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."
Maybe...
I am trying to really absorb everyones comments here and see both sides of the argument...but I am more than a tad bias being the mother of an infant who died at an early age of SIDS...so I have little if no sympathy for any mother who takes the life of her own child...
I hate him for his lack of actions, and his actions that contributed to this...and wish he could see some serious jail time whereby his cell-mates brand him a child killer also.....
And the other side of me wants to say AGAIN...there are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO many support systems in this screwy world we live in..........regardless of how mental she was.....so long as she wasn't a drooling, babbling idiot...she could quite possibly have gotten some REAL help from SOMEWHERE.....
I wonder if her psych Dr is harboring any guilt for not "seeing the signs"????
A-ha, one of those dogmatic RLV-only (Red Letter Version) bible "readers," I see -- where the only important parts are in red. ;-)
You should change your screen name to Fly_on_the_Wall
.
You're kidding? He really held that position! What a non bible reader!
Nor does he need one. He did not drown them! God.
What ever happened to civility around this place??? That "no personal attacks" seems to apply only to certain people around this place.
No, it didn't "cause" these problems. But do you really think a severely mentally ill person should have been expected to handle all of that? Come on! Look at her medical records.....the woman has a GENUINE long history of mental illness. A stay-at-home homeschooling mom
That's certainly how the defense is painting her, successfully it appears. And while it's shaping up like the husband is culpable, culpability is not the same as responsibility. She could have chosen escape... she chose murder. He could have chosen to get her help... he chose to increase her burden.
We all knew the feminists would try to make hay with this case. Hmmff.. making political hay over a mentally ill woman and the bodies of five dead children... they know no shame.
First, that would be activity he was directly responsible for. That same analogy cannot be drawn in this case.
Second, I am not disputing his culpability in not yanking those kids the hell away from her if he knew she was as much of a loose cannon as she was. My point is that he cannot and should not be charged on the same level as she as it was not he who drown them.
He should fry too.
In a perfect world, she would have drown him and then killed herself and none of this would be necessary.
By the yang-yang! and that would be too good for him.
they should send her to live with the taliban, and see what sort of sympathy she gets there.
The Taliban would seem like a vacation compared to the conditions this woman lived in.
Disagreeing is fine. Going off is annoying and immature and saddly, way too common.
What ever happened to civility around this place??? That "no personal attacks" seems to apply only to certain people around this place.
Yeah!
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?
We all know and have seen the lengths defense lawyers go to to defend their clients, lengths that would have been immoral and unethical decades ago. And lengths that work if any of the postal behavior it has generated on this thread is evidence.
Try to think rationally. There are many realtionships now that live under the man breadwinner and protector and woman nurturer and teacher. Even just a century ago, those were nealy all the relationships. How many killed their children? How many Yates trials has there been recently? How many have there been in history?
I think you need to breath, and consider that your reaction has been planned for and Yates' testamony was designed to invoke that response. From prior statements from Yates, he has been willing to do anything to save his wife. I submit that he may also be willing to humiliate himself with vastly stretched truths and take the anger of the all the abused feeling women spectators upon himself.
I also submit that that senario has at least a 50% chance of being the case here. Which means that your reaction is one that you want to have. If what I said is true, that what does that say about how Yates feels about his wife?
I think you need to consider all the possibilities before you summon the lynch mob. 
Note: She could have walked any time she wanted. She trapped herself.
If he had killed the kids because his wife was too controlling, we wouldn't blame her for being a nag.
I would think her Doc must be making himself ill over this but that would assume he is a decent human being and if she is truly as bad as the psych reports indicate, he is less than an exemplar human being for his lack of proper care for her.
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