She left her oldest boy laying face down in a tub full of shit, urine and vomit because he didn’t go to the Lord easily. This is not indicative of psychosis, it is indicative of evil, the pure unadulterated kind.
You are correct. Depression is no excuse. Lots of people have it. Even at their lowest ebb, few of them are capable of murdering their own baby. Such an act goes against every instinct of a human being.
Many parents occasionally feel capable of doing harm to their children. Few do so. It’s unnatural, even for the mentally ill, to harm a child. Even hardened criminals will usually avoid doing harm to a baby or young child. No, it takes more than human weakness or garden-variety wickedness to make a person actually hurt or kill a child. It takes evil — pure, hellish evil.
The Devil may whisper in your ear, but one doesn’t have to listen to him. This woman listened. With that act of will she became a murderer. She had options. She could have run out of that house, called a neighbor, gotten on a bus to Mexico, and never come back. She could have gotten drunk. She could have walked next door and said, “Something is wrong in my head. I’m afraid I’m going to murder my children. Please call an ambulance.” Instead, she chose to kill them, one by one. Her own flesh and blood. Her own flesh and blood!
The fact that she wants to go on living is proof she has no soul. Any human being with a soul who had killed his or her own children would kill themselves. How could any rational being with a conscience live with that kind of guilt?
They couldn’t. Which means that Andrea Yates either has no conscience or is not a rational being. If she is no longer a rational being, she should be put out of her misery. If she has no conscience, she should be put out of ours.