WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Andrea Yates waited for her NASA engineer husband Rusty to leave for work before she proceeded to methodically drown her five children
Steven White and Jane Lavender Associate Editor
01:00, 27 Jan 2026
Andrea Yates with her husband, Rusty, and their five children(Image: Getty Images)
In one of the most harrowing and heartbreaking cases in recent memory, a mother ruthlessly drowned all five of her children in the mistaken belief that she was ‘saving them’.
Andrea Yates, then 37, carried out the shocking act at their family home in Clear Lake City, Texas.
The casualties ranged from seven down to the youngest at just six months old.
Following the arrival of her fourth child, Andrea attempted suicide on numerous occasions and was repeatedly admitted to psychiatric units.
In July 1999, she received a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis and was strongly advised by a psychiatrist against having further children, as the consequences for her mental health could prove even more catastrophic.
Nevertheless, she and her spouse Rusty welcomed a fifth child in November, 2000.
Circumstances appeared to improve for Yates until her father’s death in March, 2001 – she subsequently ceased taking her medication, started self-harming and studied the Bible obsessively.
Andrea Yates (R) and her attorney George Parnham(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
On June 20, 2001, Yates waited for Rusty, a Nasa engineer at the Johnson Space Center, to depart for work before she systematically murdered her children – Noah, seven, John, five, Paul, three, Luke, two, and Mary, six months old, reports the Mirror.
In terror, Noah tried to escape for his life but his attempts proved unsuccessful as his mother managed to capture him. After killing the youngsters individually, she arranged the motionless bodies on a bed.
She carried out the act with chilling precision, arranging the bodies of her youngest children and draping them with a sheet before dialling 911.
She reported her children’s deaths, then telephoned her husband Rusty, instructing him to come home from work immediately.
“I just killed my children,” she admitted to the responding police officers. Yates was charged with five counts of capital murder in what prosecutors branded a “heinous,” case, with the state seeking the death penalty.
Andrea Yates is still behind bars(Image: wikipedia.org)
Her defence team argued that Yates suffered from severe depression and psychosis following Mary’s birth – and it was this deteriorated mental condition that drove her to end all five of her children’s lives.
They pushed for comprehensive psychiatric treatment rather than imprisonment.
Found guilty of capital murder in 2002, she was handed a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Yates’ lawyers filed an appeal and managed to get the conviction quashed.
During a second trial in 2006, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Even while behind bars, Yates continued to voice delusional thoughts.
She told officials she had been considering murdering her children for two years, believing it would save them from what she termed “eternal damnation”.
“My children weren’t righteous,” she revealed to her prison psychiatrist, according to court documents.
“They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell.”
Defence barrister George Parnham has repeatedly insisted that Yates is satisfied and thriving at Kerrville, the sole residence she’s known for the past 24 years.
Based on court rulings, she could remain at the facility for the rest of her days.
She reportedly keeps monthly communication with Rusty, despite their divorce and his later remarriage.
“She’s where she wants to be, where she needs to be,” Parnham revealed to ABC News in 2021. “And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?”.