Chilling reason mom gave for drowning her five children in bathtub
A mother gave a chilling reason for drowning her five children in a bathtub in a murder case that shocked the country.
Andrea Yates shocked the world when she drowned her five young children in a bathtub, and is now 17 years into a court-mandated stay at a mental health facility, where she is expected to remain indefinitely, per the Mirror.
Yates, now in her late 50s, carried out the horrific killings in June 2001, inside the family’s suburban Houston home in Clear Lake City. Her victims were her own children: Noah (7), John (5), Paul (3), Luke (2), and Mary (6 months).
According to court records and media reports, Yates waited until her husband Rusty Yates, a NASA engineer, had left for work at the Johnson Space Center.
Then, she methodically drowned each of her children, one by one, in the bathtub. Her oldest son, Noah, reportedly tried to escape, but she caught him.
She then placed the bodies of her younger children on a bed and covered them with a sheet, per the Express.
After completing the act, Yates called 911 repeatedly, calmly reporting what she had done. She then called her husband at work and told him to come home.
When police arrived, she confessed without hesitation: “I just killed my children.”
The case immediately ignited a national firestorm. Prosecutors described the murders as “heinous” and pushed for the death penalty.
Yates was charged with five counts of capital murder, and in her first trial in 2002, she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.
But Yates’ defense attorneys argued that she was not a monster—she was severely mentally ill.
They said she had been suffering from postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia, exacerbated by the recent birth of baby Mary. They pleaded for treatment rather than prison.
Their arguments gained traction on appeal. In 2006, Yates was retried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. The court ruled that she would be committed to a mental health facility—Kerrville State Hospital, where she has now lived for the past 17 years.
Even while institutionalized, Yates has continued to express delusional thoughts. In court documents, a jail psychiatrist recorded her saying: “My children weren’t righteous. 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.”
She also reportedly told authorities that she had considered killing her children for two years before actually doing it – believing she was saving them from “eternal damnation.”
Despite the horror of what she did, her longtime attorney George Parnham says she’s now found a kind of peace.
“She’s where she wants to be, where she needs to be,” Parnham told ABC News in 2021. “And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?”
Yates is not in prison, but her life is anything but free. As per legal judgment, she resides full-time at Kerrville State Hospital and could remain there for the rest of her life.
According to reports, she still speaks monthly with her ex-husband Rusty, despite their divorce and his remarriage.
Parnham continues to advocate for mental health awareness, often citing Yates’ case as a tragic example of what can happen when postpartum psychosis goes untreated.
