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."
adam cannot possibly be extolling the virtues of spousal abuse. i am sure he is much too rational to have meant that... i will even say this, that i agree with him that feminism causes women to murder their children through abortion. I believe that to be true. That being said, the day that my husband felt the need to show me the back of his hand, would be the day he would be shown to the door.
If anyone makes me angry today, I'll come take it out on him. LOL
At least nominally, although not always in practice. I think this authority has been overstated anyway (by the feminist movement) because it doesn't take into account the fact that women have always had a certain amount of authority.
If Russell Yates knew his wife was as mentally ill as he now says she was, he shouldn't have left the children exclusively in her care. On the other hand, I don't think he's as much of a creep as everybody's saying he is. That takes away from Andrea's part in this whole thing.
Ya know? Barefoot, preggers and in the kitchen and all???
I appreciate the detail you put in your posts to explain why you believe what you do.
Should Rusty be as accountable for his actions as Andrea? Yes - if he broke the law, then haul him into court. If he did not, then maybe someone needs to examine what laws are needed. I take his defense-presented portrayal with a grain of salt, but can see from it why people would think he was a monster.
But in my mind, if he is ever proven to be a monster, then that puts two monsters on the radar screen. The first is Andrea who murdered five innocent, relatively defenseless children, premeditated. I simply do not want to see one more excuse added to the million our society already has for why someone else should be blamed for their actions; and in her case, I do not see, as sympathetic as she is, why that one more excuse is warranted.
Any man shows me the back of his hand, he will meet my fist.
I am not making excuses for Andrea Yates. However, I think there were very valid reasons why the murders were allowed to happen. She should have never been left alone with those children. The woman belonged in a hospital. There is too much psychiatric history in her medical records for her to be the lone killer of five children. I do not see Andrea as a victim for killing her children.
However, was she not a victim of a husband who at best was in denial regarding her condition and a psychiatrist who altered his records pertaining to her condition?
I get Houston TV and newspapers. I've probably "seen" more, read more about Rusty than has been in the national news. He is extremely weird. "He doesn't like to cry in public" so he does his crying when alone. Excuse me! How can a "normal" person control their tears to that extent?
I still think if she'd been in her "right mind" she would have killed him.
YOUR question is the one that doesn't make sense...
You better be working out because I have been, and if Bella doesn't get you, I'm going too. I despise men that think they can beat on women, physically or mentally.
How's this then....if a man ever shows me the back of his hand, he'll meet the barrel of my gun.
A real man woudn't dream of laying a hand on his wife.
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Dude that ain't right...
This is a very in-neresting thread, and my opinions of Yates and Yates have wished and washed a couple times back and forth while I've been sitting here reading it instead of doing work...
Most folks are calling for hubby's head on a platter, him being the spawn of Satan and whatnot... I don't think the man was self-purposely malicious; I think he was misguided (with horribly tragic consequences...) Many folks are also saying Andrea had an obligation to get out of what she couldn't deal with-- easy for people to say who haven't lived with the sort of mentality the Yates subscribed to. Everyone lives in his own birdcage and theirs was fairly different from mainstream, to say the least-- folks say "well why didn't she do this? why didn't she do that?" First she was f-ed in the head, and second it probably genuinely never occurred to her.
I'm speculating that even taking his wife to seek professional psychiatric help was a hard step for Yates, since many of the more conservative religious see mental illness as a spiritual, not physical, incapacitation-- a serious character flaw, perhaps even attributable to demon possession.
Unfortunate case all around. I don't think it really much matters, except as a social/legal statement, whether Andrea Yates is put to death or not because she is already dead inside, as somebody else said above... As far as punishing Mr. Yates, I speculate that he probably passed into his own private living hell a long time ago.
'Sane' or 'InSane' isn't what that waste of skin and good air should be on Trial for in Houston !! !! !!
She was same enough to wait until her husband had left their house. . .prepare her children's death chamber. . .chase the ones around the house that were old enough to attempt to fight for their very lives. . .and. . .then dial 911 AFTER she had called her husband and told him just what she had done !! !! !!
Sane??
. . maybe. .maybe not. .
Crazy?? ??
. . . .maybe. . .
Guilty of, at least, 5 counts of premeditated murder ?? ?? ??
. . .Most definitely !! !! !!
So, wrap her up in 2 miles of Ace Bandages....baste her kerosene and light her up !! !! !! !!
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