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."
If she was some kind of psychotic, it was not something he did but maybe was coping with and he may have become a co-dependent.
I do not think that is the sign of a healthy mind. But it is not grounds for a murder conviction, nor accessory to same, no matter what the slush-brains here want to make it.
IMO, this man is in his own personal Hell, and will undoubtedly remain their to the end of his mortal life.
I'm sorry, I just see too many situations like this, men who are simultaneously consumed with trying to "make things better" for their emotionally unstable wives, and yet condemned by outside society as "oppressors."
This guy was foolish and ill-advised, but he wasn't a criminal. He simply refused to see what was happening. In my view, he's going to be punished the rest of his life for this, despite what anyone else says. Ironically, it is Andrea who will undoubtedly get off light.
The sheer injustice of those calling for this man's blood is more than I can take.
Did you read his interview in the New York Times magazine? He sounds like he's ready to move on to a new honey and start popping out more kids.
Oh please. If he wanted to make things better for his wife, he could have started by not impregnating her again for a fourth and fifth time, after her documented suicide attempts.
No, hard work, hard schedules, hard lives.....none of these "make" people kill their children. Unfortunately, Mrs. Yates had a long history of mental illness. Five kids with three hours off a week is not my idea of a good prescription for a cure.
But my sister-in-law is, as are, I assume, those of you who stated that you homeschooled x-number of kids and managed not to kill any of them, mentally healthy.
To say that Yates could have left her marriage and kids is to assume that she could process information and act rationally on it the way a mentally healthy person could.
From what I understand Haldol is not prescribed like Prozac and tricyclic anti-depressants. It is not an antidepressant, it is an anti-psychotic--it is reserved for the sickest of the sickest.
Guilty, yes; insane, probably. Having said that, she needs to spend the rest of her life incarcerated.
I wish you were right but I don't think so.
Some people are so drawn to "fame" that there are probably women lined up waiting for the trial to be over so they can breed with Rusty.
I'll have a hard time mustering up any sympathy for any woman that falls for him.
They don't look to me they'd be that unbearable to have around.
And just for the record, I also wouldn't stay married to anyone who gave me "three" hours off a week, and followed some kook who believed that women were inherently more evil than men! He could take his gym and shove it!
One evening-three hours--more than most women get? Honey, my husband gets five hours OF LUNCH HOUR every week. You'd better be darn sure I got more than three hours a week off when our kids were little. My husband is wonderful; a true servant leader. He would never even dream of stating something so preposterous.
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