1. Danielle Ledoux
Southern New Hampshire University
Psychology 216
Professor J. Antilus
Andrea Yates- A filicide
Abstract:
Filicide is defined as the murder, by a parent, of one’s own children. Such an
unimaginable crime, however, has not been unheard of in recent years. Andrea Yates, a
mother of five, drowned all of her children in her home’s bath tub. Growing up in

2. Houston, Texas, she excelled in school, was active and had a job as a successful
nurse. After meeting her extremely religious husband, she planned a future as a mother.
They hoped to have as many babies as nature would allow, however, it took a turn for
the worse when Andrea was diagnosed with postpartum depression and psychosis.
Andrea became a stay at home mother who home schooled her five children. She
became extremely isolated, practiced religion feverishly and became psychotic. Yates’
harmful thoughts caused her to attempt suicide a handful of times in order to prevent
herself from killing her children. When her father died in 2001, Andrea had her final melt
down. When her husband left Andrea unattended with the children after departing for
work, she drowned all five of her children one by one in the bathtub. She immediately
called the police and turned herself in: leading to trials that initially sentenced her to life
in prison. After appeal, she was put into a mental hospital for the rest of her life. She
was diagnosed as postpartum/major depressive disorder with psychotic episodes.
Mental illness can drive people to unimaginable extremes and must not gone untreated.
Knowing the difference between right and wrong seems like an easy concept for
the every day person. When mental illness surfaces, however, knowing that difference
is far from easy. Some crimes are unimaginable to the public. Hearing of filicide, the
murder by a parent of one’s own child, sends chills up just about anyones spines.

3. Andrea Yates, a former resident of Houston, Texas did the unthinkable when she
murdered her five children in June of 2001. It is common for women to suffer from
postpartum depression, as Andrea had, but postpartum psychosis is something that
seems to be diagnosed in only one in a million women. Andrea suffered from both
illnesses, causing her to drown her five children in the bathtub of her own home.
Multiple life factors may have contributed to the mental illness that Andrea suffered
during his mid life.
Yates was born in Houston, Texas and spent the majority of her life there.
Andrea grew up in a very catholic household where religion was a huge part of the
family’s life. Her mother, Jutta Karin Koehler was a German immigrant and her father
Andrew Emmett Kennedy had suffered from depression during his years. Yates and her
father were extremely close and she was known to be very caring and loving towards
him. Later in his life, he also suffered from Alzheimer’s disease which significantly
impacted Andreas health. Yates was the youngest of five children and out of her siblings
she was the child who spent the most time with her father, especially as he grew older.
In 1982 Yates had graduated from Milby High School in Houston, Texas.
Throughout all of her years in school she had been known as a star student as well as a
perfectionist. She graduated as the valedictorian of her class as well as being captain of
the women’s swim team. While in school Andrea was also the head officer in her
school’s National Honors Society. Some of Andrea’s earlier friends had documented
that Yates had spoken of her suicidal thoughts while she was in her adolescent years.
In high school she also suffered from bulimia and extreme lack of self confidence.
After high school, Yates went into a two year nursing program which she
completed at the University of Houston. After finishing there, she graduated from the
University of Texas School of Nursing. She then continued onto working as a registered
nurse at the Anderson Cancer Center from 1986 until 1994 (Nuchia, 2006). She had

4. passion in her field and loved being a nurse but gave up her career when she began to
have children with her husband Rusty Yates.
Andrea and Rusty met when they were both twenty five. In 1989 they had both
been living in the Sunscape apartment complex in Houston when they crossed paths.
They soon moved in together after dating for a while and were married in April of 1993.
Rusty was a strong Protestant christian who was a disciple of the minister Michael Peter
Woroniecki. Michael was a traveling minster who eventually had a big impact on the
Yates’ life’s. Rusty had only agreed and lived by some of Michael’s sermons but Andrea
embraced the extremist’s every word. After getting married, the couple announced that
they would have as many babies as nature and God would allow them to have. The two
moved into a four bedroom home in the town of Friendswood, Texas. By February of
1994, the couple had their first child, Noah. Andrea and Rusty decided that they would
name all of their children after religious figures. Following the birth of their first son,
Rusty had accepted a job in Florida which he felt he could not pass up. Because of this,
they relocated to the southern state and resided in a small trailer home. Andrea quit her
job as a nurse and had hopes for the future as her family began to grow.
While in Florida, Andrea become pregnant again and gave birth to their second son,
John in 1995. By the time Andrea was impregnated with her third son, Paul, they moved
back to Texas and purchased a GMC motor home to live in. The family, however, was
quite isolated. After quitting her job as a nurse, Andrea did not do much but spend
twenty four hours a day in a cramped space with her three boys and husband. In order
to avoid the “evils” of the world, Andrea and Rusty decided to home school their
children.
Andrea continued to have children with her husband, Rusty. She had called
herself “fertile myrtle” because she had been conceiving year after year. Following the
birth of their fourth son, Luke, Andrea started to become extremely depressed.

5. Spending every minute in a small trailer as a full time mother and home school teacher,
her condition started to surface.
Much of the media had also alleged that her condition was strongly influenced by
the extreme sermons of Michael Peter Woroniecki. Her family became concerned on
how significant his words had become to her. She seemed to be captivated by
everything that he had said. He had once preached “the role of women is derived from
the sin of Eve and that bad mothers who are going to hell create bad children who will
go to hell.” (Nuchia, 2006)
It came to the point where Andrea began to attempt suicide. On June 16, 1999,
Andrea called Rusty and had begged him to come home. When he arrived, he found
Andrea shaking on the kitchen floor while chewing aggressively on her fingers. He came
home and calmed her but the next day she attempted to commit suicide by swallowing
too many pills and overdosing. Following the event, she was admitted into the hospital
and afterwards was prescribed anti-depressant medication. Soon after being released
from the hospital, she made a second suicide attempt. In front of Rusty, she held a knife
up to her neck and begged her husband to let her die. She was hospitalized once again
and the doctors hoped that her condition would improve if she was prescribed anti-
psychotic medications such as Haldol. After taking the mixture of medications, she
began to improve almost immediately. Following the second suicide attempt, Rusty
moved his wife and the four boys into a small home for the sake of her health. When
they were settled in their new home, Andrea began to stabilize and returned to her old
activities such as swimming and exercising. She also began to socialize more as well as
they had moved into a peaceful neighborhood.
In July of 1999, Andrea had succumbed to another nervous breakdown out of the
blue. In that one summer she had attempted suicide two times and had been admitted
into psychiatric hospitalizations twice. Andrea had said that she believed that the devil
had been inside her. She did not want to harm the children and that’s what she felt that

6. she was going to do if she hadn’t killed herself. Ultimately, she claimed that she had the
urge to kill her children because she knew she was “bad” meaning her children would
be bad as well. At this point she had officially been diagnosed with postpartum
psychosis which is extremely rare in women.
While being treated for the illness, Andrea visited with various psychiatrists and
doctors in order to stabilize her condition. Her first psychiatrist urged that Andrea and
Rusty not have any more children after their fourth. She had said that it would
“guarantee future psychotic depression” (Nuchia, 2006) which is a condition that should
not have been taken lightly. For a little while, the couple had listened to the doctors and
Andrea was eventually discharged.
Approximately seven weeks after being discharged, Andrea and Rusty had
disregarded the doctor’s ordered and had conceived a fifth child. While pregnant,
Andrea stopped taking all of her medications including the Haldol, her antipsychotic
medications. This was an extreme issue due to the fact that being on and off anti-
psychotic medications can actually make the condition become worse. In November of
2000, Andrea gave birth to her first daughter and fifth child, Mary. After giving birth,
Andrea seemed to be doing okay and her condition was not surfaced as it had
suspected to be.
She seemed to be coping okay until six months later when her father had died
due to Alzheimer’s disease in March of 2001. Being the nurse of the family, Andrea took
the death very hard. She felt that she had the responsibility in the family to keep him
healthy and alive. After the death of her father, she stopped taking all of her medication,
mutilated and harmed herself and began to read the Bible feverishly. At the time, she
also stopped feeding Mary until it had become obvious by Rusty’s eye.
After the harmful behavior that had surfaced, Andrea was once again
hospitalized immediately. She went under the care of experts and was treated and once
again released from the hospital. On the third of May, 2001 she had succumbed into a

7. near catatonic state. She drew a bath in the middle of the day which Rusty’s mother had
questioned. When his mother asked her why she drew the bath Andrea simply said that
she “had use for it.” Andrea had later admitted that she planned to drown the children
that day but had decided against it at the time (Walsh, 2001). After a scheduled doctors
visit the following day she had been hospitalized when she told her psychiatrist that she
had filled the tub with water. The doctor decided that she was once again suicidal and
had filled the tub to drown herself which drew concern and had her admitted. Andrea
was eventually discharged but continued under the care of her doctors.
The agreement between Rusty and the doctor’s was that Andrea could never be
left alone with their children. Rusty or another adult was to supervise Andrea around the
kids at all times. Rusty had gone against the doctors orders and started to leave her
alone with the children for a few weeks for short periods of time. He would leave for
work and have his mother arrive to supervise an hour after his departure. His hopes
were to improve her independence and that she would not become dependent on him
and others for her maternal responsibilities.
One June 20, 2001 Rusty had left for work and left Andrea unattended with the
children. His mother was scheduled to arrive an hour after he had left as Rusty was
trying to ween Andrea back into caring for the kids on her own. In the hour slot that she
had, Andrea had done the unthinkable. One by one, Andrea had drowned all five of her
children. She started by drowning the youngest boys and after doing so, laid them in her
bed. After drowning the younger boys, she drowned her six month old, Mary, and left
her floating in the tub. While she was in the tub, her oldest boy, Noah, had walked in
and asked what was wrong with the baby. He realized something was wrong with his
mother and ran from her. She eventually caught up to him and drowned him while he
struggled to survive. She had admitted that he had gotten his head above water a
couple of times. One of which he said “mommy, I’ll be good.” (Quot) She continued to
kill him anyway. Andrea left Noah floating in the bathtub. She laid Mary in her brother

8. John’s arms who was a good older brother to her. Andrea left her laying with him so that
he would protect her in heaven. After drowning the children, she called the police and
told the operator to simply send a police officer with no reason. While waiting for the
police to arrive, Andrea called Rusty saying only “it’s time” over and over again (Nuchia,
2006). When the police officer walked into the home, Andrea was sitting on the couch
with a blank stare as she would not look up from the carpet. The police officer
discovered her unimaginable crime and she was arrested on the spot.
Throughout her trials, her husband had stood by her the entire time. He claimed
that the illness had killed the children, not Andrea. She had pleaded innocence by
reason of insanity where she had cited postpartum psychosis. In 2002 the jury rejected
her plead of insanity and found Andrea guilty of first degree murder. She was then
sentenced to life in prison with possibility of parole after forty years. Due to errors in the
court, the convictions were reversed and Yates was then found not guilty by reason of
insanity. She now remains in North Texas State Hospital, a high security mental
hospital. Rusty divorced Andrea in 2004 and remarried in 2006.
Andrea would be diagnosed with postpartum depression and postpartum
depression. She had major depression disorder with psychotic episodes. Under axis I in
the DSM(5), Andrea suffered particular clinical syndromes which lead her to her crimes
with postpartum depression and psychosis. Axis II was defined by her personality
disorders in which she was not stable. She dealt with depression that made it almost
impossible for her to function properly. Axis III included her general medical conditions
that came with her pregnancies. She also began to overdose on medications in order to
kill herself. With her pregnancies she was also on and off crucial medicine. Axis IV
would be characterized in Andrea’s case with psychosocial and environmental
problems. She had multiple births with left her with severe symptoms such as
depression and psychosis. Under Axis V, it is clear that she had a problem functioning
and needed immediate attention.

9. As a teenager, Andrea was a good kid who perfected her studies and social life.
She had overcome bulimia and had once spoke of suicide and a teenager. Her father
dealt with depression throughout his life so I feel as if this was passed down to Andrea
biologically. Postpartum depression was also said to had run in her family, which of
course is why Andrea had suffered from it as well. As a registered nurse out of college,
her future seemed bright. When Andrea met Rusty, she fell in love and got married to a
man that wanted to have as many babies as possible. He was a close follower of an
extremist minister who Andrea caught onto as well. Andrea was completely captivated
by the minsters words to the point that Rusty and her family became concerned with her
obsession. She become so obsessed with his sermons that it had impacted her views
on herself as well as on her children. She became delusional, believing that she was a
bad mother which would cause her children to go to hell. Her extremist views on religion
greatly impacted her mental stability as she admitted to believing that the devil was
inside her.
Throughout her married life, Andrea was extremely isolated. After the birth of her
first son the family moved into a small trailer where she had two more children. She quit
her job as a nurse and focused on the family. The cramped living conditions and
constant moving surfaced some of her depression. As the children grew older she
become their home-school teacher which fed to her isolation. Andrea had no time for
herself and had tended to her children in small spaces 24/7. By the fourth child, living
conditions were still cramped and her insanity came on harder. Depression and
postpartum depression were passed down to her biologically, however, her
environmental factors and religious influences in her life seem to have certainly led her
to insanity. I feel that if the family had lived in a home where there was room for a large
family then there would have been a brighter future. They moved around too much and
continually stayed in small spaces even with such a large family. If the children went to

10. public school rather than home school, Andrea may have had more time for herself and
would not have been isolated to the point of insanity as well.
References
• Andrea Yates. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 11:14, Apr 19,
2015, from http://www.biography.com/people/andrea-yates-235801.
• Andrea Yates. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.nndb.com/people/026/000085768
• Nuchia, S. (2006). Andrea Yates | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers.
Retrieved from http://murderpedia.org/female.Y/y/yates-andrea.htm
• Walsh, D. (2001, July 2). World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved from
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/07/yate-j02.html
• Quot, W. (n.d.). A mother's madness Andrea Yates. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt6a1OJcvJU