Rusty Yates, the former husband of Andrea Yates, says he hopes she will one day be released from the Texas mental health facility where she has lived for years.
Andrea has acknowledged that she drowned her five children — Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months — in the bathtub of the family’s home in Clear Lake, a Houston suburb, in June 2001.
She was initially convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. That verdict was later overturned, and in July 2006 she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
During the retrial, her attorneys argued that she was experiencing postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, and that she had been taken off a powerful antipsychotic medication in the weeks before the deaths. The jury accepted the insanity defense, according to The Texas Tribune.
Since 2007, Andrea has resided at a mental health facility in Kerrville, Texas.
Rusty, a NASA computer engineer, says he calls his ex-wife about once a month and visits her roughly once a year. Over time, he says, he has encouraged her to consider seeking release.
He says she largely resisted the idea for years, describing her as someone who tends to be grateful and focused on what she still has. More recently, though, he believes her outlook has begun to change.
Within the last year, Rusty says, she has seemed more open to the possibility of being free someday — even if she isn’t actively pursuing it right now. He added that he remains hopeful she will eventually take steps in that direction. Rusty participated in The Cult Behind The Killer: The Andrea Yates Story, which premiered on HBO Max on Jan. 6.
Andrea is eligible for periodic reviews to determine whether she could safely leave the facility. Rusty said she has repeatedly waived those reviews in favor of continuing treatment, including as recently as 2022.
He also acknowledged the practical hurdles, saying he has heard people insist that no Texas judge would approve her release and that politics could make such a decision difficult.
Rusty described Andrea as a “kind, caring person,” saying he believes she deserves the chance to live as the person she is today rather than remain defined solely by what happened.
On June 20, 2001, police were dispatched to the family’s home. When officers arrived, they found Andrea outside, wearing a wet shirt. She later confessed, telling officers: “I just killed my children.”
Investigators said Andrea told police she drowned the children one by one. Reports have also said she later told doctors she believed killing them was the only way to save them from Satan, according to the Tribune.
“It was the seventh deadly sin,” she reportedly told Melissa Ferguson, a jail psychiatrist who testified at her trial. “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.”
