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"yes but that's not a crime. Killing your kids is a crime. She could have left at any time."

I'm not an attorney, but here, in Illinois, I believe there is some sort of charge which can be brought against spouses who stand by and allow their kids to be "abused" (and we all probably agree that what Andrea Yates did would be the final, worst case of abuse) and don't show that they did EVERYTHING humanly possible to stop it. Kind of like the Mom who gets liquored up and piles the kids in the car to go to MacDonald's and ends up wrapping the car around a tree. If the Dad does anything short of laying under the car wheels, he could be held criminally liable. And even then they would say "he should have called the cops IMMEDIATELY and reported the Mom as intoxicated, given a vehicle description so she could have been stopped!"

If a court can prove that the other spouse was negligent, in this regard, I think the other spouse can face prison time, also. Kind of like "it takes two to tango". Like I said, I'm not an attorney, maybe someone more educated about this will give us a clue.

She could have left at any time

I agree with you...and I think at the heart of it that's one reason she murdered her children. If she killed herself, he'd get them...if she left, he'd get them, at least part of the time and full-time if she was hospitalized again.

There have been plenty of cases of husbands or ex-husbands killing their own kids to keep the woman from having custody...Women don't do this as often, but I'm sure Andrea's is not the first case. Even with her bizarre mind-set, I can't help but feel this was part of her motive for murder...to keep Russell from getting them (if she died) or taking them away from her.

Believe me, Appy (may I call you Appy?), I'm not defending her one bit. What she did was evil, whether she was in the grip of mental illness or not, it was evil...I'm just suggesting that Russell's self-centeredness and lack of empathy may have contributed to his wife's hateful decision.

And where could she have gone, AppyPappy? Leaving is not easy, I've been there. I took 25 years of being married to an alcoholic and all the garbage that brings with it. I had three kids, no marketable skills, nowhere to go really. At the right time I was able to but not until then. She was psychotic to begin with and had more kids than I did and less marketable skills. It's easy for us to stand in judgement of her but nobody can stand in her shoes and understand what wasa going on in her sick mind. I certainly don't condone what she did. It was horrific, but I believe she was a really sick puppy and was never given the help and support of her equally guilty husband and their families.