Yates lived by rigid schedule, according to husband

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

God, that post was great!!!

You know first hand how tough life is and how people can do sick things but there is that point where you can GET OUT and choose something,anything different....
She chose to stay and her "way out" was the death of those children.

I think like someone else said, she was getting back at him by killing their children. She's so repulsive to me !

She should want DEATH for herself - but she's too selfish.

Don't worry. You are making your points very well. Ignore him. Most of us are. : )

LOL!! your post made my day! i argue for a living and i can't help but feel that even the most reason-challenged individual can be persuaded. i hereby give up on Mr. Illbay. Besides, PhilDragoo's post was so powerful, i don't know that more can be said.

But she's a murderer. He's an accessory.

In your ignorant opinion. That isn't how the law reads. The man is not guilty. He undoubtedly displayed poor judgement, but the ranks of those who find out too late they were ignoring or playing down in their minds serious warning signs are LEGION.

Everything you and everyone else stupidly and ignorantly pontificating on this subject is based SOLELY on your subjective perceptions.

You see this guy acting just plain weird, and in your lust to burn for vengeance against ANYONE but the perpetrator of this foul deed is all you need to construct this damnable fantasy based on nothing but foolish and completely uninformed emotion.

You are not privy to the facts of this case. You have no standing. Your opinion is worth a fart in a worldwind.

Thanks to God Above we have a justice system that grinds slowly and exceedingly fond, for pitchfork-and-torchlight parade candidates like you would bring this country to rack and ruin.

LOL!! your post made my day!

Which I would expect coming from someone so edgily emotional as yourself. CLAMORING for validation, are we?

The fact is that every word you have posted is just another example of the very sad state our society is in, where logic and reason have no place, where emotion, tears, lace handkerchiefs and sound bites are the coin of the realm.

The "Oprahization" of America is embodied in you, my dear.

I only hope with all the plubicity from the trial, he will never find another woman to marry and produce more children with. At least I hope no other woman would want anything to do with him after hearing all this.

Check out this thread. I think he's already moving on to finding a new woman to have children with. The sad thing is, he'll probably be successful at it.

I think Russell Yates own family is covering up for him too. The day after the murders, his Aunt was caught by reporters and she kept saying "what a good husband Rusty is." I thought "Why do we care? Five kids are dead. Where is the anger? Where is the grief over five precious dead babies" Instead, everytime they were on the tube they felt compelled to tell us what a good hubby he was. That raised my suspicions. The family started trying to protect and cover for him immediately, because they knew the truth. Now it is coming out.

Great points! When Rusty Yates' mother testified, she was asked to point out Andrea Yates in the courtroom. She identified her as "my precious daughter-in-law." Would you refer to someone who killed five of your grandchildren as "precious"?

the first reaction of the "sane" is to control.

I think you're exactly right. Mrs. Yates didn't work outside the home, she didn't do housework, she didn't take care of the kids so the mother-in-law came every day to do that. Mr. Yates was so busy having to provide for his family and take care of his kids after work, and run his wife to doctors, he didn't have time to see what it was really all about.

He undoubtedly displayed poor judgement

Yes --his poor judgement was to stay with this sick evil bitch. He should have dumped her long ago when she first showed her true self, taken what kids they had and found a good woman to share his dreams with. He wanted a traditional large family. Nothing wrong with what he wanted, he just gave his wife too many chances.

ANOTHER parent who was known to be unstable and capable of causing harm. THAT is the problem here.

Supposedly Andrea had not hurt or killed children before, if Mr Yates did have some psychic ability and would have taken the kids away from the mother that day, he'd be arrested for kidnapping. If he tried to divorce her --since there was no injury to the kids in the past, she'd have won custody --no question. He did the best with what he had---he continued being the sole provider, he had his mother come in to care for the kids, he put up with a filthy house because his wife was too lazy to even clean. He gave her an evening off every week which is much more than most women get.

I'm sure all of us have more than one "control freak" story. So all of us have that button, and the defense knows how to push it. Did it occur to you that, prior to this testamony, the defense attorney explained to Yates just how to help the insanity defense, since he was trying to save his wife? I would take his testamony with a grain of salt if I were you. Every bit of it could well have been constructed around a tiny grain of truth. If so, can you imagine telling tales like that, with the vicious condemnation it brings, such as your and others reaction, to save you husband?

Actually, a few months ago the Dallas Morning News published information from Yates' hospital records about her rigid schedule and living conditions -- this was information that was in her records *before* she killed the kids. This is not info concocted for the trial.

GEESH! Don't you find that CONTROLLING????

The point is that working hard taking care of the family is not in itself punishing. Some people consider it to have been the happiest and most meaningful part of their lives.

It is obvious that a hard schedule does not make people kill their children.

It is also obvious that a CONTROLLING and mean husband does not make people kill their children.

If that were true, there would be few children left in most parts of the world.

It is difficult to believe that anyone knew in advance that Mrs. Yates would kill her five children. There may be an explanation for her actions, but that explanation does not lie in the realm of common, ordinary, normal rules of experience, emotions, and logic that apply to most people.

Whatever the explanation of her behavior, we must show that we cannot countenance infanticide.

I am sorry. if i had reason to believe my spouse was unstable (and i would say a few suicide attempts, a la Andrea, would tip me off in that regard), i would under NO CIRCUMSTANCES leave my children alone with him. PERIOD. it is not a chance i would be willing to take. He did and he lost his children. criminally negligent mistake, in my opinion.

Still ---she was raised Catholic (I think) but chose to change religions. If her marriage was bad, she could have chosen to end it like so many women do ---even those whose marriages aren't bad. Women get custody almost always. She had choices. If Rusty had tried to end the marriage because he thought she was going to hurt the kids, there was no previous episodes to use for evidence of that. She'd have gotten custody of them anyhow. He couldn't stay home 24-7 because he needed to work for a living.

I think he should have removed the kids --but legally I don't know how he could have.

Where was he going to get an income to support her and the kids if he stayed home all the time? As it was, he had his mother there much of the time to watch his kids. He probably is weird ---living with a psycho could make anyone weird. I think his choices were limited, there was no history apparently of her harming the kids so he couldn't have won custody. You can't force mental help on someone either. He seems to have tried but the medications didn't work.

I heard a brief report, on the radio ( and no other source has picked it up, that I know of ) , that they belong to a cult like , way out there , sort of Christian sect ...

Please let me know which cult they belonged to. I'm doing a position paper for our church about the local franchise of the Boston (International) Church of Christ. A member family of that group came home one day to their filth, vermin-infested trailor to find their three teenage children naked, and dead. The middle son had apparently offed the older sister, the younger brother, and himself.

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