On June 20, 2001 after her husband, Rusty, left for work, Andrea Yates, mother of five, was left home alone to watch her children, against the recommendation of her doctor. Prior to this, Yates had been diagnosed with postpartum depression, attempted suicide multiple times, and was prescribed antidepressants. Yates was urged to not have any more children but continued to do the opposite. When her father died in 2001, Yates stopped taking her medication, mutilated herself, and began to read the Bible obsessively. Now, on this day in the span of an hour, Yates deliberately drowned each of her five children. Immediately, Yates called the police and her husband to the scene.
Yates confessed to the murders, stating that she needed to kill her children to save them from the eternal damnation to which they would be subject due to her poor mothering. Yates’s defense pleaded not guilty on the pretense of insanity, but was ultimately convicted of the crimes due to her ability to distinguish right from wrong during the murders.
Yates’s actions point to the justification of murder through insanity. Although she refused to take her medications, Yates truly believed that she was saving her children. Yates felt inadequate as a mother and killed her children with the thought that they would be better off dead than with her as an unfit and unstable mother.
Motherhood Complexities 