Andrea Yates Drowned Her Children | True Crime Special

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]What's your name?

[00:00:01]>> Andrew.

[00:00:03]>> What's the problem?

[00:00:04]>> Um, I just need him to come.

[00:00:07]>> Is your husband there?

[00:00:09]>> No.

[00:00:10]>> Well, what's the problem?

[00:00:11]>> I need him to come.

[00:00:13]>> I need to know why we're coming, ma'am.

[00:00:17]Is he there standing next to you? Or she disturbance? Are you ill or what? Uh, yes, I'm ill. You need an ambulance? No, I need a police. We're going to bring you some breaking news now out of the Clear Lake area. Houston police say they were called to check out a welfare not just yet. We do know that within the last couple hours it happened in the house you see behind me here. The father is a natural engineer. Police say while he was his wife drowned children.

[00:00:50]>> You love your children?

[00:00:55]>> Yes. Not not in the right way.

[00:01:03]Five precious children, one struggling mother. What Andrea Yates did on June 20th, 2001 inside her home stunned the nation. The then 36-year-old mother called 911 herself to report she had drowned her children. The years that followed were no less dramatic. an overturned conviction based on false testimony and a second trial that sent Andrea to a state hospital where she remains today. All of it shined a light on mental illness and exposed Andrea's demons that led to her children's deaths.

[00:01:40]We get a call around 9:30 around about 9:30 9:35 somewhere around there and nice clear day and nice day and didn't expect that of course but you never do.

[00:01:49]On the morning of June 20th, 2001, >> she had breakfast on the table. They were eating cereal.

[00:01:55]>> 36-year-old Andrea Yates waited for her husband to leave for work, fed her children breakfast.

[00:02:01]>> I checked and the milk was cold.

[00:02:03]>> And then one by one took them to the bathroom, and drowned them.

[00:02:07]>> I forgot how the call came in. I think it may have just came in as a you respond to the sick call, or I don't think it came in as I know it didn't come in as a drowning.

[00:02:16]>> John Delbosi.

[00:02:17]>> I'm the paramedic who pronounced him. a Houston firefighter paramedic for 36 years responded.

[00:02:23]>> There was a police officer that may have beaten me there maybe about five minutes before I did. And uh as he walks out, first thing he says to me is uh she killed all of them. And when she he said that, I I had no idea. I thought maybe mom, dad, husband, family. No idea what she what he meant by that. So, uh, I walked in and, uh, that's when I found the the four kids in the in the bedroom, uh, all lined up and she had covered them. She didn't cover their heads, just up to their neck. And you can see all the the their faces. And they look like, uh, to me, they look like little porcelain dolls.

[00:03:01]>> Four children, 5-year-old John, three-year-old Paul, 2-year-old Luke, and six-month-old Mary, who was cradled in John's arm, all dead. Doboski thought they had been poisoned. Seven-year-old Noah was still in the bathroom.

[00:03:16]>> As I was walking out, I saw a trail of water. And when I saw the trail of water, I kind of followed it and it led into the bathroom. And that's where I saw uh the oldest child. Uh I believe that was Noah, if I can remember correctly. And he was still in the bathtub face down. He was just bobbing in the water. That's when I realized she drowned him. So yeah, that was that day.

[00:03:39]seeing five, you know, deceased kids babies was pretty difficult. It's pretty difficult to see that. So, yeah, it's probably well, obviously, it was my worst call, I think.

[00:03:51]>> Yeah, >> it happened in the house.

[00:03:56]>> Soon media and more police descended on the 900 block of Beach Comr in Clear Lake, Texas, southeast of Houston.

[00:04:03]>> Killed her children.

[00:04:04]>> The children's father, Russell Rusty Yates, rushed home. Delbosski remembers his brief conversation with the woman whose actions would dominate headlines.

[00:04:14]>> She was on the couch, sitting on the couch and I believe that that officer had her in handcuffs and she was just sitting on the couch uh just kind of glaring at the wall real like in a gaze.

[00:04:23]Hey, just like a little zombie, you know, just had no clue what she I guess what she did cuz she had no tears or anything like that. And we made small talk. She had a bus out back and I asked her I go I really didn't ask her. I go, "Man, there's a bus out back." And she said, "Uh, yeah, we used to live in it."

[00:04:42]>> Andrea and Rusty, a NASA engineer, were married in 1993. Children soon followed.

[00:04:48]They wanted a big family. Rusty shared many home videos like these online as a memorial to his children. The family moved from the converted bus to this modest home after Luke was born. Andrea homeschooled them. Her mental state was deteriorating. In 1999, she had a mental breakdown, overdosed, and was hospitalized, the first of four hospitalizations in two years. One doctor advised against having more children than Mary came in late 2000.

[00:05:18]>> I said, "Is anyone hurt?" And she said, "Yes." And I said, I said, "Who?" And she said, "The children."

[00:05:23]>> Rusty quickly faced the cameras. A day after he lost all of his children, he clutched a family photo and voiced his support for Andrea. She she loved those kids.

[00:05:33]>> Read up as much as I possibly could about women's mental health.

[00:05:37]>> George Parnum had been hired as her attorney hours earlier, a referral from a lawyer who knew her family.

[00:05:44]>> I just knew what it was about. So, I hesitated to call him back.

[00:05:49]Uh, in the back of my mind, knowing that this would be a mind changing >> event in my legal life and personal life. Um, >> but I did >> and I was right.

[00:06:07]And the next morning at 7:30, Andrea's mother, her two brothers came into my office, hired me.

[00:06:27]Um, and 20 years later, here we are talking about her.

[00:06:33]>> Pardon was not only her attorney, but a staunch advocate and now like family.

[00:06:38]>> She's like my daughter.

[00:06:41]>> Yep.

[00:06:41]>> He educated himself about women's mental health and postpartum depression and went on the interview circuit.

[00:06:48]>> It was important for me to try to level the playing field.

[00:06:51]>> He remembers his first interaction with Rusty. It was at the Harris County Jail.

[00:06:56]Parta met Andrea that same day.

[00:06:58]>> The depths of her illnesses, her illness was uh overwhelming to me. And I remember uh so well looking and uh at her and she had no pupils in her eyes. She didn't know why she needed a lawyer.

[00:07:22]Um she believed that Satan lived within her and >> she for the benefit of mankind wanted to be executed.

[00:07:45]So that the ruler as it is so stated in the Bible and realistically it's the governor of Texas, right, could execute Satan and therefore she would be able to save the world from Satan.

[00:08:04]>> In interviews with police, Andrea said she killed her children because she was not a good mother. She told a county psychiatrist she wanted to save them from Satan. Why would Satan want you to do something that saved the children?

[00:08:23]>> Because the act would condemn you.

[00:08:31]>> Satan was interested in you and not the children.

[00:08:36]There's no question but that, you know, Andrea's world at that time was her psychotic state.

[00:08:47]And when you're in a depths of psychosis, you make decisions based on that world that may otherwise not be an appropriate call.

[00:09:00]>> A jury would eventually hear the case.

[00:09:02]Was Andrea Yates a murderer or just a very ill woman?

[00:09:06]>> Either she knew right from wrong or she did not. And that's what we accomplished in the first trial. We what we tried to do in the uh second trial.

[00:09:22]>> Andre Yates was unlike any defendant accused of such horrific crimes. She was first in her high school class, the captain of the swim team. She was a nurse, a mother. Eight days after their deaths, the Yates children were buried.

[00:09:36]Five little coffins. A stunning sight.

[00:09:40]With five horses parked outside, mourners filled the Clear Lake Church of Christ to hear Rusty Yates talk about his children. Flowers draped the white caskets holding the bodies of Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and baby Mary. Rusty described in great detail each child's personality and leaned on his strong faith to help him through. He did not mention his wife, Andrea Yates, who remained in jail on 24-hour suicide watch. Legal strategies were already being formed.

[00:10:10]>> I think the jury um looking at Andrea can't imagine how a sane mother would do what Andrea did. Um, and so I think going in there was a level basis for insanity.

[00:10:32]Andrea had attempted suicide twice, was admitted to psychiatric hospitals, and treated for postpartum depression and psychosis before the drownings. Early on, her attorney, George Part, revealed he was considering an insanity defense.

[00:10:46]A judge issued a gag order. There were questions about whether the state would seek the death penalty. The following February, her case went to trial.

[00:10:55]>> Our strategy basically was to um uh focus the juror's intentions on the law, the uh uh both the common sense definitions and how they correlated with the uh scientific uh definitions and to make it a case that was simply did she know right from wrong.

[00:11:14]>> That was all the state had to prove.

[00:11:16]Experts agreed that Andrea, with a history of mental illness, suffered from postpartum depression and schizophrenia, but defense and prosecution witnesses disagreed about how severe her illness was or whether it kept her from knowing right from wrong.

[00:11:30]>> We the jury.

[00:11:32]>> In March, she was convicted. The state wanted death. The jury sentenced her to life in prison.

[00:11:38]After the verdict, her family said Rusty shared some responsibility. She had little help at home and was in a downward spiral, they said. Testimony revealed Andrea's doctor discontinued the strong antiscychotic medication, Hald just 16 days before she killed her children.

[00:11:56]>> Obviously very um disappointed.

[00:11:58]>> Rusty always said he worked hard to get his wife the medical help she needed. He was never charged. He filed for divorce in 2004.

[00:12:07]>> We all stand behind Andrea >> and I'm Tom Cook. In 2005, more than 2 years into Andrea's life sentence, a bombshell.

[00:12:14]>> Said to be shocked but happy today when she heard that her conviction had been overturned.

[00:12:18]>> We took it all the way up.

[00:12:19]>> An appeals court overturned Andrea's capital murder convictions and ordered a new trial. Joe Omi, now retired and living in Kentucky, was the lead prosecutor. there. Park Deetsz was our expert on the first case and he was very well known um uh nationally and he uh testified that um uh one of the law and order programs had run a program which basically paralleled the situation we were in. And we also had a tidbit of information which we uh was involved in a case that um Andre Yates habitually watched uh Law and Order. Um Parks testified that uh there had been an episode that kind of paralleled the events that we were trying and that turned out uh not to be correct. Um it was a surprise to me when the testimony came. Uh surprising be for one reason because I had not asked the question and did not expect it to be part of either the direct or the cross-examination.

[00:13:37]Uh turned out to be false. Uh sometime later uh during the appeal the case was overturned uh because of the incorrect statement.

[00:13:47]>> Thank goodness Dr. Deets did what he did. Deiet said he made a mistake confusing two different law and order episodes and the appeals court also found he did not quote intentionally lie. The next year, Andrea entered a not-uilty by reason of insanity plea.

[00:14:04]Judge Belinda Hill granted her a $200,000 bond, but only if she checked herself into Rusk State Hospital in East Texas. George Parnum took a quick detour to his law partner, Wendell Odum's Ranch. I get Andrea and she goes to the fence and the cows are there, right? Widow's cows.

[00:14:25]And she uh patch one on the head and uh we get back in the car and I take her to Rusk. A lot of people don't know that until now. In June 2006, Andrea was back in Houston for a second trial. Now 42, she often stared blankly during testimony. Her family was always in attendance, rusty. Now her ex-husband was there, too. A month later, and after 13 hours of deliberations, a jury found that Andrea was insane when she drowned her children and acquitted her of capital murder.

[00:15:10]>> Mental health, I think, has been addressed. That's so important. Andrea was ordered to a state mental hospital in Kurville on the edge of the Texas Hill Country. Has been home for more than a decade.

[00:15:21]>> She's where she wants to be. She where she needs to be. And um I mean hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?

[00:15:35]>> Here at Kurville State Hospital, Andrea attends group therapy and one-on-one counseling. She has a job. There are no bars or barbed wire. A green line shows patience, the boundaries. Parnham still talks to her on the phone and sometimes visits. In not guilty by reason of insanity, the court has jurisdiction for as long as her sentence would have been.

[00:15:56]In Andrea's case, that's the rest of her life. She comes up for review every year. Partnum says she has waved it every single time.

[00:16:05]>> I think she's afraid and concerned about being in a community. Um certainly her notoriety and the issues that she brings will cause people to have um harshness toward her.

[00:16:30]>> He says she's gotten death threats even 20 years later. They've never talked about that day.

[00:16:36]>> Why go there? You know, there's there's no reason for that. At 80 years old, George Parham is still practicing law.

[00:16:43]>> This is a case that will always be in my frontal lobe.

[00:16:52]>> He has supported the Yates Children Memorial Fund to educate people on women's mental health. Andrea's case has brought awareness to mental illness.

[00:17:01]This >> is such a major part of my legal existence.

[00:17:05]uh not only her case, but the aftermath of cases like hers. Uh and I just want juries to understand the mindset, right?

[00:17:18]That's critical.

[00:17:20]>> Rusty Yates did not respond to our request for an interview. He still lives in the Houston area. He has one child from a second marriage and is now divorced. Andrea turned 57 in July 2021.

[00:17:32]She has spent almost a third of her life institutionalized.

[00:17:36]George Parnum says she is happy. If they had survived, all of the couple's children would have been in their 20s.

[00:17:45]Parnham still visits the children's graves and often gets asked what he hopes for Andrea. His answer is simple.

[00:17:52]Whatever makes her comfortable. 20 years later, he remembers her first words to him.

[00:17:58]>> She leaned forward.

[00:18:06]and she said whispered something and I I had to lean forward to hear what she said and she said please don't leave me alone >> the jury find not guilty by reason by reason of insanity Safe.

[00:18:40]Heat.