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."
I don't have a problem with that at all. I was a Christian stay at home mom that has devoted much of my life to my husband and child (now grown).Heck, I even think natural childbirth and breastfeeding are great. I even had my child at home because I wanted to. If I had it to do all over again I would probably home school too. I usually do most of the housework and my husband does most of the things like maintenance and car repairs. But because my husband loves me, if he saw that I was ill or overwhelmed with some problem he would gladly step in and take over some of my responsibilites just as I would do for him.
(And other comments along those lines.)
Come on. Use your brains for heaven's sakes.
You two (and a few others) are making the same mistake the liberals want to in throwing all homeschooling, stay-at-home moms into the same category as the Yates' style.
If not, and you really are living like she did, then you need help. Serious help.
well clearly then, you haven't read a thing i have said here, and therefore you have even MORE nerve making assumptions about what i am and what i believe. i think this woman was evil and deserves to die. HOWEVER, i think that her husband is EQUALLY to blame for the murder of his children, by NOT removing them from her care, in whatever way possible. Now how you get from THAT to me being a feminist, and doing the NAG two-step, i have no idea, but you are certainly entitled to your own mental pathology.
Note to any Liberal who would like to paint us all as potential Yates': The only reason you see no flames for this is because everyone knows better than to argue with a fool.
(At least I hope. If many Freepers agree with Illbay, Lord help us.)
I was not the one trying to pass a watermellon through a hole the size of a lemon. If she wanted painkillers, she was getting them. I do not believe God intended my wife to suffer.
Yates is a control freak. Now he has nothing left to control. Sadly, I bet he'll find some new sucker in a few years.
What makes you think Russell did nothing? I remember right after it all took place hearing him say that he had had a talk with the kids about being nice to mommy because she wasn't feeling well and he had a poster on the refrigerator to remind them while he was at work. And he got his mother to move to Houston to help with the baby. Most people don't plan for dealing with a mental illness. It is usually is thrust upon them. I would rather temper my thoughts about his actions. He didn't drown his children, his mentally ill wife did. Everyone is trying to ignore the mental illness as if it wasn't really the problem. Russell didn't vaccumm. Russell didn't clean the toilet. Russell didn't do the dishes. Russell the cad is to blame for his wife's actions. I don't buy it. There is only so much a man can do with a wife who is out of her mind.
I can't spare a square. I don't have a square to spare.
So glad you did, KW!
I can't imagine what those kids went through that morning. How horrible for them. . .
I may now rest my case, dear lady.
This notion of "equal responsiblity" would NEVER have come up if it were HE who did the deed. In that case, you'd be on here wailing about how you "Identify With Poor Andrea As A Mother Yourself(TM)."
This guy's gonna be lynched one day, all because of no-brains like you.
No.....maybe you're sane and she wasn't. Factor in severe post partum depression, psychosis, possible schizophrenia, and who knows what not--all documented over many years--not to mention being taken off off the drugs that kept her "somewhat" together.
I can't understand her. I can't excuse her. I do know mitigating circumstances when I see them. The woman was nuts, and didn't get the help she needed.
I also cried when I heard about the kids. I'm right here in the Houston area, too.
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