Today, we are re-releasing the sad sad story of Andrea Yates, a mother who needed a lot of medical and psychological care. She was going through a lot, and ended up killing her children. It's alarmingly sad. So if you're not up for it, we totally understand. Let us know if you have any suggestions for future episodes!
Today, we are re-releasing the sad sad story of Andrea Yates, a mother who needed a lot of medical and psychological care. She was going through a lot, and ended up killing her children. It's alarmingly sad. So if you're not up for it, we totally understand.
Let us know if you have any suggestions for future episodes!
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
hi friends Taylor from Doom to fail today we are be releasing episode 16 part one on Andrea Yates and the murder
of her children um this one is I don't know I feel like it might be a much controversial um fars was definitely
arguing that you know she was a stay-at-home mother and had had a lot of promise when she was younger and maybe
that transition to just staying at home kind of made her um mental health
Decline and I think that's part of it but I also think that like you have to be already predisposed to some sort of
violence and like there's something else there it's not just the um the loss of potential but let us know what you think
um it happened a long time ago but it's still just freaking heartbreaking and awful so trigger warning violence
against children so um yeah keep us posted Doom toell poot gmail.com please
tell your friends and we will see you next week a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James
Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your and I guess we can go ahead and kick
things off are you good Taylor yeah I'm good I'm ready okay welcome to Doom to fail the podcast where we I don't know
just travel can't I'm God so bad what are you even talking about we don't travel I me
we travel but not for the podcast we'd like to someday like And subscribe yes talk to
the local venue if a local library has like a spare conference room ask if we
can host no okay so no we're the podcast where we're constantly traveling as
individuals you were in San Diego I was in Denver we're we're probably the most jet
setting podcast of any podcast hosts in the world right we are no absolutely
absolutely then you'll be in Palm Springs and then I have to go to LA right after that so jet C
jet Setters breaking down barriers um absolutely so obviously this voice being
heard is Taylor um our co-host how are you doing today Taylor Good Very uh we
just got back from San Diego and then our last night and then so IED to come
home from a vacation like on Saturday so you have like Sunday to calm down you know so today we're just been like
cleaning up we went to a birthday party it's very springy out here it's beautiful finally we my neighbor came
over I didn't see her she kind of she just snuck by but left us a big beautiful
like bouquet of lilacs um that I brought in the house and it smells amazing but I feel like I might die of allergies any
day sweet neighbor I know it's really nice it's really pretty I don't even know my neighbors I like barely I barely
have neighbors and I could do a much better job so I need to go down hurt and say thank you fair enough and all that
yeah uh so let's go ahead and segue into our stories and if I am correct on this
I go first this time you do thank you so I'll tell you what I'm drinking yes I'm
drinking this Pacifico IRL um but I am drinking rum by the
teaspoon okay which is the only way I drink rum yeah they're tea to that's how you
do it when you're tea total teaspoon teaspoon at a time yeah well that's why you never get drunk that's why we call
you sober Taylor everybody calls me that everybody calls you that weird yeah mhm
so I I should be drinking Coors cuz like I said I just got back from Denver and we talked about Kors and the episode
where we discussed Chris Watts and now I'm drinking real Kors which is Kors banquet which is the tan colored can and
their great they're really good are they okay I was gonna ask if it was delicious or not but I think it's a Nostalgia of
it it's like I kind of miss being in Colorado and like it's kind of cool to like yeah have a taste of the Rockies but what I actually Colorado like last
week like yesterday right it has a place my my
heart all right continue I adopt the personality of any place I go um but so
realistically for today's drink I chose Lone Star are you famili with Lone Star no what is that so it's a Texas
specific beer but it's probably the shittiest one it's what you get when you
can't afford Shiner or boach I don't know if Zan Bach is still considered good beer it was when I was in high
school or college high school I meant College um what but whatever but it's
basically it's it's kind of like a Coors Light like it's just like kind of like a run-of-the-mill it's not as bad as Keystone but it's not as good as you
know this banquet version of cor that banquet course yeah exactly and the reason we're doing that is because we
are going to be in Texas which is where you need to be when you drink lonar makes sense and the reason we're in
Texas is is because we're going to be discussing an angel of a woman oo a lady
Andrea Yates oh oh yeah see I set you up I set you up for failure she's not an
angel I have conflicting opinions about Andrea Yates and um we'll be discussing
it at length here all right let me know per usual Taylor I'm going to try not to
make excuses for people who do messed up things but this story intertwines two things that from me obviously makes
sense devout religiosity mixed with mental illness equals bad yeah how
familiar are you with Andrea Yates I can't remember the details but I know that she she killed a bunch of kids her
kids she drown in the bathtub is she the bathtub drowner she's the bathtub one oh
and the and the oldest one was like I'll be good please don't do it you know what's funny is like I yeah you're right
but and I always mix this one up with the one who like buckled her kidss in the seat of the back car and then said
like a bunch of guys yeah yeah an [ __ ] yeah sure I shouldn't talk more about
that because maybe that that'll be the next one I do so yeah you you nailed it that's Andrew reates and that's what everybody
knows about her is she drowned her kids in the bathtub and I went pretty deep down the rabbit hole trying to figure
out like what was going on with this woman and how this all came about and I literally just hit on devout religiosity
and mental illness later on I'm going describe why I'm Prejudiced and I came up with that because Andrea Yates has a
unique distinction where any pet issue you have you can attach to it it's spousal abuse it's loneliness it's a
women's place in society today it's mental it's like every everybody could attach an issue to it and mine are
religiosity and mental illness so there go on one episode of last podcast on the
left um you might remember Henry said something that I'm going to paraphrase and probably semi butcher here he say
the effect of religion turns dumb naive people into dumb violent people yeah you
remember that one no but I get it but I agree agree to agree and that's and that's kind of like what I kept thinking
about as I was reading this and um you know what Taylor just look up the Yates
family okay I don't want to I'm sad I know the kids make me sad to look at but Andrea and the husband his name's Rusty
we're going to get into are it's interesting when I look at them because they just look so
average just painfully painfully average
absolutely I have like no Des I mean I guess I should like I know a lot of
people like my brother-in-law and his wife they always get like family portraits done like nice ones and I we
just like never done that I just feel like that'd be weird if I like dressed up and like went to Ser way too cool you're way too [ __ ] cool for that that's like what lame people do look at
the picture of Andre Yates and Rusty and tell me that you're belong in a similar photo lineup as they do no I
don't oh beautiful boys yeah okay okay go ahead
so in the case of Andrea Yates I think it took a repressed and depressed person
and turned her into a violent and numb person that's what I get when I look at those pictures of Andy Gates is like
there's just nothing there like she's smiling sure but like in the eyes which I know you don't agree I just don't see
a lot of life behind those eyes like there's the guy the guy's he's loving it like he's he's
scored like he's he's doing great I don't see that eyes though is she like she doesn't have a job right she just
like stays at home yeah yeah yeah so some people like that but yeah also it can be very lonely and
horrifying yeah yeah I'm actually going to lean on you a lot for this one Taylor because I don't know what it's like to be a mother or a woman which I guess are
kind of synonymous with one another or different it's hard yeah I should have said woman and then mother whatever it
doesn't matter and then also be like our age range because I it's got to be kind
of in her case awful I know that there's a lot of Happy Mothers out there but they also didn't have five children with
the goal of having a lot more than that so like at 36 that's too many children um
no I mean I it's different for everybody it's not I don't think it's not super easy for anybody you know but you just
like have to figure it out like I have a great husband so we we split everything you know but other people don't like
that could make it a lot harder um I also like I don't know if I told you this but someone that I'm connected to
on LinkedIn like started a group for like dads who it's like it's hard to be a dad and have a career and I was like
this is [ __ ] cultural appropriation like go [ __ ] yourself it is not hard for a dad to have a career you know like
when you have kids like women's value goes in the workplace like they get paid less you know like if you tell people
you have kids you get paid less a dad gets paid more cuz they assume that he can like work harder and we'll have more time so like the more kids you you have
the less you get paid if you're looking for a new job because the assumption is that you're not going to have time to do it like that still exists in the workplace today I mean yeah that's not
this does not surprised me like this all sounds like it's like this feels like it's been since time in Memorial has
been the case if it's it's hard it's hard but it's also wonderful um I don't know my kids are a [ __ ] Delight so no
I want I want you to talk about this when we get I'll explain why I think the way I do about her being a mother and
why it all came out in the way that it did but my main takeway from this like I just mentioned was like repressed and
depressed that is exactly what I see when I see her pictures
so yeah let's get into her background a little bit so Andrea is from Houston
Texas originally her father there's so many things that intertwine from other stories here her father was first
generation American his parents were Irish immigrants Andrea's mom is actually from Germany so I bring that up
because immigrant parents tend to put a lot on their kids with their expectations and based on how Andrea turned down in high school I think it's
safe to assume that they were kind of traditional immigrant parents like they just like helicopter parents essentially
yeah she was validic twin of her class captain of her swim team she was a
leader in some way shape or form in the National Honor socier school and was just generally seen as an all-around
great student kid student athlete classmate you name it I would I would say that she's the
girl that if you met her in high say oh she's she's going to go places like she's she's going to be someone you
know so we all know that overachieving so we all know that overachieving high
school students are all kind of like harboring their inner demons like there's something going on when you care
so much about your studies I think I don't know maybe I'm prejudiced about this like I graduated with a 2.1 GPA
from high school like I was I was like pretty close to like I think it was like
me and this kid like would start fires with the last two people graduated in our class so like I'm not of the ilk
that like understands why someone would be a high achiever in high school funny I mean I wasn't I wasn't sporty
obviously but um I was you know the Secretary of student council I was on
the National Honor Society I was um Junior un right you did Junior un I
didn't I wish I did though we didn't have that I wish I had um and then I had a extremely high grade point average
seriously yeah like what was your GPA I don't know like 3.9 or something were you like top of
your class like Val Victorian no I think I was like 12 out of like 400 or
something I'm very smart Farmers I think so I may be making that up but I'm going to say that for the record because no
one's ever G be able to fact check that but I'm pretty sure I was that's so smart though that's so smart because you
could be lying and literally nobody will ever know nobody like Taylor's a genius you guys that also proves how smart I am
so no matter what path we take I'm super smart Okay so I know that in any episode that we start talking about stuff you're
going to start yelling me about things and now I know that this is the thing you're going to yell me about okay so okay well I'm saying I'm saying that
like I'm fine but it also like when when we do our homework with the kids like
Juan has to do it because Florence and I both get so stressed out and she starts to cry because I remember being eight
and crying over my homework because it wasn't perfect you know such different children we were like vastly different
but this is so this is the part where you're going to start being upset at me okay Andrea went on from high school to
become an RN and look I love nurses Taylor you know I love nurses like
you've met my exes before and there's no shade to nurses at all but why the [ __ ]
would you work so hard in high school to become an RN like it's a hard job but it's not like being a becoming a
neurosurge like why would you work that hard like go fing hang out with the kids so the girl I'm dating now I hope she's
not here but the Girl I'm dating now like she's an RN and like the story she tells me of her high school days like she was like jumping fences running away
from Cops like that's what she did it's just it's not like it's not like my high
school grades mattered in my life you know but if you're the type of person that thinks that they matter because
people tell you they matter like I was I just like worked really hard I would have been like super disappointed if I
hadn't you know it wasn't like to an end interesting interesting for the sake of
learning and knowledge okay so I do have a rant that I'm not going to do around
how to raise children because I feel imminently qualified to discuss this topic especially in front of you that
could be a side a side show but I do think there's something to rule
followers versus rule Breakers in how that manifests in adulthood that I I
also like when we were 15 we told this dude we met who was a college dude that we were 16 and I used to stay the night
at his house like every weekend and we just drink with college guys well that's rebellious but I got a
lot of good grades that's rebellious yeah yeah wasn't cool because I was very cool no no I I totally believe that you
were cool I mean you're you're so cool that's why we're gonna have dinner on Thursday at Palm Springs oh Lord okay so
I'm gonna keep going please do I'm sorry no no this is great you asked for banter we're doing banter so in 1989 Andrea met
a guy named Russell Yates who went by Rusty and like he couldn't have been
that old right like a rusty needs to be like an old grizzled Vietnam right whatever it
doesn't matter Rusty was a NASA engineer he was on the engineering computer side of things um and he was fairly
accomplished uh his biggest downfall is that he is or was an Evangelical
Christian so out of all the versions of Christianity that I look down on evangelicalism is pretty much at the
very top of that list and what's interesting about this is that most of Americans agree with me
so I read this article that included a poll in a publication called Christianity
Today the incredibly awesome and Sassy title of this article is quote evangelicals are
the most beloved us Faith groups among
evangelicals at first I was like I'm not going to read this article then I read the title I was like oh I got to go through this
fantastic so across the board um evangelicals in this poll are the worst
Faith group in the US and the only reason why this U article speculates the percentage isn't higher of people who
hate Evangelical Christian or the faith not the people is because a quarter of the
Christians now in the United States identify as Evangelical so that exes the results because they're not doing double
blinds MH it's weird because I I wrote down here because like I think of like Catholics and I actually like kind of
love Catholicism because of how dark and morbid it is like there's like it's just
vastly different than I don't know like it itd be fun if it wasn't for all the kid raping you
know I'm not gonna disagree with you I'm not gonna record but but I understand I do like the I like the ceremony of the
pomp the drinking of the blood yeah yeah it's like it's like really mob kind of
cool a dead guy yeah yeah like and Jesus is ripped right like he's jacked and ripped and it's like none of that makes
any sense but it's so cool by contrast Evangelical to me like
it is I know this is another thing you're disagree me about so I look at Evangelical Christians the same way I
look at like woke progressives and that their belief system doesn't actually seem to be rooted in like act like
reality so much as is rooted in performance art that's truly how I feel about wcal progressives as I do with
like these folks most of the beliefs in Evangelical Christianity are why Republicans today are the way that they
are I mean they are I don't so I should have done my research on this I didn't
there was an amazing podcast it had to have been fre economics or This American Life but they
did this amazing podcast on Evangelical as a voting block and how that was
literally the thing that saved the Republican party when Reagan was coming up it is a massive component of why
conservatives are the way that they currently are being rooted in in in the face
structure it's also rooted in the infallibility of the Bible and and also it's a very us-centric religion as
well so I thought about Manifest Destiny and how like we're the best because we're Americans that type of thing long
story short is like Rusty was Evangelical which is horrible because
they are [ __ ] and their belief system is a joke yeah and most of
Americans who are not evangelicals agree with me on that sentiment as Christianity Today cited in their
hilariously titled article that's funny that's Christianity today it's like [ __ ] those guys
yeah they so so so part of it is because actual Christians actual people
who of Faith don't think that religion and politics are one they you shouldn't
politicize your religion and turn it into into what even they made a mockery in some ways of all
these other Christian beliefs so anyways totally moving on so going back to
Andrea and Rusty one thing uh I read when after they were married because they you'll you'll learn later on that
they've been through a ton of psychological discussions with therapists and stuff like real
therapists or like the re no real therapist real yeah yeah so one thing
that came over and over again was them sitting together and saying that they really truly believe that they need to
have as many babies as possible like that is like what God wants for them they were supposed to do this that's a
big piece of this and it all strikes me as rusties it doesn't strike me as Andrea's it strikes
me as Rusty's belief system so they did a good job so they ultimately had five
children there was Noah who's seven John five Paul was three Luke was two and
Mary was six old that is [ __ ] bananas so like this week we were at Legoland I didn't go I was had to work from the
hotel but my my father-in-law went with Juan and our kids and they met up with a
family that we know so it was five kids my father-in-law was like get me the [ __ ] out of here this is kids like and
I'm from a family of five it's too many kids D yeah yeah especially that many under seven that's crazy like that's
like I mean like it's it's I know people do it and they do it but that just seems near impossible there and most two years
away from each other but there's also two that are less than a year from each other you just have to oh it just sounds
it just sounds it sounds almost impossible to me yeah and this again like this is the
part where like your take on this is going to become really really n Nifty in handy is I don't know what it's like to
go through this but um I think that the pregnancies and everybody agrees that the pregnancies had a lot to do with what ended up
happening so it's worth noting that signs of Andrea being depressed were
kind of a constant theme so it started out in high school after everything happened with Andrea happened friends came out saying that they remember her
talking about suicide after Luke was born so Luke the 2-year-old Andrea tried
to commit suicide by overdosing on prescription pills oh yeah she'd be hospitalized for this and put on anti-
depressants the the suicidal ideations would keep coming on though she'd eventually be put on a cocktail of
medications which did seem to stabilize her to some extent but the problem was they kept getting pregnant and she
couldn't be on meds when she was pregnant because it would come out in the milk or some I don't I don't know py
how this works but you have to be careful with what you you know obviously when you're pregnant you're like you have a baby in there so you shouldn't
like binge drink you know you can have like a glass of wine every once in a while that's not going to kill the baby and after you have the baby like you can
have a glass of wine and that's not going to kill the baby in the milk either but um I have been taking Zoloft
for like 12 years and they said like it's okay to to keep it to use it when
you're pregnant and I tried to get off of it when I was considering getting pregnant for the first time and I like I
was like no like [ __ ] this I'm being I'm depressed like it was too much I need to be on it so I just stayed on it both
through both my pregnancies so there are safe things that you can be on they might they might look they might have
had different opinions on that 15 years it was 80s yeah totally like the 90s or whatever yeah so no this
was 2001 so I mean it was still a long time ago but like you know how people will perceive medication for pregnant
mothers changes I'm sure oh yeah totally so I will say this um this is
very counter to my normal personality type normally I would be talking Shan
Rusty constantly you saw his picture super generic dude Evangelical
Christian I don't really want to do that because I don't know subjectively what
he was experiencing as part of this like I think that he looked at things as like my wife's crazy pumper full of meds
hopefully that'll work and but then I look at it I'm like what
what else do you do like I mean back then how does a husband treat
their wife in this situation you know like I don't I don't I look at it within the context of the time that we're in and I'm like today obviously have access
to people you could talk to people and like research things like oh I need to do this with my wife I should do like back then it's like you you nothing like
he's just like a generic dude like I'm working every day and my wife is nuts I'm just going to pump her full of meds
and that's basically it and he seems to be like advocating for mental
health nowadays and he did back then but
not but in in like AA like a weird traditional 35-year-old husband in the
early 2000s kind of way like it was just like not like he wasn't like an path by
nature and and a lot of this I look at this I'm like dude like you turn this woman into like a baby Factory because
of your religious beliefs yeah it just it takes it takes it's like so many
women are depressed after they have one a baby you know anything that M with your hormones like that you know being
on birth control in general like all those things like they make you can make you crazy so so that Taylor that
Taylor's actually that only affects one in 10 women that's postpartum what she had is
called postpartum psychosis oh which affects a very very
very small subset of women and Rusty was just IL equipped to understand like yeah
my wife's crazy it's like no no no dude like she's like she's like dangerous like it's not just crazy she's like
dangerous at this point my my thing was all like dude stop like being this guy
and just hire a babysitter for a week take your wife to Hawaii like let her experience a different life lifestyle
different like you imagine this [ __ ] like this is the part where I don't understand it where like wake up every
day every day is the same there's five screaming babies I got to nurse three or four of them constantly like how
horrible of a is that is that a good life I don't know there's no there's people who love it I think legitimately
my mom did it my well we were like 12 years stretched out through 12 years but she stayed home with us and she loved it
um so you know a lot of people that's that's what they want that's their dream it's not for me like I have no desire to hom school I have no desire to stay home
with them um I really like them but like I think they should be out I think we should be separate during the day you know but um but I think they people who
genuinely do like it and that's like why I thought about like Andrea's inner childhood of like I did all the right
things I made the best grades I did this and then I my I married a man who has a great job and he's going to take care of
us and he wants me to make kids so I'm going to make it's like she did everything everybody else wanted her to do and then like she wakes
up and like this is her life like how [ __ ] sad with that I mean I don't know I'm making excuses for again but
whatever it is what it is yeah so this crime what we're talking about here happened 22 years ago so she was 36
years old you're 36 you got five kids that's your and and in coincidentally
there was plans to have more both before and after the murders happened I'll get
to that in a minute I know I know I'll get to that in a minute it's absolutely insane so in mid 1999 Andrea had more
mental breakdowns more suicide attempts I have I've heard I have heard that
doctors and researchers don't know why certain anti-depressants work and why others don't you know the brain chemistry is a
complicated thing they put on some complicated mix of cocktails that seem to work but occasionally would stop
working they would change her cocktails and put her on something new it seems to be a consistent thing with like mental illness and all that stuff that's uh
that's what you get with a 2.1 GPA when you're describing Neuroscience um this complicated [ __ ] uh is so she had
another suicide attempt in mid 1999 Rusty apparently walked in on her trying to slice open her wrists oh Jesus
yeah she was again hospitalized and while being treated for this attempt Andrea is quoted as
saying Taylor this stuff is so scary to me because like it's like you're hearing someone's like demons come to the for
it's so [ __ ] scary and then you look at the pictures of them smiling it's like I'm I'm going to talk more about that I'm going to compare to a movie that you know then we both love she she
was quoted as saying during while being hospitalized here I had a fear I would hurt somebody I thought it better to end
my own life and prevent it from happening there was a voice then an image of a knife I had a vision in my
mind get a knife get a knife oh my God oh
God so yeah so like I said earlier um Andrea was diagnosed with a much much
more severe version of postpartum depression calls postpartum psychosis I wish I remember the numbers on this one
in 10 women get postpartum depression it was something crazy was like one in like
10,000 or 100,000 get postpartum psychosis it's like a very exceptionally rare
diagnosis it's also referred to as PPP and the symptoms include delusions
hallucinations disorganized speech abnormal motor functions confusion they called it severe
difficulty sleeping mood swing in a whole like it almost sounds like a schizophrenic like it sounds like you're
going through and we'll learn later that she was actually having auditory and hallucinatory um Visions going on at the
same time yeah none of those things it's someone who should be around children
yeah yeah but it's interesting that they had her hospitalized but then she went back I guess she had mean what are you
gonna do well so here's so I actually didn't write this in the outline but it
was an interesting point that I probably should have which is like towards the end when things really hit a crescendo because you're going to see she's been
hospitalized many many times one of those times the doctors try to involuntarily
commit her they're like she's dangerous like you need to like we got to do this
yeah the husband was really adamant saying no we'll commit her but it has to be voluntary I want we want to have
control over it and when it ends and all that stuff and so they're like fine we'll acass as long as we're going to do it he did it the problem was if you do
it in a involuntary commitment there's no insurance limit on the maximum number
of days that you can stay but if you do a voluntary commitment the insurance limit in Texas at that time for Blue
Cross Brew Shield was 10 days so they got 10 days of insurance coverage on the 10th day russy's like we're not paying
out of pocket for this [ __ ] and they checked her out wow didn't mean she was good didn't mean
she was well he was like what am I going to do am I going to spend $7,000 a day here no we got to check you out great
good job America no kidding right yeah so uh her psychiatrist during this time
uh told Rusty to not have any more children so yeah she went to a psychiatrist and this is a severe
diagnosis like this is not a joke diagnosis the psychiatrist is like guys you'll really really need to not have
any more kids every time she has a kid you are only going to exacerbate the
PPP seven weeks later she conceived this the fifth child Mary oh my God
yeah say away from her look I wrote down here like this makes Rusty sound awful
but when she was hospitalized it's also worth noting that like nurses talked a lot about how diligent and supportive he
was he apparently went to work with like binders of her medical medical diagnosis
with him so he could like research things on the side he was always by our side whenever he wasn't at work and
would regularly raise a fuss if she wasn't getting what he thought was adequate care so he definitely wasn't well equipped to
understand the dramatic ramifications of this but he tried so how could you
imagine yeah like this stories there are stories that you Stephen King makes up
like you can't imagine this happening to your own life right so anyways going back to Mary so she gave birth to Mary
in November of 2020 and in March of 2021 shortly thereafter Andrea's father died
after an incredibly long stim with um Alzheimer's so was it was apparently very debilitating not 20 not
20120 I wrote 2020 I meant to write 2000 in 20 20 okay great I was like that
feels like it feels longer ago yes definitely so yeah March of 20 I was
goingon to say it again March of 2001 is when Andrea's father died and that seem
to be a jumping off point for this at that time she stopped taking her medication she started regularly cutting
herself she stopped taking care of the kids or herself point where she had to be hospitalized again I keep picturing like
what was this house like if you're Rusty who presumably is
normal what is this house like yeah horrifying like it sounds like a vision
from a nightmare there's a there's I'll never find this again and you know what I'm
probably going to go post on Reddit to figure out what this was there was a video I watched like forever ago where
it was like it was a show or TV show or movie it was a clip of some sort but
there's a man in this like room watching TV and ignoring his wife and the wife
keeps trying to get him to her to pay him to pay attention to her he doesn't so she goes in the bathroom and breaks
the glass window or the mirror and then starts cutting her face with the chars of glass and goes out and says will you
pay attention to me now like do you know what I'm talking about no that's I need to figure I need
to find this cuz I saw it forever ago and it's been eted my memory I probably saw like 25 years ago and I still can remember this to this oh totally that's
that's a horrifying scene oh my God yeah it was it was but like I I kept picturing it when I was doing research
for this so anyways she so again Mary's
born father dies she goes back into like this state that she's in after being
hospitalized got released again and a month after that release experienced another episode where she became
catatonic like she's starting to she's starting to almost come across
like she's possessed she later would tell police that on this day she filled the bathtub
with water and just stood there staring at it they just stood there staring not
saying anything probably not even blinking and she did also mention later on that she thought that what she was
thinking about while she was staying there was killing her kids that day that was that was all she did uh again she
got Rusty came in found her doing this she got hospitalized again and then you
know she goes over to um to to the psychiatrist W by this time it was pretty clear that Andrea was for sure
suicidal and for sure incapable of caring for herself for the kids Rusty was actually told by her doctors to
never leave her alone and definitely never leave her alone with the kids oh my God not most of the time Rusty didn't
most of the time he didn't his theory on it after a while was like well look she's a grown woman eventually she's
gonna have to be alone maybe I can like kind of wean her on to being alone with like right kids that makes sense I mean
who knows and he would do this in like very controlled it was like a controlled experiment again like I'm giving him
credit for this I don't know if I should but I am on June 20th of 2001 for 1 hour
he left her alone Rusty went and Rusty's mom Dora was supposed to
come over an hour after so I don't even know if it was like for scheduled like that or anything I think that Rusty
planned it because he was like yeah give her one hour alone and then you show up Mom and then take care of things right
right let her try it for an hour exactly exactly so like I again I I don't know how much to blame him for
that but I can say that during that hour she filled the bats up up again and then
systematically drowned all five of her children oh my God she started with the eldest so she started with the not the
eldest to under that it was Luke who went first then Paul then John she would
then take their bodies and put them in her bed wrap them up in the sheets
she drowned Mary the six-month-old left the body in the bathroom and just kind
of sat there with it and then Noah comes in the oldest boy who's seven and sees
it and asks what's wrong with Mary he apparently understood enough I don't
know how how attune seven-year-olds are to things but he understood enough to like know that oh something's really
wrong and try to run away from his mom which is like a crazy thought I would never run like can you imagine seven
running away from your mom like I it's like your whole world oh my God she eventually grabbed him and then drowned
Noah as well she then called the police and really didn't specify what was wrong
she would say I'm Andrea Yates you know I need the police yada yada y one thing she said was like she basically she just
said it's time like it was it's all very biblical and cryptic sounding you know
like it was just what does it mean she then called Rusty and said quote you'd
better come home to which Rusty replied quote is anyone hurt Andrea responded
Yes the children all of them oh my God I remember down here Taylor like the
movie I was referencing earlier was Event Horizon and the reason I thought of Event Horizon was because there's this scene where the the guy our
favorite character Sam Sam what his name Sam Neil Sam Neil yeah his real name
yeah yeah whatever his character name was he um he just like once his eyes were removed and he became fully
possessed like you just like talked in a dead pan voice you're coming with us forever it's just like see that in this
woman it's [ __ ] real and it's like in the 2000s so everything everything was covered in carpet in beige it's just all
just grossest so terrifying yeah it to me I wrote down it
just felt like her soul was completely gone like I don't know why the direction her mind went went the way it did but it
whatever so Andrea confessed the murders obviously she's insane right she claimed insanity and that was actually rejected
so Ty the way it works is that insanity is a defense it sound like a different trial like you just say this person was
insane that's how you do it most of the time Insanity defenses don't work because the way that you prove insanity
is you have to prove that that person couldn't tell right from wrong at the time of the crime due to mental defect
that's the legal definition of it there's a ton of cases out there where
somebody does something absolutely horrible and then tries to cover it up and the fact that they try to cover it
up validates that they were not insane because if you try to cover it up they know they did something wrong so if you
ever kill someone just walk around with their skin draped
around you like you're normal like go to the coffee shop and then like you will get off because it's like obviously
nobody would do that who was we not gonna get off you're gonna go to a mental institution right I will discuss
that as well because there's actually no timelines on mental on um involuntary commitments which is very
interesting the jury found uh so the mental defense failed they find found her guilty and they sentenced her her to
life imprisonment the prosecution wanted the death penalty they were like no this woman is going to get Life 3 years later
so she's on in a maximum security jail 3 years later in appell court reversed the conviction this is insane they reversed
the conviction because they found that a prosecution's expert witness lied on the stand the guy's name was Dr Park Deets
he had testified that weeks before the murder a lawn Order episode aired of a woman who drowned her kids in a tub and
then claimed Insanity defense to get off off there's I so there's um this woman
I'm going to reference a little bit later on she wrote phenomenal articles about the case
the murders her life like she her articles are mostly what I referenced for this she wrote a book about it as
well and I'm going to talk I'm going to quote her here later on she was also the uh an a writer for Law and
Order during this time when this happened and she came out saying no I'm actually I'm a journalist now who is
covering the Andre R Yates trial you referenced this time period of Law and
Order that I was working as a writer on we never did that episode huh he was just totally making [ __ ] up weird yeah
and so because of that the appell court was like no like that testimony could have been enough to have swayed the jury
into thinking that she was Lally just trying to fake being insane so we're going to reverse the conviction she was retried she was found
not guilty by reason of insanity and then like I mentioned before like this is an interesting part of the insanity
defense you don't actually get time for being insane you're just held until you
evaluated to be determined to be sane again so right that could be a month a
year never it's totally yeah and so
that's where she ends up she ends up in a mental facil facility in Texas it's a minimum security facility and every year
she gets to come up for review to see if she's healthy mentally enough to be released in every single year since this
would have been 2005 she's refused to go undergo her review she doesn't want to
do it yeah apparently she's happy like what you do like get a job like
apparently so as far as I understood it like she's just like numbed right like
she's just on medication completely zoned out and it's just like just sits
there and like it's like um it's like the the chief and one One Flew Over The
Cook Nest there's another answer P this which is like the blame component of it like I said I talked a little bit about Rusty but everybody kind of blamed
everybody else so the doctors blame Rusty because they're like we told you don't leave her alone we told you to
involuntarily commit her like but I will say this the doctors never actually said
that they thought that she was a danger to the kids so they had an option to choose these like multiple check boxes
is is this person a danger to herself is she a danger to her kids is she like so on and so forth and they didn't check
the danger to the kids part and so they could have escalated this outside of
Rusty's control if they had done that and they just didn't because I guess they didn't think it
was that serious most people though blame Rusty almost all of them yeah they
blame his desire for kids how quickly he wanted to have them how quickly and success you wanted to have them the
religiosity of everything that was involved gave this like dark component to this most of most reports come out
and say that if it wasn't for the kids this well obviously this
wouldn't have happened well yeah I obviously yeah but but like my point being like if it was like you're a
nuclear family you have two kids yeah probably not going to happen right uh on
the on the religiosity side so also the other part of this the media also blame religion
everybody blame whatever everybody blamed everybody it's worth noting that Andrea noted that she didn't think that
she was a good mother and then part of what they think was like in her head of this was like my kids are going to be like Wicked Sinners and they're not
their Immortal Souls won't go to heaven if they grow up because they're going to be terrible because I'm a terrible person I'm a terrible mother killing
them will save them from Damnation that's another piece of this
damn there was a really really important piece of this that I forgot to put in here what I didn't put put in here that
was really really interesting and this was part of the article I read in the woman's name the one the one that I
mentioned earlier her name is Susan Omi she wrote that Rusty thought Andrea was
gonna get off he was at the trial every day he thought Andrew was GNA get off
and was already starting to plan having more kids with her what that's crazy
like she G to go home and be fine what yeah I don't get it that's really
weird yeah it's um did he get remarried he did so he filed for divorce once she
um came out of that Maximum Security Prison uh and went into the psych board he filed for divorce and was granted
that divorce would been 2005 he remarried a woman or he married a woman named uh Laura Arnold and then she filed
for divorce from him in 2015 they have one kid together so he he
stopped D let me has six kids he has six kids in total that's nuts wow so uh like
I said um I I'll shout this woman out because I actually think that her work was like
incredible it was incredibly easy reading it was incredibly thorough it was awesome so the article that she
wrote is called um a cry in the dark her name is Susan Ali and one thing that she points out
about this case which is I think one of the reasons why it's so persistent in terms of like being top of mind for
people she wrote down that each of us sees in the Yates case our own issues the death penalty children's rights
women's rights men's rights rights to mentally ill religious rights are just plain righteousness and that's like a
really really good point because like a lot of I hate to say like a lot of people kill their kids it's not like
that rare of An Occurrence like it happens but this one was really really
unique because it a the number of children was crazy and then there's so many other things were
going on there so much just emptiness and sadness and like just I don't know
um yeah and it still persists and I think it's going to be one of those cases that we like think about forever like it's
just totally like it brings up just such a terrible feeling you know like I just
I was think of that poor last kid who was like there's old enough to know what was going on and like I saw his sister
dead in the tub and like ran away you know poor baby so scary so bad they probably I mean
their life is probably so scary anyway yeah yeah it had be had to be
awful like I so on the on the on the point of the podcast like the whole Doom fail red flag part of it again because
of how Susan Ali references this later on like I don't actually know what to hone in on other than live your Live Your Truth like I
know that sounds really hokey especially coming from a guy like me but like like if you don't want to be the valid
dictorian and you don't want to have like the perfect life with the perfect whitebred husband who works at Nasa and like instead you want to run away with
like a Harley-Davidson riding guy to Vegas and get a bunch of like flame tattoos like do that like like don't
live a life that you don't want to live because you'll resent it and or it's okay to change your mind like it's okay
like to maybe she like you know doesn't feel bad as bad as she did as you do
against smart people in high school but like maybe she just like maybe she wanted to do that and at some point
things were super out of her control bad because of her
diseases no well so okay so this is the rant that I didn't do earlier that I'm I'll do now is like if you NE if you
don't have the muscle in you that is like I'm going to do what I want and [ __ ] what everybody else wants me to do
I'm going to Rebel if you just don't have that muscle in you you can't expect someone just like pick that up and learn
it at some point right that's why like I'm going to be the you know I got to be the best I be a voran I got to do this I
got it's like you just don't she just didn't have it she just didn't have that muscle in her of like I'm just going to
do what I want to do instead and well then I think I think part of
like the part with the postp part of depression and that stuff is like you you have in your head you're like I'm
supposed to want this why do I feel this way you know and then you feel like a failure maybe that my takea away from it
is like yeah just like what does she say about it does she say anything Andrea
yeah no dude I'm pretty sure she just stares at a corner of a wall forever until she dies no like my
my take on it was more like be cool with your kids like rebelling and like like
that's healthy it should be a good thing and like they're more them you know be like are you okay yeah like you know
listen I'm going to write a child I'm going to not a child's book I'm going to write a child rearing book a guide on how to raise children um and it'll be
available in every swamp and Sewer that has books probably that's what that's what the world is asking for more fars
um what does this childless 30-some year old man have to say about
kids and how hard it is you know what I noticed Taylor's like this chair is like super squeaky today uh oh can't imagine
what's coming I didn't hear it so we are we are so that's my story wow that's so
sad yeah it is it's it's sad it's fascinating it's [ __ ] scary it's so scary to me it's it's it's like every
horror Possession movie I watch like this is it like this is yeah except it happened like yeah anyways um but on to
your side of the equation I'm going to pull out my teaspoon teaspoon do you have te do you
have bedroom cups no definitely not just
curious I'll I'll I'll grow up eventually and get spoons that measure things but not not quite yet yeah you