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."
By the way, I can also feel sorry for him. His "robot-like" behavior is not surprising to me, since he's probably numb with grief. I'm just surprised at the number of folks here who think "she" should fry, and that ol' Rusty has no blame in this tragedy. He's ***at least*** responsible for there being two more kids for Andrea to murder, as for as I'm concerned.
Her life reads like a horror film.
I had 6 children under 7 at one point I know how stressful that was..and I made sure I had time for me..
So if anyone with a mentally-ill loved-one compares their own actions with his, and can't honestly say that they are treating their own loved one better, then I would hope they are thankful for such a wake-up call.
Sorry, but that number of children is not an "impossible job for any woman".....just a mentally ill woman with no support. And it'd be darn hard for any woman with no support, but she could still do it.
it never ceases to amaze me that you presume to predict my reactions to hypothetical situations, when, before today, i had never exchanged a word with you. i do not know YOU, mr.Illbay, therefore i do not presume to predict what your reaction would be in any given situation.
In the first place it has not been establshed the woman is a "whackjob." In the second place, it has not been established that Yates "knew" she was a whackjob.
This is irrational thinking.
Wait a minute, I know! "Russell Yates was also a whackjob."
So now, they're even...except for one small detail.
She killed them. Herself. Alone. Unaided.
She's a MURDERING whackjob. He's simply a whackjob whose kids have been murdered.
Hope that clears it up for you.
Yeah, I know, you only presume to know without a doubt what YATES should have done in HIS position.
Gee, how is it that you don't have enough info to know what I should do, but you DO have enough to know what HE should do?
I don't know what to think about this case sometimes. I'm waiting for the trial to be over to see if the jury will uphold the law and not base their decisions on emotions.
This is an extremely emotional case. I knew it would be exploited from day one.
Rusty was NOT a good Christian husband. He did not "Agape" his wife as the Lord commanded him. Andrea was a very, very, very, very sick woman and I do pity her. Killing is wrong and she must be punished. There is no justification. I don't want to see her put to death and I sincerely doubt she will be. But she must go to prison and receive justice. If they do not punish her fairly, any depressed mother with a rotten life can get away with killing her children.
I don't have a degree yet in Psychology, and I doubt I'll ever finish. It was my major in college for three years but I decided it wasn't for me for this reason. I couldn't handle listening to whining adults the rest of my life who had no desire or will to change their situation.
With that said, it is my unprofessional third party diagnosis *cough* that this was a severe and sick act of passive agressive behavior in the most horrific form. I do believe she knew what she was doing at the time and knew it was wrong. I believe she hated her life and hated her husband. To be crass, passive agressive behavior is mostly just shooting the finger at someone with your behavior. She basically did that to her husband. She was justifiably angry. You can look at it this way...this may be a sick think to suggest, but at least she is free from him. Maybe for the first time in 10 years she is free. Perhaps that's what her sick mind figured out. I don't know. Rusty is just as sick too. Sick people find each other and attatch.
Sick working, non-Christian mothers, who have their children in schools murder also. I hate to see those of us who go to church on Sundays, depend on their husbands for bread and homeschool their children to be painting unfairly. I didn't see too many over generalizations in this thread, but I just wanted to remind others that being a SAHM Christian, homeschooling mother doesn't put you in a hire risk catagory of murdering your children.
I feel sorry for Andrea. I really do. I think she suffered a lot. But I will not allow myself to forget 5 human beings are dead at the hand of their mother (and father). I can't forget her dragging her older son. I can't forget that she waiting for her husband to leave for work. If she was sane enough to know that dialing 911 would bring help, then she was sane enough to pick up a yellow pages and find a number for an abuse shelter.
What bothers me about this case also is if it were her husband who did this, he would be a cold blooded monster. When it's a woman who kills, we find ways to justify or feel sorry for her. Why don't men get the same? They shouldn't!! A murderer doesn't deserve "understanding". They deserve punishment.
Every facet discussed has added to the perception of this diamond, this lump of coal, this woman drowning all five of her children.
In 121 dubyaismypresident suggested a "loveseat" Ol' Sparky for Russell and Andrea. I second that.
In 432 one_particular_harbour refers to the Karla Faye Tucker case. She murdered an elderly couple with a pickaxe. I wanted her executed and was on hold to tell Ollie North that, but in truth, he was shopping for "Christian forgiveness".
Last issue of National Review the British prison psychologist who does a column, Theodore Dalrymple, addresses what he perceives to be a "collective loss of self-control" in "ascribing blame to others," something he sees on a regular basis. His description of prisoners explaining "why they thrust a screwdriver through a victim's skull" is on a par with the extant "devil made me do it" prettied up as "insanity"--oh, legally defined, to be sure.
I salute all the present accounts of successful parenting, the loving couples, the nurturing vital to the survival of our society's health.
I'm the middle of five, and our mother didn't drown us in the bathtub. Our father did beat her, when whiskied to excess, and she put him out. Though his lawyer was better than hers and cheated us out of the thousands due in child support, she took a job teaching public school, and we're all functional. Her last words to me were that she was really happy she'd had us all.
I lived five years with a woman who was--mentally ill? She survived on scotch and ultimately threw down on me with a rifle naked at midnight in the depths of the January winter. She wasn't going to put up with someone sober--no sir. She needed an alcoholic husband: she got one; he beat her to death with a four-by-four. He's free.
Russell Yates was free to be an a**h*le--hey, it's America. And Andrea was free to be his d*mb*ss slave--(Ev'ryone free in A-me-ri-ca). But she's a murderer. He's an accessory.
As for "mental illness"--Hey, there are millions of pages of tax law--there was even a pardon for Marc Rich--so I know people get away with murder all the time.
And of course, legally, Russell Yates is untouchable. What the networks will pay him--after a bidding war--for his story will be an obscenity.
I will not agree to excuse Andrea Yates' guilt--in my appraisal--on the basis of mental illness. I've experienced the suicidal acts, the psychiatrists, the medications: She coolly plotted and executed her horrific murders of her five children, then calmly dialed 911 and her husband. Perfectly sane.
Russell knew he had pushed her to the edge. He knew it for years. He kept sticking it in her. Some engineer--couldn't equate that penetration with impregnation? He thought it would make her happy to speed up the carnival ride? Him I would like to fit my 36" hickory pick axe handle into at about 95 mph--but, hey, it's a spiritual metaphor, it's a rhetorical hyperbole.
I think the economic out is a palletized sentence: Andrea, Russell, Preacher Michael Peter, Dr. "Positive Thoughts" Saeed, the mother-in-law--all shrink-wrapped and pushed out the open cargo ramp of a C-130 into the howling black stratosphere of the fifty-below Afghani night.
Fresh out of psycho-excusing and compassionate forgiveness.
Ice these scumbags for the children.
They won't offer him a dime I betcha. I don't think this guy should pay any legal price. I guess that being publically exposed as a total jerk will have to suffice.
Does THIS nail it on the head. What a post. Wish I'd written it.
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