Yates lived by rigid schedule, according to husband
Posted on 03/01/2002 1:45:51 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Yates lived by rigid schedule, according to husband
Husband also testifies she was allowed 3 hours a week without her kids
03/01/2002
HOUSTON - Russell "Rusty" Yates told jurors Thursday about how his wife, Andrea, lived by a rigid schedule as housekeeper and teacher and was allowed three hours each week to do whatever she wanted, alone, without her children.
"Man's the breadwinner and the woman's the homemaker," Mr. Yates said Thursday during Mrs. Yates' capital murder trial. Mrs. Yates pleaded insanity after admitting that she drowned her five children in June.
While he talked proudly of the couple's decision to toe a higher ethical line based on biblical teachings and lessons gleaned from a conservative newsletter called "Perilous Times," Mr. Yates coincidentally painted a picture for jurors of a bleak life bereft of any outlet for Mrs. Yates besides her children.
AP "A scared animal" is how Debbie Holmes testified that her friend Andrea Yates behaved in the days before she killed her children. |
Mr. Yates, 37, told the jury that he and his wife agreed before their wedding in 1993 to a "traditional" marriage in which he would serve as sole breadwinner and she would be homemaker.
The pact included being a stay-at-home mother, primary caregiver and, eventually, home-school teacher. Mr. Yates said that he controlled the cash and that she stuck carefully to an allowance.
Therapist Earline Wilcott, who met with Mrs. Yates after her suicide attempts, testified that her client felt overwhelmed and trapped.
Ms. Wilcott said Mrs. Yates felt criticized for the way she ran the household. Ms. Wilcott said Mrs. Yates told her that her husband bought her a book on how to get organized.
When pressure from raising their children appeared to be getting to Mrs. Yates, she could always look forward to Thursdays. Mr. Yates testified that for three hours once each week from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mrs. Yates could do whatever she wanted, alone, without the children.
The free time was to provide some relief for his wife, Mr. Yates said. "I guess that's what we decided," he said.
Mrs. Yates is a diagnosed schizophrenic predisposed to pitch-black depressions that followed the births of her last two children. Testimony has shown that the 37-year-old registered nurse with perfectionist tendencies and a solid Christian faith went along with the home management plan she and Mr. Yates hammered out before marriage.
During a second day of testimony, this time during questioning by Harris County prosecutor Joe Owmby, Mr. Yates, a NASA engineer, said he and Mrs. Yates agreed before marrying that she would give up her job at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at Houston.
"We thought it best that Andrea be home," Mr. Yates testified.
Prosecutors say Mrs. Yates was fully aware of what she was doing when she drowned Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and 6-month-old Mary in the family bathtub.
Mrs. Yates' trial, which began Feb. 18, is expected to go through next week. She faces life in prison or lethal injection if convicted.
During questioning, Mr. Yates said his wife was quiet and remarkably modest. After they were married, Mrs. Yates wouldn't undress in front of her husband. "That's a pretty personal question, but generally that's true. She's shy," he testified.
While Mr. Yates found time for interests such as biking to work, joining a gym and working in the garage, Mrs. Yates had the children and home-schooling to keep up with.
Their life also included some unusual experiments and choices.
Almost as soon as their first home was built, they rented it out, trading it for a 38-foot trailer to live a "simpler life."
"I think a lot of it was that Andrea was generally happy in the house, I probably wasn't as happy in the house," he said.
After being married 41/2 years, with three young children and another on the way, they sold the trailer for a $37,000 converted Greyhound bus.
"I didn't view it as a hardship," Mr. Yates said. "We like it better than a house."
After the 1999 birth of their fourth child, Luke, the close quarters appeared to get to her. She summoned her husband home one day. He found her sobbing and shaking in the back of the bus.
The next day, she took an overdose. Less than a month later, she held a knife to her throat.
Mr. Yates told jurors how he faithfully drove his wife to therapy after her two suicide attempts.
He also told jurors that his wife opted for natural childbirth.
Although he conceded that the newsletter he and his wife read advocated natural childbirth for a "humbling experience for a woman," Mr. Yates said it was his wife's idea to go without local anesthetic.
"It was her choice," he said. "Sometimes Andrea liked to take the hard road instead of an easy road."
Despite warnings from at least one psychiatrist who said having more children would bring Mrs. Yates a harsher version of the depression that sent her to try to kill herself, they had a fifth child on Nov. 30, 2000.
They knew that Haldol pulled her out of the depths in 1999, after the birth of Luke. When Mrs. Yates faltered again, particularly after her father died in March 2001, they asked for the drug again.
"I knew she was sick," Mr. Yates said. "She wouldn't have tried to commit suicide if she hadn't been sick."
Four days before she drowned her children, Mrs. Yates awoke screaming that she was trapped. As her husband comforted her, she told him about her nightmare. "Something about in her dream she was trapped in her bed," Mr. Yates said.
"A scared animal" is how Debbie Holmes later testified that Mrs. Yates behaved in the days before she killed her children. The women met about 16 years ago at M.D. Anderson.
Mrs. Holmes said Mrs. Yates spoke only three complete sentences to her in the four months before the children died. Her hair greasy and matted, her body reeking, Mrs. Yates was a walking zombie then, Mrs. Holmes said.
"I was appalled," said Mrs. Holmes. "She looked like a cancer patient." When she heard that the children were drowned, a teary Mrs. Holmes said she collapsed.
"I fell on the floor, and I just cried," Mrs. Holmes said. "I was screaming. It can't be my Andrea."
which is why he is equally culpable, c'mon Appy, pretty please, give me this point : ) ?
http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/w16.html
http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/news2/an020124-08.html
Well, You would be at the front of that line......
MY point is that a lawyers job and oath is to defend his client vigorously. All to often, nowadays, this is held to mean in any manner possible, including deceit and misdirection. Look at the OJ trial.
The two facts are that Yates was willing to defend his wife in the face of these horrible acts and the defense lawyer's oath to defend his client with all weapons in his arsenal. The defense is insanity. Anything that would mitigate her actions on the side of insanity is this lawyer's job, including testimony of horrible treatment of his wife from her husband.
There are two ways to look at this. His treatment drove his wife to insanity, or his testimony is calculated to make the jurors (and us) think he drove his wife to insanity, when in fact his actions were an order of magnitude less egredious than testified to.
I'm not saying either one is the truth. I'm saying that most here are ignoring the possibility of the second when the first is so emotionally satisfying.
Most here are taking his testimony at face value, and I'm saying there are other possibilities. Do not rush to conclusions based on emotional reactions. That may in fact be precisely the defense plan. 
wait, let me get this straight.....
If he was in the bathroom too long, she would call the ambulance because he "Overstayed" his alotted time??? Was this the explanation she gave or was it some nutty rant?
She once filed a missing person claim on him and told the police where to find him. She also beat him.
while the bathtub, as an inanimate object, could not absent itself from the house so as not to become an instrumentality, Randy Yates COULD have removed his children from his wife's care and thus, saved their lives.
If she is found "not guilty by reason of insanity" she should be incarcerated for the rest of her natural life in a maximum security institution for the criminally insane. No way should she be allowed to roam at large among other humans, least of all released into the custody of her equally nutty husband so that they can create more babies to replace the ones she broke.
Oh, and she should be spayed before she's carted to the looney bin.
That's because I can't spell ... sorry. You can read about Michael and Rachel Woroniecki here on this Christian cult-awareness website.
From the Houston Chronicle: "Yates and her children joined a home school support group that meets at nearby Sagemont Church, a friend said, but the couple and the children are not listed on the church's membership or Sunday school rolls. Relatives said last week that the Yateses were not affiliated with any church." I have been unable to locate on the Web the information I read last summer about Sagemont Church. If I find it again I will post it on one of these threads.
I have never visited the site that describes them before, but clicking on various links, I found one section that describes how to recognize heresy and cults, which it appears Andrea fell into...
Again, sorry for not knowing how to post a direct link...
http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/news2/an020124-08.html
I think she was a time bomb and disgusting really - with that hair, and if she smelled too - and then after what she did she deserves the death penalty.
BUT the difference is the *sick card* doesn't work for me, she KNEW enough to wait till the husband or anyone who could stop her wasnt around (those poor babies, they had no chance...and we know she chased the oldest...he KNEW he was going to DIE). I believe she committed the worse crime imaginable - I can't even think of one worse, unless she was able to kill her kids and her neighbor's too
It's not like she baked a cake afterwards, mowed the lawn and then went shopping at the mall.....AS soon as the DEED was done she called 911 and her husband - what anyone would do at a minimum....if they know right from wrong.
Why does this woman want to live? That's my question...how could you live with yourself after drowning her 5 babies?
The only thing that is regrettable is this wretch of a woman couldn't manage to kill herself before she harmed her children.
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