- 2 hours ago
Andrea Pia Yates, 37, was formally sentenced to life in prison for drowning three of her five children. She will not be eligible for parole for 40 years.
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00:06When the news about Andrea Yates broke, it shocked the nation.
00:10How could a mother have killed her five little children?
00:13Andrea Yates is the sickest woman I have ever seen.
00:17We never had a doubt that she knew right from wrong, never.
00:20I was told by people who saw her in those days that Andrea was a fabulous mother.
00:26We hero-worshipped Andrea.
00:28What were the forces that led her to commit these horrible acts?
00:32We all go to hell, yeah!
00:35She didn't have any ability to judge the rightness or wrongness of what this preacher was saying to her.
00:41You are accountable for those children.
00:43No other people does God single out than children.
00:47And in her world, there was no other way out for her children other than to send them to God.
00:53Sometimes you just have to look at it and call it what it is.
00:56It's an evil act.
01:08On June 20, 2001, Houston police received a 911 call from a normally quiet section of town.
01:17What's your name?
01:18What's your name?
01:18What's the problem?
01:20Um, I just need them to come.
01:23Did your husband stand?
01:25No.
01:26What's the problem?
01:27I need them to come.
01:28I need to know why we're coming, ma'am.
01:33Is this there standing next to you?
01:35Uh, she?
01:37Are you having a disturbance?
01:39Are you ill or what?
01:40Uh, he has something else.
01:42You need an ambulance?
01:43No, I need a police officer.
01:45You have been in an ambulance.
01:47Andrea Yates then called her husband Rusty, a project manager at NASA.
01:52She said, come home.
01:54And he said, is anything wrong?
01:56And she said, yes.
01:57He said, with the kids, yes.
01:59How many?
02:00She said, all of them.
02:02When two police officers arrived at the house, Andrea confessed to her crimes.
02:07The police showed up at her door, said, what's the problem?
02:10She said, I killed my children.
02:16Andrea Yates had drowned her five children.
02:19Her husband, Rusty, arrived at the house shortly after the police.
02:24Rusty falls to the ground, slams his hands into the grass.
02:29He then spent much time going from window to door, looking in, trying to see Andrea and
02:34saying, Andrea, how could you do this?
02:36How could you do this?
02:38I get a phone call from my sister, turn on the news, turn on the news.
02:43And I just couldn't believe it.
02:45I just cannot imagine the Andrea that I knew being capable of doing what she did to her
02:52own kids.
02:53That Andrea may try to hurt the children, I mean, that never even entered my mind.
02:57Not my mind, not my mother's mind.
02:59I don't believe any of the family's mind that that would ever happen.
03:02The officers led her out the back door to avoid parading her past Rusty and took her
03:07to police headquarters in downtown Houston, where they questioned her.
03:12After you drew the bathwater, what was your intent?
03:15What were you about to do?
03:18I had the children.
03:20During the 17-minute confession, Andrea Yates detailed what she had done.
03:26This morning, what time was it that you got out of bed this morning?
03:30About 8.10.
03:32Okay.
03:32And who in your household was awake at that time?
03:37My husband, Mary, and Luke, and Paul.
03:45We knew she started with Paul, who was a middle child, and she proceeded with Luke, killed him.
03:51We knew that she took John then from her statement and drowned him, put him in the bed.
03:55Then she drowned Mary, left Mary floating in the tub when she summoned Noah, the 7-year-old,
04:01killed him there.
04:01For anyone to kill one child, to see that this child is dead, has died, to have that
04:09emotional effect, and then go to the next child, it's just, it's hard to even imagine or put
04:15yourself in that person's position.
04:17How could anyone do that occurs to you?
04:20The next day, Rusty shocked everyone by expressing sympathy for his wife.
04:25I mean, I'm supportive of her.
04:27It's hard, you know, like I said, because, you know, I'm torn.
04:30One side of me, you know, blames her because, you know, she did it, you know, but the other
04:35side of me says, well, she didn't because that wasn't her, you know, she wasn't in the right
04:39frame of mind, and I guess she had, you know, psychotic, you know, side effects with her
04:46depression that led her to do this.
04:49Rusty revealed that Andrea had been battling a mental illness, leaving police and the public
04:55to ponder whether she was a cold-blooded killer or whether her actions were the result of
04:59a severe mental disease.
05:01The only question she asked the whole time was, what are we going to plea, what type of
05:06plea, whether guilty or not guilty, and she indicated that she did not want to plea not
05:11guilty, that she wanted to go ahead and receive punishment because she was a bad mother.
05:16She was the sickest person I've ever seen in my life.
05:20She was not bathed.
05:22She was dressed in this orange jail outfit.
05:26Her shirt was falling off of her.
05:28She didn't have a bra on.
05:29Her hair was hanging in her face, and she was shaking.
05:33She had eyes that, when she looked at you, had no pupils, like shark's eyes.
05:39She could answer questions about what happened, but any sort of question about why or what's
05:45going on or what you're doing, it just sent her into an immediate never-never land.
05:51My first thought was, this woman has postpartum psychosis.
05:55Postpartum psychosis is a severe form of depression that affects one out of every thousand women
06:00after giving birth.
06:02Usually, the disorder takes the form of a delusion, and the horrible tragedy of postpartum
06:08psychosis is that the delusion is about the child, in most cases.
06:12I've seen women who are afraid to bathe their children for fear that they'll drown them.
06:18Women who have had thoughts of suffocating their children.
06:21Really horrible, horrible things.
06:24While Andrea's lawyers were preparing for an insanity defense, the state was gathering evidence
06:29to prove that Andrea was criminally responsible for her actions.
06:33Texas law is, does the person have a severe mental disease or defect?
06:39And if they do, as a result of that severe mental defect, were they able to tell that their
06:44actions were wrong, that their conduct was wrong, at the time of the offense?
06:49We knew within a week that the evidence was telling us that she knew right from wrong at
06:55the time of the crime.
06:59As people gather in front of the Yates house for a candlelight vigil two days after the
07:04murders, public opinion about Andrea Yates was growing stronger.
07:08This was such a polarizing event.
07:11Either people had sympathy for Andrea and cared for her, or they hated her with every drop
07:17of blood in their bodies.
07:19There are people all over Houston, including most of the talk show hosts, who would, oh,
07:23she knew what she was doing, oh, she's just evil, or oh, they're terrible people.
07:28They just totally discounted the fact that Andrea was very, very sick.
07:34A week after the murders, the legal posturing and the public outrage quieted down for the
07:40children's funeral.
07:41It was such a typical, hot, muggy, miserable Houston summer afternoon, with probably a 20%
07:48chance of rain.
07:49It was so hot and miserable, every so often there would be a little drop of water from
07:54the trees, almost like the trees were weeping.
08:02I went to the service at the church, but not to the burial.
08:05It was just a little too much for me to handle.
08:07So I just wanted to think about my sister and the children on my own.
08:11Andrea was undergoing a battery of psychiatric exams.
08:15She was put on antidepressant and antipsychotic medication.
08:19As she became more stable, she started to reveal disturbing reasons for the murders.
08:25What were you trying to accomplish then, when you did take your children's lives?
08:31Maybe in their innocent years, God would take them up.
08:37God would take them up to be in heaven?
08:39Is that what you mean?
08:40All right.
08:40And if you had not taken their lives, what did you think would happen to them?
08:45If they were to continue stumbling.
08:48And where did they end up?
08:50Hell.
08:50In hell.
08:52Wanting to know what Andrea meant by stumbling, the psychiatrist then asked her about her
08:57children's behavior.
08:58What sort of things did they do which showed you they weren't right?
09:01Well, they just did a lot of silly stuff and didn't obey.
09:14They didn't obey you when you told them to do things.
09:16All right.
09:17You mentioned their manners before.
09:18Can you give me an example of their manners?
09:20Yes.
09:25When Rusty's mom would visit, they would not treat her well and call her names.
09:33Be disrespectful.
09:35Mm-hmm.
09:35Okay.
09:36Now, you concluded that they were not righteous.
09:40And you're a religious person.
09:43And explain to me what you meant by not being righteous.
09:48Well, they didn't do things God likes.
09:53Well, Andrea's lawyers entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the DA's office
09:59announced that they would be seeking the death penalty.
10:02If this woman had gone into a neighbor's house and killed her five children and thought
10:07it was the best thing to do for those children to save those children because she felt those
10:11children weren't being raised in the right way, do you think anyone would have felt the
10:15way they do?
10:16What is it that you can, as a mother, take the lives of your own children and because it's
10:20so horrific, people just don't want to think that that could be an evil act?
10:25Three months after her arrest, a jury deemed Andrea Yates competent to stand trial.
10:38When we come back, was there something in Yates' background that could have led her to this
10:43horrible act?
10:55Andrea Yates grew up in Houston, where she was the youngest of five children of Andrew and
11:00Karen Kennedy.
11:01She was my best friend from eighth grade through the end of college.
11:10A lot of people, when you're teenagers, you just think, oh, your family is just totally
11:14embarrassing.
11:15And I never got that from Andrea.
11:17I mean, she really was pretty devoted to her parents.
11:19She was always wanting to help other people out.
11:21Elderly people in the neighborhood just derived a lot of satisfaction out of wanting to do things
11:27for other people instead of people doing things for her.
11:30In high school, she was the captain of the swim team, the historian of the National Honor
11:35Society, and graduated valedictorian of her senior class.
11:40She wasn't satisfied with mediocre stuff.
11:44She wanted things to be excellent.
11:46I don't know about perfect, but she valued excellence.
11:49After graduating from the University of Texas School of Nursing, Andrea moved into an apartment
11:55complex in the suburbs and began dating.
11:58I don't think anybody ever would have pictured Andrea getting married and having five kids,
12:02because she never dated.
12:04She just never dated even once that I know of until we got out of college.
12:09Rusty Yates, a computer systems designer for NASA, lived in the same apartment complex.
12:15He told his story to author Susie Spencer.
12:18The first time he saw Andrea, she was floating in the swimming pool with her arms outstretched,
12:25almost like a cross.
12:28And he was listening to his radio sitting by the pool, just watching her, thinking,
12:32I could never have this woman.
12:34She is too good.
12:36Andrea ignored Rusty that day, but a few months later, it was she who made the first move.
12:41The couple dated for three years before moving in together and eventually marrying.
12:47And Rusty told me that Andrea did not like sex, that she would dress in the closet.
12:53He thought that once they got married, it would be okay.
12:56And Andrea still was always uncomfortable with sex and revealing her body.
13:00After their wedding, Andrea continued working as a nurse at a nearby hospital.
13:05But before the couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary, Noah was born.
13:10And like many women, Andrea was faced with a critical decision whether or not to go back to work.
13:16There are many women who will say over and over that Andrea wanted to go back to work,
13:23that she really wanted to go into nursing again.
13:25And Rusty will say, no, she didn't.
13:28We talked about that.
13:30I gave her the option of going back to work.
13:32And she said, no, I'm a mom now.
13:35That's all that matters.
13:36That's all I want to do.
13:37What's the truth?
13:39I don't know, because Andrea was a people pleaser.
13:42So I think she would agree with whoever's talking at the moment.
13:45I don't think Andrea regarded it as a problem that Rusty was the guy who would go to work and
13:51support them,
13:52and she's the one who would take care of the house.
13:54And she wanted that.
13:55She wanted the Ward and June Cleaver kind of lifestyle.
13:59Andrea quit her job and appeared to adapt well to her role as a full-time mother.
14:05But defense psychiatrists maintained that at the time, something terrible was happening to her.
14:11She had thoughts or visions of a knife and had thoughts about stabbing someone in blood.
14:17She thought she heard Satan speak to her after the birth of Noah.
14:21Andrea decided to keep the incident a secret, and therefore the beginning signs of her illness went undiagnosed.
14:29Andrea had to be perfect.
14:31The perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect nurse.
14:35So she could not reveal to anyone that she was having these visions.
14:40But that's another typical Andrea thing, that she plays her cards close to the vest.
14:44If she doesn't feel like telling you something, no hint. No hint.
14:49Oh, is that right?
14:52Over the next four years, Andrea had two more sons, John and Paul.
14:59Meanwhile, Rusty and Andrea were following the teachings of a fire-and-brimstone street preacher Rusty had met in college.
15:05God is going to destroy this earth and all you wretched sinners.
15:09Michael Waranicki and his wife, Rachel, corresponded with their followers mostly through letters and videos.
15:15The former college football player and former cheerleader were routinely in trouble with local authorities for their aggressive preaching style,
15:23and ultimately left their home state of Michigan to avoid prosecution.
15:36The couple took their ministry on the road, and for three decades have traveled across the U.S. and 23
15:43other countries with their six children,
15:46preaching their own brand of Christianity on street corners and at college campuses.
15:51When I first discovered that they were a part of Michael Waranicki's system, I knew exactly that she went through
15:58what I went through.
15:59Like Rusty, David de la Isla was in college when he met Michael Waranicki.
16:04He followed the preacher for 12 years.
16:07We all go to hell! Yes! To hell!
16:12In Mike's teaching, he constantly says that only a few make it.
16:16So the red light went off with me, and I started to become very suspicious at the notion that there's
16:22many people who come to salvation,
16:25not just a few as he teaches.
16:27Waranicki preached an austere lifestyle, and de la Isla believes it is this instruction that encouraged Rusty and Andrea to
16:36move from their suburban house to a mobile home in the nearby campground.
16:44In the teachings of Michael Waranicki, to hold a job and to even live in a home is to participate
16:52in the evil satanic conspiracy against God.
16:55So, you know, for Rusty to get his family in this mobile home and to kind of emulate this nomadic
17:01lifestyle comes directly from the teachings of Michael Waranicki.
17:05By the time Rusty and Andrea had their third son, it was Andrea who had developed the stronger relationship with
17:11the Waranickis, corresponding regularly with them.
17:14Then they see in a Waranickis newsletter that the Waranickis have a bus for sale, a used Greyhound bus.
17:24Rusty and Andrea bought the converted bus and downsized again, moving with their three young children from their mobile home
17:31to the 350 square foot bus.
17:34The small bus that the children were being raised in, the amount of children back to back to back, one
17:41after another.
17:42My mother and I knew that it took its toll on my sister.
17:45Meanwhile, she was also helping to care for her father who was suffering from Alzheimer's.
17:50The people at the RV park will say, we knew something was wrong.
17:55We were saying, Rusty, help her.
17:58Rusty will talk about that we had clear lines of responsibility.
18:03I was the breadwinner, Andrea was to take care of the kids.
18:07Andrea remained in contact with the Waranickis.
18:09You don't need to listen to someone tell you hateful things.
18:15He's like a doctor.
18:16He diagnoses your spiritual state by what you write him.
18:20He encourages you to describe where you are with God, and then he responds back to you in a written
18:25letter, diagnosing and picking out your flaws.
18:29From the letters I have that Rachel Waranicki wrote to Andrea, it was, you are evil, you are wicked, you
18:38are a daughter of Eve, who is a wicked witch.
18:43You know, the window of opportunity for us to minister to you is closing.
18:48You have to repent now.
18:49Mike believes that all women inherit a witchcraft nature from Eve and have the spirit of Jezebel, so they should
18:58be the servant of a man and man should have, you know, dominance over the woman.
19:02Jesus does single out one group, children.
19:07Lauren Ecke's writings were particularly judgmental when it came to raising children.
19:13He believes today's mothers are too permissive.
19:16Modern Mother Worldly was very, very lazy.
19:19All her children drove her crazy.
19:21The Bible told her to spank and train them, but society said she must never constrain them.
19:28The fruit of rebellion she did now see.
19:31On the day of judgment she will have no plea.
19:35Modern Mother Worldly, cast in hell.
19:38Now what becomes of the children of such a Jezebel?
19:41This ties specifically with Andrea and what really, I think, gave her the notion that her kids are going to
19:47go to hell.
19:48What becomes of the children of the Jezebel?
19:50She's the Jezebel.
19:56Shortly before her 35th birthday, Andrea had her fourth child, Luke.
20:01Here we are on the way home.
20:03Here's our next addition, Luke.
20:07When Luke was four months old, Rusty got a call similar to the one he would get the day of
20:12the murders.
20:13Andrea calls Rusty at work and says, come home, I need help.
20:18So he runs from NASA out to the RV park with the 350 square foot bus, walks in and says,
20:26what's the matter?
20:28Andrea is sitting there chewing her fingers, not biting her fingernails, chewing her fingers.
20:34Her legs are trembling, her arms are shaking.
20:38She says, I need help.
20:44Andrea Yates had suffered a nervous breakdown.
20:48Next on Mugshots, Andrea and Rusty decide to get help, but her descent continues.
21:01A, B, C, D, E, N, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O.
21:09Oops. P. P.
21:11Name what?
21:12Dada, who?
21:13No.
21:14D, R, A, T, R, V.
21:18Dada, who?
21:20W, X, Y, and Z.
21:24Now I know my ABCs want to come and play with me.
21:30By the summer of 1999, Andrea Yates' life was in turmoil.
21:35She was caring for her ailing father, homeschooling her three older boys and nursing her new infant,
21:41all the while living in a 350-square-foot bus and corresponding with the Waraneckis.
21:48But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble,
21:54it is better for him that a heavy maelstrom be hung around his neck and he be drowned in the
22:01depth of the sea.
22:03I mean, Jesus, you're saying to kill yourself? Yeah.
22:05Then, two weeks before her 35th birthday, Andrea suffered her nervous breakdown.
22:11Rusty does not know what to do.
22:13So he packs up Andrea and the kids and takes them for a walk on the beach in Galveston.
22:19In the trial, they said, why did you do this, Rusty, when your wife is having a nervous breakdown?
22:24He said, I didn't know what else to do, which I think is typical with mental illness.
22:29We don't know what to do.
22:31The next day, Rusty took Andrea and the kids to her mother's house.
22:36That afternoon, Andrea took an overdose of her father's sleeping pills and tried to commit suicide.
22:43Totally shocked. I never expected her to try that because she's very, very strong.
22:47So something must have really weakened her at some point to where she actually didn't attempt suicide.
22:55Andrea was rushed to a nearby hospital and transferred to a psychiatric unit
23:00where she was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder.
23:03The hospital psychiatrist prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft.
23:08And she was there for about a week.
23:10The medical records show that she was released because the insurance had run out.
23:17Didn't matter whether she was well or not, but the insurance had run out.
23:22She was then referred to a doctor, Eileen Starbranch, a psychiatrist.
23:27Dr. Starbranch recommended switching from the antidepressant to Zyprexa, an antipsychotic used for treating bipolar mania and schizophrenia.
23:37Andrea didn't want to be on medications.
23:39For one thing, Reverend Warnecke believes that medicines are bad, that doctors are bad.
23:45So Andrea flushed this very expensive Zyprexa down the toilet.
23:53Andrea Yates was developing a pattern of not taking the medications that could help control her illness.
23:59She did what is called cheeking.
24:01She would stick the meds, her medicines, in her cheek, look like she had taken them and really hadn't, and
24:08would later spit them out.
24:10Andrea was staying at her parents' house to recuperate.
24:13Scratching bald spots on her head and picking sores on her body, she showed little signs of recovering.
24:19Her condition continued to deteriorate, and as author Susie Spencer learned, she began to hallucinate,
24:26re-experiencing the vision she had after her first son Noah was born.
24:30She's having a vision that says, get a knife, get a knife, get a knife, get a knife, get a
24:35knife.
24:36So she ran and got a steak knife from her mother's house, goes into the bathroom, and is holding it
24:43to her neck.
24:44When Rusty comes in, she's going, you know, noticing Andrea's missing where his sheet goes to the bathroom,
24:48and she's saying, get back, let me do it, let me do it, please let me do it.
24:54And he wrestled the knife away from her, took her back into the hospital.
24:58This time Andrea was admitted to a private center for psychiatric treatment.
25:04After an emergency dose of the antipsychotic drug Haldol, Andrea loosened up and confessed to the doctors
25:10that she suffered the knife vision as many as ten times in several days,
25:15and feared her vision's predicted violence.
25:18When she went back into the hospital at this point, she had claw marks on her legs where she had
25:25been trying to hold herself back from hurting anyone,
25:29and she was trying to save her children's life by taking her own life.
25:32About 50 percent of women with postpartum psychosis go on to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or manic depressive illness.
25:41The psychiatrist at the treatment center diagnosed Andrea with a major depressive disorder that was severe and recurrent with psychotic
25:49features.
25:50In Andrea Yates' case, after looking at all the medical records and getting some psychological testing, speaking to her family,
25:59she'd probably had it for a very long time, but her symptoms were not so severe that she wasn't standing
26:06on the street corner speaking to herself.
26:08As Andrea's mother and siblings began discussing her condition, they admitted their own struggles with depression and learned that a
26:16majority of the family had sought professional help.
26:19Women who have relatives with manic depressive illness are at a much greater risk for having postpartum psychosis.
26:26The psychiatrist recommended electric shock treatments, but Rusty and Andrea decided against it.
26:31So after three weeks in the psychiatric center, Andrea was released with prescriptions for an arsenal of drugs, including the
26:39antidepressants Effexor and Welbutrin and the antipsychotic Haldol.
26:43She continued monthly visits with Dr. Starbranch.
26:47I really don't think my sister's children completely understood.
26:51I think that they knew that their mother was sick and needed to get some help, but they all missed
26:56their mother because she was gone quite a bit during that summer.
26:59After Andrea attempted suicide, Mrs. Kennedy went to Rusty and said, Rusty, no more bus. Get Andrea a house.
27:10So it was while she was in the hospital in 1999 that he went out and bought the house in
27:17Clear Lake.
27:18And in September, she was at home in their new home throwing her son Paul a birthday party with making
27:25him an elaborate cake that looked like a truck.
27:27She was very creative in her birthday cakes for her kids.
27:31Andrea's condition improved in their new house.
27:34Her focus continued to be the children as she cared for her infant son and homeschooled the older three.
27:40And the kids were obviously brilliant.
27:43If you've ever looked at any of their artwork, these are incredibly talented children.
27:49For four months, life seemed to be returning to normal.
27:54In November, despite warnings from doctors, Andrea and Rusty decided to have another baby.
28:00Women with histories of postpartum psychosis have 50 to 80% chance of having another episode.
28:08Andrea stopped taking her medication and discontinued the use of birth control.
28:13In four months, she was pregnant.
28:16Coming up, Andrea's fifth child is born, setting off a series of events that would end in unspeakable tragedy.
28:34Andrea Yates had suffered violent visions after the births of her first and fourth child.
28:38She survived two suicide attempts and was finally given a combination of antidepressants and antipsychotics that appeared to calm her
28:47delusions and paranoia.
28:51Rusty and Andrea knew she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
28:55The psychiatrist had told them that having another child could trigger another psychotic episode.
29:01Having a child is a choice, and there are ways that you can control pregnancy, and there are ways that
29:07you can make decisions not to bring more children into this world if you know there's dangers.
29:12Rusty explained this as, if you were given a brand-new Mercedes Benz and said, here it is for free,
29:19but if you take this Mercedes Benz, you're going to have the flu for two weeks, would you do it?
29:26He said, of course. He said, that's the way we thought of it. Andrea might get sick, but we knew
29:33there were medicines out there that could help and would put her on those medicines and should be fine.
29:40Andrea and Rusty ended their sessions with Dr. Starbranch, and Andrea stopped taking both her medications and her birth control.
29:47On November 30, 2000, they had a baby girl, Mary.
29:52That's so cute. There's a big brother holding his big little sister.
29:59That spring, three months before the murders, Andrea's ailing father died.
30:04Andrea, as much as she loved my father and was close to him, I know that this was just really,
30:09really hard on her as it was on me, too.
30:11Andrea began to deteriorate.
30:13She stopped talking, refused to drink liquids, and scratched ball spots on her head.
30:19Rusty recognized the symptoms and took Andrea for treatment.
30:23Over the next two months, she would be committed and released from a private psychiatric treatment center twice.
30:30The staff psychiatrist put her back on medication, changing drugs and adjusting dosages.
30:35A lot of this information that has come out now, my mother and I were not privileged to that.
30:42So all my mother and I basically witnessed at this point was my sister's roller coaster ride.
30:47Two days before the murders, Rusty took Andrea back to the psychiatric center for a follow-up visit and told
30:54the psychiatrist she was not improving.
30:56Again, her dosage of antidepressants was adjusted.
31:00What we learned early on was that there wasn't any one thing that was a stressor to cause her to
31:08eventually go into the psychosis.
31:10It seemed to be a number of different factors.
31:13The primary factor being the birth of children and how that affected her.
31:20And then the other environmental stressors, a religious delusion, if you will, that gets reinforced as time goes by.
31:29You add it all together, you get the right combination, and it's just a recipe for disaster.
31:35It's better to tie a stone around your neck and throw yourself in the sea than cause the little one
31:44to stumble.
32:00Finally, on June 20, 2001, Andrea did the unthinkable.
32:09What happened was just, you know, incomprehensible.
32:11I mean, I just can't, you know, looking back, you know, I struggled with it all last night.
32:18I couldn't sleep last night.
32:19I was like, you know, is there anything I could have done, you know?
32:22For Andrea to be held criminally responsible, she would have to be found legally sane.
32:28There are millions of people with five children that work and some are divorced.
32:34Some are with five children in homes with abusive husbands.
32:38Some of them have all of those factors plus some degree of mental illness and do not kill their children.
32:44Do not do violent acts.
32:45Texas is a very strict standard as to the insanity defense.
32:51There's two criteria.
32:53One is that someone has to have a mental disease or defect.
32:57Well, everybody acknowledged that she clearly had a mental disease and or defect.
33:01And the second criteria is that she didn't know that her actions were wrong.
33:07According to a National Institute of Mental Health study, the insanity defense is used less than 1% of the
33:14time.
33:14And of those cases, only 26% are argued successfully.
33:20Adding to the defense's challenges, the Texas guidelines are among the toughest to meet.
33:25Defense lawyers had even convened their own test jury to see how their strategy would hold up.
33:31We did a mock trial before we went to trial.
33:35And the biggest problem we had was they just could not get over the fact that she killed her children
33:43and confessed to killing her children.
33:46When Mugshots returns, the trial of Andrea Yates.
33:50Will she be found legally sane and criminally responsible for the murder of her children?
34:08Andrea Yates' trial began eight months after she drowned her five children.
34:13The state of Texas versus Andrea Pia Yates.
34:16The state was not taking any chances and only tried her for three of the murders, holding back the other
34:22two in case they didn't get a conviction.
34:24If found criminally responsible, Andrea faced a death sentence.
34:28Our approach to this case all along was to simplify the case for the jury whether or not the person
34:34knows right from wrong.
34:36And to keep the jury focused on that issue rather than the history of mental illness.
34:44And it was much more difficult for us to try to convince a jury to look beyond the literal interpretation
34:50as to what she thinks right and what she thinks wrong is and make your decision on that.
34:57The state's case focused on the physical evidence of the crime and used it to demonstrate that Andrea was legally
35:04sane the morning of the murders.
35:06She had to prepare to do this.
35:08And part of that preparation was choosing a time when it could be done, and that was the time between
35:149 and 10 o'clock in the morning.
35:16One of the things that I felt we could only show through the physical evidence was how she chose the
35:22order of the children to kill them.
35:24If she had started with Noah, the oldest, Noah 7, we know Noah put up the biggest fight.
35:31She could have alerted the other children and possibly John, the five-year-old, could have gotten out.
35:36And so this was a very methodical, organized manner in which she went about executing the children.
35:45Both sides agreed that Andrea was mentally ill.
35:48But the defense argued that her illness made her too sick to be able to know right from wrong.
35:53To illustrate this, they played for the jury portions where Andrea exhibited extreme delusion.
36:01They've been eating some candy one morning, and we had the TV on, cartoon, and just flashed a scene where
36:12the comic, the cartoon characters were talking to us.
36:18The cartoon characters?
36:20The cartoon characters were saying, hey, kids, stop eating so much candy.
36:23Okay.
36:24That flash, and then back to the program.
36:26All right.
36:27So you concluded that the TV had this special message for you and your family?
36:35She had tried to kill the devil in 1999 twice when she tried to commit suicide.
36:41I believe she had tried over and over to get rid of the devil.
36:45You can't get rid of the devil.
36:46So the only option she had to save her children from a life in hell was to kill them and
36:54to sacrifice her own eternal life for the children.
37:09It was important to be able to have a jury not believe that we were defending her on the devil
37:19made me do it premise.
37:21And we were cautious, but we nevertheless were able to, through the little cartoon that was introduced in evidence, the
37:30Jezebel with the stumbling children, that this was Andrea's delusion.
37:36The defense argued that Andrea's initial confession should have been videotaped so the jury could see how she was acting
37:43right after the murders.
37:45The interviews they did see were taped weeks, even months after the drownings.
37:51And by the time of the trial, with the help of her medication, Andrea appeared to be more stable.
37:57This is a huge problem.
37:59This is a moral dilemma for a psychiatrist.
38:01It might have been to Andrea's advantage, legally, to not medicate her, to leave her, quote unquote, crazy, so that
38:10the jury could see what state she was in at the time she committed the drownings.
38:15For everyone involved, it was an extraordinarily emotional trial.
38:19We can have experts and did have experts that talked in terms of mental illness for three and a half
38:26weeks.
38:27But it is so difficult to overcome pajamas.
38:34It is difficult to overcome photographs.
38:37It is difficult to overcome the image of this young boy face down in the bathtub.
38:44The way that the case unfolded, and because of some things that happened during the case, I was fairly confident
38:51that the jury would find her guilty.
38:54That is, that they would reject the insanity defense.
38:58Ladies and gentlemen, the court has been advised that the jury has reached a verdict.
39:02After three weeks of testimony and dozens of witnesses, the jury took only three and a half hours to reach
39:09a verdict.
39:09We, the jury, find the defendant, Andrea Pia Yates, guilty of capital murder as charged in the indictment.
39:16Andrea Yates was found guilty on March 12th, exactly one year after the death of her father.
39:22And I'm sitting right there behind Mrs. Karen Kennedy, Andrea's mother, and Andrea's favorite brother, Brian, and they say guilty.
39:31And then Andrea turns around, and she looks straight at Brian, and I'm right behind Brian.
39:38And like I say, she tried to smile, and she just couldn't.
39:41And she just started weeping and turned around and walked off.
39:46Knowing Andrea, I can't see how a minute will go by on any day that she won't constantly think about
39:54what had happened.
39:54And missing the children, that I think that she'll always be living with her pain.
39:59I think the jurors really focused on these children and what they went through and how the evidence of the
40:06killing of these children showed her state of mind that she knew right from wrong and was responsible.
40:11Every single family member of the murder victims wanted this woman to live, to not be tried for death.
40:22And here she was, convicted, and at that point, they didn't know if she was going to be sentenced to
40:27life or death.
40:30Three days later, the jury would reconvene to decide whether Andrea Yates would live or die.
40:36Her sentence, next on Mugshots.
40:48In the spring of 2002, a jury found Andrea Yates legally sane when she drowned her five children.
40:55There were only two possible sentences, life in prison or death by lethal injection.
41:01I can't describe to you the feeling that a defense attorney has wherein you've had a verdict that goes against
41:09you.
41:09Now you're going to go and decide whether or not someone's going to live or die.
41:13After deliberating for only 40 minutes, the jury decided to spare Andrea Yates' life.
41:18She was sentenced to life in prison.
41:21I'm sure it's very, very hard on her each day for the son to come up and then she's by
41:28herself and just probably doing a lot of thinking, I would imagine.
41:34Clearly, she was ill probably in her late teens or early 20s, but very subtly.
41:41There were some choices made along the way, though, that I think contributed to the final outcome.
41:47I think one unfortunate thing that happened was that they met this preacher.
41:53Not that the preacher caused her to be sick, but she didn't have any ability to judge the rightness or
42:01wrongness of what this man was saying to her.
42:03One of my sisters asked me, well, how can you still love her?
42:06She's my friend and what she did is not who she is.
42:11There's just a break with reality there for her.
42:14Don't look at caste in blame. Just feel sorry.
42:17I don't have pity for her. I have pity for the children.
42:20They never had a chance in that home. They were little. They were defenseless.
42:24I think there has to be responsibility for adults.
42:28She had different avenues available to her, and this was a choice that she made.
42:32And I'm glad that she's been held responsible.
42:35Andrea Yates is imprisoned in the Skyview Unit, a psychiatric prison in East Texas.
42:40She will be eligible for parole in 40 years.
42:43A lot of people say the cruelest thing in the world for Andrea Yates was for her to become healthy
42:49again and know what she did.
42:51But all we know is Andrea Yates is one sick lady today with five dead babies, and she knows she
42:59killed them.
43:00Can you live with that?
43:02Could this mother, who would stay up all night sewing for him, live with that?
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