Andrea and Randy Yates and four of their children.Photo:Courtesy of Yates Family/Getty
Courtesy of Yates Family/Getty
After drowning sons Luke, 2, Paul, 3, John, 5 and her 6-month-old daughter Mary, Yates put them in bed and covered them with a blanket, as if they were asleep.
Her oldest son, Noah, 7, tried to run away, but Yates wrestled him into the tub and drowned him, too.
In his opening arguments, defense attorney George Parnham told jurors about Yates’ history of postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis.
BRETT COOMER/AFP via Getty
“Postpartum depression with psychotic features,” he said, “is the cruelest and most severe of mental illnesses. It takes the very nature and essence of motherhood to nurture, protect, to love, and changes the reality.”
Unless the mother is properly treated, she and the child “are at great risk for harm,” he said.
Not only was Yates suffering from these illnesses, her doctor took her off the powerful antipsychotic drug Haldol just weeks before the murders.
Spiraling into the throes of psychosis and believing she was doing something good for her children, “on June 20, the inevitable happened,” Parnham said.
In March 2002, Yates was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’sfree True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
In a recent interview, Parnham tells PEOPLE that he still keeps in touch with Yates, who hasopted to stay at the hospital to continue treatmentrather than be released.
He also said he still drives to Clear Lake to leave flowers on the children’s grave.
“There’s a large headstone, with pictures of the kids engraved on it,” he says.
Yates, he says, is thankful for that gesture of kindness. “She is glad someone is putting flowers on the grave,” he says.
“She just loved those children," he says. “And she, in her psychotic state, believed she was saving their lives, saving their souls.”
This case remains important, he says, because it shines a light on women’s mental health in the criminal justice system.
The prosecution had argued that the murders were premeditated.
“Just because a person who is psychotic plans [something] doesn’t mean that they don’t meet the insanity standard,” Parnham says.
source: people.com
