Episode 15: The Broken Mind - The Andrea Yates Case

In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we examine the devastating case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001. There was never any question that Andrea committed the act. The question was whether she was legally sane when she did it.

This case forces a difficult conversation about postpartum psychosis, religious delusions, criminal responsibility, and how the legal system should respond when severe mental illness and unimaginable harm collide.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This is one of the most disturbing cases ever. It's about a mom who drowns all five or her kids, one by one, in a bathtub, then calls the police to confess. How could anyone do that? This is what we discuss on TMTC episode 15.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome back.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Tell me the crime, episode 15.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

I said tell me. Tell me. Tell me the crime.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

That's true.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I will tell you.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

You'll tell me the crime. Alright, so what what is the crime today that you are telling me? Because I'm I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

It's about a mom who lost her kids.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Lost her kids, okay. And where did she lose these kids?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

You'll know.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Okay, so I'll wait. What's the episode called? Do we do we have a title?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Of course. The title is Andrea Yates The Broken Mind. Okay. Andrea Yates The Broken Mind. Okay. Okay. Okay, so June 20th, 2001, in Houston, Texas.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Mm-hmm. So you know the when and the place. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Did you say 2001 or 2021?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

2001.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Oh wow. Long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

2001. So 25 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, so before the major digital media age. I think that matters a lot for context.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah. Like probably not so much in this case. But yes. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so a mother calls 911 and then she calls her husband and tells him to come home.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

When police arrive, they find something almost impossible to process.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

From the preview that I gave you, can you guess what happened?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Her family is murdered? I'm guessing. I mean that's.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So all the five children all dead.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Oh my god. Like what kind like were they I'm guessing murdered, but like how?

SPEAKER_00 2:30

That's the uh biggest line of the story for the how. I'm tempted to tell you right away, but I also want you to think, but it's also very straightforward, so I'm having a hard time here.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Okay. Just tell us, just tell us what it would tell us what it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

So all those five children all dead um drowned in the bathtub.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Jesus. Okay, that's definitely not an accident. You can't have five children drown in a tub. That doesn't make sense. Unless they got like knocked out by some gas or some shit. Like no chance. You have five kids drown. Because one of them drowned, like, starts to drown, the other one's gonna save them. Like, no way they all knocked heads together.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah, it's something intentional, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah, of course, of course.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

So somebody did this to them.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Okay. Alright. But let me uh provide some background about uh the mom. So the mom is Andrea Yates. Uh before this case became the national news, she was known as an intelligent mom, she was quiet, and she was also a high achiever. Um she worked as a nurse, she was religious, and her husband's name was Rusty Yates. Okay, so they're together built a life centered around faith, um, gr you know, having this family, five children, and uh their names are Noah. Noah was seven years old, and he was the uh eldus, and then John, Paul, Luke, and Mary. I mean, you can you can tell, right? Like, even like from the names, yeah, very religious names. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

So although anyone not religious would be like, what are you talking about? But yes, for me and you who grew up Catholic, right? Like, we're just like, yeah, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Yeah, the Bible, the Bible names, right? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Um I I grew up Catholic, you didn't grow up Catholic. But you you were you're Christian, right? So Protestant, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Okay, anyway. Uh neither of us like conforms to any particular religious view. We just that's just our baptism.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Behind that image of motherhood, apparently there is something a little bit of about the mom.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Okay, now now I gave you another clue.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

So five kids very vague clue. There's something off about her. Yeah, no shit. She probably murdered her kids. So I'm guessing, you know, there's something very weird and off about her.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Okay. So after several pregnancies, um, Andrea, the mom, okay, began experiencing some severe psych psychiatric. Is that how do you pronounce the word? Psychiatric, psychiatric symptoms, yeah. Okay, so something like um her mood, that good jump from one pole to the other.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Right, so it was like biphasic, so she's kind of like a what is it like bipolar kind of thing? Like it was like super depressed to super men.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah, yeah. So that was like depression. Um, she also had suicidal thoughts and hallucinations, delusions, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Well, and that's more than just depression. That's definitely more than just like bipolar.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

That sounds like schizophrenia or you know, oh I I I really don't know the labels, but the uh report says she is she suffered from psychiatric symptoms, as what I just mentioned to you. Okay. So at points, she also stopped eating. She stopped speaking, she attempted suicide, and actually the doctors warned her a couple of times that if you were pregnant again, um, it could make the conditions worse.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Really? Mm-hmm. And what was their reasoning for that? Like why could it make it worse?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Was it just like hormonal changes or I think it could be because um for some women what do you call it? Like postbastrum, postbastrum. Postpartum.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Postpartum depression or psychosis or psychosis, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

So it's very it's actually a lot more common than people realize. Yeah, a lot of people just assume, like, oh yeah, everyone's gonna be super happy after they have a kid or whatever, but actually there's a lot of women that suffer from this. From this. And it's you know, it's not surprising if you just think of it from like a physiological perspective. Yeah. Your your hormones are going out of whack. Like, think about like, you know, that time of month, like you're you know, your hormones are going up and down and they're completely balanced, and they make people have irrational emotions and behaviors, and I mean a you and slash I have experienced it, right? But but imagine even you know, like uh a pregnancy is even worse, right? And so like there are some many situations where people have like um longer situations like that.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Yeah, so she experienced that anyway, and the doctors warned uh her about it several times, but as we know, she got five kids. Okay, um, so this is where the case becomes difficult because there have been some warnings, right? Those signs that she was struggling. And uh this situation later matters. Um, so the legal system had to ask whether Andrea acted with criminal intent. Now you know where this is going, you know. So she did she did this to uh her kids.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Right. So was it was it I guess what I'm I'm thinking you're getting at is not just whether she acted with criminal intent, but was she mentally stable enough to actually be held accountable?

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

So like was she could she stand like they often assess like can you stand trial?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Right?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Are you mentally fit enough to stand trial? Yeah, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

So the day of the crime, it was on June 20th, 2001. Um, her husband Rusty left for work. Andrea was alone with the children. I mean, it's normal, right? Like you know, the husband goes to work and the mom is staying at home with the kids. Uh but one by one, she drowned them in the bath at my god, oh my god. What do you think of the motive?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

I have no idea. I mean, you know, I I I have no idea. Like, you haven't given me enough content yet. So but I'm just thinking, like, what is a reason for you know a mother or a parent to ever do something like that? Yeah, you know, it could be that they just snapped, you know, let's say like there's a massive hor hormonal balance imbalance or something, and they just snap because they just like get super frustrated and they're just like, hey, I can't deal with this, you know, I need to like silence everything. Or maybe it's something like, well, um, you know, I'm gonna stop them from having to deal with the pain and suffering that I'm dealing with. Right. So it could be like sort of like you're rationalizing something that is not rational. Yeah, exactly. But you're trying to convince yourself that it's better for them in that way, right? Like, so people do that, right? So they'll rationalize like this is actually for the greater good, even though for them. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I mean you meaning the kids.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Right, right, right, exactly. But I don't know, I have no idea, I'm just guessing, and you haven't really told me the anything about motor paper.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah, so one by one she droned them in the bath app. But after she did that, she called 911 right away. And then she also called uh her husband and told him to come home.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

And she didn't tell him why?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Not yet. So when the police arrived, um she was just calm and she admitted what she had done.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

For that sense, if somebody did something and then confessed right away, you know, it's it's like a normal person, right? Well, she felt guilty. Because she she admitted everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

She felt guilty, or she felt like it was a necessary evil to do to give them a better life, and that's what she felt she needed to do.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Now from I'm always just playing devil's advocate. I have no idea. From from what you said, from what you said just now, where does that perspective come from?

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Um you know, it it comes from like, okay, so many different scenarios that we've talked about, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Where like what perspective would you put um to build that idea?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

I mean that's or the perspective. Like I'm I'm just I'm thinking of when people think, okay, they might suffer in the future, right? The the cost that they're going to see in the future. Because of her condition? Well, not just because of her condition, it could be a number of factors. It could be her condition, or it could be something like, okay, well, you know, the world is a terrible place, right? And there's always negativity, and the the net negativity in the world is so much stronger than the net positivity in the world. And to bring someone up in this world right now is not great until the world is fixed. You know, you could you could have something like that where that's a possibility, right? That's a possibility, but in that sense She might think that she's a terrible, you know, she's like, I'm not mentally fit, and them growing up with a mother like me might actually damage them more, and they don't deserve that. You know, there's like lots of situations where you could see it as like a a self-justified like way of doing things, but it's not, you know, but sh they think they're doing good, but they're not, you know. I don't I I don't know, I'm just I'm guessing here.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Yeah, so another part of the story is the uh delusion. Um her explanations were deeply disturbing. That's how I I thought about it. So she reportedly believed that she's a bad mom. And not only that, um I gave you a little bit background of how religious she was. Okay, but I do not want to associate it with what certain uh belief and how deeply ingrained the belief, because I think religion is is is uh should teach us about something good.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

It should, yeah. Right? It doesn't always, but yes, yeah, it definitely it that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Well, the goal is that, but humans' interpretations are really different. So I'm not talking about the humans' interpretations in here.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

And then she believes Saturn was involved.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Really?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

And she believed that her children.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

The mother believed Satan was involved somehow.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Uh-huh. And then she also believed that her children might be spiritually doomed.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

That's what she explained um in the court. And according to the defense, Andrea thought killing them would save them for um eternal damnation.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

So again, it was it, you know, it wasn't what I what I predicted, and the you know, but it was something about her trying to do the right thing, which is really kind of interesting in a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, that's why I asked you when you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah, they try to do the right thing when you make it like a terrible thing to do. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it sounds like she's like you said, delusions.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, because what you said uh earlier, maybe she wanted to save her kids from whatever that the world um would face them in the future. And I was very curious about that because okay, does that perspective actually come from the psychological state or does it actually come from another perspective in which like from what her uh what she confessed, it's not only about the psychology, but it's also something related to Satan and uh Well it sounds like it was yeah, it sounds like it was more than just the world.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

It sounds like she had distorted views on reality, and she was talking about like demons and and things like that. So it sounds like she had some, like you said, she had some delusions that she needed to deal with, and those interfered, and she thought she was helping her kids. But uh you know, that's uh so maybe maybe she does have some sort of delusional disorder like schizophrenia or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Wild. And so what what happened in the case? Did they find her guilty? Did they find her unfit to stand trial? Like what happened?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

So in 2002, she went on trial for capital murder.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Nobody disputed that she killed the kids, and the entire trial centered on, as you said, insanity. Right. So the surprising yeah. The prosecution argued that she planned the killings. Um she waited until she was alone, and then she called 911 and she understood the consequences.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

The defense argued that Andrea was severally psychotic and believed she was saving her children. So, um, for that sense, then you know, she did not do that because she wanted to kill the kids. She did that because in the narrative, I just want to save my my children.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Um that that that also kind of like brings up a bigger picture question of like you know, people and it we we see these themes in like movies all the time. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

That's something that I would like to say after this. Okay, gone.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

You know, people talk about like playing God and uh and trying to basically like say, like, okay, well, this is for the greater good. Yeah. Right? It's like we're gonna eliminate these things because it's gonna help for the greater good. But it's like, who are you to save? Who are you to save? Well, you to do it. And like I always wonder about those situations where they have like these moral dilemmas where they're like, if you knew like someone was gonna die on like a train track, um, or you know, there was like ten people about to die in a train track, and you had the opportunity to flip a switch and it would only kill one person instead of the ten, right? Would you flip that switch? Would you let it kill the ten, or would you let it kill the one? And here's the thing: it was going to kill the ten, no matter if you didn't touch anything. But would you flip the switch to kill the one instead of the ten? And so that comes back to this whole like moral dilemma of like, are we doing things and adjusting our strategies according to a greater good? And I I think that like intentions here do matter a lot, but at the same time, just because you have good intentions there doesn't mean it's the right thing that you should do.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Okay, so you mentioned that you or we usually watch something on TV about p somebody playing God, things like that, right? Um so in her conviction, a prosecution expert testified that Andrea may have been influenced by a television episode where a mother drowned her children and used insanity as defense.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Oh shit, really? Oh wow. She saw this. She saw a show on that?

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Your comment um really is related to what I would say.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Oh damn.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

But that episode did not exist.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

What do you mean? I thought you said she was a good one.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah, so the prosecution expert testified that she was an episode that kind of inspired her to do this.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Okay. And then So that episode never existed.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

So where the hell are they bringing this episode in from?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I don't know. Uh the jury heard false testimony. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Wow. So this prosecution made that shit up?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

That's what the news said. Um, and in 2002, Andrea was convicted.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Wait, why was she convicted?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Because of the false testimony.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Because of the false testimony that she watched something, and it said something about like, you know, drowning your kids or killing your kids, and then pleading insanity. So people bought it. But then it came out. How did they find out that it wasn't true?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Um, so at Andrea's first trial, the uh prosecution psych psychiatrist, Dr. Partiates, I think that's a German word uh for the last uh name. Okay. Um, Dr. Parts Diaz testified that she may have been influenced by the episode of the TV show Law and Order. Um, and in that episode, a mother drowned her children and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. But after the trial, people began checking the claim, and then the NPC and the producers of Law and confirm Law and Order confirm that there was no episode matching um Diet's description had ever aired.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

So wait, so there was like a claim in the court where the prosecution said, Hey, you know, she's doing this thing kind of like on that Law and Ep yeah Law and Order episode where you know this happened. So this prosecutor made that story up.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

That's essentially what I got from like the new sex.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Okay, but maybe we need to double check on that. Um, the uh producer said that there is no episode that matching that description. There was an episode involving a woman who drowned her children, but it did not include the insanity defense scenario. So partially it's correct, right? Because there is that episode that a mom drowned the kids, but the insanity defense scenario did not exist. So that's the reason why the testimony was there for Accurate and the defense argued that the testimony was um definitely demaging because it suggested that Andrea had copied a fictional plot rather than this is acting under the condition.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

But this was the defense arguing this after the case was closed, right? Is that what you're saying? Or was this like kind of in the closing arguments?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

That's after the first trial.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Right. After the first trial, they were like, okay, well, this wasn't fair that they found her guilty because of these reasons. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah. So then she received a second trial. Okay. But then the public conversation now had shifted because more people were talking about the uh postpartum psychosis.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Um, rather than that testimony. Okay. Now let's go to the second trial and the verdict. In 2006, Andrea Yeats was tried again. Uh, this time the psychiatric evidence became even more central in the second trial. And the experts also discussed her long history of mental illnesses, hospitalization, um, the psychotic symptoms, some religious delusions, and also the postpartum psychiatric crisis.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

And the second jury reached a different conclusion this time, and Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Okay, interesting. So she won her appeal, essentially. She retried and found out. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

But it's not free, right? That's what I understand.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

What do you mean it's not free?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Um, found not guilty by reason of insanity, meaning that she was committed to a hospital.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So that means, but what was her sentence though? Because I don't know what the sentence is for a particular like scenario like that where they go to a hospital. But usually it's like something like, okay, well, you know, you're gonna go to the hospital for a number of years. Uh I don't know if there's a minimum in this case, or if you just like kind of decide, hey, we're gonna go there until you feel better. You know, so okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Uh, from one of the sources that I got, she actually has an opportunity to review her condition for potential release every year, but she has continued to wave that right as recently as 2022. So maybe she is still there.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Okay, so it sounds like I mean if she's waving her right for that, it sounds like she is.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah, this is also from the source published on January 7, 2026, which is very recent.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Do you ever wonder if like sometimes people and I'm not saying that's the case here, but like sometimes people want to be put in a word like that.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Really?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Well, I just wonder I'm asking you, like, do you ever wonder if like someone does that? Because it's possible. Like, I can imagine that like someone that feels like they really appreciate control and they ple you know, they appreciate a schedule and all that, and then their life seems so out of control. And then they, you know, they are given this situation where you know they have to do things at a certain time and everything is structured and coherent. It's just like I wonder if sometimes people would prefer to be in that environment. I wonder if she is waiving her rights to, you know, all that stuff because she actually kind of enjoys being in that environment.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

But that's a possibility, right? Because I don't know. If we think about it, she does not have anybody out there. Um her husband divorced her, and then he also got married, I think, and he has uh one kid now, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

It's some it's not only about the guild that she's feeling, but also a sense of, well, I do not have any where to go.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Yeah, I get that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Yeah, so that's that could be a possibility. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Wow. That's a crazy.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

So this case is one of the most debated cases, anyway, in American criminal history.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Debated, like, m in the sense of like, should she have actually been given that insanity plea, or was she just like trying to get away with murder?

SPEAKER_00 27:01

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

But the fact that like she's still in the asylum, right, and she's waiving her right to be released and you know, have her case reevaluated and stuff, does suggest to me that she does have probably some pretty severe issues that she needs to deal with. Even if like, can you imagine even if like the person was faking all of this and they but they their goal was to stay in a mental institute, right? Like, let's just say the the person was Well, that's a new reality, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:37

For the person.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Right, but that's imagine that though, like there's so many different scenarios, like, and then I'm thinking like imagine she was actually she knew what she was doing, but her goal was to be in a mental facility because they have you know full meals there and a bed to sleep in, and you never have to think about any responsibilities ever again. I don't know, I it's just like I'm trying to think of like dark scenarios, but um that's also my question.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Maybe this is a stupid question, but is the facility uh prepared for her, like everything as you said, or her family should need to pay some amount for this kind of situation?

SPEAKER_01 28:22

I don't know. I have no idea. That's a good question, though. I mean, I don't yeah, I wonder what they do. I would imagine it would be covered by the state because imagine if, like, this person, you know, got sentenced to a facility like that, but they didn't have money, like what are they supposed to do then? Yeah, like you you don't throw them on the street, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

All right, all right.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Well, thank you. That was a very interesting yeah. TMTC 15.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

Yay, all right, so we'll be back.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Yeah, okay. We'll have another episode next week. I have no idea what it is, but it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

It would be great, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

All right, all right, thank you. Bye everyone.