Andrea Yates Case

On June 20th, 2001, Andrea Yates killed her five young children Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary in the bathtub of the family’s home in Houston, Texas. The family was Caucasian, and at the time of the crime, Noah was 7, John was 5, Paul was 3, Luke was 2, Mary was 6 months, and Yates was 36. Yates’s husband Russell “Rusty” Yates was at work at the time of the crime. Yates killed her children as a result of her post-partum psychosis and other mental illnesses that had been developing throughout her life. After she finished the murders, Yates called the police and then called Rusty to tell him to come home. After her trial, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity and is currently institutionalized. Her case is famous for showcasing the effects that post-partum psychosis can have on a woman.

While I believe that Yates’s children were simply victims of their mother’s mental illness, Yates claimed that she killed her children because they claimed that she was a bad mother and she believed that they were not developing properly as Christians (Christian and Teachy 2002). This delusion, however, was likely just a part of Yates’s psychosis. Yates suffered from depression and bulimia nervosa as a teen, although her depression seems to have gone into remission for several years (O’Malley 2005 p. 20). However,

While she was able to garner a bit of sympathy due to her history of mental illness, the sheer brutality of her heinous crime could not be ignored. Even with her post-partum psychosis being evident, the fact that a mother was able to carry out the murder of her five young children was unable to be ignored by the media and public. Yates’s confession and belief that she had done the right thing for her children only proved to be the final nails in the coffin. Given the case, it was impossible for the media to support Yates over her children who were simply innocent victims of