How far would you be willing to go to protect your children? When did it become against human nature to stop at nothing, no matter what it was to make sure your kids were protected in all ways? My essay today will be about a mother of 5 who drowned her kids one-by-one in the bathtub in hopes of saving their souls from the devil. Should Andrea be blamed for murdering her children in cold blood if her only attempt was to protect them?
Andrea Pia Kennedy was born on July 2, 1964 in Hallsville Texas. She is the youngest of 5 children of Jutta Karen Koehler and Andrew Emmett Kennedy. During her early teenage years, she suffered from depression, bulimia, and would also often talk to friends about suicide. Andrea graduated from Milby High school
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It took about a month for Rusty to start noticing Andrea was falling back into her old depressive ways. She was caught talking about suicide again and once held a knife to her neck and begged Rusty to just let her die.
July 1999, Yates suffered from a nervous breakdown and tried again to commit suicide and was hospitalized. The doctors determined she suffered from postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is a rare psychiatric emergency in which symptoms of high mood and racing thoughts (mania), depression, severe confusion, loss of inhibition, paranoia, hallucinations and delusions set in, beginning suddenly in the first two weeks after delivery.
Soon after being diagnosed with postpartum psychosis Andrea started seeing a therapist to help her through her depression and was advised to not have anymore children because it could be detrimental to her mental health. It would “guarantee future psychotic depression.” Seven weeks after being discharged from her therapist they conceived their fifth child Mary who was born on November 30, 2000. Mary was a very good baby who hardly ever cried. She loved to be with her
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As psychotic as this may sound, should she be charged with 1st degree murder? In my opinion, no. In the state of Texas, in order to be convicted of 1st degree murder it must be proven that this was a planned attempt to kill and even though it was, in her mind she did not know the wrong actions she was doing. This mother suffered from psychosis and had cold turkey stopped taking her medication. Even though it sounds completely crazy that the devil will be after her children, in her mind this is what was happening to them. She did what any mother would do for her kids. Which is save them! I feel Rusty is at fault in this. He should not have left Andrea alone with the kids in this state of mind. After knowing her history of depression, her father’s death, and hearing her talk about the devil taking her kids. That should have been enough information to know better than to leave her unsupervised. It’s unfortunate what these children had to go through, but it is not their mom’s fault. Postpartum psychosis is very serious and should be taking