Andrea Yates in 2006. Credit: Brett Coomer-Pool/Getty
A mother said she drowned her five children in a bathtub to save them, shocking the entire country.
Andrea Yates shocked the world in June 2001 when she drowned her five young children in their suburban Houston home.
She is now 17 years into a court-ordered stay at a mental health facility, where she’s expected to remain indefinitely, according to the Mirror.
Yates, now in her late 50s, killed Noah (7), John (5), Paul (3), Luke (2), and Mary (6 months).
She waited for her husband, Rusty Yates—a NASA engineer—to leave for work at the Johnson Space Center.
She then drowned each child one by one in the bathtub.
Her oldest, Noah, tried to run but she caught him.
She laid the younger children’s bodies on a bed and covered them with a sheet, per the Express.
Afterward, Yates calmly called 911 multiple times to report the killings.
She then phoned her husband and told him to come home.
When police arrived, Yates immediately confessed, saying, “I just killed my children.”
The case sparked national outrage.
Prosecutors called the murders “heinous” and sought the death penalty.
Yates faced five counts of capital murder.
In 2002, a jury convicted her and sentenced her to life in prison with a chance of parole after 40 years.
Her defense team argued she wasn’t evil but severely mentally ill.
They said she suffered from postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia, worsened by baby Mary’s recent birth.
They pushed for treatment instead of prison.
Their appeal succeeded.
In 2006, a new jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity.
The court sent her to Kerrville State Hospital, where she has lived for the past 17 years.
While institutionalized, Yates continued expressing delusional beliefs.
A jail psychiatrist noted she said, “My children weren’t righteous… They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell.”
She told authorities she had considered killing them for two years, believing it would save them from eternal damnation.
Despite the tragedy, her longtime attorney George Parnham says she has found a form of peace.
“She’s where she wants to be, where she needs to be,” he told ABC News in 2021.
He added, “Hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?”
Yates isn’t in prison, but she lives full-time at Kerrville State Hospital under court order and may stay there for life.
Despite their divorce and his remarriage, she still speaks with her ex-husband Rusty once a month, according to reports.
Her attorney, George Parnham, continues to push for mental health awareness and often uses Yates’ case as a warning about the dangers of untreated postpartum psychosis.
