that Yates may have gotten the idea from the show. No such episode existed.

[On March 12, 2002, the jury found Yates guilty of capital murder.](https://www.npr.org/2002/03/13/1139877/andrea-yates-guilty-capital-murder) She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after forty years.

[In 2005, the Texas First Court of Appeals overturned the conviction](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/01/06/AR2005010600431.html), ruling that Dietz's false testimony about the "Law & Order" episode could have influenced the jury's verdict.

[At her second trial in 2006, the jury found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity on July 26, 2006.](https://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/26/yates.verdict/index.html) She was committed to a state mental health facility. She remains at a low-security state psychiatric facility, where she receives ongoing treatment for her mental illness.

Rusty Yates divorced Andrea in 2005 and remarried in 2006. The case prompted significant legislative and public health attention to postpartum mental illness and led to the passage of laws in several states requiring screening for postpartum depression.