Posted on 03/16/2002 7:41:28 AM PST by codebreaker
Prosecutors will weigh a number of factors that may lead them to prosecute Andrea Yates husband Russell for either child endangerment or negligent homicide. ABC News has learned.
No decision has been made, but it is being seriously considered, sources said. Prosecutors would charge Russell Yates if an when the evidence warrants, but do not have the evidence now, sources said.
Andrea Yates 37, was convicted Tuesday of two capital murder charges filed in the killings of her children last June.
Can only confirm that I remember reading that somewhere...very close to what you said.
Why don't you cut the juvenile crap and stay on topic? Either that or go someplace else.
It sounds to me that they had both discussed having a large traditional family. When she started acting weird, he took her to a number of psychiatrists and even a hospital and none were able to correctly diagnose her. He was led to believe this was just a temporary baby-blues thing and he was led to believe she would recover. Since he never studied medicine or psychiatry, he apparently wasn't able to see the doctors were seriously wrong.
That is damning.
How did he know when all her psychiatrists (trained for years in the field) did not know? He was an engineer, he wasn't a doctor. They diagnosed baby blues. Would you blame a man who took his wife in for chest pains that the doctor said was from stress for the heart attack she later got?
Man, that's cold.
It's also important to realize there are some things you can't fix, I would have put my children first and got out of a marriage with a crazy person. I believe Rusty was wrong to stay married to this nutcase after even one child, she was dangerous to any number of children. He could have divorced her, found someone who was better mother-material and had a much better life for those kids. Of course he wasn't likely to win custody because judges tend to always award custody of small children to a mother no matter what.
WHEN HE GOES TO JAIL, HE CAN BE CELL MATE WITH BUBBA, THEN HE CAN FIND OUT WHAT REAL SEX IS ALL ABOUT. WHAT A BIG BARF
That's not cold. She'd have been much better off in a state hospital and those kids would certainly have been better off far away from her. Now she's in prison for the rest of her life---she got committed anyhow. It's just too bad someone didn't realize what a nutcase she was much earlier.
You judge her by her failures. I judge her by her successes.
As for Russell Yates--who is only a series of electrons and audio impulses--we know nothing of what is going through his mind. We know nothing of his REAL relationship with his wife as opposed to the theatrical version which is produced in the midst of all domestic disasters.
We know nothing of the advice he is receiving from "well-wishers"; nothing of the "expert" opinions he is accepting as to the best way to show loyalty to his monstrous wife; nothing of the impotent guilt that is driving him to horrifying verbal diahrrea in front of the omnipresent video camera. We know nothing of what makes him seem so hollow and lacking in dignity. We know nothing of his upbringing. We don't know anything about anybody in this case, except.....
Five children were murdered, by hand, slowly, by Andrea Yates.
My brother in law was all-american in athletic and mental capabilities. Humble, nice, religious, conservative and patriotic through and through. One of the best guys I've ever known. Graduated with a BS in chemistry with a 3.97 GPA from one of the top universities. Went to Vanderbilt, was top in his class in med school. Had two kids, nice wife, at age 26 he was on a roll to the top.
Over a period of two months his memory fell apart into reality and imagination. He couldn't remember what he had done and what was total imagination/hallucination. He'd call his mother asking her if such-and-such really happened.
After about six months of this he went to a doctor because he had started to hear voices in his head telling him all kinds of things. He could no longer focus on his studies and moved back home to try and work it out.
Things got worse and he eventually was taken to a mental hospital, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He was given medication that helped him with the voices, etc. but took away his powers of concentration even further. He got a job at a chemical manufacturing plant and worked there for 6 months until they fired him because he couldn't remember from one day to the next where he had left off the day before.
This husband and father of 2 could have just given up and gone on welfare, but to support his family he went out and got a job as a landscaper that paid just enough to pay his bills.
Well, it turns out that it couldn't pay ALL of his bills. The bill that took the most was his medication. So, in order to keep his family under a roof and with food on the table he started cutting back on the amount of the medication he was taking, all the while telling his wife every morning that he had taken the full amount. He figured he could handle it.
Eventually he had begun taking so little that his condition started to worsen, and it worsened to the point that he became so depressed and distraught that within 2 years of the illness taking effect, he killed himself. At the time of his death, he had NONE of the medication in his system.
So there you have a nice story. Is she to blame in any way for his death? What if he had totally freaked out and killed someone besides himself? Is it his wife's fault? Is she to blame? I am here to tell you that she did all that she could to help him through it. Because he was so determined to be able to beat the schizophrenia, she never knew until it was too late.
Andrea Yates had never killed one of her kids before. They had always managed to make it through her psychotic episodes. Even when he knew that his wife was off of the drugs, how was he to even imagine that she would do something like that? You can cry and wail all you want about "but, but the doctors told him...." The fact is they had always made it through and as husband and wife they figured they would be able to make it. Well, they didn't, and she did what she did.
She has proved that she needs to be taken care of in a mental institution or prison the rest of her life. She had not proven that before. Visit a mental "hospital" sometime and ask yourself if you would feel okay committing someone you love to that condition with only "possibilities" as the guiding factor in your decision.
And to those of you who don't even believe in mental illness, I was with you before all this happened. Since then I have realized that for some reason I believed that every part of a human body could have something go wrong - every part but the brain. But the truth is, the most complex part of the human body is made of the same stuff as the rest, and when something goes wrong there, the problems are more complex than anything else.
Unfortunately not. But I was interested to be a psychiatrist before I graduated, took number of courses and read a tone of literature on the topic. I decided that I will not be a good psychiatrist since im my opinion it requires not only learning but being more sensitive, warm and streetwise than I am.
I knew a number of people who were mentally sick as I was drawn to know them closer and learn about them. My good friend worked a year a a nurse in psychiatric clinic and I have number of friends who are clinical psychologists. Also my relative got sick.
Look, people from mental institutions are barred BY LAW to work in a day-care center. Why? Because teh state doesn't want to take the chance of someone, even on medication, to be allowed to rear children, even for a few hours!
If this woman is solely to blame after having psycotic thoughts that her husband also knew about (see the knife incident) and was considered insane at the time of the murders, then how can her husband be so ignorant of the signs? He allowed his wife to do what the state in no way will allow. Thats either stupidity or selfishness. Either way its child endangerment!
I had a feeling this was coming on..Yep. Me too. Here was a story that I posted a little while back that has a LOT of discussion about Rusty:
Yates lived by rigid schedule, according to husband
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/637758/posts
Husband also testifies she was allowed 3 hours a week without her kids
03/01/2002
By TERRI LANGFORD / The Dallas Morning News
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.
"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."
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