Andrea Yates Case Study

Andrea Yates at the time she committed her crime was a thirty-seven year old married mother of five children from Houston, Texas. Her five children, Noah 7, John 5, Paul 3, Luke 2, and Mary 6 months was murdered by their mother by her drowning them. She held each one of her children under the water in the bathroom bathtub. She drowned them one by one and once they were dead she placed them under a sheet on her bed. All except for Noah who was found still face down in the bathtub when the police arrived.

Yates had suffered from psychotic episodes for some time before she drowned her children. She had an incident in June of 1999, when she attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. She was admitted to a local hospital and was given antidepressants. Not to long after this episode she begged her husband to let her die as she held a knife to her neck; once again she was admitted to the local hospital. This time she was given a mixture of medications.

In April of 2001 she had another episode and was hospitalized and then released. In May of that same year she reverted back to her ways and had drawn a bath and had planned on drowning her children that day, but decided against it. The very next day she was hospitalized after a visit with her psych doctor.

He had called his mother and scheduled with her to have her come over to their house an hour after he left for work and take care of the kids. Within this one hour time span, Andrea had drowned all of her children. After all of her children were dead she called the police telling them that she needed a police officer and wouldn't give them any information other than she needed an officer. And then she managed to tell them she would be needing an ambulance as well. After she got off the phone with the police she called her husband and kept saying repeatedly "It's