Andrea Yates
| Andrea Yates | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Andrea Pia Kennedy July 2, 1964 Hallsville, Texas, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Rusty Yates (1993–2004)(divorced) |
| Children | Noah Jacob, b. February 26, 1994 (aged 7 at death) John Samuel, b. December 15, 1995 (aged 5 at death) Paul Abraham, b. September 13, 1997 (aged 3 at death) Luke David, b. February 15, 1999 (aged 2 at death) Mary Deborah, b. November 30, 2000 (aged 6 months at death) All children killed June 20, 2001 |
| Motive | Postpartum psychosis |
| Conviction(s) | Acquitted reason of insanity |
| Killings | |
| Date | June 20, 2001 |
| Killed | 5 |
| Weapons | Drowning |
Andrea Pia Kennedy (formerly Yates; born July 2, 1964) is a former resident of Houston, Texas, who confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. She had been suffering for some time with very severe postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. She was represented by Houston criminal defense attorney George Parnham. Chuck Rosenthal, the district attorney in Harris County, asked for the death penalty in her 2002 trial. Her case placed the M'Naghten Rules, along with the Irresistible Impulse Test, a legal test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States. She was convicted of capital murder. After the guilty verdict, but before sentencing, the State abandoned its request for the death penalty in light of false testimony by one of its expert psychiatric witnesses. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. The verdict was overturned on appeal.
On July 26, 2006, the Texas jury in her retrial found that Yates was not guilty by reason of insanity. She was consequently committed by the court to the North Texas State Hospital, Vernon Campus, a high-security mental health facility in Vernon, where she received medical treatment and was a roommate of Dena Schlosser, another woman who committed filicide by killing her infant daughter. In January 2007, she was moved to a low security state mental hospital in Kerrville.
Yates was born in Hallsville, Texas, the youngest of the five children of Jutta Karin Koehler, a German immigrant, and Andrew Emmett Kennedy, whose parents were Irish immigrants. She suffered from bulimia during her teenage years. She also suffered from depression, and at 17 she spoke to a friend about suicide. She graduated from Houston's Milby High School in 1982. She was the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and an officer in the National Honor Society.
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