Criminal Profile

Andrea (Kennedy) Yates was born on July 2, 1964, in Houston, Texas. She seemed to have a successful, normal life, being the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and a member of the National Honor Society. She graduated from the University of Texas School of Nursing in Houston and worked as a registered nurse at a University of Texas–run facility. She met and married Rusty Yates, and the couple began to raise a family. Though money was tight and living conditions cramped, the couple had fi ve children in the fi rst eight years of their marriage. The pressure began to take a toll on Andrea, and her mental health deteriorated. On June 17, 1999, after attempting suicide by taking an overdose of pills, she was placed in Houston’s Methodist Hospital psychiatric unit and diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. Even though she was medicated with powerful antipsychotics such as Haldol, Andrea continued to have psychotic episodes and was hospitalized for severe depression. Her losing battle with mental illness culminated in an act that shocked the nation. On June 20, 2001, she systematically drowned all fi ve of her children, including her eldest, seven-year-old Noah, who tried to escape after seeing his siblings dead, but was dragged back into the bathroom by his mother and drowned also. At trial, Yates’s defense team attempted to show that she suffered from delusional depression and postpartum mood swings that can sometimes evoke psychosis. Though she drowned her children one by one, even chasing down Noah to drag him to the tub, did she really have any awareness that what she was doing was wrong? Postpartum depression affects about 40 percent of all mothers and in its mildest forms leaves new mothers feeling “blue” for a few weeks; more serious cases can last more than a year and involve fatigue, withdrawal, and eating disorders. The most serious form, which Andrea Yates is believed to have suffered, is a psychosis that produces hallucinations, delusions, feelings of worthlessness, and inadequacy. Though very uncommon, postpartum psychosis increases the likelihood of both suicide and infanticide if left untreated. Despite her long history of mental illness and psychiatric testimony suggesting she lacked the capacity to understand her actions, the jury found her guilty of murder on March 12, 2002, ordering a life sentence instead of the death penalty sought by the prosecution. Andrea’s conviction was later overturned when a Texas appeals court ruled that an expert witness, Dr. Park Dietz, made a false statement during the trial. (He claimed she might have been infl uenced by an episode of Law and Order, though no such episode ever aired; it was actually L.A. Law that dealt with a case of a mother killing her children.) At the time of this writing Andrea remains in a psychiatric facility. The Andrea Yates case illustrates the association between mental illness and crime. Who could claim that a woman as disturbed as Andrea chose to kill her own children? While the jury may have reached that verdict, it was constrained by the legal defi nition of insanity that relies on the immediate events that took place and not Andrea’s long-term mental state that produced this horrible crime.


Sources: “Andrea Yates: Ill or Evil?” CourtTV Crime Library, CNN, “The Case of Andrea Yates,” (accessed July 10, 2008).