Andrea Yates’ Ex-Husband Rusty Still Visits Her Decades After She Drowned Their 5 Children

On June 20, 2001, a stay-at-home mother called 911 from her home in Clear Lake, a Houston suburb, and confessed to drowning her five children in the family bathtub — a horrific crime that quickly drew national and international attention and led to the arrest of Andrea Yates, then 37.

In March 2002, Yates was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months. That conviction was later overturned. In July 2006, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Her defense team argued she had suffered from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, and that in the weeks before the killings, her doctor had taken her off the antipsychotic drug Haldol.

Now, Rusty Yates, 61, is opening up about his life with Andrea — and why he still visits her about once a year at a mental health facility in Kerrville, Texas, nearly 25 years after their children died.

“I try once a year to visit in person and we text back and forth some and talk on the phone some,” Rusty says. “Andrea and I always got along. That’s a time of our life that we both cherish and she’s the only person I can talk to about it. She and I are the only two who can get together and reminisce about what it was like to enjoy those years together.”

Rusty, who divorced Andrea in 2005, says their continued connection is meaningful — but complicated.

“I mean, it’s nice to reminisce. Honestly, I never imagined anything like this could happen, especially with her, especially how caring and loving and devoted Andrea is,” he says. “I don’t hold it against her, but even just communicating with her is a reminder of that. So, we try to focus on the better times, but it’s a little hard to, even in our conversations, avoid that most significant tragedy. And I think that for her, it loomed so large that it’s really kept her from growing, from really living and trying to enjoy the balance of her years. It’s just too big. She can’t get past it.”

Andrea has been held at the facility since 2007.

According to previous reporting, she can undergo a yearly review to determine whether she is competent to leave the facility — but has chosen each year to waive her right to be reviewed.

According to Rusty, Andrea poured herself into motherhood, and the way it ended has been a lasting weight.

Andrea “spends a lot more time going over old videos of our family, looking through old pictures — that sort of thing — because her mind is still sort of stuck there,” says Rusty, a computer engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I was raised in a tradition where intention matters as much as anything, right? And we’re flawed humans. We can have good intentions and do the wrong thing,” he says. “So, it’s easier for me to forgive Andrea than it is for her to forgive herself because she was raised in a tradition of works. It’s a strict Catholic upbringing. She’s kind of stuck because she has this extremely hard time forgiving herself. It’s like, how do you take something that significant and get past it in life? Or do you get stuck there? And that’s where you’re stuck and that’s it.”

Rusty says he met Andrea in the late 1980s, when she was working as a nurse and they lived in the same apartment complex in Houston.

“One night someone had bumped her car in the parking lot, and I was sitting in my apartment,” he recalls. “I was talking to somebody on the phone. I heard a knock at the door and opened the door, and it was Andrea. And I literally dropped the phone. She asked me; she said, ‘Hey, do you know anything about that?’ Because she knew that I parked out in the same area she did. And later she admitted that it was just an excuse to meet me.”

“She’d been wanting to meet me,” he adds, describing Andrea as shy and reserved. “And if you know her at all, that was a big step for her because she’s not a very forward person at all.”

The two married in 1993 and soon began building a family. Rusty says Andrea embraced staying home with the children, while he worked.

“I was almost jealous of the fact that she got to spend so much time with the kids while I had to work all the time,” he says. “I offered; I said, ‘Hey, we could probably make it if I work halftime and you work halftime.’ And she said, ‘I’m a mother now.’ And I thought, ‘That’s a role that she embraced and being a father is a role that I embraced.'”

“It’s my favorite role in life — being a father,” Rusty adds. He says he has a 17-year-old son from a second marriage that has since ended in divorce. “And I honestly think being a mother was [Andrea’s] favorite role.”