RedHanded - Episode 109 - Andrea Yates & The Devil

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

In 2001 Andrea Yates did the unthinkable when one-by-one she killed all 5 of her children; what had possessed this seemingly ordinary, loving mother? Well, according to Andrea it was Satan himself. Join the girls this week as they ask did the devil really make Andrea do it?  Recommended viewing: Andrea Yates: A Mother’s Madness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsYS-guaNHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2pNZPJPdoc   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. We have got quite the case for you today. And I would just say, reserve your judgments until the very end. Yeah, you need the full story before you're making any... You do. Jumping any assumptions. Exactly.

As tempting as that might be. Because today, we're heading to Texas. We on the 20th of June 2001, Andrea Yates, a young mother, did the unthinkable when she killed all five of her children. This case threw the little-known and even less understood condition of postpartum psychosis into the spotlight on a global scale. But as ever, let's start at the beginning. Andrea had grown up in Houston, the youngest of five children, to Andrew and Karen Kennedy. And Andrea had a really normal childhood. It was only extraordinary in the sense that she herself was extraordinary. In high school, she was the captain of the swim team, she was the historian of the National Honours Society, and she graduated as valedictorian of her senior year. So yeah she's an all-star student. Does valedictorian mean toppest of marks? Yeah. Okay. I think it's like the best. Yes another

Americanism that I don't fully understand. Exactly. But it's very impressive is what I've understood of that. The thing with Andrea that you need to know from the start is that she always wanted excellence, but she worked really hard to achieve it. After high school, Andrea went to the University of Texas to study nursing, and then she went on to land her dream job. And at university and at high school, no one expected Andrea to ever get married, let alone have five kids, because according to her friends and family, she never ever dated. In fact, it wasn't until well after uni that she started finally showing an interest in romantic relationships. In 1989, when she was 25, Andrea

moved to a block of flats, and this was where she met her future husband, Rusty Yates. Rusty was also 25 and he was a computer systems designer for NASA. The pair met at the pool in their apartment block and soon they were dating. After three years, they got married and moved in together and from the outside, they seemed like the perfect couple. But things weren't peachy right from the start. Rusty told his story to author Susie Spencer for the book she wrote on this case, which is called Breaking Point.

And he told Susie that Andrea hated sex. She would even get changed in the cupboard. And she just generally hated the physical side of being married. And he said that he thought that things would get better after they actually got married. But they didn't. But it can't have been absolutely none because after they were married almost immediately, Andrea fell pregnant. And on the 26th of February 1994, their first child, Noah, was born. Andrea carried on working as a nurse at first, but soon she left her job.

Exactly why Andrea quit being a nurse is hard to know. Some people say that it was her choice, but then other people say that she was desperate to go back to work. But she was a people pleaser, so when Rusty had asked her to stay home and raise the kids, she accepted. But whatever her reason for staying home, something wasn't okay with Andrea. She started having thoughts of violence and particularly stabbing. And she started to hear voices that she believed was the devil. But Andrea had to be perfect so she couldn't tell anyone. And I don't think that's like an unreasonable thing if that first starts happening to you.

You're not going to just come out straight away and tell people, are you? No, because no one's going to believe you. Yeah, or they're going to think exactly what they would have done you're completely crazy and we'll take your kids away or something right yeah the thing we can say is andrea probably would have been terrified but she kept it to herself and andrea was good at hiding her issues rusty jokingly used to call andrea fertile my because, quote, when we started trying for kids, it never took long. Andrea definitely goes on to live up to this pretty gross nickname. It is gross, man. She's your wife. I know. Fertile Myrtle. She's not a fucking cow.

As is expected with Fertile Myrtle, the following year, Andrea fell pregnant again, and the couple had another son, John, who was born on the 15th of December 1995. With a second baby now in the picture, Andrea's stress levels would no doubt have increased. And with it, so did her violent thoughts. But again, she suppressed all her fears. In 1996, Rusty took a short-term job opportunity in Florida. And I assume that's because that's where Cape Kennedy is, possibly. Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that.

Despite being closer to Disney World. They didn't get any happier. They didn't get any happier. They certainly were not in the happiest place on earth. The move proved absolutely disastrous for Andrea's mental health. Rusty thought that it would be a good idea to move his family into a 38-foot trailer rather than looking for a temporary home. And at this point, I have to say, like,

Rusty works for NASA. He must have had a decent salary. It seems like a bizarre move to move your wife, their young kids, into a trailer when it's not like a financial move. So why is he moving his growing family into essentially a caravan? And we all know absolutely nothing sexy about them. Maybe that's what they needed. They needed to stop being sexy.

That's true. And stop having kids. Well, it didn't work though, did it? No. It probably must have been quite a sexy caravan for Rusty at least. For them, caravans are really sexy. The reason for this was that since university, Rusty had been following the teachings of a very fire and brimstone street preacher

named Michael Waranecki. And Michael was a former college football player. And in Texas, that's basically a celebrity. And his wife, Rachel, was a former college football player and in Texas that's basically a celebrity and his wife Rachel was a former college cheerleader so they're probably the like the power couple that everybody wants to be. Michael Waranecki actually grew up Catholic but now describes himself as an independent non-denominational Christian missionary and that's a mouthful. Whatever that is when it's at home. Yeah independent non-denominational Christian missionary. And that's a long business card, isn't it? It should just have said, I don't know, Manic Street Preacher.

Something. Make your own joke up. Here you go. Insert your own joke here. So he actually has an official website which you can go and look at and you can check out his life story. And it reads as pretty reasonable and toned down. It's such an interesting website.

It's like so ultra modern. It looks like a an interesting website. It's like so ultra modern. It looks like a marketing company website. It's so modern is the only word I can think. I wouldn't even say slick, just very modern. But anyway, you go on to it and it's so weird because, yeah, he's got a very reasonable bio up there now. And he says that he came to Christ, his mum was sick and he was playing in the college football games and he asked Jesus to help him win and that if he did that he would like pray to him every Sunday or something like that. Make me really good at football and then I'll give up football to serve you. That makes perfect sense. So when he won, probably not anything to do with

Jesus, he said that he felt like god really cares about what happens to me so i should serve him quite arrogant isn't it i thought very magical thinking isn't it yeah strange but anyway you go on to his website the other really interesting thing apart from the toned down bio which is like literally 17 pages long he makes his own trance and edm music that is inspired by the scriptures. Oh my god I can't stand EDM and trance anyway the only thing to make me hate it more is to involve Jesus in any way. Oh my god it's a lot and oh what's the quote when you go onto the website when you can start listening to the tracks it's like um he who can hear now let him hear or some shit like that.

Jesus Christ. So pointless. This is what's happening now. Back then, he's definitely not who he is now because Michael Waranecki has undoubtedly gone through quite a rebrand. Because if you check him out on YouTube and we'll post some of the videos, you'll see what he was up to back in the day. And I'm not saying that he's changed from who he was back then. I just think he's realised that you can probably catch more flies with Bible EDM than fiery prophetising. That's literally why he's done this. Not many more. It's a very niche group of people.

That website's not cheap, Hannah. You seen it? No, I bet. I bet. But anyway, back to the 90s. At this time, Michael and Rachel Waranecki took their six kids out on the road with them as a moving ministry. And they made it sound like they wanted to do it so they could be, like, free. But in fact, it was because they were always in trouble with the authorities for their very aggressive preaching style. And they actually left their home state of Michigan to avoid prosecution.

So it's not like, let's hit the road for freedom. They're kicked out. No, we've got to leave. They've run out of town because they're so nuts. But anyway, they travelled all over the US and 23 other countries, mainly preaching on street corners and college campuses, spreading their particular brand of Christianity. And this was one of austerity, a back to biblical basics, and the idea, very

interestingly, that only a very few select people would go to heaven. Everyone else was doomed to go to hell. It's very like Westboro Baptist-y. Westboro Church Baptist. Is that what they're called? Westboro Baptist Church. Westboro Baptist Church. It's very like them. The austerity teaching was key. And according to Warinecki, to have a job or to live in a house was to take part in the evil satanic conspiracy against God. How is he paying to feed his children is what I want to know. And it was Warineke who encouraged the Yates family to leave their nice house in the suburbs and move into that 36 foot trailer. And don't worry about it, we will come back to this fascinating character later on, but for now let's leave Waranecki where he is and concentrate on Andrea for a bit.

Andrea, Rusty and their two young sons had just moved to Florida when we left them and they're living in this trailer. And that year Andrea got pregnant again, but this time she miscarried. In 1997 the family moved back to Houston where Andrea fell pregnant, and they had their third son called Paul, who was born on the 1st of September 97. Despite having moved back to Houston and having another baby, Rusty decided against moving his family back into a house. So they stayed in the trailer, And the following year, and I suppose because the boys were getting bigger, Rusty traded in the trailer for a 350 square foot greyhound bus that they bought from none other than Michael Waranecki.

So selling things is fine. That's not taking part in the global satanic conspiracy. If it directly benefits you, that's fine. Oh, yeah. It's all just donations for God's man, though, isn't he? He's God's wingman on Earth, so it's fine for him. Oh, everything he does is fine. It's just you can't go to 7-Eleven. No.

And how dare you, Rusty, have a job at NASA, get in this fucking trailer, and then live in this bus that I will sell you. And now that I have a bus to sell you, it's fine for you to live in this bus. Like, and we can't get away from the greyhounds greyhound buses following you yeah I just think at this point like what possesses Rusty to do this I honestly don't know a few months after moving into the bus baby number four arrived Luke was born on February 15th 1998 1998. And just in case 350 square foot doesn't mean anything to you,

believe me, it is tiny. It's a bus. Bigger than the caravan, but still definitely a bus. Exactly. I spent four and a half hours on that bus and I was like, get me out of here. They are living in this bus. In the main part of the bus, there was like a trap door on the floor and you could open it and look down into what is essentially the luggage hold. And down there, the family had put pallets down. And that's where their children were sleeping. They've got four kids by this point. And the craziest thing is they don't need to be doing this.

It's like you said, this is not a financial necessity. No, it's a choice. It's a choice. And you can just imagine how overwhelmed Andrea was. At least Rusty got to escape every day to go to work and sit in his probably quite nice office. Andrea's stuck on the bus with four boys. Where are

they washing? Honestly, I don't like outside or somewhere. I think it's because they're parked up in like a trailer park or like in a campsite. So there's still like facilities there. But it's not ideal, especially when you've got four sons between the ages of four and a newborn. They're living at this point by Michael Wiernecki's teachings.

So they're not even allowed to use nappies, like disposable nappies. And I know it's like very much more environmentally friendly now to use like washable, reusable diapers. You know that. She's living on a bus with four kids. She's constantly, all she's doing is changing nappies and washing nappies. That's all she's doing basically. Can you imagine the stress? No.

And they're probably all in nappies as well. Of course, there is. The four-year-old maybe not, but that's three children shitting round the clock. In a bus. Oh, God. And your husband's not there because he goes to work. So it's fair to say that at this point, Andrea's life was unravelling. And we know now that Andrea had started to experience strange symptoms

immediately after the birth of Noah, her first son, but that she had kept it a secret so that her family didn't ever know that anything was wrong. But it's important at this point that we talk about Rusty. I don't think that Rusty was abusive. I think that he was ignorant to his wife's plight and stupidly following the teachings of a man like Waraneke. But I honestly don't think that Rusty had any idea of the impact that his and Andrea's choices were having on her. Because they were, to an extent, Andrea's choices were having on her because they were to an extent Andrea's choices too she had actually gone on to become an even bigger fan of Waranecki's than Rusty even though it was Rusty who would introduce her to them it's a really difficult one because

like obviously inconsiderate is too light a word for this but I think she's your wife like you're supposed to know her better than anyone else and he should have been more switched on even though she's not outwardly saying that she's in trouble she can't have been looking great she probably wasn't acting like her normal self and as a husband that's something that he should have picked up on and he didn't but I think you're right I don't think he's abusive I think he's neglectful I think he's neglectful and ignorant to it because I think what is going on in Rusty's head is we want to have all these children it's going to be tough but I'm the breadwinner I'll go get the money she has to stay home and raise the kids my job is stressful this is stressful but it will pass when the kids get older and I think

that's how he kind of rationalizes it to himself but it's not okay all right but having said that Andrea was regularly communicating with Michael Warinecki and his wife Rachel and she was fully behind every decision that both of them made about their lives. Of course, we know now that Andrea wasn't totally okay, so of course we can blame Rusty for not realising the enormity of what Andrea was dealing with, but being blind and negligent isn't the same as willful abuse. Andrea had seemed fine until just before her 35th birthday, when her fourth son Luke Luke, was born. And it was at this point that the first red flag flared.

Andrea's life was in total turmoil. She's homeschooling her three eldest boys and nursing her newborn, and all of that while living on a bus. Just think about how unsanitary that must have been if she's washing three, possibly four sets of shitty nappies every day, day in, day out in a bus with no running water. I'm amazed that they survived. I honestly don't know how Rusty, as we can say, a subjectively intelligent man, allowed this to happen. It's all the teachings of this Michael Waranecki.

He like completely brainwashes them that living this like austere life on a bus will mean that they will all not be left behind. They'll all go to heaven. There's a rapture coming or some shit. Are you serious? It's so extreme. And on top of that, because she was a nurse, Andrea was also helping care for her father

who had Alzheimer's. And all the while she's corresponding with the fucking Waraneckis. Other people at the trailer park told Rusty that Andrea didn't seem okay and they told him to do something. But Rusty just said that they had clear roles within their family. He was the breadwinner and Andrea raised the kids and she was fine. But Andrea was most certainly not fine. Slowly but surely over that summer Andrea's delusions grew and grew and they started to merge and intertwine with the biblical mumbo jumbo that the Waraneckis were beating her over the head with.

The way the Waraneckis managed their flock was like a priest, a therapist and a doctor all rolled into a pen pal. Because if you remember, they're always on the road. So the way that they would maintain this connection is that they would correspond with people through letters or videos. So buying a stamp at the post office isn't buying into the global conspiracy then that's fine and i assume um buying a stamp at the post office to send people a letter and probably ask them for money in return for your counsel yeah isn't buying into a satanic conspiracy against god even jesus had a job he was a carpenter this is such a dumb idea of like not having a job making you more spiritually holy like oh no i know it's a lot and um we can um you know know all these points down and write to him

because if you go onto his website there is an option to write to me so oh no what i'm doing with my content anna yeah so if you're wondering like how this all works how is he running this ministry while he's on the road? Basically, the method is you would write to the Waraneckis about all of your problems, all of your challenges, your spiritual guidance that you needed. They'd read your letter, then they would analyze you. And of course, they would judge you. And then they would write back with some suggestions and some hate. That's how it works. So Andrea has nowhere else to turn. I just feel like she is so used to being perfect that she doesn't want to trouble her family with this because her dad's

sick. She can't tell Rusty because he's busy. So she has nowhere else to turn. And I think, not think, I know, Andrea desperately needed a therapist and a doctor. So she wrote to the only people she had, the Waraneckis. But considering that Michael Waranecki's key message was, quote, if you think you're a good person and a Christian and that you're going to heaven, you aren't, because that's prideful. And only God knows and chooses who goes to heaven. So you can imagine a man who thinks like that wasn't going to be much help for a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. That's a very Catholic idea. He's definitely carried through his Catholicism into his own intersectional, non-denominational, whatever it is.

Yeah, that idea that you are just bad, whatever you do, and the only thing that you can do is everything the church tells you. And in this case, the church is him. And it still might not be enough. Yeah. So you better overcompensate. And you're not going to know until judgment day. Exactly. All bets are off.

Michael Waranecki, his beliefs don't sort of end there with that kind of crazy. Because Michael Waranecki also believed that all women are evil. In one of the letters that his wife, Rachel Waranecki, wrote to Andrea, she called her evil, wicked, and the daughter of Eve, and a wicked witch. That's nice and supportive, isn't it? I know. Women helping women. And she also told Andrea that the only hope she had was to repent. I assume it's probably quite confusing to be told to repent for being an evil serpent

and a wicked witch and the daughter of Eve when you don't even understand why. How do you repent when you don't know why you're repenting? And also technically all women are daughters of Eve when you don't even understand why? How do you repent when you don't know why you're repenting? And also technically all women are daughters of Eve. There you go. So Rachel Wernicke will give you that one. So Michael and his wife basically believe that all women inherited that witchcraftiness from Eve and the spirit of Jezebel. I think Jezebel gets a tough rap, man. Like all she did was convince her husband, the King of Israel, to stop worshipping Yahweh and worship Baal instead. Like that's it's it she was like should we just change religions well there you go there's a little classic sidetrack for everybody listening does bible study count as classics uh

no because it's made up okay there we go as opposed to the minor tour which is obviously 100 true fucking hot takes over here made up and it's. But basically, like, this is their whole vibe. Women are evil, they're bad, Jezebel, whores, etc, etc. You get the message. And their whole message was that men should have dominance over women. Again, obviously, Rusty and Andrea well bought into this. I don't think Rusty is like actually using this to like beat Andrea into submission. But I think they both willingly accept that those are their roles, and they along with it so the Waraneckis are really terrifying and you get why the authorities had a problem with them they would go to universities and yell at female students on campus because they were at school learning instead of being at home

raising kids do you know what I got yelled at me the other day? What? Because I was in Brixton with my sister. It was about midnight, I think. It might have been a bit earlier. Brixton at midnight. Yeah, classic. And I was waiting with my sister on the side of the road, waiting for an Uber, and this man, sort of like mid-twenties,

with his mates in the car, leans out of his taxi window to shout at me and my sister, you're a one out of ten. It's nice, isn't it? And my mouth is open. That's so mean. I was like, why have you a one out of ten it's nice isn't it my mouth is open that's so mean i was like why have you taken time out of your fucking night to insult me like how dare you maybe he didn't understand the scale big man now like in front of your mates oh and i said to my sister i was like i'm gonna call him out on the show she was like hannah it's really not that

much of a big deal i was like no i will be avenged you will be avenged this is your moment of avenging you are an avenging angel for yourself now. Oh God, I was so, it really just ruined my night, honestly. Oh, fuck that guy. Yeah, I'll find you. We will. Someone will find you. Anyway. So anyway, they were very hot and bothered by women being at university. Women, you should be at home. You're wicked witches, go raise kids, apparently.

Thing is, even if women stayed at home, they didn't escape the judgment of the righteous Waraneckis. Oh no. Because Michael was very judgmental about how women these days raise their kids. His basic vibe is that women are lazy. So to curb this and to really get his message across, he wrote a little poem. And I guess it's probably now an EDM track.

And this is my dramatic reading. Oh, I can't wait. Poem time. Story corner. All of my childhood spent at verse and prose competitions is just about to kick in, guys. Don't worry. I'm trained. I'm classically trained. Modern mother world was very, very lazy. All her children drove her crazy. The Bible told her to spank and train them. But society said that she must never constrain them. The fruit of rebellion she did now see. On the day of judgment, she will have no pleas.

Modern Mother Worldly cast in hell! Now, what becomes of the children of such a Jezebel? You're welcome. Please set that as your morning alarm. And Andrea started to see herself as a Jezebel, which is, as we have covered, historically incorrect. She was consuming so much of the Waranecki's words that she became convinced that she hadn't been raising her kids correctly. So because of that, and because of her, they were going to hell. In her eyes, she was an awful mum, even though to everyone else she was known to be a wonderful, loving and natural mother. But she just wasn't well. She didn't see it like that, and her circumstances and environment weren't helping. Four months after Luke was born,

Rusty got a call at work. It was Andrea. She sounded strange and she told him, quote, come home, I need help. And this bit just breaks my heart because Rusty got home, well, got home to the bus and Andrea was sat there chewing her fingers. And they actually state in the reports I read, she's not chewing her fingernails, she's chewing her fingers. Let that sink in. And she was shaking uncontrollably. And when Rusty arrived, she looked up and said, I need help. Andrea had had a nervous breakdown. And Rusty said that at this point, he didn't know what to do.

So we got Andrea and the kids into the car and took them. He drove them to Galveston Beach and took them for a walk. It's also heartbreaking. In interviews since the incident, Rusty does look pretty tragic. And I think people do misconstrue him a lot, like in all the interviews at the time, in interviews now as well. He awkwardly smiles and it makes him just look stupid. But he's just an awkward guy. You can see the pain in his eyes. This is tragic. And he says when he's talking about this particular incident that he just had no idea what was wrong or what he should have done.

And finally, after their walk on Galveston Beach, he took Andrea home to her parents. By this point, Andrea was having vivid, intrusive thoughts about killing the kids, but she still didn't tell anyone. The day after her breakdown, Andrea took an overdose of her sick father's sleeping pills and tried to kill herself. But Andrea's family rushed her to hospital and she survived. Following the suicide attempt, Andrea was taken to a psychiatric hospital

and diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and prescribed with the anti-depression medication Zoloft. Following this, Andrea was kept in hospital for a week and released, not because she was better, but because the health insurance had run out. She was then referred to a psychiatrist named Dr Eileen Starbrunch, who recommended moving from the antidepressant Zoloft to the antipsychotic Zoprexia. But the thing is that Warinecki told his followers that doctors were bad and that medication was worse.

So Andrea started flushing her medication. Once Andrea stopped taking her meds, she showed little signs of recovery, unsurprisingly probably. She started pulling her hair out and scratching bald spots on her head, and she would just sit and scratch at her skin constantly, and then she would pick at the resulting sores. Andrea began to have visual and auditory hallucinations. She would hear the words, get a knife, get a knife, get a knife, over and over again. Finally one day she did get a knife but again worried that she was going to kill her children she went into the bathroom and tried to stab herself in the neck. Rusty saw her

though and managed to wrestle the knife away from her and then he took Andrea back to hospital. This time she was moved to a private facility and given an emergency dose of the powerful anti-psychotic drug Haldol. Andrea now told the doctors that she had had the knife hallucination over 10 times in the last few days. She had claw marks on her legs like she'd been trying to physically hold herself down. So by 1999, it's fair to say that Andrea is at crisis point. But finally at this point, she was diagnosed with having postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is not the same as postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a serious mood disorder, but it is quite common. Apparently, according to the NHS, up to like one in seven women can experience this after having a baby.

Postpartum psychosis, on the other hand, is incredibly rare and incredibly serious. And it only occurs in one out of every thousand births. In this case, so women suffering with postpartum psychosis will suffer with delusions, hallucinations, manic mood, essentially the symptoms that we would see in someone who was psychotic. And the symptoms will often be so bad that hospitalization is required. Over half of women with postpartum psychosis go on to be diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, but most women with postpartum psychosis do go on to make a full recovery, as long as they receive the right treatment. The right treatment

being medication therapy and in some very severe cases ECT or electroconvulsive therapy. Dr. Starbranch Andrea's psychiatrist recommended that she had ECT but she and Rusty decided against it. So again after three weeks in hospital Andrea was released with prescriptions for the antidepressants Apexia, Welbutrin, and the antipsychotic Haldol. Andrew was also to have monthly check-ins with Dr. Starbranch. After the breakdown... Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series,

NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest

to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding

and this time, if all goes to plan we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Andrea's mum made Rusty buy a house. She really put her foot down. There was to be no more bus.

So by September 99, Andrea was in a nice new house. She was taking her medication and her condition had improved considerably. She was back to being her usual self. She was playing with the kids, the voices had stopped, and she was cooking and baking like she used to. Things were getting better and for months, things seemed to continue to improve. But then in November, Andrea and Rusty started to consider the idea of having yet another baby. Dr Starbranch outright told them that this was a terrible idea and not to do it. When a woman has already had an episode of postpartum psychosis, they have a 50 to 80% chance of having another episode if they have another baby.

Not only does the risk of episode increase, but the psychotic symptoms are likely to get worse next time. And it makes sense because the first time she feels the symptoms is after her very first baby, but she's able to suppress it and then she goes on to have three more and it gets incrementally worse exactly and it's after her fourth child is born that she just has that breakdown and i think at this stage it's pretty fair to say what the fuck is rusty doing i don't think he can claim ignorance anymore she's been in and out of hospital a doctor has specifically told him not to have another baby. She's, I mean, better, but obviously not in her right mind. And now when you watch like more recent interviews with him,

he says, the doctors never told us not to have another baby. But that's bullshit. They definitely did tell him not to have another baby. The reason I also know that is not only because the doctors would have told them and like, of course they would have, it's because when you go back to what he says at the time, in like contemporaneous reports, it reads very much like someone who was told not to have another baby. Because he told Susie Spencer, the author that we mentioned at the start of the show who wrote the book on the case, Breaking Point, quote, if someone gave you a brand new Mercedes-Benz and said, you can have it, but you'll have the flu for two weeks, you'd take it, wouldn't you?

It's not the flu, it's fucking psychosis, you absolute moron. Exactly. It's not something that you can get rid of with antibiotic. Even if she gets better, it's going to take consistent medication, therapy and hard work. It's never going to go away. And it's not a fucking car, it's another baby that's going to add another huge slice of stress into her life,

which is the opposite of what she needs. The thing is, it's very easy for us to judge Rusty and Andrea because they both want to have this baby, but the Yates, as you can tell, they were super religious and they were determined, according to them, to have as many children as God would allow. And the doctors weren't going to talk them out of it. In interviews, Rusty says, quote, we knew there was a risk, but we knew that the meds could help her again. We knew what it was now and we knew how to treat it. It would probably be a short spell and maybe she'd be down for a few

weeks at the most. What a fucking risk to take with your wife's health. It's unbelievable. I don't, I just, I have no words. If he was, you know, deluded enough to think, or maybe that's harsh, maybe if he's misinformed enough or naive enough to think, we know what it is now, we can just give her more Haldol, she'll be fine.

The doctors were clear. If Andrea got pregnant again and she had another case of postpartum psychosis, not only might it be more severe, but it would become harder to treat if it came back. Four months later, Andrea was pregnant again. And on November 30, 2000, their fifth child and first daughter was born. They called her Mary. And tragically, this was very much the beginning of the end.

Within months, Andrea's dad died and the stress was too much for Andrea. Being the nurse in the family, she felt as if she'd failed him. On May 31st, 2001, Andrea was taken back into hospital and she was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and postpartum psychosis. This time, Andrea wasn't put back on Haldol. If you go on and off your meds, it can have an effect on the brain and make the same condition harder to treat, and it can also make you more ill. In April 2001, with Andrea making little progress, Rusty flew his mum out to Houston to help Andrea with the kids. But the thing is, unbeknownst to anyone, Andrea had gone back back to her ways she'd been flushing her meds

she stopped eating and she refused to drink any liquids and she started scratching at bald spots on her head and she completely stopped speaking Rusty's mum was so worried about her daughter-in-law's erratic behavior that Andrea was once again hospitalized for the next two months Andrea was committed to a private psychiatric hospital she was was put back on her meds, but again the drugs were changed. But Andrea just stopped improving. On June 20, 2001, Rusty was at work and Andrea was home alone with the children. That afternoon, Houston police got a 911 call from the Yates house. It was Andrea.

She told them that she was ill and that they needed to send the police and an ambulance. Andrea then called her husband and told him, quote, Come home, it's about the kids. Rusty asked her, is there something wrong with them? Which ones? To which Andrea replied, all of them. When the police arrived, Andrea calmly told them that she had killed her children. The police officers couldn't believe it. Andrea was sat on the couch in the hallway, not looking at them, and the house was dead silent.

Officer Frank Stumphole, who was the first responder, said that he walked into the master bedroom, not sure of what he'd see. And there he saw a tiny baby lying on the edge of the bed. He said that, at first, he almost thought it was a doll. Its eyes were open and just staring at him. But as he got closer, he realised that it was very real. The body was partially hidden with a blanket that was spread across the bed. Frank pulled the blanket up and as he did, he saw body after body laying next to the first one.

There were four. Shocked, he walked into the bathroom and there he found Noah, the eldest, floating face down in the bath. Andrea had drowned all five of her children. The police had no idea what to do. Officer Frank Stumphol said in an interview, quote, everything I'd ever been taught or learned or any instinct I had just went out of the window. By this stage, Rusty had arrived home, but the police wouldn't let him in. But he knew what had happened.

Rusty stood outside the house, dropped to the floor and banged his fists, screaming at Andrea, what have you done? On the other side of the door, Andrea just sat there staring with a blank look on her face. The police took Andrea out the back door to avoid Rusty and took her to the police station. Here, Andrea gave the police a very calm but very shaky 18-minute confession. She looks like she's on drugs, but she's the opposite. She's wired. It's really, really tragic. I think you can really easily find the video footage of her confession.

Here's like a snippet of the kind of things that she's saying. After you drew the bathwater, what was your intent? What were you about to do? Found the children. So obviously this is immediately all over the news. And the next day, Rusty shocked the world with his statement. It's hard, you know, like I said, because, you know, I'm torn. One side of me, you know, blames her because, you know, she did it, you know.

But the other side of me says, well, she didn't because that wasn't her, you know. She wasn't in the right frame of mind. And I guess she had, you know, psychotic side effects with her depression that led her to do this. I think people just couldn't believe how quickly this husband was saying that he forgave her, that it wasn't her fault. But it's because Rusty knew better than anybody exactly what Andrea had been going through. And needless to say, the public opinion was totally polarising at the time. How could a mother kill not one, but five of her children? So while Rusty dealt with the backlash that came his way from the public,

either for not protecting Andrea or for defending Andrea, Andrea was being held in a psychiatric hospital undergoing a series of psychiatric exams. As she was put back on medication, Andrea stabilised and she started to reveal the terrifying motives behind her actions. Andrea told doctors that, quote, maybe in their innocent years, God would take them to be up in heaven and when asked if you hadn't taken their lives what would have happened she told them

they would have continued stumbling and ended up in hell a bible passage that Michael Warinecki really seemed to have liked because he was obsessed with child rearing was mark 942 and it goes like this if anyone causes one of these little ones those who believe in me to stumble it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea that's in the new testament people always say that like oh the old testament is this like fire and brimstone god like he shows up in the new one as well and this is the thing this is a message that um i think andrea took very much to heart because like you see in her confession

she says that she was causing these kids to stumble and this passage says well you should just go fucking kill yourself then and as we know she tried twice i don't think anyone can doubt that andrea loved her kids but the message she kept hearing was that she was the devil, she was evil. And when psychosis happens, it will be absorbed and intertwined with a person's pre-existing ideas and belief systems. Look at Janet Moses, exactly the same thing, a psychosis that took its form through Maori beliefs rather than Christian ones that we see here,

because that's how psychosis worked. Andrea believed that each of her children were doomed to go on to sin because she was evil. And that's because of what Michael Warinecki told her. He is more to blame here than Rusty is, I think. Andrea truly believed one of her sons would become a serial killer and one son would become mute and one son would go on to be a homosexual sex worker and so on. And this was a predetermined fate. So Andrea was going to save their souls by sending them to heaven while they were still pure. And this is the thing, you have to understand the rationale that Andrea is dealing with. Of course it doesn't make sense, of course it's not logical, but it made sense to her,

given the world she was living in, given the fact that she was under attack from psychosis. We have to think about it from her perspective. So Wendell Odom, Andrea's defense attorney, says that straight away from the start, Andrea wanted to plead guilty. She wanted to be punished because she felt like she was a bad mother. But in her mind, I think it was because she caused her children, quote, to stumble, and not necessarily because she'd killed all five of them. According to Wendell, she was, quote, the sickest woman I'd ever met. Andrea would constantly shake.

She was totally detached, unbathed, and she'd lost so much weight. Her pupils in these videos and the way that people described them were so dilated that her eyes appeared totally black. One person even described her eyes as looking like that of a shark's. And I can understand this looking unnerving, but I assume it's the medication. But she's not on any, is she? No, now she's been, you know, she's in care. She's still sort of stabilising out,

but during that time she's taken a while to stabilise because she's been on and off meds. Like it's been a roller coaster for years. So the doctors are having a hard time finding the right drug, finding the right combination, finding the right dosage. And during that time, it takes her a while to reach like an equilibrium. And the thing is, Andrea still had some of those remnants while she was stabilizing of her past troubling behavior she would still pick at her scalp constantly pull her hair out and she told doctors that she did it because she believed that the number 666 had been etched into her head. Doctors now diagnose Andrea with

cocodomonomania and that's the term for it's the medical term for a belief that one is possessed by evil spirits and when Andrea was examined by Dr. Philip Bresnik, the defense expert psychiatrist, she told him that she believed that she was possessed by the one and only Satan. It's like how people are never like, I was a peasant. I was always a Chinese princess. Yeah, exactly. And even if she's not possessed by one of the lesser demons, she genuinely believes that she is being possessed by Lucifer himself.

Well, if you're going to go, go hard, I suppose. With this, her defence team started preparing for an insanity defence, but the state were going after Andrea and they were seeking the death penalty. Three months after her arrest, a jury finally deemed Andrea fit to stand trial. The question of this trial was whether or not Andrea was criminally responsible. Criminal courts obviously have a very high standard for someone to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. On average, it's only ever accepted as a plea less than 1% of the time, and only a quarter of those 1% cases are argued successfully.

So what's that, Math Genius? 0.04? No, like less than that. Crazy small. And here is your PhD in mathematics. And I think this is something we, this comes up in the live show as well. Something we've been discussing a lot this week is I feel like not guilty by reason of insanity is thrown around a lot in the world of true crime. And I'm not always convinced that people 100% understand it. So let's get down to what it actually means. Everyone, deep breaths. To be held criminally responsible, Andrea would have to be found sane.

And it's crucial to note that there is a huge difference between mental illness and insanity. Mental illness is a psychiatric condition. Insanity has of course now become a cultural concept but first and foremost insanity is strictly a legal term. Insanity is a legal term referring to mental incompetence and moral irresponsibility but importantly it has absolutely no specific medical meaning. So mental illness and insanity are of course related but they are not synonymous. Mental illness is a prerequisite for insanity in a legal setting but it is not the end of the story. So if you can establish that your client or the defendant has a mental illness the the question then becomes, what sort or degree of mental illness constitutes insanity in a legal sense? What does it take for one to be considered

legally insane and therefore not responsible for their actions? And how on earth do you prove that someone was or is insane? To do this, there are three conditions that can be applied, from what I've understood. The person must have a mental three conditions that can be applied, from what I've understood. The person must have a mental illness that means that they did not know what they were doing was illegal. Or they have a mental illness that means that they did not know what they did at all. Or they have a mental illness which means that they were compelled to do what they did by an irresistible force. So in that case, the third point, there is an irresistible urge, not an urge unresisted. The difference being an irresistible urge could have been like visual or auditory hallucinations that convince you it's God or the devil and you must commit this crime.

You may or may not still know that what you're doing is illegal, but you are so ill and so compelled to do it that you cannot not do it. An urge unresisted would be closer to someone who derives sexual pleasure from killing. They aren't being compelled to do it by any force other than their own sexual drive. They could resist, they choose not to. And vitally, their perception of reality isn't skewed to the extent that intent to commit crime was removed. The key thing is that in the law criminal behavior is all about intent. Why did you commit the crime? Was there intent to commit the particular crime or was the intent linked to something else? To prove this the defense need expert testimony

proving that their client is mentally ill and proof of how this mental illness removed the defendant's ability to reason. The jury must then decide whether the expert witness proves that the person did not have intent to commit the crime. The challenge comes down to the fact that this is incredibly complicated and ultimately it comes down to whether the person knew the difference between right and wrong when they were committing the crime. And this is the thing, there's no legal definition for what is right and what is wrong. That's very much left up to the jury's interpretation

and their ability to ascertain whether they thought that that person knew the difference at the point they committed the crime. Before the trial, the defence wanted to see how their plan would play out. They knew this was going to be a hard sell, so they held a mock trial. But the jury at the mock trial just couldn't get over the fact that Andrea had killed her children and then confessed. But time was running out. Andrea's trial started just eight months later on the 18th of February 2002. And interestingly, the state only tried her for three of the murders. They held back two just in case they needed to have another shot

at her. And it's very similar to like the Dali Routier case where they only try her for one of the sons because they want to hold back so they can have another shot at her. And it's very similar to like the Dali Routier case where they only try her for one of the sons because they want to hold back so they can have another shot at her, which interestingly happened about like six years before this case happened again in Texas. So people were primed for mums killing their kids. It's another Diane Downs, it's another Dali, chuck her in the prison. Not that we knew what happened with Dali anyway, I still don't know. The state decided to try and keep the jury focused solely on the idea of whether Andrea knew right from wrong during the act of the murders, rather than allowing them to be distracted by the long history of mental illness that they knew that the defense would

bring out. But if the mock trial was anything to go by, the jury would surely convict. The state claimed that Andrea knew what she was doing because she was prepared and they focused on the physical evidence. Like for example, the order in which Andrea killed her children. She had killed Noah last. He was the eldest and it stood to reason that he would have put up the most fight. Surely that's a reason to take him out first. They said she waited to kill him until last because if she'd have done him first, he would have screamed and put up a fight and if he'd got away, he would have like alerted the other kids to it and they would have run off Oh, OK. But the defence countered this argument by playing the jury videos of Andrea seeming unhinged.

They had tapes of her talking about cartoon characters talking to her through the TV. The cartoons had told her to kill her children to save them from hell. The thing is that those tapes were just after the killings and by the time of the court trial, Andrea had been going through treatment for months and she seemed more or less normal thanks to the medication.

So you have to ask a very difficult ethical question. Should her defence team have kept her quote-unquote crazy so she would seem more unhinged on the sand? However, if they didn't make her better at all, she never would have been found fit to stand trial. So it's a complete catch-22. It is. And they sort of like throw this out there

as sort of like an academic question in interviews, like, should we have kept her crazy? Because it was so hard to stand up there as her defence lawyer and say, you know, this woman was so mentally ill when she sat in the dock. She's gained weight back. She looks better.

She's now obviously bathed. And convincing a jury that, you know, eight months ago, this woman was crazy enough to kill her five kids. That's hard, but obviously completely unethical and unreasonable and would never ever happen to keep her quote, crazy. And so obviously, both sides, both the defence and the prosecution brought in expert psychiatric witnesses. The defence had Dr. Resnick, and the prosecution brought in expert psychiatric witnesses. The defence had Dr Resnick and the prosecution had Dr Park Dietz, the man who had worked on the John Hinckley case, that's the guy who tried to assassinate Reagan. And Dietz also worked as an advisor on the TV show Law & Order.

Both Dietz and Resnick agreed that Andrea was sick. Both also agreed that she knew what she was doing was against the law. But Resnick the defense witness felt that despite knowing it was wrong andrea thought that she was doing the right thing so he says that she knew it was against the law but she still felt like morally in the eyes of god it was the right thing to do that's the key. And you can still be found legally insane if you know what you're doing is legally wrong, as long as you have another intent rather than just to commit the crime. Dietz disagreed. He told the court that Angela knew what she was doing was wrong in the eyes

of the law. And crucially, she also knew what she was doing was wrong in the eyes of God. He could have stopped here, but he also gave an unlikely inspiration for why Andrea maybe did what she did. Remember that he works on Law & Order as an advisor, and he said that on the week of the murders, an episode of Law & Order had aired that had been about a woman who killed her child to be free of her responsibility. Whatever the testimony, I think it would have been so difficult for the jury to get over her sat in the dock looking pretty normal, alongside photographs of five dead kids in pyjamas, especially the one that's face down in the bath. So after three weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for just three and a half hours. On March the 12th, Andrea Yates was found guilty on three counts of murder.

In court, her family broke down. In the video footage, you can see that she tries to turn around and smile at them, but she breaks down into tears. Three weeks later, the jury would reconvene to decide whether Andrea lived or died. After 40 minutes of deliberation, they spared her life. But if you think our story ends there, you'd be wrong. Because questions quickly arose about Dr. Park Dietz's testimony. The storyline he gave of that Law & Order episode was thrown into question. It seemed that such an episode had never existed. So the defence team sat poring over scripts of Law & Order shows and they couldn't find any such episode. They even got in touch with the show's creator Dick Wolf and he told them, I respect Park Dietz greatly but there's no such episode.

Do you know what it is? It's literally him just being like, oh, but by the way, I do work on law and order. Like, how can I loop this into my testimony? That's all it is. And he's really well respected in this field. So everyone was like, it was just an error. He made an error. But like, what an error to make. You're an expert witness in a murder trial.

Capital murder trial. Try harder. Be better. Like, why are you such an arsehole? I hate this fucking guy. I know, it's a lot. So after this came out, the defence filed for mistrial, but it was denied.

Andrew's attorney was now a man who was called George Parnham. He had 19 points of error from the first trial. And finally, in January 2005, three and a half years after the conviction, Andrew was granted a reversal of the guilty verdict. Parham appealed that a second trial would constitute double jeopardy, so he tried to just have the whole thing thrown out as an outright dismissal. But no can do.

They basically ruled that it wouldn't be double jeopardy. So Andrew was to stand trial again. And it all kicked off on June 26, 2006. And after a month of testimony, the jury this time spent 13 hours deliberating. And they asked to see the pictures of the children one more time. And then 30 minutes later, they said they had their verdict. When I heard that, I was like, they're going to find her guilty again. Why are they asking to see the pictures of the kids? Yeah, exactly.

And then they come out 30 minutes later and say, we have a verdict. But the thing is, we found out later that in those final minutes, they weren't still deliberating when they'd asked for those photos. It was because the jury held a two-minute silence for each child. So they spent 10 of those minutes just in silence. But they did actually have a verdict as well. And five years after the murders, Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She's currently at the Kerrville State Hospital and there is no timetable for her release. Rusty divorced Andrea after the first trial and remarried. He now has a

young son. He says that he forgave Andrea a long time ago and says that, to be honest, he never really blamed her at all. George Parnham, the appeal attorney, still speaks to Andrea four times a week, and thinks of her as a daughter. Now this is obviously a very, very controversial case. It was at the time, and it still is today. But the thing is, Andrea had been ill for a long time, probably from her late teens and early twenties. The preacher, Michael Wiernecki, didn't cause her to be sick,

but she lacked the ability to judge what he was saying well. And you would just hope that the other people in her life, like Rusty, could have, you know, seen it a bit more clearly for what it is and kept her safe. But he obviously also wasn't equipped to be able to do that. And then you add in the kids, the bus, everything. Andrea, as the state put it at her trial, had choices and made poor choices. But again, was she in a position to judge her choices well?

And maybe you'll feel it's justice. Maybe this will make you sad. But the one thing we do know is that Andrea was sick, but now she's well again. And she's got five dead babies that she knows that she killed. She's probably exactly where she was terrified she would end up. In hell. I'm glad George still talks to her though. George is the cutest man in the world. I love George. I'll post a picture of George. He's just like so adorable. Before we started this I kind of felt like yeah yeah I know that case. Fucking

hell I didn't know this case. No me either. We hope you got something from that. Stay away from street preachers that's what I'm taking away from that. Take that away from it if you take nothing else. And EDM. And also how you can maybe put together your plea for not guilty by reason of insanity. So good luck with that. Right yeah. As usual let us know what you think on all the social medias at redhandedthepod and of course if you would like to you can give us some lovely money on patreon and here are some people who have done that and normally we say here are some people who have done that this week but people are starting to be like i donated this week and i'm not on that episode because we are like trying not to put a million people's names in every episode because

then no one will listen and your name will be lost in a sea of names. We know you want to hear us butcher your names properly. So we're a little bit behind. We're still like in mid-August, but we will get to you. We will not miss you out. Here we go. B. Ressball.

Thank you. Mars. Maris. Maris. Bacari. I feel like you guys are just making it up now. Mandy. Hicks. Cassie, Stephanie K, Natalie,

Stephanie Bartlog, Mary B, Olivia Rowland, Alexandra, Emily Borman, Mary Craig, Georgia Stephenson, Mary Alice Cafiro, Sarah Parker, Jane Tabor, Stephanie, Lisa Ruth Lynn Bettencourt, Hannah Samautis, Rebecca Wine, Gerard, Gerard? Yeah, Gerard? Yeah, Ryan. Ashley W., Marta Trivi, Gail Classenz, Patrick Towle, Laura Dixon, Alicia McBride, and you can go. Carolina Kennedy or Carolina Kennedy, I don't know. Gay ghost, what's up? Bucky McSwenson, Spencer, Cassie Hunsaker, Lindsay, Ashley Chapnick,

Rebecca Manners, Matthew, Lauren Dayster, Amber, Emily Davis, Hannah Smith, Red Wolf, Amy M, Anne Spatch, Jackie Walker, Aileen Nilsson, Ellen Nilsson, sorry, Andrew Burris, Matthew Clark, Katie Champlin, Nicole Lowry, Noor Smith, Gillian Logan, Heather, Annie Matthews, Lindsay Grace, Gemma Shaw, Amy H. Sturgis, Katie Dahlstrom, Nicholas, Sarah-Jane Patterson, Emery Quantagua. I thought I was doing such, I had such a good run. You were doing very well.

And Melanie, thank you so much for your money. And we will see you next week. We will. Bye. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts,

Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Spotlight turns off. Fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.