Andrea Yates

[Anonymous]

This is a 19 part series:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_m ... index.html

[Anonymous]

Yikes, this is an interesting read ...

Two weeks before she filled up the bathtub,
but Rusty was home, so she didn't go
through with the drownings.

I am freaked that he knew what the command
voices where saying to her, and he still
didn't bring in any help for her!

[Anonymous]

The Call


Around 10:00am on June 20, 2001, Rusty Yates received a startling phone call from his wife, Andrea, whom he had left only an hour before.

"You need to come home," she said.

Puzzled, he asked, "What's going on?"

She just repeated her statement and then added, "It's time.   I did it."

Not entirely sure what she meant but in light of her recent illness, he asked her to explain and she said, "It's the children."

Now a chill shot through him.   "Which one?" he asked.

"All of them."

He dropped everything and left his job as a NASA engineer at the Johnson Space Center.  When he arrived fifteen minutes later, the police and ambulances were already at their Houston, Texas home on the corner of Beachcomber and Sea Lark in the Clear Lake area.  Rusty was told he could not go in, so he put his forehead against a brick wall, trying to process the horrifying news, and waited.

Restless for information, he went to a window and    on to the back door where he screamed, "How could you do this?"  According to an article in Time, at one point Rusty Yates collapsed into a fetal position on the lawn, pounding the ground as he watched his wife being led away in handcuffs.

John Cannon, the police spokesperson, described for the media what the team had found.

On a double bed in a back master bedroom, four children were laid out beneath a sheet, clothed and soaking wet.   All of them were dead, with their eyes wide open.  In the bathtub, a young boy was submerged amid feces and vomit floating on the surface.  He looked to be the oldest and he was also dead.

In    less than an hour that morning, five children had all been drowned, and the responding officers were deeply affected.

The children's thin, bespectacled mother---the woman who had called 911 seeking help---appeared able to talk coherently, but her frumpy striped shirt and stringy brown hair were soaked.  She let the officers in, told them without emotion that she had killed her children, and sat down while they checked.  Detective Ed Mehl thought she seemed focused when he asked her questions.  She told him she was a bad mother and expected to be punished.  Then she allowed the police to take her into custody while medical personnel checked the children for any sign of life.  She looked dispassionately at the gathering crowd of curious neighbors as she got into the police car.

Everyone who entered the Spanish-style home could see the little school desks in one room where the woman apparently home-schooled them.   The house was cluttered and dirty, with used dishes sitting around in the kitchen.  The bathroom was a mess.

Yates' family photo
Yates' family photo
 

This crime story would unravel in dark and strange ways, with the reasons why a loving mother of five had drowned all of her children tangled in issues of depression, religious fanaticism, and psychosis.   The nation would watch with polarized opinions , as the State of Texas was forced into a determination about justice that was rooted in glaringly outdated ideas about mental illness.

But in the meantime, Andrea Yates sat in a jail cell and Rusty Yates had to deal with a demanding media that not only wanted a scoop but also wanted an answer.   Why would any mother murder all of her children?

[Anonymous]

Confession


The Yates children ranged in age from six months to seven years, and all of them had been named after figures from the Bible: Noah, John, Luke, Paul, and Mary.   Four were boys and the infant a girl.

Once they were known to be dead, the children were left in place for three hours to await the medical examiner's van.   Rusty, 36, was kept outside his own home, says Suzy Spenser in Breaking Point, for five long hours.  He told the police that his wife was ill and had been suffering from depression.  She'd been on medication.

At Houston Police headquarters, an officer turned on a tape recorder to take the formal statement of the woman who had already admitted to killing all of her children.   Her name was Andrea Pia Yates and she was 36 years old.  She stared straight ahead as she answered questions and said, with little energy, that she understood her rights.

"Who killed your children?" the officer asked.

"I killed my children."   Her eyes were blank.

"Why did you kill your children?"

"Because I'm a bad mother."

For about seventeen minutes, they pressed her for details of exactly how she had proceeded that morning.

She had gotten out of bed around 8:10 and had waited for her husband, Rusty, to leave for work at nine.  The children were all awake and eating cereal.  Andrea had some, too.  Once Rusty was gone, Andrea went into the bathroom to turn on the water and fill the tub.  The water came within three inches from the top.

Then one by one, she drowned three of her sons, Luke, age 2; Paul, age 3; and John, age 5.   She put them in facedown and held them as they struggled.  As each one died, she then placed him face up on a bed, still wet, and then covered all three with a sheet.  Each had struggled just a few minutes.  Next was six-month-old Mary, the youngest, who had been in the bathroom all this time, sitting on the floor in her bassinet and crying.  When Andrea was finished with Mary, she left her floating in the water and called to her oldest son, Noah.

He came right away.   "What happened to Mary?" he asked.  Then apparently realizing what his mother was doing, he ran from the bathroom but Andrea chased him down and dragged him back to the tub.  She forced him in face down and drowned him right next to Mary.  She admitted in her confession that he had put up the biggest struggle of all.  At times he managed to slip from her grasp and get some air, but she always managed to push him back down.  His last words were, "I'm sorry."  She left him there floating in a tub full of feces, urine and vomit, where police found him.  She lifted Mary out and placed her on the bed with her other brothers.  Andrea gently covered her before calling the police and her husband.  It was time.

Had the children done something to make her want to kill them? The officer asked.

No.

You weren't mad?

No.

She admitted that she was taking medication for depression and she named her doctor, whom she had seen two days earlier.   She believed she was not a good mother because the children were "not developing correctly."  She'd been having thoughts about hurting them over the past two years.  She needed to be punished for not being a good mother.

The questioning officer was confused.   How was the murder of her children a way to achieve that?  "Did you want the criminal justice system to punish you?" he asked.

"Yes."

She had almost done the same thing two months earlier, she admitted.   She had filled the tub.  Rusty was home at the time, so she just didn't do it.

The officer asked for the birth dates of each of her children and then stopped the tape.

The media soon learned that Andrea had suffered from depression for at least two years and had been hospitalized for attempted suicide.

By the end of that first awful day, Andrea Yates was charged with capital murder for "intentionally and knowingly" causing the deaths of three of her children, using water as a weapon.   She was not charged in the deaths of the two youngest boys.  There was no indication on this report, says Spencer, that she suffered from mental illness.

Andrea Yates in prison
Andrea Yates in prison

Yet Rusty was telling the media that she had suffered bouts of serious depression since the birth of their fourth child two years earlier.

In fact, her most recent psychiatrist, Dr. Mohammed Saeed, had called Rusty on the day of the drownings.   He appeared to be stunned and apparently wanted to make it clear that he had believed that Rusty's mother was always at the home.

On the local radio, talk show hosts were buzzing, asking people to call in and express their outrage at a mother who would do such a thing.   They tried her in the court of public opinion and found her worthy of death.

However, Rusty had made a decision.   He felt torn, he said, but it was not his wife who had killed the children, but her illness.  He went out to the throng of reporters and, holding a portrait of the once-happy family, told them everything he could recall from that dreadful day.  He believed that the Andrea he knew was not the one who had turned against their kids.  As he searched desperately for reasons that hadn't been obvious before, he made it clear that he intended to support her.

"She wasn't in the right frame of mind," he said.

[Anonymous]

Study: Postpartum Depression Might Be Predicted by Fatigue

United Press International - February 10, 2006

An Ohio State University study suggests persistent fatigue immediately after childbirth may predict whether a woman will develop postpartum depression.

Elizabeth Corwin, the study?s lead author and an associate professor of nursing, said women who reported still feeling extremely fatigued two weeks after having a baby were more likely to suffer from postpartum depression a month after giving birth.

All mothers are tired right after having a baby -- it helps them get the rest that they need to recover and heal from the physical and mental stressors of childbirth, said Corwin. But for most women, fatigue steadily fades within the first two weeks of giving birth.

In Corwin?s research it was fatigue -- not stress or a history of depression -- that was the best indicator of which women went on to develop postpartum depression.

The study appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing.

[Anonymous]

I HATE this Bitch so much!

[Anonymous]

On 2006-02-13 23:27:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I HATE this Bitch so much!"

I understand, and don't necessarily disagree, but
there is something to be learned by understanding
the dynamics of this atrocity ... so it doesn't happen again.

[Anonymous]

Evaluation


On June 22, Andrea appeared before Judge Belinda Hill and listened to prosecutor Kaylynn Williford state the case against her.   It was Williford's first capital case and she went at it with all she had.  Andrea then quietly said that she did not have an attorney.  The judge appointed public defender Bob Scott, who requested a gag order.  The county prosecutor's office had not yet said whether they would seek the death penalty, but Williford and her partner, Joseph Owmby, told the press that they did not intend to make their decisions public.  Owmby said that it was the most horrendous case he'd ever seen.

Andrea Yates prison ID
Andrea Yates prison ID
 

Rusty looked for an attorney to take Andrea's case.   He talked with family friend, George Parnham, who agreed to get involved.  His first act was to get family members in to see Andrea.  Spencer describes the initial meeting between Rusty and Andrea, according to Rusty.  Andrea's first words were, "You will be greatly rewarded."  She rejected the attorney and told Rusty to "Have a nice life."  He was completely confused.  Later he found out that she had been given a sedative.

Wendell Odom came on the case to assist Parnham, and he said that all Andrea asked when he sat with her was what kind of plea they were going to enter and insisted she did not want to plead not guilty.   He watched her, with her sunken eyes and hair hanging over her face, and believed she might not even be competent to stand trial.  She had said that she heard the voice of Satan coming out of the walls of her cell.  Dr. Lucy Puryear, a psychiatrist from the Baylor College of Medicine, said on Court TV's Mugshots program "She was the sickest person I had ever seen in my life."  In those early days, Andrea was unbathed, dressed in an orange prison uniform, and seemingly unaware of what was going on around her.  She was shaking, and every now and then she absently scratched at her head.  Puryear believed she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

Andrea's medical records were subpoenaed from the Devereux Texas Treatment Network, where she'd last been seen.

While postpartum depression occurs in up to twenty percent of women who have children, psychotic manifestations are much more rare, and thus much less understood.   Only one in five hundred births result in the mother's postpartum psychosis, says forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner.  Unlike in Britain, where the mental health system watches mothers for months afterward for signs of depression and mood swings, people in America have a difficult time understanding how hormonal shifts can actually cause violent hallucinations and thoughts.  Such women can become incoherent, paranoid, irrational, and delusional.  They may have outright hallucinations, and are at risk of committing suicide or harming their child?particularly "for the child's own good."  The woman herself will not recognize it as an illness, so those countries that have programs for it generally advise immediate hospitalization.

A psychiatric examination was ordered for Andrea. One psychiatrist, featured on Mugshots, asked Andrea what she thought would happen to the children.   She indicated that she believed God would "take them up."  He reversed the question and asked what might have happened if she had not taken their lives.

"I guess they would have continued stumbling," which meant "they would have gone to hell."

He wanted to know specifically what they had done to give her the idea they weren't behaving properly.   She responded that they didn't treat Rusty's mother well, adding that, "They didn't do things God likes."

Five days later, on the day of the children's funeral, the judge issued a gag order, effectively ending information leaking to the press.   For the time being, anyway.  Items kept leaking out.

Russell Yates
Russell Yates
 

Time reporter Michelle McCalope attended the June 27 funeral for the five children at Clear Lake Church of Christ and published an account of the service.  Rusty looked tired and grim in the unbearable humidity.  He looked at the small cream-colored caskets, open for viewing, and placed Mary's favorite blanket inside hers.  The baby was dressed in pink.  Rusty cried as he spoke his final words to her.  He did the same at each of the other four open coffins, telling them they were now in good hands and placing some favorite item inside.

He gave a half-hour eulogy that addressed each child's personality and offered family stories.   He had a projector on which he showed pictures of the children, happy and having fun.  Then he offered some scriptures, saying that what had happened was God's will.  At the end, he sat down, clearly still in shock.

Andrea's relatives attended as well.

By June 28, a staff writer for ABC News predicted what might happen to Yates.   While juries tend to punish the killing of strangers harshly, they often are more lenient with mothers.  Juries have a difficult time in America sending a mother to lethal gas or the electric chair.  In 2000, Christina Riggs was a notable exception.  She killed her two children in a suicide attempt, and was put to death in Arkansas.  At the time of the article, there were eight other women on death row, yet approximately 180 children are murdered annually by their mothers.

Typically, a woman has a believably tragic story to go along with her deed, although some like Mary Beth Tinning, Susan Smith, and Marie Noe turned out to have killed for reasons other than their initial excuses.  Thus, excuses become suspicious.  And sometimes an act is so overwhelming that no mental condition seems to count as a reasonable explanation.

[Anonymous]

Mom Admits Letting Newborn Drown In Toilet
Infant Was Woman's Second To Be Born In Toilet

POSTED: 5:56 am PST February 15, 2006

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A Florida woman who gave birth on a toilet and knowingly allowed the baby to drown will be sentenced March 30.

Shatoya Nelson, then 21, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter. She was originally charged with first-degree murder.

She told investigators she didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth at her mother's Tamarac home July 21, 2004. According to detectives, Nelson, then 21, said she left the infant in the toilet for several minutes before taking her out and wrapping her in a towel.

The girl's mother discovered the dead baby the following morning and insisted Nelson take the body to the hospital.

Earlier in the day, she had appeared in court on child neglect charges. Detectives said she gave birth to another baby on a toilet the year before, and left him in front of her grandmother's house. The judge ultimately ruled she was fit to take care of her two children.

Those children are now living with her parents.

Nelson's attorney said he'll ask that she be sentenced to probation and counseling.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press

[Anonymous]

Legal Decisions


On July 31, a Houston grand jury indicted Andrea Yates for capital murder in the cases of Noah, John, and Mary.  Because she had killed someone under the age of six and had killed more than one person, she was eligible for the death penalty.  There was talk that the prosecutors would keep the other two deaths as fallback, in case they did not get convictions.  Judge Hill ordered a third psychiatric examination, with the results due before Yates' arraignment.

A deteriorating Andrea went to court on August 8 to enter an insanity defense.   She was even thinner now than she had been in June, although she had been medicated with Haldol, the only drug that had worked for her.  A rudimentary psychological report done for the court indicated that she was competent to stand trial.  But Parnham and Odom weren't content.  They wanted a jury to make that determination, since their own psychiatrists had concluded that she was not competent.  In other words, she was not able to participate in her own defense with a reasonable degree of rational understanding and comprehension of the court proceedings.

The judge granted their request to look at the medical testimony that Dr. Saeed's gave to the grand jury and set a date for a competency hearing.   She granted the prosecution's request to have their own experts examine Andrea.

The next day, the prosecutors stated that they would be seeking the death penalty.   No one was allowed to comment publicly, not even Rusty.  Yet on September 5, he met with Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes to answer questions.  He turned over videos of the children and talked about Andrea, but shied away from his feelings about the forthcoming trial.  He was also prepared to answer questions for Time magazine and anticipated that they would come out after the hearing.  He had hired an attorney, Edward Mallett, to fight the gag order.  At some point during the hearing, DA Chuck Rosenthal spoke with the 60 Minutes crew as well.

On September 18 (postponed one week due to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.), a jury selection began for the competency proceeding.   Eleven women and one man were selected.  In Breaking Point, Spencer gives a comprehensive account of the proceedings.

Andrea's attorneys filed hundreds of pages of documentation on her history of mental illness.   Their experts claimed she was not ready, while the prosecution experts were about to declare her competent.  Andrea's mother and siblings were subpoenaed, as were several jail employees.  The lawyers argued over the State's psychologist seeing Andrea without the defense's knowledge, and the judge made a ruling that the information could not be used?although toward the end of the hearing, it was.

Parnham called Dr. Gerald Harris, a clinical psychologist who had interviewed Andrea in prison on four occasions.   On June 25, she had shown signs of psychosis and hallucinations.  She said she had seen Satan in her cell and he was talking to her.  She had a difficult time processing Harris's questions and sometimes did not seem to hear them at all.  She did make it clear that she wanted to be executed so that she and Satan, who possessed her, would be destroyed.  She had insisted that she would not enter a plea of not guilty.  She did not need an attorney, and she wanted her hair cut into the shape of a crown.  She believed the number of the Antichrist, 666, was imprinted on her scalp.

By the end of August, on medication, she was much improved.   She reported no hallucinations and was able to hold a conversation.  She still had delusions about Satan but insisted she was not mentally ill.  Her intelligence was above average, but she had difficulty remembering things?an important issue for competency.  She believed that Satan lived inside her and the way to be rid of him was for her to be killed.

Dr Lauren Marangell, an expert on depression, testified about changes in the brain during different psychological states.   She also provided a map of Andrea's psychotic episodes since 1999.  She concluded that Andrea would be competent in the foreseeable future, with continued treatment.

The prosecutors took their witnesses?mostly prison staff?over the thirteen points involved in assessing competency.   Then they questioned Dr. Steve Rubenzer, who had spent over ten hours with the defendant and who had administered a competency examination on several successive occasions?the very assessments that were in dispute because they were done without Parnham's knowledge.  It was his opinion that the defendant's comprehension had improved over time and that she did pass the state's competency stipulations.   However, he believed that Andrea Yates did have a serious mental illness and he thought her psychotic features were only in partial remission.

Under cross-examination, he admitted that she believed that Satan inhabited her and that Governor Bush would destroy him.   But Bush had not been the governor of Texas at that time.

Two more mental health experts testified, and while they were divided on the competency issue, all recognized psychosis in Andrea's condition and no one thought she was malingering.

On September 24, the jury deemed Andrea Pia Yates competent to stand trial.   The defense quickly prepared motions.

Now it was time for both sides to learn more about who she was, what her mental health history was, the quality of her marriage, and what factors had been involved in her fateful decision.

[Anonymous]

::noway::  ::puke::

[Anonymous]

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Defense asks judge to bar children's photos at Yates trial

HOUSTON A lawyer for a Houston woman who admits drowning her five children in 2001 doesn't want their photos shown during her retrial.
About 30 pretrial motions in the Andrea Yates capital murder retrial were made public today.

Defense attorney George Parnham also is asking that his client's confession to police -- be suppressed.

Prosecutor Alan Curry says the photos of the children are evidence.

A judge has scheduled a motion hearing for Friday.

Yates faces trial March 20th in Houston.

Such photos and a crime scene video taken by police were shown during her 2002 trial.

Jurors convicted Yates and sentenced her to life in prison.

An appeals court last year overturned the two capital murder convictions for three of the deaths.

Yates, who's at a state mental hospital, again has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

[Anonymous]

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Defense asks judge to bar children's photos at Yates trial

HOUSTON A lawyer for a Houston woman who admits drowning her five children in 2001 doesn't want their photos shown during her retrial.
About 30 pretrial motions in the Andrea Yates capital murder retrial were made public today.

Defense attorney George Parnham also is asking that his client's confession to police -- be suppressed.

Prosecutor Alan Curry says the photos of the children are evidence.

A judge has scheduled a motion hearing for Friday.

Yates faces trial March 20th in Houston.

Such photos and a crime scene video taken by police were shown during her 2002 trial.

Jurors convicted Yates and sentenced her to life in prison.

An appeals court last year overturned the two capital murder convictions for three of the deaths.

Yates, who's at a state mental hospital, again has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

[Anonymous]

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_m ... tes/4.html

Legal Decisions

On July 31, a Houston grand jury indicted Andrea Yates for capital murder in the cases of Noah, John, and Mary.  Because she had killed someone under the age of six and had killed more than one person, she was eligible for the death penalty.  There was talk that the prosecutors would keep the other two deaths as fallback, in case they did not get convictions.  Judge Hill ordered a third psychiatric examination, with the results due before Yates' arraignment.

A deteriorating Andrea went to court on August 8 to enter an insanity defense.   She was even thinner now than she had been in June, although she had been medicated with Haldol, the only drug that had worked for her.  A rudimentary psychological report done for the court indicated that she was competent to stand trial.  But Parnham and Odom weren't content.  They wanted a jury to make that determination, since their own psychiatrists had concluded that she was not competent.  In other words, she was not able to participate in her own defense with a reasonable degree of rational understanding and comprehension of the court proceedings.
 
The judge granted their request to look at the medical testimony that Dr. Saeed's gave to the grand jury and set a date for a competency hearing.   She granted the prosecution's request to have their own experts examine Andrea.

The next day, the prosecutors stated that they would be seeking the death penalty.   No one was allowed to comment publicly, not even Rusty.  Yet on September 5, he met with Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes to answer questions.  He turned over videos of the children and talked about Andrea, but shied away from his feelings about the forthcoming trial.  He was also prepared to answer questions for Time magazine and anticipated that they would come out after the hearing.  He had hired an attorney, Edward Mallett, to fight the gag order.  At some point during the hearing, DA Chuck Rosenthal spoke with the 60 Minutes crew as well.

On September 18 (postponed one week due to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.), a jury selection began for the competency proceeding.   Eleven women and one man were selected.  In Breaking Point, Spencer gives a comprehensive account of the proceedings.

Andrea's attorneys filed hundreds of pages of documentation on her history of mental illness.   Their experts claimed she was not ready, while the prosecution experts were about to declare her competent.  Andrea's mother and siblings were subpoenaed, as were several jail employees.  The lawyers argued over the State's psychologist seeing Andrea without the defense's knowledge, and the judge made a ruling that the information could not be used?although toward the end of the hearing, it was.

Parnham called Dr. Gerald Harris, a clinical psychologist who had interviewed Andrea in prison on four occasions.   On June 25, she had shown signs of psychosis and hallucinations.  She said she had seen Satan in her cell and he was talking to her.  She had a difficult time processing Harris's questions and sometimes did not seem to hear them at all.  She did make it clear that she wanted to be executed so that she and Satan, who possessed her, would be destroyed.  She had insisted that she would not enter a plea of not guilty.  She did not need an attorney, and she wanted her hair cut into the shape of a crown.  She believed the number of the Antichrist, 666, was imprinted on her scalp.

By the end of August, on medication, she was much improved.   She reported no hallucinations and was able to hold a conversation.  She still had delusions about Satan but insisted she was not mentally ill.  Her intelligence was above average, but she had difficulty remembering things?an important issue for competency.  She believed that Satan lived inside her and the way to be rid of him was for her to be killed.

Andrea Yates in court, much improved by medication

Dr Lauren Marangell, an expert on depression, testified about changes in the brain during different psychological states.   She also provided a map of Andrea's psychotic episodes since 1999.  She concluded that Andrea would be competent in the foreseeable future, with continued treatment.

The prosecutors took their witnesses?mostly prison staff?over the thirteen points involved in assessing competency.   Then they questioned Dr. Steve Rubenzer, who had spent over ten hours with the defendant and who had administered a competency examination on several successive occasions?the very assessments that were in dispute because they were done without Parnham's knowledge.  It was his opinion that the defendant's comprehension had improved over time and that she did pass the state's competency stipulations.   However, he believed that Andrea Yates did have a serious mental illness and he thought her psychotic features were only in partial remission.

Under cross-examination, he admitted that she believed that Satan inhabited her and that Governor Bush would destroy him.   But Bush had not been the governor of Texas at that time.

Two more mental health experts testified, and while they were divided on the competency issue, all recognized psychosis in Andrea's condition and no one thought she was malingering.

On September 24, the jury deemed Andrea Pia Yates competent to stand trial.   The defense quickly prepared motions.

Now it was time for both sides to learn more about who she was, what her mental health history was, the quality of her marriage, and what factors had been involved in her fateful decision.

[Anonymous]

Andrea Yates was born Andrea Kennedy on July 2, 1964 into a middle class family in Houston, the youngest of five children.  She had developed a very close relationship with her father, a high school teacher, and she liked to help other people.  She graduated from high school as class valedictorian and had been captain of the swim team.  She had been shy with boys but was goal-oriented like the rest of her family, and had good friends.  She earned a nursing degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center and found work as a registered nurse.  She quit after she married and had her first child.

Timothy Roche delved deep into her history for Time and discovered a rather disturbing picture of a troubled family, including a long history of mental illness for Yates.  But there was more, emphasized in a documentary for Court TV's Mugshots.  The form mental illness takes often has an outside influence, and this one was insidious.

Andrea and Rusty had met when they were both 25.   Rusty had seen her swimming in a pool of his apartment complex and had decided he was interested in her.  She introduced herself to him and they dated for three years.  In 1993, they were married and a year later had Noah.  They planned on having as many children as came along, whatever God wanted for them, and told friends they expected six.

Yet soon after Noah was born, Andrea began to have violent visions: she saw someone being stabbed.   She thought she heard Satan speak to her.  However, she and her husband had idealistic, Bible-inspired notions about family and motherhood, so she kept her tormenting secrets to herself.  She didn't realize how much mental illness there was in her own family, from depression to bipolar disorder?which can contribute to postpartum psychosis.  In her initial stages, she remained undiagnosed and untreated.  She kept her secrets from everyone.

Rusty introduced Andrea to a preacher who had impressed him in college, a man named Michael Woroniecki.   He was a sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, self-proclaimed "prophet" who preached a simple message about following Jesus but who was so belligerent in public about sinners going to hell (which included most people) that he was often in trouble.  He even left Michigan, according to Mugshots, to avoid prosecution.

Michael Woroniecki
Michael Woroniecki
 

Rusty corresponded with Woroniecki, who wandered around with his family for several years in a bus, and eventually he believed he had found the Holy Spirit.   Woroniecki spent a lot of time in his street sermons and letters to correspondents judging them for their sins and warning them about losing God's love.  In particular, he emphasized that people were accountable for children, and woe to the person who might cause even one to stumble.  He once stated, "I feel like I need a sledge hammer to get you to listen."  He denounced Catholicism, the religion with which Andrea had grown up, and stressed the sinful state of her soul.

He also preached austerity, and his ideas were probably instrumental in the way the Yateses decided to live.    As Andrea had one child after another, she took on the task of home-schooling them with Christian-only texts and trying to do what the Woroniecki and his wife, Rachel, told her.

"From the letters I have that Rachel Woroniecki wrote to Andrea," says Suzy Spencer on Mugshots, "it was, 'You are evil.   You are wicked.  You are a daughter of Eve, who is a wicked witch.  The window of opportunity for us to minister to you is closing.  You have to repent now.'"

According to a former follower, the religion preached by the Woronieckis involves the idea that women have Eve's witch nature and need to be subservient to men.   The preacher judged harshly those mothers who were permissive and who allowed their children to go in the wrong direction.  In other words, if the mother was going to Hell for some reason, so would the children.

After two more children had come along, Rusty decided to "travel light," and made his small family sell their possessions and live first in a recreational vehicle and then in a bus that Woroniecki had converted for his religious crusade and sold to them.   Andrea didn't complain?she was the type of woman who just went along with decisions---but she got pregnant again and had a miscarriage.  Yet it wasn't long before she recovered, was again pregnant and had her fourth child, making their 350-square-foot living quarters rather cramped.  She continued to correspond with the Woronieckis and to receive their warnings.  They thought it was better to kill oneself than to mislead a child in the way of Jesus?a sentiment she would repeat later in prison interviews.

Not surprisingly, she sank into a depression.  She was lonely.  She tried to be a good mother, but the pressures were building.  At the same time, her father grew ill with Alzheimer's and she had to help care for him.  Then things got bad.