_ April 17, 1993: Russell "Rusty" and Andrea Yates are married.
_ Feb. 26, 1994: Noah Yates is born. Yates later tells doctors that shortly after the birth that Satan told her to get a knife and stab someone.
_ Dec. 12, 1995: John Yates is born.
_ Sept. 13, 1997: Paul Yates is born.
_ Feb. 15, 1999: Luke Yates is born.
_ June 16, 1999: Andrea Yates calls her husband at work and asks him to come home. He returns to find her shaking and crying.
_ June 17, 1999: Yates overdoses on Trazodone, a prescription sleeping medicine given to her father after a stroke.
_ June 18, 1999: Yates is transferred to Houston's Methodist Hospital psychiatric unit and is diagnosed with a major depressive disorder.
_ June 24, 1999: Yates is discharged from Methodist.
_ July 20, 1999: Russell Yates wrestles knife away from his wife, who was holding it to her neck in the bathroom at her mother's house.
_ July 21, 1999: Yates is admitted to Memorial Spring Shadows Glen for psychiatric treatment and is prescribed Haldol, an anti-psychotic drug.
_ Aug. 9, 1999: Yates is discharged from Memorial Spring Shadows Glen.
_ Aug. 10, 1999: Yates begins daily outpatient care.
_ Aug. 18, 1999: Psychiatrist Eileen Starbranch warns the Yates couple that having another child could trigger another psychotic episode.
_ Nov. 30, 2000: Mary Yates is born.
_ March 12, 2001: Yates' father, Andrew Kennedy, dies. Rusty Yates later says his wife's condition begins deteriorating soon after.
_ March 31, 2001: Yates is admitted to Devereux Texas Treatment Network and begins taking anti-psychotic medication.
_ April 12, 2001: Yates is discharged and begins outpatient care at Devereux.
_ May 4, 2001: Yates is readmitted to Devereux and begins taking Haldol.
_ May 14, 2001: Yates is again discharged from Devereux.
_ June 4, 2001: Dr. Mohammad Saeed, a psychiatrist, tells Rusty Yates to have his wife taper off Haldol over next three days.
_ June 18, 2001: The Yates couple have follow-up visit with Saeed. Rusty Yates reports his wife is not improving.
_ June 20, 2001: Yates drowns her five children in the bathtub.
_ Feb. 28, 2002: Trial on two capital murder charges begins.
_ March 12, 2002: Yates is convicted of both charges.
_ March 15, 2002: Yates is sentenced to life in prison.
_ Dec. 14, 2004: Yates' attorneys argue her appeal before 1st Court of Appeals in Houston.
_ Jan. 6, 2005: 1st Court of Appeals in Houston overturns Yates' conviction, ruling that some erroneous testimony may have influenced jurors.
_ Nov. 9, 2005: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholds lower appeals court ruling overturning Yates' conviction.
_ June 26, 2006: Yates' second murder trial begins.
_ July 26, 2006: Yates found innocent by reason of insanity.
People understandably want Andrea Yates to suffer for her unspeakable deeds. I understand that. But consider that she has been psychotic since she had her first child, and was in such pain that before murdering her children, she tried to murder herself. Twice. And consider that she has to live with the killing of her five children on her conscience. If there is a prison more punishing than that Andrea Yates now lives in, and will have to live in for the rest of her life, even if she regains her sanity, I don't want to think about it. I have seen in the lives of close friends how serious depression affects them and their ability to reason -- and they were nowhere near as sick as Andrea Yates -- and I cannot accept that this poor miserable creature understood what she was doing on that terrible morning.
I was thinking that that shockingly obtuse ex-husband of hers, Rusty, deserves a great deal of opprobrium in all this, for the role he played. But considering that he buried five children, it's hard for me to muster much anger at him. It's all so horribly, horribly sad. Lord have mercy on them all.
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PostPartum Depression is real, and can become more pronounced with subsequent pregnancies. Living in a bus, and getting religious instructions from the likes of Mr. W didn't help matters along.
Hopefully, Ms. Yates will receive treatment and even compassion. Nothing will bring back the lives of those innocent children.
For what it's worth, I pray they are at peace.>
I see this crazy crap too often with the religious nuts, like the Yates. Years of brainwashing about Satan, Heaven and Hell, and other mythical people and places, burdens the weak with great fear and guilt,(Religion's most powerful weapons).
This unstable woman should not have been allowed one child, let alone five! I am watching her interviews on "Primetime" and she speaks of saving her children from Satan, and making sure they didn't go to hell (that's why she killed the kids).
You combine religious fanatisism with unstable and uneducated people, and you may create the perfect storm, just look at the Middle East.
Hopefully, both of these lunatics will be sterilized before they die, just in case reproduction is acheivable in the afterlife.
Too bad she didn't join the Jim Jones Cult or the Hale Bop Comet nuts, before she was able to breed.>
Wow. I agree with your principles, Steve, but when it comes to lack of compassion, you just posted a prime example.>
I just read this and it sounds like a bunch of LIBERAL, bleeding heart, soft on crime, bull crap. There is NO EXCUSE for drowning your children. None.
Andrea should have been executed for her brutal crimes as far as I'm concerned.
Levi
www.waroncrime.co.nr
Last year I discovered a book on the wikipedia written about the drowning of five children, published in 1986. I was going to publish it on my blog but I convinced myself it was a foolish notion. Just before finding that information, I had discovered that George Chapman who was claimed to be Jack the Ripper, was possibly acting out Edgar Allan Poe's Telltale Heart, in which a man murdered his wife and buried her under the floor boards in the house. I do not know if this was referencing Poe's father's thoughts about his mother or his adoptive father. I happen to be related to some Chapmans. Chapman's real name was Klosowski, a Russian Jew and were accused of these crimes. Klosowski was charged with three murders unrelated to the Ripper murders and hanged. He was basically psychotic as a result of someone reading those stories and probably projecting them out onto whoever. Having had a public business, a barber at one time, he was certainly subjected to many public associations. My guess is his situation was no different than Yates'. Beware what you read and watch in TV. Lindsey Wagner, a well known actress and star of Bionic Woman appeared before a US Government committee in DC in 1993, telling the committee that allowing children to view violent television should be prohibited and that children could become violent as a result. Words can kill, it may not happen today or tomorrow but what you allow into your subconscious mind will manifest itself sooner or later. There are numerous books written on the subject, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, The Genie Within, TNT. It doesn't matter what believe about what is said. It is the same with music, the ideas get planted. Listen to the music, turn your radio on, get in touch with God, turn your radio on...
As Paul Harvey says, "good day".
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