The Misery Machine - Andrea Yates: A Case That Changed How We View Mental Health

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

This week, Yergy and Drewby discuss tha case of Andrea Yates, a woman from Houston, Texas, who confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. She had been suffering for some time from severe postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia. Her case placed the M'Naghten rules, along with the irresistible impulse test, a legal test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States.  Check out Hollie's masks here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/HollsNDolls Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/25/us/andrea-yates-fast-facts/index.html https://allthatsinteresting.com/andrea-yates https://abc13.com/andrea-yates-rusty-george-parnham-clear-lake-texas/10802560/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bcgyeKHeV8&t  

At what point could you forgive a mother for taking the lives of all five of her kids? How much would you personally weigh mental health into your decision to forgive? What kind of responsibility would you place on her husband for refusing to follow clear medical treatment plans for his wife and allowing her to go off the medication that kept her from harming herself and others? Today, we cover not only an incredibly tragic case, but one that changed how America looks at most. mothers with mental health issues. Andrea Yates was born in Hallsville, Texas, the youngest of five kids of Jeddah Karin Kohler, a German immigrant, and Andrew Emmett Kennedy, whose parents were Irish immigrants.

Andreas' battles with her mental health started very early. She suffered from disordered eating, specifically bullionia, during her teenage years. She also suffered from depression and dealt with thoughts of self-harm around the age of 17. However, her mental health issues didn't negatively impact her studies. In 1982, Andrea graduated from Milby High School, located in Houston's East End, where she was the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and an officer in the National Honor Society. After high school, Andrea went on to complete a two-year pre-nursing program at the University of Houston and graduated from the University of Texas Health Science Center. For eight years, Andrea worked as an RN at the University of University of University of University of University of University of Houston. of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. In summer 1989, she met Russell Rusty Yates, who worked as an engineer.

The two quickly moved in together and after dating for four years were married on April 17, 1993. Andrea stopped working soon after they were married. Rusty and Andrea were very religious. Although they were not affiliated with any church groups in the area, they regularly held Bible study at their house three nights a week. The couple purchased their first home in Friendswood, Texas, and soon began to start a family. Andrea and Rusty planned to have as many kids as nature would allow, and their first son, Noah, was born on February 26, 1994. Prior to Noah's birth, Rusty accepted a job offer with NASA in Florida, and the family relocated to a small mobile home in Seminole. Shortly after Noah was born, Andrea began experiencing hallucinations where she was using a knife to harm

someone. The Yates family soon welcomed their second son, John, into the world on December 15, 1995. Sadly, Andrea suffered a miscarriage in 1996. By the time their third son, Paul, was born on September 13, 1997, the family had relocated back to the Houston area and purchased a GMC motorhome to reside within. One would think that living inside of a motorhome, with two adults and three kids would be a tight fit, but nevertheless, the Yates family welcomed their fourth son, Luke, into the world on February 15, 1999, and Andrea began to homeschool her older sons outside of the RV. Shortly after the birth of Luke, Andrea began to show signs of postpartum depression. On June 16th, 1999, Rusty found her shaking and chewing her fingers.

The following day, Andrea overdosed on trazodone, which is a medication used to treat depression. and Andrea was subsequently admitted to Methodist Hospital's psychiatric unit where she was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. Soon after her release, Andrea begged Rusty to let her die and again attempted to take her own life holding a knife up to her neck. She also began to scratch bald patches into her scalp and scrape the skin from her legs with her nails. This time hospitalized at the Memorial Spring Shadows Glen facility, she was given a cocktail of medications, including Haldol, which is an antipsychotic. Andrea's condition improved immediately, and she was provided with prescription upon her release.

Prior to her release, Andrea was officially diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia. Her first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, urged the Yates's to not have any more kids, as it would guarantee future psychotic depression out of Andrea. Two attempts on her life was enough, and Rusty moved the growing family into a small house for the sake of Andrea's mental health. The transition between RV life and an actual place to put down roots

and raise her sons seemed to temporarily stabilize the young mother. However, Andrea and Rusty did not heed Dr. Star Branch's warning. Andrew stopped taking her halidol in March of 2000 and gave birth to her daughter, Mary, on November 30, 2000. Andrews seemed to be coping well as a mother of five

until the death of her father on March 12, 2001. This tragic incident sent Andrea into a spiral. She began mutilating herself and reading the Bible in a feverish manner. She also began neglecting her daughter Mary and forgetting to feed her. She once more began to self-harm by pulling out her own hair and believe that there were spy cameras in her home. She also believed that television characters were directly telling her that she is a bad mother. It became so bad that Andrea needed to be hospitalized yet again,

this time at the Devereaux, Texas Treatment Network, where she was under the care of Dr. Mohamed Saeed, who released her into the care of her husband. On May 3, 2001, Andrea's mental health began to deteriorate once more. After filling up her bathtub during the middle of the day, she was once again hospitalized at the Devereaux, Texas Treatment Network. Her psychiatrist determined she was probably contemplating to take her own life once more and had filled the tub to drown herself.

Other sources indicated that Andrea actually admitted that she had planned to kill her kids. On June 4th, Dr. Muhammad Said discontinued Andrea's prescription for Haldol, which had been working for her previously. He advised her to start thinking positive thoughts and that this would help her situation despite her prior diagnoses. On June 20th, 2001, Rusty left their home in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake City to go to work, which was against Dr. Saeed's specific instructions to supervise her around the clock. Rusty's mother, Dora, was supposed to show up an hour later in order to look after Andrea and her five grandkids. However, during that span of one hour that Andrea was left alone with her kids, the unthinkable happened.

Andrea entered the family bathroom and filled the tub, and then one by one, drowned her sons and her only daughter. She first started with five-year-old John, then three-year-old Paul, and then two-year-old Luke, placing their lifeless bodies in her bed. She then gathered up Mary, who was only six months old at the time, and drowned her, and left her floating in the bathtub. Finally, seven-year-old Noah entered the bathroom and asked what was wrong with Mary, who was floating lifelessly.

Noah ran and put up a fight, but soon met the same demise. as his siblings. Andrea repeated the process of laying them in her bed, this time with Mary and John's arms. Andrea called emergency services requesting an officer, but would not tell the operator why. Afterwards, she contacted Rusty and told him to come home immediately. Andrea provided a full confession

and admitted to killing all five of her kids, and Rusty enlisted family friend and attorney George Parnum to represent her. Andrew advised forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Wellner that she waited for Rusty to leave for work before filling the bathtub because she knew that he would have stopped her from doing so. Afterwards, police found the Yates family dog locked up in a crate, which was unusual as he was normally allowed to roam free about the home. Rusty advised Dr. Wellner of this, which led him to allege that she locked the dog in the crate to prevent him from interfering with the drownings, thus demonstrating premeditation. Although the defense expert testimony agreed that Andrea was psychotic,

Texas law requires that in order to successfully assert an insanity defense, the defendant must prove that they could not discern right from wrong at the time of the crime. Both Andrea and Rusty's comments to Dr. Welner dashed those hopes, and on March 12, 2002, a Harris County jury rejected the insanity defense and found her guilty on two counts of capital homicide in the deaths of Noah, John and Mary. Interestingly, she was not tried in the deaths of Paul and Luke. Although the prosecution had sought the death penalty, the jury refused that option. Harris County, Texas is known for carrying out death sentences. If this county were a state, it would only be behind Texas and Virginia for

the most death sentences carried out since 1977. The trial court sentenced her to life imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice with the eligibility of parole in 40 years. Later that same year, the Yates Children Memorial Fund was established to raise awareness of postpartum depression and psychosis. Andrea's prison stay was not without complication, however. She twice attempted to take her own life via starvation, which required round-the-clock monitoring and hospitalization. While in prison, Andrea stated that she had considered killing her kids for two years and that they thought she was a bad mom, as well as claim that her sons were developing improperly. She told her jail psychiatrist, quote,

It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren't righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell, end quote. Andrea continued to have hallucinations in prison, claiming to have seen satanic teddy bears and ducks. In 2004, Rusty Yates filed for divorce, stating that he and Andrea had not lived together as a married couple since the day of the homicides.

The divorce was granted on March 17, 2005, after which Rusty began dating his future wife, Laura Arnold. As part of the divorce settlement, Andrew received $7,000 in cash, the right to be buried next to their kids, and a nursing chair. She would also be eligible to receive a portion of Rusty's retirement benefits from NASA. During her imprisonment, Andrea's lawyer, George Parnum, had been filing appeals on her behalf, and on January 6, 2005, a Texas court of appeals reversed her convictions. State District Judge Belinda Hill approved a $200,000 bond on the condition that Andrea voluntarily commits herself to Rusk State Hospital. You might be wondering how this came about. Well, California psychiatrist and prosecution witness Dr. Park Deetz admitted that he had given materially false testimony during the trial. In his testimony, Dr. Deetz had stated that shortly before the homicides, an episode of Law and Order had aired featuring a woman who drowned her kids and was acquitted by reason of insanity.

But Park Deetz was sorely mistaken, and his error was pointed out by author Suzanne O'Malley, who had been covering Andrea's trial for a variety of news sources. including the Oprah magazine, the New York Times magazine, and NBC News. O'Malley had previously been a writer for Law and Order, and was quick to point out that no such episode existed during this time. It is important to know that Park Deats was known for testifying as an expert witness, most commonly for the prosecution and court cases. He had been involved in many high-profile cases, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, O.J. Simpson, Ted Kaczynski, and the Menendez.

Dates was widely criticized by other professionals in the mental health field for being too harsh and unforgiving towards mentally ill defendants, as well as being accused of presenting opinion as fact. Dietz stopped treating clients in the early 80s. He claims he had last seen a client who had postnatal depression in 1977 over 20 years prior to this case. It should also be noted that he couldn't say for certain if he ever saw a certain if he ever saw a patient that had postnatal depression with psychotic features.

Dr. Dietz had a strange conception of insanity. He believed Andrea was not insane because she knew what she was doing was wrong. He said that he was sure of this because Andrea believes Satan told her to kill her kids instead of God. Thereby justifying that if a person was told to do something by Satan, they would know right from wrong. But if God told them to do something, they do not know right from wrong. To my knowledge, there is nothing in.

current psychological literature that weighs the validity of psychosis on the origins of a religious character giving a command. If one wanted to connect Andrea's motivations to the media, the movie seven would be logical, as she did state that she was thinking of the movie the day she committed the homicides and believed she committed all seven deadly sins. The problem with mental health testimony is that it can lend to a lot of speculation and opinion. The defense could not clearly give an answer to Andrea's insanity other than the fact that she was insane. Whereas the prosecution gave a clear statement, but it was false. The clarity of the statement alone was enough to win over a jury, as we tend to see with human nature. Cohesiveness and explanations is far more appealing than

accuracy. The jury who convicted her stated that they were persuaded by Park Deetz's testimony, Andrea's own assertion that she was sinning, the fact that Andrea could describe what she did, and the fact that she called the police, made the jury believe she was thinking clearly. The appellate court was unanimous in its decision that the jury may have been influenced by Dr. Dietz's false testimony, and therefore a new trial would be necessary. On January 9, 2006, Andrea entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and on February 1, 2006, she was granted release on base. on the condition that she be admitted to a mental health treatment facility.

During her 2006 trial, Dr. Saeed testified that he advised Rusty to not leave Andrea unattended. However, it was revealed that he began leaving her alone with the kids in the weeks leading up to the drownings for short periods of time in an attempt to approve her independence. Rusty had announced at a family gathering the weekend before the drownings that he had decided to leave her home alone for an hour each morning and each morning. evening, so that Andrea would not become totally dependent on him and his mother Dora for her maternal responsibilities. Soon, Andrea's relatives began to speak up in her defense. Her brother, Brian Kennedy, told Larry King that Rusty told him in 2001, while transporting Andrea to the

Devereaux Treatment Facility that all depressed people need was a swift kick in the pants to get the motivated. Her mother, Judda Kennedy, expressed shock when she heard of Rusty's plan, stating that Andrew wasn't stable enough to care for the kids, noting that Andrea demonstrated she wasn't in her right mind when she nearly choked Mary by trying to feed her solid food at six months old. Rusty stated to the media that he was never told by psychiatrists that his wife was psychotic, nor that she could harm the kids. And had he known otherwise, they never would have continued to have anymore, which directly contradicts the instructions that were provided to the couple by Andrea's first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen's Star Branch. However, Andrew revealed to her prison psychiatrist Dr. Melissa Ferguson that prior to her last birth,

she had told Rusty that she didn't want to conceive any longer because Dr. Starbranch had said that she might hurt her kids. Rusty, she said, simply asserted his procreative religious beliefs, complimented her as a good mother, and persuaded her that she could handle more kids. Rusty went on to pin the blame on Dr. Muhammad's Said, stating that Andrew was too sick to be discharged from her last day in the hospital in May of 2000. and that he should not have discontinued her prescription for Haldol. He added that he noticed the staff lower their heads as if in shame and embarrassment, turning away without saying a word.

However, the hospital had no other choice due to the 10-day psychiatric hospitalization insurance constraints of their insurance provider. Rusty also contended that the 450 milligrams of effects are that Andrea had been taking, which was twice the recommended dosage, was responsible for her violent, psychotic behavior. Although homicidal ideation was added to the warning label in 2005, it is considered a very rare side effect. Different doctors providing expert testimony during the trial suggested that although twice the recommended dosage, 450 milligrams of effects were was not an uncommon prescription and that the discontinuation of Andreas Haldol could have been the culprit.

Media outlets began to point the finger at a man named Michael Warenke, who was a transient preacher whom Rusty had met while attending Auburn University. They claimed that the preacher was partially responsible for the drownings due to his fire and brimstone message found in his newsletter called the Perilous Times, which the Yates family had received and which was entered into evidence of the trial. The newsletter contained a poem which laments the disobedient kids of the modern mother worldly and ends with the question, what becomes of the children of such a Jezebel?

Jezebel is a biblical figure most commonly associated with spiritual deception. Werencki claimed that his contact with the Yates family was intended to help them strengthen their marriage and find the love that his own family had found in Jesus. However, his teachings also preached that women derived from sin and that the hellbound mothers would see their kids burn in hell. Even the prosecution used the preacher in its case against Andrea, claiming that the pressure to follow Wareneky's lifestyle by living on a bus with five kids was a factor in Andrea's two previous attempts on her wife. Rusty Yates denies the impact of Warnacki and said that he was not close with him

in the months leading up to the drownings. On July 26, 2006, after three days of deliberation, Andrew Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to the North Texas State Hospital Vernon campus, a high security mental health facility, where she received medical treatment and was a roommate of Dana Schlosser, another woman who committed infanticide by killing her daughter. This is actually the same facility that houses Adi Sanchez. You'll remember our Adi Sanchez coverage back in February. In January of 2007, Andrea was moved to the Curville State Hospital, which is a low security mental facility in Curville, Texas. In May of 2012, Andrea filed a petition to attend weekly church services outside of the hospital, but she was denied.

In February of 2014, Andrea and her doctors at Currville State Hospital requested that she be allowed to attend supervised group outings with other patients. The request is later withdrawn due to media attention and public scrutiny. Andrew's lawyer, George Parnham, still thinks of her as a daughter and talks to her often. He's still practicing in his 80s, and he's happy that Andrew's case has changed how people view mental ill. illness, especially when it comes to the law. His only wish for Andrea is that she's comfortable and happy, and she is. Her case comes up for review for release every year, and she waives it every single time. Andrea's first words to Parham were, please don't leave me alone, and he hasn't. It would be

irresponsible if we didn't talk about Rusty Yates and his involvement with Andrea's care. Now, before you cover your ears and scream that you don't want to hear our opinions like so many people or quick to let us know in the comment section. Please note that a big problem in telling this case from the timeline of events is that it doesn't delve into how Rusty had at least some control over the outcome of this situation. It is important for us to give you the full picture of the story

in order to do right by these poor kids that had their lives taken for them in such a senseless manner. But I'd like to take this time to ask you what you feel the level of responsibility is that Rusty had here. We're in no way implying that Rusty intended to orchestrate the deaths of his kids at all. Neither of us think that. and under the purview of the law, Rusty Aates did nothing wrong at all.

However, we have seen plenty of comments in Rusty's interview with Oprah Winfrey that signal that many of you think otherwise. So to you, the listener, do you feel that Rusty's insistence to continue to have Andrea conceive was a responsible thing to do, despite clear doctor advice that any future births would result in a major likelihood of postpartum psychosis? What about letting Andrea stop taking her antipsychotic meds that are necessary when one has a schizophrenia diagnosis? Was it sensible of him to expose Andrea to a religious figure like Michael Warenke, despite her mental health diagnoses? Is it a responsible act of a father to leave his mentally unstable wife with a history of self-harm alone with the kids, despite doctors' orders that she should never be alone with them unsupervised? Is this someone who did right by his wife and kids? Do you feel that these were a series of careless mistakes on his part, or is it something more?

Let us know in the comments down below. And finally, it should be noted that Rusty's second wife, Laura, whom they married in 2006, filed for divorce in 2015. They have one son together. Additionally, Law and Order finally did make an episode loosely inspired by Andrea's case in 2004 titled Magnificat. For those that haven't seen our past couple episodes, our Adrian Jones video was taken down by YouTube as it threatened the safety of minors. This is showing pictures of Adrian with his face censored while fully clothed, while other channels show him unclothed and wounded. Apparently that is fine, but we are threatening the safety of minors by covering Adrian's case. We were also threatened with channel termination if we continued.

So I don't know what we're going to have to do going forward. We're not stopping. We may have to pivot away from cases involving minors for a bit. I hope you understand because we can't make any difference in advocacy if our channel is taken down. But don't worry, we are busy brainstorming how to work around this. We are not giving up. And if you support us in that and you support the hard work we're putting in every week, if you could hit that subscribe button and stay with us on this journey, it would mean the world to me.

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