Why Would Andrea Yates Drown Her 5 Kids?

“I just need them to come,” Andrea Yates told a 911 dispatcher the morning of June 20, 2001.

The 36-year-old former nurse pleaded for help moments after methodically killing her five children in the bathtub at their Houston home. Yates first drowned Luke, 2, then Paul, 3, then John, 5, then her infant daughter Mary, 6 months. The oldest child, Noah, 7, witnessed Mary’s death and fled, only to be captured by his mother and meet the same fate. Yates then put her four children’s bodies in bed and covered them with a blanket as if they were sleeping, while Noah remained in the bathtub.

Yates called 911 before her husband, NASA computer expert Russell Yates, arrived home at her insistence.

"Is anyone hurt?” he asked, according to O Magazine.

She responded, "Yes. The children. All of them."

To some, Yates was a calculated killer who waited for an opportune moment to commit the quintuple slaying–after her husband left for work and before her mother-in-law came over to help with the children. To others, she was an alienated mother whose deteriorating mental state played second fiddle to her religious duties.

In February 2002, Yates stood trial for the capital murders of Noah, John and Mary. According to ABC, prosecutors said it was unnecessary to indict Yates for Paul and Luke’s deaths. With a gag order implemented, speculation swirled that prosecutors wanted to keep their options open in case Yates was acquitted of the three murders. They sought the death penalty, arguing her actions were mindful and premeditated.

Yates claimed she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia when she killed her children. She told Houston police that she believed killing them was the only way to spare them from her and eternal damnation.

Under Texas law, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity requires the defendant to “ not know that their conduct was wrong” due to “severe mental disease or defect.” This legal framework meant Yates’s mental state took center stage at her 2002 and 2006 jury trials, with both sides addressing longstanding myths about motherhood and mental health.

Journalist Suzanne O'Malley revealed in Are You There Alone? The Unspeakable Crime of Andrea Yates that Yates was bulimic and depressed in her teens and privately expressed suicidal ideation. Further, Russell testified that his wife tried to kill herself with sleeping pills after the birth of their fourth child. Four weeks later, he reportedly found her with a knife to her throat. She was treated four times at psychiatric hospitals.

Therapist and The Myth of the Perfect Mom author Erin Schlozman tells A&E Crime + Investigation that a mom experiencing postpartum depression isn’t always necessarily experiencing postpartum psychosis, defined by the Cleveland Clinic as a condition affecting “person’s sense of reality, causing hallucinations, delusions, paranoia or other behavior changes.”

“A common misconception is that postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are linked,” Schlozman says. “Generally, the person experiencing postpartum depression can tell you what they're experiencing, whereas a person in postpartum psychosis is unaware they are in crisis.”

Mothers experiencing postpartum psychosis have been known to kill their children.

“Having suicidal thoughts in the context of postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, there’s concern she’s thinking of killing herself, but also her infant,” forensic and reproductive psychiatrist Dr. Susan Hatters-Friedman explains to A&E Crime + Investigation. “With postpartum psychosis, [she’s] hearing voices, perhaps seeing things, having paranoid and delusional thoughts, and a disorganized mind. In that context, we see mothers killing their children.”

Two years before the murders, friend Deborah Holmes reportedly documented how Yates stopped bathing and responding to her children, lost weight and aimlessly paced in circles while holding her baby. Holmes claimed she had expressed her concerns to Russell, but he believed childcare responsibilities were the woman’s duty.

“I called her husband crying and sobbing, saying she needs help now,” Holmes testified in 2002. “He’d say, ‘I’ll look into it.’”

Therapist Earline Wilcott,, who counseled Yates for months at a Christian center, said she hoped Russell would help more with homeschooling and other tasks. Russell allegedly responded by quoting Bible scripture about women being submissive to their husbands.

Experts like Dr. Eileen Starbranch, who treated Yates after the birth of her fourth child, ranked her as one of the hardest patients to get out of psychosis. According to The New York Times, Starbranch said she urged the couple not to have more children because it could lead to Yates relapsing.

Even with Holmes, Wilcott and Starbranch’s testimony, the jury might determine that Yates could discern right from wrong despite her various mental health issues.

“Postpartum psychosis has been known since Hippocrates, but it is not listed in the psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual [of Mental Disorders] as its own entity. This can cause confusion about making a diagnosis and confusion about the diagnosis in court,” Hatters-Friedman says.

Neuropsychologist Dr. George Ringholz testified that Yates’s medical and family history shows she was suffering an “acute psychotic episode” when she killed her five children and was unaware her actions were wrong, according to the Los Angeles Times. He concluded that her schizophrenia worsened because she stopped taking her antipsychotic medications two weeks before the slayings, meaning the drugs were out of her system by then.

The jury deliberated for less than four hours before convicting Yates and sentencing her to life in prison. Yates’s lawyers appealed, with defense attorney George Parnham, vowing to plead insanity again if granted another trial.

The First Court of Appeals did just that in 2005, finding that false testimony from the prosecution’s star witness in 2002 was prejudicial. The witness, Dr. Park Dietz, suggested Yates was inspired by a Law & Order episode in which a woman drowned her children and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Dietz, who was a consultant on the show, ultimately admitted that no such episode exists.

During the second trial, two medical professionals recounted Yates’s behavior a day after she drowned her five children. John Bayliss, who worked in Harris County Jail’s mental health unit, said Yates talked to a wall while picking at her hair. Dr. Melissa R. Ferguson evaluated Yates a day after the murders. She testified that Yates was catatonic before she started crying and screaming about how her children could not be rescued because of how she raised them.

“Couldn’t I have killed just one to fulfill the prophecy? Couldn’t I have offered Mary? Are they in heaven?’” Yates yelled, according to Ferguson, who claimed that Yates did not believe she was mentally ill.

The second jury deliberated for 13 hours before finding Yates not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury’s foreman said it was “very clear” to them that Yates was in psychosis before, during and after the murders, thus unaware that her actions were wrong. Russell admonished prosecutors for retrying his then-ex-wife, claiming their deceased children would not want to see her imprisoned.

"I'm so proud of the jury for seeing past that,” he told CNN.

After her acquittal, Yates was moved to Kerrville State Hospital in Texas. She has refused all interview requests and waived annual competency hearings that could lead to her release. In 2012, she asked the court to leave the facility for two hours weekly to attend church. Parnham opined that the trips would be “beneficial and mentally therapeutic” for her.

Yates gained a support system that she apparently lacked before that fateful day in 2001. Though Russell divorced her and remarried days before her second trial began, he reportedly calls Yates regularly as he moves toward forgiveness and coming to terms with the role mental illness played in their children’s deaths.

“Andrea was a wonderful mother. I did not know that she’d been psychotic [...] but for her sickness, she would never, ever, ever would have harmed our children,” he told NewsNation in 2023.

Parnham also calls Yates every weekend, along with visiting her children’s grave and leaving flowers.

“She just loved those children," the attorney told People last year. “She is glad someone is putting flowers on the grave.”