Downloaded on December 2, 2015 from: http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/guide/schizophrenia-symptoms Schizophrenia SymptomsIn this article · Positive Symptoms · Negative Symptoms · Cognitive Symptoms Schizophrenia changes how you think, feel, and act. Its symptoms will be different for everyone who gets the disease. The symptoms can come and go, too. No one will have all of them all of the time. In general, there are three kinds: · Positive (things that start to happen) · Negative (things that stop happening) · Cognitive (related to processing information) They usually start between ages 16 and 30. Men often get them earlier than women. When the disease is in full swing and symptoms are severe, the person with schizophrenia can't tell what's real and what's not. This happens less often as they get older. People with the condition usually aren't aware that they have it until a doctor or counselor tells them. They won't even realize that something is seriously wrong. If they do happen to notice symptoms, like not being able to think straight, they might chalk it up to things like stress or being tired. If you're concerned that you or someone you know is showing signs of schizophrenia, talk to a doctor or counselor. Positive Symptoms The changes you see are "add-ons" to normal behavior. The person starts thinking or doing things they didn't think or do before. Hallucinations. They might hear, see, smell, or feel things no one else does. Most often they'll hear voices inside their heads. These might tell them what to do, warn them of danger, or say mean things to them. The voices might talk to each other. Delusions. These are beliefs that seem strange to most people and are easy to prove wrong. The person affected might think someone is trying to control their brains through their TVs or that the FBI is out to get them. They might believe they're someone else, like a famous actor or the president, or that they have superpowers. Confused thoughts and speech. People with schizophrenia can have a hard time organizing their thoughts. They might not be able to follow along when you talk to them. Instead, it might seem like they're zoning out or distracted. When they talk, their words can come out all jumbled and not make sense. They can also have trouble concentrating. For example, they might lose track of what's going on in a TV show as they're watching. Different movements. Someone with the condition can seem jumpy. Sometimes they'll make the same movements over and over again. But sometimes they might be perfectly still for hours at a stretch, which is called being catatonic. Contrary to popular belief, people with the disease usually aren't violent. Negative Symptoms You'll see changes because the person loses the interest in and ability to do things. These symptoms can be hard to spot, especially in teenagers, because it's normal for them to have big emotional swings between highs and lows. Depression has some of the same symptoms, too. Emotion ...

1. Downloaded on December 2, 2015 from:
http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/guide/schizophrenia-
symptoms
Schizophrenia SymptomsIn this article
· Positive Symptoms
· Negative Symptoms
· Cognitive Symptoms
Schizophrenia changes how you think, feel, and act. Its
symptoms will be different for everyone who gets the disease.
The symptoms can come and go, too. No one will have all of
them all of the time.
In general, there are three kinds:
· Positive (things that start to happen)
· Negative (things that stop happening)
· Cognitive (related to processing information)
They usually start between ages 16 and 30. Men often get them
earlier than women.
When the disease is in full swing and symptoms are severe, the
person with schizophrenia can't tell what's real and what's not.
This happens less often as they get older.
People with the condition usually aren't aware that they have it
until a doctor or counselor tells them. They won't even realize
that something is seriously wrong. If they do happen to notice
symptoms, like not being able to think straight, they might
chalk it up to things like stress or being tired.
If you're concerned that you or someone you know is showing
signs of schizophrenia, talk to a doctor or counselor.
Positive Symptoms
The changes you see are "add-ons" to normal behavior. The
person starts thinking or doing things they didn't think or do
before.
Hallucinations. They might hear, see, smell, or feel things no
one else does. Most often they'll hear voices inside their heads.

2. These might tell them what to do, warn them of danger, or say
mean things to them. The voices might talk to each other.
Delusions. These are beliefs that seem strange to most people
and are easy to prove wrong. The person affected might think
someone is trying to control their brains through their TVs or
that the FBI is out to get them. They might believe they're
someone else, like a famous actor or the president, or that they
have superpowers.
Confused thoughts and speech. People with schizophrenia can
have a hard time organizing their thoughts. They might not be
able to follow along when you talk to them. Instead, it might
seem like they're zoning out or distracted. When they talk, their
words can come out all jumbled and not make sense.
They can also have trouble concentrating. For example, they
might lose track of what's going on in a TV show as they're
watching.
Different movements. Someone with the condition can seem
jumpy. Sometimes they'll make the same movements over and
over again. But sometimes they might be perfectly still for
hours at a stretch, which is called being catatonic. Contrary to
popular belief, people with the disease usually aren't violent.
Negative Symptoms
You'll see changes because the person loses the interest in and
ability to do things. These symptoms can be hard to spot,
especially in teenagers, because it's normal for them to have big
emotional swings between highs and lows.
Depression has some of the same symptoms, too.
Emotionless. A person with schizophrenia might seem like they
have a terrible case of the blahs. They might not talk much or
show any feelings. And when they talk, their voice can sound
flat, like they have no emotions. Doctors call this a "flat affect."
Withdrawal. Someone who has the condition might stop making
plans with you or become a hermit. Talking with them can feel
like pulling teeth: If you want an answer, you have to really
work to pry it out of them.

3. Struggling with the basics of daily life. They may stop bathing
or taking care of themselves.
No follow-through. People with schizophrenia have trouble
staying on schedule or finishing what they start. Sometimes
they can't get started at all.
Cognitive Symptoms
Cognition has to do with how good your brain is at learning,
sorting, and using information.
Someone with schizophrenia might have a hard time with their
working memory. For example, they may not be able to keep
track of different kinds of facts at the same time, like a phone
number plus instructions.
Along with having trouble paying attention, it can be hard for
them to organize their thoughts and make decisions.
WebMD Medical Reference
View Article Sources
Reviewed by Joseph Goldberg, MD on August 19, 2015
© 2015 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.
Downloaded on December 2, 2015 from:
http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/guide/mental-health-
psychotic-disorders
Psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia are a group of serious
illnesses that affect the mind. These illnesses alter a person's
ability to think clearly, make good judgments, respond
emotionally, communicate effectively, understand reality, and
behave appropriately. When symptoms are severe, people with
psychotic disorders have difficulty staying in touch with reality
and often are unable to meet the ordinary demands of daily life.
However, even severe psychotic disorders usually are treatable.
There are different types of psychotic disorders, including:
Schizophrenia: People with this illness have changes in
behavior and other symptoms -- such as delusions and
hallucinations -- that last longer than six months, usually with a

4. decline in work, school, and social functioning.
Schizoaffective disorder: People with this illness have
symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder, such as
depression or bipolar disorder.
Schizophreniform disorder: People with this illness have
symptoms of schizophrenia, but the symptoms last between one
and six months.
Brief psychotic disorder: People with this illness have sudden,
short periods of psychotic behavior, often in response to a very
stressful event, such as a death in the family. Recovery is often
quick -- usually less than a month.
Delusional disorder: People with this illness have a delusion (a
false, fixed belief) involving real-life situations that could be
true, such as being followed, being conspired against, or having
a disease. These delusions persist for at least one month.
Shared psychotic disorder (also called folie à deux) : This
illness occurs when one person in a relationship has a delusion
that the other person in the relationship adopts for him or
herself.
Substance-induced psychotic disorder: This condition is caused
by the use of or withdrawal from some substances, such as
hallucinogens and crack cocaine, that may cause hallucinations,
delusions, or confused speech.
Psychotic disorder due to a medical condition: Hallucinations,
delusions, or other symptoms may be the result of another
illness that affects brain function, such as a head injury or brain
tumor.
Paraphrenia: This is a type of schizophrenia that starts late in
life and occurs in the elderly population.
What Are the Symptoms of a Psychotic Disorder?
Symptoms of a psychotic disorder vary from person to person
and may change over time. The major symptoms are
hallucinations and delusions.
Hallucinations are unusual sensory experiences or perceptions
of things that aren't actually present, such as seeing things that

5. aren't there, hearing voices, smelling odors, having a "funny"
taste in your mouth, and feeling sensations on your skin even
though nothing is touching your body.
Delusions are false beliefs that are persistent and organized, and
that do not go away after receiving logical or accurate
information. For example, a person who is certain his or her
food is poisoned, even if it has been proven that the food is
fine, is suffering from a delusion.
Other possible symptoms of psychotic illnesses include:
· Disorganized or incoherent speech
· Confused thinking
· Strange, possibly dangerous behavior
· Slowed or unusual movements
· Loss of interest in personal hygiene
· Loss of interest in activities
· Problems at school or work and with relationships
· Cold, detached manner with the inability to express emotion
· Mood swings or other mood symptoms, such as depression or
mania
What Causes Psychotic Disorders?
We don't know the exact cause of psychotic disorders, but
researchers believe that many things play a role. Some
psychotic disorders tend to run in families, suggesting that the
tendency, or likelihood, to develop the disorder may be partly
inherited. Environmental factors may also influence their
development, including stress, drug abuse, and major life
changes.
In addition, people with certain psychotic disorders like
schizophrenia may have abnormalities in the functioning of
pathways in the brain that control thinking, perception, and
motivation. In schizophrenia, it is thought that nerve cell
receptors that interact with a brain chemical called glutamate
may not work properly in specific brain regions, and that this in
turn may contribute to symptoms of abnormal thinking and
perception.

6. How Common Are Psychotic Disorders?
About 1% of the population worldwide suffers from psychotic
disorders. These disorders most often first appear when a person
is in his or her late teens, 20s, or 30s. They tend to affect men
and women about equally.
How Are Psychotic Disorders Diagnosed?
If symptoms of a psychotic disorder are present, the doctor will
perform a complete medical history and physical exam to
determine the cause of the symptoms. Although there are no
laboratory tests to specifically diagnose psychotic disorders --
except those that accompany a physical illness, such as a brain
tumor -- the doctor may use various tests, such as blood tests
and brain imaging (e.g., MRI scans), to rule out physical illness
or intoxication with drugs like cocaine or LSD as the cause of
the symptoms.
If the doctor finds no physical reason for the symptoms, he or
she may refer the person to a psychiatrist or psychologist,
mental health professionals who are trained to diagnose and
treat mental illnesses. Psychiatrists use specially designed
interview and assessment tools to evaluate a person for a
psychotic disorder.
How Are Psychotic Disorders Treated?
Most psychotic disorders are treated with a combination of
medications and psychotherapy (a type of counseling).
Medication: The main medications used to treat psychotic
disorders are called antipsychotics. These medicines do not cure
the illnesses but are very effective in managing the most
troubling symptoms of psychotic disorders, such as delusions,
hallucinations, and thinking problems. Antipsychotics include
medications such as Haldol, Thorazine, Loxapine, and Mellaril
and other medications (often called atypical antipsychotics)
such as Abilify, Clozaril, Geodon, Invega, Latuda, Risperdal,
Saphris, Seroquel, and Zyprexa.

7. The atypical psychotics are often considered first-line
treatments because they have fewer and more tolerable side
effects. Some of the medications are available by injection and
only need to be taken once or twice a month. For patients this
can be easier to keep up with compared to a daily pill.
Psychotherapy: Various types of psychotherapy, including
individual, group, and family therapy, may be used to help
support the person with a psychotic disorder.
Most patients with psychotic disorders are treated as
outpatients. However, people with particularly severe
symptoms, those in danger of hurting themselves or others, or
those unable to care for themselves because of their illness, may
require hospitalization to stabilize their condition.
How Long Does It Take to Recover From a Psychotic Disorder?
Each person being treated for a psychotic disorder may respond
to therapy differently. Some will show improvement quickly.
For others, it may take weeks or months to get symptom relief.
Some people may need to continue treatment for an extended
period of time, and some, such as those who have suffered
several severe episodes, may need to take medication
indefinitely. In these cases, the medication usually is given in
as low a dose as possible to control side effects.
What Is the Outlook for People With Psychotic Disorders?
The outlook varies depending on the type of psychotic disorder
and the individual. However, these disorders are treatable and
most people will have a good recovery with treatment and close
follow-up care.
Can Psychotic Disorders Be Prevented?
In general, there is no known way to prevent most psychotic
disorders, but many of the related symptoms can be prevented
with early detection and treatment. Seeking help as soon as
symptoms appear can help decrease the disruption to the
person's life, family, and friendships. Avoiding drugs and

8. alcohol can prevent psychotic disorders associated with these
substances.
Downloaded on December 2, 2015 from:
http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/ss/slideshow-
schizophrenia-famous-names
· Vincent van Gogh
· Jim Gordon (drummer and composer)
· Veronica Lake
· John Nash, Jr. PhD (A Beautiful Mind)
· Lionel Aldridge (Green Bay Packer)
· Peter Green (rock guitarist, founder Fleetwood Mac)
http://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/ss/slideshow-
schizophrenia-famous-names
Hello!
This is your individual assignment. Expectations are that you do
this on your own. By yourself.
Han Solo. Feel me?
So, This assignment is designed to see if you can draw an ERD
from an existing database,
modify that design, then create the SQL code that would
implement those changes.
The database that you’ll be diagramming is the tutorial database
from w3schools.
https://www.w3schools.com/sql/ should get you to the tutorial
site, and any command, if you
click the ‘Try it yourself’ button, should take you to the online
editor that uses that database.

9. Graphically
Is what the site looks like…
See the green ‘Try it Yourself’ button??? Click that…
https://www.w3schools.com/sql/
https://www.w3schools.com/sql/
Once you do, you should be in the editor environment...it looks
like:
The database you’ll be modeling is on the right....
You need to use your understanding of primary and foreign keys
to make the appropriate
relationships in an ERD between the entities. Additionally you
should be able to figure out which

10. entities are normal, associative, or weak...use appropriate
symbols!
Specifically the directions for the assignment are:
1 - Create the ERD from the w3schools sql site. (25 points)
Your ERD CANNOT BE HAND DRAWN. You must use a
program to draw it. I am
indifferent as to the program. Personally I use paint to print
screen and modify ERD’s.
You could do this, or you could use PowerPoint, or any other
program. Please note that I
am looking for specific symbols. Microsoft Project makes Class
diagrams, not ERDs,
and if you choose to use a Class diagram you will be deducted
points as
associative and weak entities are not shown in Class diagrams.
https://erdplus.com/#/ is a tool that some students have used in
the past - PLEASE
https://erdplus.com/#/
NOTE THAT NOT ALL SYMBOLS ARE PRESENT!!!!
STUDENTS HAVE HAD TO
MODIFY THESE DIAGRAMS BEFORE TURNING THEM IN
FOR FULL CREDIT.
If you don’t get it, I’m kind of hung up on you guys using the
appropriate symbols...

11. 2 - Create a second ERD with the following modifications: (25
points)
A - The company now has multiple stores; stores have an
address, square footage, a
phone number, and one employee is the store manager
B - Stores have products that are stored in an inventory. The
same product can and
should be stored (and sold) at multiple stores. Inventories
should capture the quantity of
a product on hand at a given store. Inventories should also track
how much space is left
in a given store given the number of products on hand. This
space is a calculated field
using the square footage - don’t worry about the specific
calculation, just be able to store
the value in a field.
C - Employees can have one of four different titles: Sales
Associate, Assistant Manager,
Store Manager, and Inventory Specialist
D - Additionally the employment history of the employee
should now be tracked. This
includes a start date and an end date for each employment of an
employee. Employees
should be able to be promoted, fired, hired, and moved back and
forth between stores
as the company needs.

12. PLEASE NOTE THAT TO FILL THESE NEW
REQUIREMENTS YOU WILL NEED TO
CREATE NEW TABLES, MODIFY EXISTING TABLES, ADD
NEW FIELDS, AND
SPECIFY SOME FIELD VALUES.
3 - Create SQL statements needed to modify the existing
database to reflect the changes in
question 2. For each command, print screen the ‘after’ image.
For example, if I made a table
called ‘Black Panther’ I would expect to see the evidence of the
table in the database.
Changes should include all of the following:
a. Create all new tables (20 points)
b. Modify existing tables to reflect new fields (include all
primary and foreign keys)
(10 points)
c. Create the constraints that reflect the primary and foreign
keys (10 points)
d. No key should have a null value (Neither primary or foreign)
(10 points)
Please note that EVERY command should have a picture! I want
to see what you’ve

13. done. If there isn’t a corresponding picture for all of the 4
requirements (a-d) you will be
deducted all points for that item. I.E. there are several new
primary and foreign keys.
Make sure you modify the new AND existing tables to reflect
these changes.
Your finished document that you upload into TurnItIn should
look as follows:
ERD for the existing database.
<Insert your ERD picture here>
ERD for the modified database
<Insert your ERD picture here>
EACH SQL statement executed to make the necessary changes.
<Insert the picture of each SQL statement plus the execution of
said statements>
<There should be many different pictures here>
This assignment is worth 100 points.

14. This assignment MUST be turned in through the Canvas
prompt.
The Yates Odyssey BY TIMOTHY ROCHE Sunday, Jan. 20,
2002
Andrea Yates wanted lots of kids and a solid family life but lost
it all one murderous morning. As her trial begins, the defense
will try to prove she is insane. But that begs the question: could
the tragedy have been averted?
The first time Russell Yates ever saw Andrea Kennedy, she was
in the water. It was 1989, and he had spied her sunbathing in a
bikini by the pool of the Houston apartment complex they
shared. She hopped in for a swim, and he looked on in
wonderment as she steadied herself with her toes against the
pool wall and stretched out to float serenely on her back, her
long brown hair making a slow swirl in the blue water and her
arms outstretched like a cross. She seemed so at peace he
thought she might fall asleep on that bed of water. He would
later find out that she was a champion swimmer and had once
swum around an island in Mexico. She loved to sail. She loved
the water. As Rusty Yates now describes the woman he would
marry in 1993, "she was a person who was more graceful in the
water than out of it."
It is late into the night of the second day of 2002, and Rusty
Yates is sitting in a Mobile, Ala., hotel room, traveling on his
first vacation alone and trying to piece together thoughts of his
marriage. The NASA computer engineer averts his memory from
the image of water for a moment. But he cannot really avoid it.

15. On June 20, 2001, when the police reached his modest brick
home on Beachcomber Lane in suburban Houston, they found
Andrea drenched with bathwater, her flowery blouse and brown
leather sandals soaking wet. She had turned on the bathroom
faucet to fill the porcelain tub and moved aside the shaggy mat
to give herself traction for kneeling on the floor. It took a bit of
work for her to chase down the last of the children; toward the
end, she had a scuffle in the family room, sliding around on wet
tile below a poster that proclaimed the epithets of Christ:
SAVIOR, SHEPHERD, BISHOP OF SOULS. She dripped
watery footprints from the tub to her bedroom, where she
straightened the blankets around the kids in their pajamas once
she was done with them.
She called 911 and then her husband. "It's time. I finally did it,"
she said before telling him to come home and hanging up. He
called back to ask what happened. "It's the kids," she said. He
asked which of five. "All of them."
Jury selection is now under way in one of the most sensational
murder cases in years. Andrea Kennedy Yates, 37, has pleaded
not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple counts of capital
murder, the drowning of her four sons and baby daughter. At
issue in the trial is her mental state: her motives and her will.
Her attorneys will argue that the killings were brought on by
psychotic delusions, exacerbated by repeated episodes of
postpartum depression.
Prosecutors dispute the extent of her psychosis and plan to seek
the death penalty if she is convicted, contending she knew right
from wrong and that the massacre of five children was an
intentional attempt to escape a life she could no longer live--
and a husband she had grown to resent. While Andrea is the one
on trial, the case will also bring scrutiny of her husband, her
doctors, her mother and siblings. What did they know of her
condition? And could they have prevented the

16. tragedy?
Andrea Yates' odyssey is the focus of a TIME investigation that
included 40 hours of conversations with Rusty Yates as well as
interviews with his wife's family and friends. TIME also
reviewed hours of home videos and thousands of medical
records, police files, autopsy reports and court documents. What
emerges is a picture far different from that in the
framed family photographs hanging in the hallway of the
couple's home. It is a portrait of a fateful, tragic intersection of
characters. Among them:
--A woman who had a vision of violence from the time
just after her first child was born but who kept her demons
secret to preserve the image of family and motherhood she and
her husband treasured.
--A well-intentioned husband, strong willed yet seen
as lacking empathy, who had the task of explaining his wife's
mental condition to physicians as she lapsed into silence and
catatonia.
--A psychiatrist who achieved a dramatic improvement
in Andrea Yates' symptoms with antipsychotic drugs but whose
warnings about the danger of relapse were not heeded by
Andrea or her husband.
--An institutional doctor who missed opportunities to
expand her treatment, halted her antipsychotic drugs and sent
her home after only marginal improvement.
--Family members with a history of mental illness but
little self-awareness of their shared syndromes. They had a
vague sense of her problems but remained at a certain distance
from her, despite harboring concerns about the way their in-law
Rusty was handling the situation.

17. What becomes clear from the oral history and medical
documents of Andrea Yates is that she did not simply snap but
gradually came undone. Since her arrest, she has told detectives
and court-appointed doctors things that her husband and
psychiatrists say she managed to hide for months, if not years.
Rusty Yates denies contributing to her mania and maintains the
strongest belief that she is innocent, that insanity led her to kill.
"Andrea is a victim here. She has lived in a different world for
weeks and weeks, months and months," Rusty says. "She is
waking up, and this is her life now. Think of the trauma she has
been through. What a cruel thing to do. Where's the
compassion?"
On the dry-marker board Andrea used to home school their
children, Rusty has drawn charts of her depressive episodes and
hospital stays since 1999. He can cite studies in the American
Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology; he has read the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. His
wife's major depressive episodes, he says, are described on page
356. His obligation to support her, he says, goes beyond their
wedding vows. "She wasn't just my wife. She's my
best friend. And my friend's in trouble."
Rusty Yates now believes there was something invisible and
corrosive in Andrea, and trying to explicate his marriage, he
weaves together two threads: "Bible and brain." God blessed
them with five children in eight years of marriage. A big family,
Rusty says, was going to be their "adventure in life." But, he
explains, "the Bible says the devil prowls around looking for
someone to devour. I look at Andrea, and I think that Andrea
was weak"—not morally weak but chemically weak,
her resistance to evil lowered by mental illness. "Think about a
field of deer, and there's one limping around, and that's kind of
the way I see it. Andrea was weak, and he attacked her. Jesus
says, Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." But Andrea

18. did not have the strength to resist. On June 20, 2001, however,
she was strong enough to realize a vision that had been in her
head for two years.
Secrets and Lies
Andrea Kennedy had never before been so bold as on the day in
1989 when she knocked on Rusty Yates' apartment door to ask
if he knew who had dinged her car. He did not, but they talked.
She later confessed to him that she had simply wanted to meet
him--just as he had first been interested in her after seeing her
in the pool weeks earlier. She went by herself to eat at
a steak restaurant by a river, and the sight of couples chatting
intimately made her focus her attentions on Rusty. Back at their
apartment complex, she scribbled a note on a torn piece of
notebook paper and placed it beneath a wiper of his white
Toyota Corolla. It said, I WAS THINKING MAYBE YOU
COULD COME BY SOME TIME TONIGHT. "I doubt she ever
did anything like that before that time," says Rusty.
"She just got to a point that she needed companionship."
Eventually, he gave up Monday-night football to visit her
apartment. They talked for more than an hour. "She was smart,"
recalls Rusty, who was 25 at the time, as was Andrea. "She used
two or three words and I didn't know what they were." Perhaps
for fear of embarrassing him, she did not tell him then that she
had been high school valedictorian. He had been a popular jock
in high school--and a summa cum laude graduate of Auburn
University. There were secrets she would never tell
him. Her boldness was rooted in desperation: she had not dated
until she turned 23, and she was getting over a romantic
breakup. Only after her arrest, he says, did he learn of it from
her psychiatric records.
Even as a teenager, she kept her confidences. "Andrea would
not let people get close enough," says Marlene Wark, her only

19. good friend through Milby High School in southeast Houston.
"She was prickly that way. She minded her own business and
expected you to mind your own business." She was the youngest
of five. Her parents, determined to vary the children's interests,
would rouse them from bed at 5:30 a.m. to swim in the cold
pool at the YMCA. The family had one of the largest paper
routes in Houston, making deliveries in their mother Jetta's aqua
station wagon, which their father Andrew had souped up. As
soon as she was old enough, Andrea got a job at a Jack in the
Box restaurant. "Her parents expected her to make good grades,
and she made good grades," recalls Wark. "She was
always interested in pleasing her parents, particularly her
father. He was a teacher and very demanding. She did not want
him to disapprove of her." She took a calculus test from which
she was exempt to prove her capability. "I think her dad really
wanted her to do it," says Kyle Weygandt, another classmate.
Andrea worked as a post-op nurse at M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center while dating Rusty, who designed computer systems for
NASA. They spent two years getting to know each other, living
together, reading the Bible and praying. Their wedding in 1993
was not extravagant, but Andrea and Rusty had very set ideas
about the future. The couple talked openly to wedding guests
about planning not to use birth control and wanting as many
children as might come along. Within three months,
Andrea was pregnant. She kept her job until Noah's birth in
February 1994. One morning soon after, however, she had a
startling vision: the image of a knife crossed her mind,
flickering into a scene of somebody being stabbed, which
vanished as quickly as it had appeared. She dismissed it
and never told Rusty, who says he learned of it only after she
was arrested.
With Noah still in diapers, Andrea was pregnant again in 1995.
She gave up swimming and jogging. She saw less of her friends.
"That was her choice," says her friend Marlene Wark, who lost

20. touch with her old chum after Noah's birth. "Andrea is not a
cream puff. She never struck me as the type who rolled over."
Wark had seen her friendship lapse with Andrea
before. In college they stopped talking for a year until Andrea
warmed up again, without ever explaining what had miffed her.
Andrea later told another friend that, at the time, she might have
been bulimic and depressed.
Rusty learned to accept some of Andrea's secretiveness. "I know
a few things about her," he says, "but I don't know a lot. I don't
probe. I don't want to be nosy." He even respected her obsession
about undressing and changing in a closet, out of his sight. She
did not like confrontation and argument. He says he wanted her
to speak up, but she didn't. She avoided conflicts with
stints of silence that lasted days or weeks until he confronted
her. "Throw a frying pan at me. Do anything!" Rusty says he
told her. Nothing.
"I wanted her to thrive as a person," he says. "I wanted her to
read challenging works. I didn't want her to get isolated and
overwhelmed and all these things you get with children." He
recalls buying her books on home management and offering to
cut back on his work so she could return to nursing. She
refused, he says, telling him, "I'm a mother now."
The Obedient Wife
In 1996 Rusty jumped at a chance to be part of a six-month
NASA-related project in Florida, and he wanted to drive his
family there in a trailer. So he leased out their four-bedroom
house, and Andrea plunged ahead with a garage sale of
furniture, Christmas ornaments and clothes. No one recalls her
complaining, but her relatives could not help noticing that she
saved photos and her wedding dress while Rusty focused on
storing his tools and workout gear.
That November, Andrea, Noah and baby John moved into the

21. 38-ft. trailer, setting themselves up in a recreation-vehicle
community in Seminole, Fla. While Rusty worked, Andrea spent
her days taking Noah and John to the beach, the park and the
children's museum. Rusty was head of the household. Andrea
was his partner. Their parenting skills differed, he says, but
their philosophy didn't. They showed the boys the value of
books, sports, the arts. Andrea taught them to shuck
corn and snap green beans. She wanted them to appreciate the
colors of rainbows. She let them make messes, get away with
more. In Florida, Andrea became pregnant twice, miscarrying
the first time but conceiving again by the time Rusty's project
ended and they drove back to Houston. She began to call herself
"Fertile Myrtle."
They rented a grassy lot for their trailer home at the Lazy Days
RV Campground, near a dog track in Hitchcock, Texas. Rusty
had no intention of returning to the house in suburbia. Not yet.
They were living out a new family motto: Travel light. "We had
expenses. We didn't have a budget," Rusty says. "We just kind
of lived. We took it easy."
A few months later, in 1998, Rusty came across a newsletter by
an itinerant evangelist named Michael Woroniecki, whose
advice had influenced him in college. Woroniecki was selling a
motor home converted from a 1978 GMC bus that he, his wife
and kids had used for their traveling crusade. Andrea and Noah,
4, preferred the bus to the trailer, so Rusty bought it. Noah and
John slept in "the hole," a luggage compartment accessible from
the cabin through a
trapdoor. The 350 sq. ft. of living space would also house Paul,
who would be only 17 months old when brother Luke was born.
Yet even as her brood expanded, Andrea was busy caring for her
father, who had Alzheimer's and had never fully recovered from
a heart attack a decade earlier. During the holidays, with her

22. kids in tow, Andrea usually took charge, dishing up plates of
food for relatives even as her own meal went cold. It was
always Andrea who visited; she rarely allowed relatives to visit
her, even though they lived just 30 minutes away. "We got as
close as they could let you," says her brother Andrew Kennedy.
"They were very private." Some thought she was embarrassed
by the bus.
The stresses seemed to converge in 1999 after the family took
the bus to the Grand Canyon. Andrea seemed tired and
preoccupied on the drive home to Texas, recalls Rusty, who
assumed she was suffering from aftereffects of he flu, which
they all had had. But then she slipped into a deep funk. On June
16, 1999, crying and nearly hysterical, she called Rusty at work
and asked him to come home. He found her in the back room of
the bus. She was slumped in a chair, biting her fingers, her legs
shaking even more uncontrollably than her hands. Rusty packed
her and the kids into his Chevy Suburban and drove south to
Galveston and the bay. There he walked his wife along the
seawall in an attempt to calm her. But she remained shaken. He
then drove her to her parents' home.
The next day, after Rusty had left to run errands, Andrea told
her mother Jutta that she was going to nap. Andrea then took at
least 40 pills of her mother's trazodone, an antidepressant
prescribed to help Jutta sleep. Andrea was lying unconscious in
her mother's bed when Jutta walked in, saw the empty bottle and
called 911. An ambulance arrived, with Rusty following behind.
As paramedics carried Andrea away on a stretcher, her sons
sobbed uncontrollably.
The Breakdown
She had taken the pills to "sleep forever," Andrea told staff at
the Methodist Hospital, according to medical records released
by defense lawyers. But afterward she felt guilty for attempting

23. suicide. "I have my family to live for," she told registered nurse
Bridget Fenton. Andrea told a psychiatrist she was worried the
overdose had done permanent damage to her body. Recovery
was not as immediate as repentance. On June 20, 1999, Andrea
retreated from group therapy to her hospital room, where with
the lights out, she pulled the sheets over her head. According
to his notes, psychiatrist James Flack found her to be
purposefully vague. "I guess there has been some turmoil," she
told him without elaborating. Her "extreme guardedness"
frustrated Norma Tauriac, a social worker at the hospital. Yates
would discuss her childhood, but she deflected the social
worker's questions about her children or her breakdown. All she
would say was "I guess I was overwhelmed and depressed."
When Tauriac asked about her
strengths, Andrea paused, then said, "I can't think of any right
now."
Rusty had his own assessment. In a phone call with Tauriac, he
said Andrea had "lost her identity." She relied on him for
decisions, he said, noting that she focused only on the children.
Tauriac asked about the marriage. "Maybe I could treat her with
more respect,"Rusty said, adding that Andrea "may be
struggling with the concept of salvation...She puts a burden on
herself." He thought Andrea had "some guilt about showing
anger." Tauriac scribbled notes in the file: "The patient's
husband might be a little bit controlling." Tauriac was wary of
Rusty. He had insisted that his wife's problems were simply
signs of temporary postpartum depression, not a graver mental
illness. He also told her that he was teaching the kids to be
quieter for long periods and that he was instructing
them in woodworking. His 3 1/2-year-old, he said, could use a
power drill.
Andrea was still depressed, but Flack discharged her "for
insurance reasons," as he wrote on her medical chart. He also

24. thought she might respond better to a female psychiatrist, whom
she might find more "nurturing," he told Rusty. Flack had given
Andrea a prescription for Zoloft, an antidepressant not unlike
her mother's, and Rusty took her back to her parents to
recuperate. But she never liked taking pills and faked
swallowing them, say Jutta and Rusty. They took turns checking
her mouth for hidden meds.
Andrea only got worse. Staying in bed all day, she scratched
four bald spots into her scalp and picked sores in her nose. She
used her nails to score marks on her legs and arms in her silent
obsessions. Her mother and other relatives say Andrea was
slipping away, and they could not reach her. At this time, she
would later tell psychiatrists--but not her husband, he
says--she experienced visions and voices. She would hear
commands: "Get a knife! Get a knife!" Then the image she first
saw after Noah's birth returned: a knife and a person being
stabbed. But now in the image she saw the bloody results. The
visions returned as many as 10 times over several days.
Andrea told Rusty and her mother that the children were "eating
too much." When 4-month-old Luke cried, Andrea would try to
rock him to sleep and give him a pacifier, but she would not
feed him. The task of weaning the infant to a bottle fell to her
elderly mother, who struggled to care for her grandchildren and
her own sick husband. Not until Andrea became ill did her
relatives fully realize that mental illness ran in the family. They
began to confide in one another, says Jutta. Andrea's brother
Andrew and sister Michelle are being treated for depression.
Her other brother Brian found out he is bipolar. The more they
talked, the more they all suspected that their father had been
battling depression. Andrea, as far as anyone knew, had never
been treated for her pre-Rusty bout of depression.
The day before she was to meet her new psychiatrist, Andrea
disappeared. Rusty tracked her to the bathroom, where she

25. stared at the mirror, pressing a kitchen knife against her throat,
deliberating. "Give me the knife," Rusty demanded. She told
him to get out. "Let me do it," she said. He moved toward her,
grabbing her arm and prying the knife away. Upon hearing the
details from Rusty, psychiatrist Eileen Starbranch wanted
Andrea hospitalized again. This time she would be
sent to Memorial Spring Shadows Glen, a private center in
northwest Houston. After 10 days, Andrea was nearly catatonic.
Electroshock therapy was considered. But Starbranch decided to
try an emergency injection" formulated from a cocktail of
drugs, including the antipsychotic Haldol, which she used only
in dire cases. The effects were immediate, recalls Rusty. His
wife exhaled like a wounded animal and moved erratically
around the room before she slept.
When she awoke, Rusty saw renewed longing in her eyes as she
looked at the swimming pool outside, back at him and then at
the pool again. He saw the woman she could be. The
conversation they had that night, he thought, was one of their
best. Andrea was unguarded. Later she told him that the Haldol
injection was a "truth serum"--and that she hated how it caused
her to lose control of herself.
In sessions with psychologist James Thompson, whose medical
records were released by defense lawyers, Andrea said things
she would never confess to her husband. Her attempt to commit
suicide, she explained to Thompson, was her way of heading
off what the visions and voices were leading to. "I had a fear I
would hurt somebody. I thought it better to end my own life and
prevent it," she said. What others saw as her silence and
nervousness, she said, were her attempts to restrain herself from
acting out and causing harm. In the sessions with Thompson,
her secret history began to unfold. She admitted the knife image
followed Noah's birth but refused to say who was hurt in the
vision. She tried to change the subject. She had been depressed
twice in her life--after her dad's heart attack and the "failed

26. relationship" before she met Rusty. How, asked Thompson,
would she describe the old Andrea? "A little more outgoing.
More cheerful. More helpful. More patient. Not so self-centered
as I am now."
The Kennedys were running out of room in their small house as
Andrea's brothers and their kids moved in briefly, but her
parents were adamant that Rusty not take her back to the bus. It
was not healthy for her--or the kids. So Rusty, now a project
manager at NASA earning $80,000 a year, bought a house, the
second one he looked at: 942 Beachcomber Lane, a Spanish-
style home with three bedrooms, two baths, trees, a high wood
fence around the
backyard and a spot to park the bus. Rusty took Andrea to close
the deal. She was now receiving Haldol monthly and looked like
a zombie, says Rusty, but he remembers she could hold the pen,
signing here and initialing there, agreeing to pay the mortgage
along with him. "I wanted her name to be on the deed," Rusty
says, hoping the serenity of the backyard would speed her
recovery.
And as the months passed, Andrea improved. She started
swimming again, doing a furious 70 laps at dawn in the
neighborhood pool. She planted milkweed to attract the
butterflies that she and Noah loved. In a rare confession, she
told Rusty she felt she had "failed" at the simple life in the bus.
But she turned the front den into a classroom to home school
Noah and the other kids. When they studied horses, they read
Black Beauty and went riding real ones. When they
were learning about Indians, she crafted a cardboard diorama
including pretend deerskin stretched across twigs. To show off
musical instruments, they paraded as a marching band in front
of the video camera so Daddy could see them. She insisted on
buying extra workbooks to expand their home-schooling
curriculum. "You make it difficult on yourself," Rusty says he

27. told her. "You're making it more complicated than it
needs to be."
Andrea baked elaborate birthday cakes from scratch and stayed
up late sewing costumes for her friends' kids, not just her own.
The boys bragged about her chicken pot pie, and Rusty loved
her chocolate-covered cookies. She traveled with the best-
stocked stroller and diaper bag in the neighborhood, complete
with apples cut into kid-size bites. "She did love to nurture her
children," says Traci Winkler, another mother who would hang
out with Andrea at the park and at kids' birthday parties. "She
never seemed like she was in a rush with them." On Wednesday
n nights Rusty would take one of the boys out for pizza.
Mommy's Night Out was Thursday. Andrea usually took one of
the younger kids with her.
The family had Bible study three nights a week in the living
room because Rusty had not found a church he liked. He had
learned the faults of organized religion from Michael
Woroniecki, the traveling preacher who had sold him the bus.
Rusty did not agree completely with the extreme views of his
old spiritual mentor. But Andrea, moved by the repent-or-burn
zeal, wound up exchanging letters with the preacher and his
wife for years after they bought the bus. Woroniecki wrote that
"the role of woman is derived...from the sin of Eve" and that
bad children come from bad mothers. Sometimes her family life
seemed to parallel his: raising kids on the road, home schooling,
God fearing. At one point, she asked Woroniecki to write a
letter to help convert her Catholic parents. The influence
worried the Kennedys. What had Rusty got her into? But even
Rusty grew concerned with her obsession with Scripture. Still,
he says, "a guy cannot really complain that his wife is reading
the Bible too much."
Andrea was continuing her Haldol injections and driving twice a
month to see a social worker for counseling. At that time,

28. neither Rusty nor Andrea chose to find out more about the
complexities of depression that had threatened their family. He
once asked what her illness had been like. "Very dark," she told
him. She would not
discuss it further, and Rusty admits that he asked nothing else.
"I didn't want to pry," he says. He still knew nothing of the
knives she saw or the bloody visions, he says, and believed she
was fully recovered.
Rusty had used birth control while Andrea was on
psychotropics. But toward the end of 1999, when she was
happily baking cookies and exercising again, she stopped taking
her meds and they stopped using contraception. By the spring of
2000, she was pregnant again. "We weren't trying to have a
baby," Rusty says, "but we weren't trying not to, either." Dr.
Starbranch had warned that if Andrea's illness returned, it could
be more severe. But Rusty and Andrea both believed, Rusty
says, that if the depression were to return, Rusty could easily
recognize the symptoms and seek early intervention. The birth
of Luke may have triggered her illness, but he was a blessing
too. "To us," says Rusty, "the trade was simple."
Not everyone thought so. Andrea's mother was already
concerned that Rusty had contributed to his wife's first
breakdown. Andrea's former nursing colleague Debbie Holmes
tried to talk to Andrea about the burdens of motherhood. Andrea
already had four kids. Did she really need another? But Andrea
told her friend that Rusty
wanted the baby. "Rusty only cares about Rusty," Holmes told
TIME. Through the years, she heard Andrea describe her
husband as controlling and manipulative. Holmes told police
she was "the only friend allowed to visit" Andrea, and Holmes
wrote down her friend's stories about Rusty in her diary. When
Andrea trimmed Rusty's hair, Holmes claimed, her hands

29. supposedly trembled because he belittled her for every goof.
Andrea hoped for a girl. "Let's get enough boys for a basketball
team, and then we can talk about girls," Rusty joked. By
Thanksgiving 2000, she got her wish: a daughter named Mary
Deborah.
Darkness Visible
In spite of keeping house, home schooling and a new daughter,
Andrea never missed a day of visitation when her father lay
dying in the spring of 2001. She took all the children with her
to the local VA hospital. She cared for him after doctors sent
him home. The man who once taught her to sail was now
confined to a wheelchair and could only gargle the water
Andrea gave him. The night he died, Andrea insisted on driving
to her parents' house. But the sight of her father's corpse
devastated her. Rusty still wonders how guilty Andrea felt about
the death--whether she believed her father could have lived
longer at home with an IV, which as a nurse she could have
administered. But he never asked her about her feelings.
Andrea began to fray. She became absorbed in the Bible. Rusty
came home one day to find Noah upset because Andrea had
berated him about an assignment. "Nothing would get her to
laugh," says her brother Andrew. "She would not ask us for
help. Maybe she didn't know how." She constantly held Mary
but would not feed her. She stopped talking. She went days
without drinking liquids. She began scratching her head to
baldness again. It was
just three weeks since her father's death.
At Dr. Starbranch's advice, Rusty decided to rehospitalize his
wife and, guided by his Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance
coverage, found the Devereux Texas Treatment Network, a

30. sprawling campus amid the woods in nearby League City. But it
was not easy to get her there. On March 31, 2001, Andrea
refused to leave the house. As Rusty remembers it, he and her
brother Brian had to drag her into a truck, and at Devereux's
parking lot they had to drag her out. Andrea then
refused to sign forms admitting herself to Devereux, leading her
attending psychiatrist Mohammed Saeed and the staff to prepare
letters asking a Texas judge to confine her to the Austin State
Hospital because, they said, her condition was dangerous. After
Rusty pleaded for hours, she complied. What the psychiatrist
learned about her history came from her husband, who did all
the talking, not from the psychiatrists and other professionals
who had treated her in the past. Rusty says he still did not know
about the visions and voices his wife had described in 1999, but
he urged Dr. Saeed to read Andrea's medical records because
the psychiatrist seemed skeptical about her earlier treatment
involving a Haldol cocktail. When Saeed finally
received a partial batch of records, he wrote in her chart, "No
new info."
At Rusty's urging, Saeed agreed to put Andrea on Haldol, but
discontinued the treatment after only a few weeks because he
thought her "flat face" might be a side effect. In a pretrial
hearing last month, Saeed testified that he partly based his
treatment decision on the limited responses of a patient who
rarely spoke. "I had not seen any evidence of psychosis," he
testified, referring to medical files, "and I have a notation that
she had denied hallucinations and delusions." (Saeed
has declined comment to the press, citing a gag order.) Saeed
said she never opened up to him about her inner torment. At the
hospital, she watched videos about drug addiction, which
Devereux officials say offer therapeutic advantages, such as
coping skills.
It took 10 days for Andrea to begin feeding herself again. That
was enough improvement for Saeed to discharge her, even

31. though her medications were not yet stabilized. She wanted to
go home, where Saeed said she might respond. Says Rusty: "He
saw me. He thought I could take care of her. He calculated the
risk." Home, however, was a demanding place. Andrea had
resisted the idea of a nanny or a housekeeper, says Rusty, who
felt that keeping house "was a source of pride for her." The
Kennedys thought he should have hired somebody long ago. "I
had five children, but I had a very good husband who helped,"
Jutta says. Rusty's mom Dora, however, came from Tennessee to
help, sleeping at a motel and watching Andrea and the kids by
day.
On May 3, while he worked, Andrea and her mother-in-law took
the kids for a walk. After they returned, Noah saw Andrea
filling up the tub. He told his grandmother, who turned off the
water. Asked why, all Andrea said was, "I might need it."
Debbie Holmes stopped by the house to drop off food, but
Andrea would not let her in. Holmes doubted whether Rusty
realized the severity of Andrea's depression; she believed he
was not "big" on pills. Holmes also believed her friend
had been possessed by the devil, something the two discussed
after her 1999 illness, say sources close to the case. About this
time in 2001, the sources say, Holmes was worried that the
demons had returned a hundredfold.
But even Rusty knew that Andrea needed treatment. When Dr.
Saeed agreed to a rehospitalization, Rusty drove her back to
Devereux. Lori, 32, her roommate there, remembers Andrea as
eerily mute as she lay in the indowless room farthest down the
hall from the nurses' station in Unit 3. "Her eyes were real
wide. She looked like a scared person," says Lori. "It was like
nothing I'd ever seen before." Despite the rules, Rusty would
walk into their room, and Lori complained to nurses. "To
me, he was sneaky," she says. One night Lori hallucinated and
screamed so loudly that nurses ran to their room. Andrea, lying
in bed, did not flinch. Lori's parents, David and Janna

32. Fashenpour, came to daily group therapy for families. At first
they liked Rusty. But he dominated the discussions when others
tried to talk, and he answered questions the counselor asked his
wife, who wouldn't nod her head.
Says David Fashenpour, a retired Air Force officer and NASA
contractor: "It was almost like her silence was a payback to the
husband--like a control issue going on."
During this hospital stay--unlike the three previous ones—Rusty
did not bring the kids to see her. For Mother's Day, though, the
four boys and Mary brought her a heart-shaped helium balloon
and Russell Stover chocolates with a rose on the box. On a
concoction of Haldol and antidepressants, she had improved
marginally. She remained on 15-minute suicide checks, and she
mostly stayed in her room. But for the first time, when Saeed
asked if she was having suicidal thoughts, she answered no.
The next afternoon, May 14, Rusty came by for his daily visit
and found Andrea waiting by the nurses' station. She was ready
to go home, released by Saeed, who wrote in her chart that
while she still appeared depressed, she was eating and sleeping
"much better." Hospital workers noted that in group therapy,
she would still say nothing except her name. Nurses noted that
her affect was "flat," her mood "somber" and her judgment still
"impaired"; however, she was showering and eating with
"minimal prompting." So Rusty took Andrea home.
Last Acts
On June 18 the lot behind the discount cigar and liquor store
was nearly empty when Rusty pulled into the strip shopping
center where Dr. Saeed parks his Mercedes. Andrea, silent and
somber, had not changed her clothes or combed her hair before
the appointment. In the month since her release from Devereux,
Saeed had sent her to six days of outpatient therapy that again

33. included four hour-long sessions on substance abuse and
addiction. HeeHH had discontinued Haldol and tinkered with
her drug combination, sending Rusty to Walgreens five times to
fetch pills. "She's declined," Rusty says he told Saeed. "And I'm
concerned." Rusty, as had been his practice, answered most of
the questions, at one point describing how Andrea woke up
screaming from a nightmare in which she was "trapped in bed."
Each gradual improvement, he told Saeed, had been followed by
slightly faster declines, particularly in the previous few days.
He wanted Saeed to consider shock therapy again.
Saeed was not as displeased by Andrea's progress. Shock
treatments were usually temporary fixes for severely ill
patients, he told Rusty. He still did not want to go back to
prescribing Haldol. "It's a bad medicine," he said. He thought
about putting her on lithium, typically used to treat bipolar
patients with mood swings. Andrea's mood had been flat but
steady until the past week, Rusty told him. Asked if she were
suicidal, Andrea murmured "No" to
Saeed. He did not ask if she thought of hurting others. Again
Saeed adjusted her dose of antidepressants, but no Haldol,
Rusty says. The psychiatrist then suggested, "Maybe you can
see a psychologist." Before she walked out, Saeed turned to
Andrea and said that he needed her help. Find new ways of
controlling the mind, he told her. "Think positive thoughts."
On the afternoon of the next day, Andrea watched cartoons in
the living room, and later she joined in a brief round of
basketball with Rusty and Noah in the garage, taking about 15
shots. Then without a word she went back in and crawled into
bed without changing her clothes. She did not wake till the next
morning, June 20. The nightmares had taken over. That day
Rusty Yates noticed a nervousness in the way Andrea moved
around the kitchen, setting out cereal bowls and milk for the
kids. Rusty asked her to get ointment for Paul's lip, which he'd

34. hurt at the playground. Andrea hurriedly dabbed on the gel.
John asked Rusty if he could finally have his long-awaited turn
going to work with him at NASA and playing games at Space
Center Houston. But Rusty had a space-shuttle design meeting
that morning and was not in the mood to take John along. He
told him to stay with Mommy. Rusty made certain Andrea had
swallowed her morning dose of antidepressants, and as he left
he saw her eating handfuls of Sugar Pops from the box.
The kids were still having breakfast when she began. First was
"Perfect Paul," the 3-year-old who had been her most joyful and
least trouble. He died in seconds, held violently underwater by
the mother whose hands had carefully washed his hair so that
the soap would not sting his eyes. She carried his soaked body
to her bed,
tucking him beneath a maroon blanket, his head on the pillows.
After Paul, she drowned Luke, 2, and moved on to John, 5. Next
she killed their baby sister Mary, whom she had distracted with
a bottle so she wouldn't scoot away and hurt herself while her
brothers were being killed.
Noah, her firstborn, was the last to die. The 7-year-old left his
half-eaten cereal on the kitchen table when Andrea summoned
him. Walking into the bathroom, Noah saw his sister facedown
in the water, her tiny fists clenched. He asked, "What's wrong
with Mary?" and then, according to the account Andrea would
give police, he tried to run away. His mother chased him down,
dragged the wailing boy to the bathroom and forced him
facedown into nine
inches of cold water in the tub, his sister's body floating lifeless
next to him. Noah came up twice as he fought for air. But
Andrea held her grip. She then laid Mary in bed with her
brothers, wrapping their arms around the baby. She left Noah in
the tub.

35. Waiting for Death
Drinking a diet coke, Andrea told homicide sergeant Eric Mehl
what she had done and why. She did not hate the children. Nor
was she mad at them. "They weren't developing correctly," she
said. The soft-spoken sergeant asked how long she had
considered murder. Two years, she said. "Since I realized I have
not been a good mother to them." Mehl watched her movements.
She looked him in the eye. She nodded. Sometimes she
answered, "Yes, sir." But she would sit in 15 seconds of stone-
cold silence if he asked too much. She could give only short
answers to simple questions in their 17-minute conversation as
she twice recounted the order in which her children were born
and died.
Later she told jail doctors that nothing could mute the patter
that said she was a lousy mother. The death of her children, she
said, was her punishment, not theirs. It was, she explained, a
mother's final act of mercy. Did not the Bible say it would be
better for a person to be flung into the sea with a stone tied to
his neck than cause little ones to stumble? And she had failed
her children. Only her execution would rescue her from the evil
inside her—a state-sanctioned exorcism in which
George W. Bush, the former Governor and now President,
would come to save her from the clutches of Satan. Had not
Scripture taught that the government is a minister of God, "an
avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil?" She
told the doctors she wanted her hair shaved so she could see the
number 666--the mark of the Antichrist--on her scalp. She also
wanted her hair cropped in the shape of a crown, perhaps the
kind the Bible says Jesus will give to those who have won
salvation.
When Rusty visited her two days after her arrest, Andrea had
gone from robotic to bizarre. The blank look on her face

36. appeared to be strained, even skeptical as Rusty sat and told her
he had done some thinking and knew she did not intentionally
kill the children. He had stood in front of television cameras to
defend her. "I love you and I support you," he told her. Leaning
back in her chair, she interrupted. "You will be greatly
rewarded," she said in a
cold voice, echoing the Sermon on the Mount. When Rusty tried
to introduce her lawyer, she said, "I don't need an attorney. I'm
not going to plead not guilty." As he left, Andrea said, "Have a
nice life."
Since then, Andrea has been put back on Haldol and other
drugs. Though she has a distorted recall of June 20, other
memories are coming back. "It's like a fog being lifted," she
tells Rusty when he visits her on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Their discussions are blunt but sincere. "If I am going to have
an ongoing relationship with
her," Rusty says, "I need her to be open." Andrea calls him once
a week from jail. They talk while Rusty cradles the cordless
phone and paces the empty house. Before Christmas, Andrea
asked him to play her snippets of home videos archived in the
electronic shrine that he has created at www.yateskids.org. Only
recently had she been allowed to see photos of her children.
Rusty made sure he played her clips of all five. Listening from a
pay phone,
Andrea wept to hear Noah's brothers singing him the Happy
Birthday song and Paul's giggles as he held newborn Mary.
The children are buried near a stream of running water at the
Forest Park East cemetery. Rusty comes by often to talk out
loud and to hear his own thoughts. He wishes he had let John
come along to work with him that day. He misses Noah, misses
the basketball games. He feels in his heart that each of the

37. children has forgiven their m0ther. He feels they can hear him
speak, can hear his thoughts. And so, on one December day, he
whispered one plea to them. "Pray for Mommy."
-- WITH REPORTING BY ANNE BERRYMAN AND
DEBORAH FOWLER/HOUSTON, HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN
AND GREG FULTON/ATLANTA