Borrowed Bones
Families build you up, tear you down, and sometimes drag you into something truly unhinged. Borrowed Bones unearths the bizarre, toxic, and fascinating stories of family dynamics gone sideways. From the macabre to the just plain strange, we’re digging deep to uncover the skeletons hiding in the closets of history, culture, and beyond.
Borrowed Bones
The Yates Family
Andrea Yates' story isn't just about a mother who killed her children—it's about mental healthcare failures, religious extremism, and societal pressure on mothers. What can we learn 20+ years later?
Sources:
Yates Family Memorial Site, Biography.com, Time.com, NYPost.com, PsychiatryOnline.org, NYPost.com, CNN.com, Psychiatry.com
E-Mail the show at BorrowedBonesPodcast@proton.me
hello everyone hello people I'm sarah and I'm cole and you're listening to borrowed bones, a podcast about fucked up, interesting and toxic families yes, it's our bread and butter yes, last episode was a nice one yeah, it was a change of pace. Yes, the lovely twinings.
Speaker 2:No blood and guts or gore.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:No sexual assaults or bodies in basements or anything.
Speaker 1:I'm still waiting, but as of yet no, I don't know of anything yet Knock on wood. Yeah, today is not a nice one.
Speaker 2:Oh good, Back to the nitty gritty.
Speaker 1:Yes, today we are talking about the Yates family, yates or Andrea Yates specifically.
Speaker 2:Know the name, but I can't place it.
Speaker 1:There's probably a few people that know exactly what I'm talking about. This happened in 2001.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:It is one that involves children. So here's your trigger. Right now, it's about Andrea killing her children.
Speaker 2:Oh, her own children, mm-hmm. Yes, oh, okay.
Speaker 1:This one I really wanted to do because there's a lot of talk around it. I'm surprised that you don't remember it at all. Really Like nothing rings a bell.
Speaker 2:Nope.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:She's not the woman that drove her sons into the lake.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I know that one that was in the 90s. That was Susan Smith, I think was her name.
Speaker 1:I don't know for sure Okay. You have to look it up now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was Susan Smith, I was thinking.
Speaker 1:Okay 94.
Speaker 2:She drove a car into a lake or a river or something with her two sons.
Speaker 1:I remember hearing about a woman doing that. Yeah, but then she famously South Carolina. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And then for like a week she famously claimed that her kids were like abducted, like she was carjacked or something oh shit. So you know, she was in front of the cameras, her and her husband. Her husband was not involved, was not with her and was like please, whoever abducted our sons? And then they found the car and she confessed she's still in prison, Okay, Wow. Well we won't do that one.
Speaker 1:We just did a quick one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quick one right there. Bonus just did a quick one. Yeah, quick one bonus episode right in it. Yeah, give a frame narrative.
Speaker 1:Yeah anyway, I decided to do andrea yates and the yates family because of all of the talk surrounding it and also a lot of podcasters or true crime youtubers, whoever. I've seen and heard a lot of them reference andrea y but say it's too difficult for them to cover. I'm going to give it a try.
Speaker 2:Oh, cause they're parents.
Speaker 1:I do think it's because they're parents yes, and I think I know that you roll your eyes at it cause they chose to be parents and all that. Like I get that point? I don't know, I understand. I guess, maybe because I was a nanny, I do think of those children in my mind, I think of all the kids in my life, even though I'm not a mom. But I think I was able to handle it better because I do have that separation of not having given birth. Yeah, I don't want to.
Speaker 2:You won't with me.
Speaker 1:No, okay, let's start in the beginning. Andrea Yates was born Andrea Kennedy.
Speaker 2:Wow, is she? No, not oh.
Speaker 1:She's not, not the.
Speaker 2:Royal Kennedys no, oh, I was like God damn Everyone in that family. Something goes wrong with their heads.
Speaker 1:Andrea Kennedy was born July 2nd 1964 in Houston, texas.
Speaker 2:Oh, happy belated, birthday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she was a good kid, great student. She graduated high school as class valedictorian. Oh, what town was this in Texas, Houston.
Speaker 2:Texas, so that's got to be, I'm assuming, public school, so that's valedictorian in a major city's high school is more impressive than being the valedictorian of like a you know, school.
Speaker 1:I went to a hundred students, so Were there a hundred students in your graduating class About that, okay.
Speaker 2:Roughly 400 in the school 100 per class.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cute. Yeah, little Midwest boy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm saying she's obviously more impressive, yeah, at that age.
Speaker 1:Yes, so Andrea graduated class valedictorian and she also loved to swim and was very good at it. Okay, as soon as she was old enough, andrea got a job at the Jack in the Box At Jack in the Box.
Speaker 2:Oh, the fast food. Yeah, you don't know what that is, do you?
Speaker 1:I had to reference.
Speaker 2:California movies to be like the what.
Speaker 1:There's not Jack in the Box in Michigan. If there is, it's not popular. No, I've never seen one.
Speaker 2:I've never seen one in real life, Except have we seen any in Albuquerque? Are they California only?
Speaker 1:No, we had them in Texas. Okay, yeah, houston.
Speaker 2:I've definitely never seen them anywhere on the East Coast or in the Midwest.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Some fast food place. We saw in Albuquerque that you were like oh, look at that.
Speaker 1:Whataburger.
Speaker 2:Whataburger, that's it. Yeah, we don't have those.
Speaker 1:Whataburger.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Anyway, yes.
Speaker 2:Back on track. Stop delaying the inevitable.
Speaker 1:Dinner is next on our list today. You can tell we're hungry. Anyway, Andrea's parents expected her to get good grades and they wanted all of their children to be well-rounded. They wanted them all to have jobs. They kind of had a strict upbringing. Andrea also very much wanted to please her parents.
Speaker 2:It was back and forth, hence the valedictorian and getting a job right away.
Speaker 1:You don't become a valedictorian, not being an overachiever Right Whenever I mean, you always make like she was. They were pushed, yes.
Speaker 2:You're a stereotype who's trying to get your parents' praise.
Speaker 1:That's what you are as a valedictorian. That's exactly what she was, Even though she did well in school and had good grades. One of Andrea's high school friends named Marlene said that Andrea would not let people get close. She was prickly.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Just kind of kept her distance a little bit. Marlene was pretty much the only close friend she had.
Speaker 2:Well, she's into books and that's pretty much it. No social life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not too much outside of her own activities and scheduled things. Yeah, she's not even interested in it. She seems to be like, not that, she's like an outcast. She's kind of in self-excitement, yeah, now in 1989, andrea is about 26 years old, 25, 26. And she was living in an apartment complex still in Houston Texas. This is where she will meet her neighbor and future husband, russell, who goes by Rusty Yates.
Speaker 2:Rusty.
Speaker 1:Yates, and he's a year younger than her, so he's around 24, 25, all right the attraction was mutual, hopefully.
Speaker 2:Rusty noticed a husband that wasn't attracted to you.
Speaker 1:Well, they both like noticed each other separately. Yeah, rusty noticed andrea while she would be sunbathing in the apartment pool. It's miss. Yes, she would swim a lot. She loved to swim and he noticed her swimming quite a bit Later he would discover which I thought was an interesting little fact about Andrea that she was a champion swimmer and once she swam around an island in Mexico.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just thought that was an interesting fact. Not a lot of people can say that that's pretty cool, True, Now? Rusty said in an interview with Time later on, after everything happened that quote she was a person who was more graceful in the water than out of it.
Speaker 2:Ah, Aquaman.
Speaker 1:Yes, Namorita. Yes. One Monday, still in 1989, Andrea knocked on Rusty's door. This is how they meet. Andrea asked him if he knew who dinged her car. He said he didn't know. But that got them talking.
Speaker 2:No one dinged anyone's car no.
Speaker 1:Later on in their relationship she confessed that that was just an excuse to meet Rusty.
Speaker 2:That's where the lies began. Yeah, yes, a relationship where the lies began.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:A relationship founded on a lie.
Speaker 1:Yes. Andrea then left and she went to go grab some food. She sat outside by the water while she was eating and she was thinking of Rusty. Unable to get him off her mind, she returned to her apartment complex and left a note on Rusty's car windshield. The note read I was thinking you could come by sometime tonight.
Speaker 2:Oh, sometime tonight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very forward. Yeah, it was Monday night football, but Rusty felt like, ah, I can give this up for one night and I'll go over.
Speaker 2:Giving up Hank Williams Jr's Monday Night Football theme? I don't know. Come on, everyone knows that song. It was the trademark Monday Night Football song, Hank Williams Jr. I'm not singing it, so don't look at me like I'm going to. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, moving on. While Andrea and Rusty were dating, Andrea was a post-op nurse.
Speaker 2:Oh, mm-hmm, human doctor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, veterinarian.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I'm going to start doing that whenever someone mentions anything medical, I'm like human or animal. It's weird how everyone looks at you like are you crazy? Just asking that simple question straight-faced. So do that.
Speaker 1:Anyway, rusty designed computer systems for NASA. He was a.
Speaker 2:NASA, engineer.
Speaker 1:He still is a NASA engineer.
Speaker 2:Damn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, andrea and Rusty spent a few years getting to know each other, dating, moving in together and eventually marriage. They had a modest wedding in 1993. Okay, and Andrea quickly took herself modest wedding in 1993.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And Andrea quickly took herself off of birth control.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:They both wanted as many kids as possible.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Rusty was a disciple of Michael Warniecki. I didn't care to look up the pronunciation. It looks Polish to me. He's from Michigan and I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing it correctly. I mean, I'll tell you Okay, W-O-R-O-N, as in Nancy, I-E-C-K-I.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. It might not be that because it's polish, but yeah, who knows?
Speaker 1:warnecky or something warnecky yeah but I think warnecky yeah I don't really care because he's one of those really eccentric out there preachers that would go to college campuses and like yell at people oh, like he's an evangelist, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is he like fire and brimstone? Old school religion kind of Okay.
Speaker 1:Need to get you some Jesus. Yeah, so I don't respect him.
Speaker 2:Okay, flat out, he's one of those non-denominational, he's his own. Yes.
Speaker 1:He doesn't like organized religion, but he's non-denominational is what?
Speaker 2:he claims.
Speaker 1:That's what he claims. I'm not saying this is how non-denominational churches. This is not the same. He's his own person. He claims non-denominational, but he also dislikes organized religion and he travels around and preaches Circuit riding preacher. Yes, rusty followed him through phone calls, videos, things like that, but I don't know if they're personal videos that he purchased or sent out or if they were like on TV.
Speaker 2:Either way, he followed him. He's obviously an like classically intelligent man if he's working as an engineer for fucking nasa rusty kept him at arm's length. He didn't get too into him, yeah I guess I'm still like I'm always fascinated by any like these hardcore scientists who are still into any supernatural mysticism. Woo-woo-ness, I'm like what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially the American Christian woo-woo. It's so blatantly wrong and eats its own tail so quickly.
Speaker 2:You're looking at space and getting to. This is what you're at, yeah. Yeah, anyway, the theory of relativity is like your freaking basis for everything. The lens and you're he. He breaks out.
Speaker 1:He, he, yeah, yeah, I think he learns. But yes, I had a similar rant in my own head and I didn't want to get too invested into this michael preacher person, because you can see already we're ranting. Yeah, anyway, the warneckies. They did believe that couples should have as many babies as possible. That is god's way. The preacher also chastised the couple, saying that they were doomed to hell if they were not living the right way. Yeah, we're starting with some doom and gloom, fire and brimstone everything you were saying. Within three months of marriage, andrea was pregnant.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Throughout her pregnancy she maintained her nursing job, but once her baby boy Noah was born, she became a stay-at-home mom.
Speaker 2:Noah was born February of 1994. Hmm.
Speaker 1:I would have been turning nine in february of 94, oh wow, yeah, I won't say how old I would have been in 94 was also the same year that susan smith would kill her two sons oh, look at the venn diagram crossover 94 is the look, this is the locus point she's the background character, isn't she or that?
Speaker 1:that's the side story of all this. Okay, so I gave you noah's birth, february of 94. I'm gonna do the rest of the children right now, because throughout the story it's they move and do things I'm just gonna get it all out yes, just like she did um, sorry, okay.
Speaker 2:Noah.
Speaker 1:February of 1994. He's the oldest. Then we have John, born in December of 96. And then we have an Irish twin situation here where Paul is born in fall like September of 97.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I didn't get all of their birthdates confirmed, even though I looked them up. The website that their dad made doesn't have two of their actual birth dates, but I figured out their ages. Luke was born, I believe, February of 99.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Because I read that Paul was 17 months old when Luke was born, so that matches correctly, and then Mary was born in November of the year 2000.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's five total.
Speaker 1:Five total Four boys, one girl girls at the bottom Yep, all right, and they're, so I can remember them all Noah, John, Paul, Luke, Mary. Yes, correct.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Shortly after Noah's birth, andrea had a vision. In this vision was an image of a knife. The knife crossed her mind very briefly and then there was a scene of someone being stabbed, and then the vision vanished as quickly as it came.
Speaker 2:She's awake, not a dream.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, like a hallucination. Yeah, rusty never knew about this until after Andrea's arrest. She never told him about it. In 1995, andrea was pregnant again with John. She gave up jogging and swimming, exercising. She was seeing her friends less and less. This was even after she had John. Throughout their relationship, rusty always respected andrea's privacy. She was always a bit secretive, like I mentioned, and even in her high school years yeah, standoffish and rusty never probed. I think rusty just figured, if she had something to say she would say say it.
Speaker 2:But she never did he did mention in an interview as well later on that he respected her obsession, he said, with changing her clothes in the closet out of sight.
Speaker 1:You mean like she? Would you mean like she would change clothes on her body or she would rearrange the clothes? No, she would change her outfits like herself, like her body, and she would go into the closet to do it. Though, to change, yeah, out of sight Out of sight Okay. That's something that she did when she met Rusty, but that is a sign of something.
Speaker 2:Why did he leave the room?
Speaker 1:Like trauma an issue, like if I was in a room with you and you were changing and you like went into the closet, I'd be like I'll just I can leave the room and you don't have to do that. Right, but this is also someone that she shares a bed with and he probably did start leaving the room. He said he respected it. He probably did do things you know but what I'm saying is what's up that there's something bigger happening here, that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Rusty offered to reduce his hours at work, allowing her to go back to nursing part-time if she wanted to maybe get out of the house, or he was fine with her just seeing her friends more doing her hobbies anything supportive.
Speaker 2:He's not forcing her to be this stay-at-home broodmare. He's no, but go have a life.
Speaker 1:Most of this is from his word, though, like a lot of this, is from interviews that he's in. I do. I do think he's supportive, but there are some people that are sprinkled in here that are kind of like he's a little controlling, he's a little weird.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:So I think there's honestly, I think the religious side of things is where the controlling comes in. I think he is a good person, but the religion muddied it up for him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is what I think religion muddied it up for him. Yeah is what I think it's easy to say to your wife I want you to go out and have a social life and do all these things, while you keep giving her babies, exactly like you know have fun, go out with the girls. Um, there's four kids to sit around with like yeah, and it was the 90s early odds.
Speaker 1:Still very classic, not necessarily armchair dad, but still yeah, like we really didn't start seeing dads being involved until us millennials started having kids. According to rusty, though, even after he offered all of this to her which this might be true, who knows she just said I'm a mother now oh and that was it one of the tones she said exactly she's saying like, like I'm a mother now. Oh, and that was it one of the tones she said exactly.
Speaker 2:She's saying like, like I'm a mother now, like you, like I gave that up also is it like? Also is there, is there a tone of like us, like me against you, or yeah you did this to me.
Speaker 1:Right is a resentment of exactly I'm a mother now, thanks to you yeah, and he might not realize what that tone is, because in his head this is what life is right.
Speaker 2:This is how he was raised too.
Speaker 1:This is fine. So I don't think that's what I mean by like I don't think he knew. I think today he does, but I don't think, then he did. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I hope so by now.
Speaker 1:Yes, now, yes, in 1996 rusty took the opportunity to be a part of a six-month nasa related project in florida. So for six months they got to go to florida. He drove his family down to florida in like an rv trailer.
Speaker 2:yes, all right, I pictured him going and leaving her alone with the kids.
Speaker 1:Okay, Nope, Right now we have Andrea, Rusty, Noah and John.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Going to Florida living like an RV trailer situation. For six months. They leased out their house, did a quick garage sale to kind of unload things.
Speaker 2:Don't come.
Speaker 1:And in November of 1996 is when they went is when they went. While Rusty was working, every day Andrea would take Noah and John to the beach, the park and the children's museum. She was doing good things being an interactive mom.
Speaker 2:She's out, just staying at home.
Speaker 1:The couple enjoyed showing their sons the value in books, art and sports. Andrea taught them how to shuck corn and snap green beans. Like she was involved. While in Florida, andrea became pregnant twice. The first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but they conceived again while still in Florida and they were only in Florida for six months. They got no extension.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And Andrea jokingly called herself Fertile, myrtle, fertile myrtle, myrtle just a name, fertile myrtle like I was like, but myrtle beach isn't in florida, oh right no, I'm just like oh, she's a fertile myrtle over there.
Speaker 1:Look at her popping out babies and getting pregnant left and right. Yeah, when they went back to to Texas, they did not go back to their suburban lifestyle. They got rid of the house and they're now living at the Lazy Days RV campground near a dog track in Hitchcock, texas, in their RV trailer. Yes, so they're doing like the van life kind of before. It's cool they're choosing to do this because Rusty has a good job.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The house they can keep, but they wanted to live van life. Essentially we're jumping forward a little bit to 1998.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Now they have three sons. Paul was born in September of 97. Rusty receives a letter from the preacher Michael.
Speaker 2:Oh God.
Speaker 1:What's the charlatan?
Speaker 2:one.
Speaker 1:The preacher was selling his motor home. It was a converted 1978 GMC bus. Very, very van life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those might have been like the touring rock star buses.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those are the sweet, those are the.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds pretty cool honestly, palaces of the road. Andrea preferred the bus over the trailer, so Rusty bought it. Yeah, of course arrival. He's still a little baby. Noah and john slept in the hole which was a luggage compartment accessible from the cabin through like a trap door. Yeah, I didn't look at any.
Speaker 2:I didn't see any photos, but yeah, I'm just weird. Whenever you say where your kids are, they sleep in the hole yeah, yeah, it's weird, that's what they called it just, even if it's fine, I'm sure it was fine in some weird way, but like don't call it the hole yeah, now the yates family is growing.
Speaker 1:We're in the year 1999. Baby luke, the fourth child, was born earlier in the year. Now andrea is caring for all of these children, as well as helping her mother take care of her ailing father who had Alzheimer's. Yeah, so all of that's happening.
Speaker 2:That sucks.
Speaker 1:Andrea rarely brought people over to their home the bus. She always offered to go to them with the children for playdates and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Bring your brood along. No thanks, Keep them over there.
Speaker 1:Her family and friends. They kind of had a hint that she didn't really enjoy the van life as much as Rusty did. He got to leave every day and go to work. Right, he got to be in the AC and use a real bathroom.
Speaker 2:She could drive it to work. She could drive the home to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in 1999, still in this year, after the family took the bus to the Grand Canyon, andrea seemed tired and preoccupied. While on the drive home, rusty thought she was just recovering from the flu, but then she dipped into a very deep depression.
Speaker 2:You don't even have a daughter yet, right? Nope, so four boys well, maybe if they get back to banging it'll cure her depression. I know you're sad, but let's get on to it.
Speaker 1:Babies ain't gonna make themselves in june 16th 1999, andrea was crying very badly and she called rusty while he was at work and said he had to come home. When he he came home, he found her in the back of the bus and she was slumped over in a chair, biting at her fingers. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably. She just was having a breakdown. Rusty packed everyone up and drove to Galveston, texas, which isn't far from where they are, and his thought was to be near the water. She always felt good near the water, so he walked her along the shoreline trying to calm her down, and it didn't work. After walking near the water didn't work, he took everyone to Andrea's parents' house and they stayed there for a little while.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:The following day, rusty leaves to run some errands and Andrea tells her mom that she's going to go take a nap. Andrea then proceeds to take at least 40 of her mom's antidepressant pills that she has to help her sleep. Andrea's mom walks in and finds Andrea lying unconscious on the bed, and then she sees the empty pill bottle. She calls 911 and an ambulance arrives, and then Rusty comes home right bottle. She calls 9-1-1 and an ambulance arrives, and then rusty comes home right after that he just happens to be right there.
Speaker 1:andrea's sons were sobbing as andrea was taken away on the stretcher and while at the hospital, andrea told the medical staff that she took the pill so she could sleep forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she wanted to die.
Speaker 2:She was almost there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was her first suicide attempt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that we know of.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, that we know of. Yeah, she also said that she felt guilty for attempting suicide when she was speaking to the nurse. She said I have my family to live for, so I don't know. She wanted to die and then she survived and was like, ah, what am I?
Speaker 2:doing it was cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, June 20th of 1999, she's still in the hospital. Andrea begins to isolate herself. She was no longer going to group therapy not as much anyway and she would retreat to her hospital room where she would turn the lights out, pull the sheets up over her head and just like sit there. Yeah, the hospital psychiatrist said she was purposefully vague about things. She would just say stuff like I guess there's been some turmoil, it's just like that's it.
Speaker 1:The hospital social I'm looking at her more and more I know I mean, yes, we'll, we'll go through this, but yeah, she's she's becoming more sympathetic. She's a sympathetic character yes, her children deserve to be alive, a hundred percent. I've sympathized, empathize with the children and they should be here.
Speaker 2:But to be killed later on by something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah right. The hospital social worker said Andrea would discuss her own childhood but would deflect questions about Andrea's children.
Speaker 2:What is there to answer about your kids? They're fucking kids. They don't have any personality.
Speaker 1:A seven-year-old does. Well, I guess Noah's probably like five at this point, yeah.
Speaker 2:Every parent who talks to them talks. They all say the same things because there's nothing unique about their kids.
Speaker 1:Yet there was one, there was one parent, and I will not say who this is but they were the first and only parent to be like I think my kid's kind of ugly and they're not that great at things, they're pretty average, but I love them anyway and I was like respect a hard respect the fact that you won't say it means you probably know who it is, which I like that you're not saying, because now everyone that we know who's a parent is thinking it might be them and it was just one of the parents, and they're married, nice, and they only said about one of their children as well, they've got multiple kids.
Speaker 2:They're like I don't know this one kid of of mine.
Speaker 1:It's not going to break any hearts. Yeah, it's not going to win first prize anyway, anyway, moving on, moving on, when the social worker asked Andrea about her strengths, Andrea paused and then said Breeding. I can't think of any right now, and that was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that she's not playing the therapist's game.
Speaker 1:No, she's just no. I don't know nothing, I'm not good at anything, I don't give a shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:Rusty felt that Andrea lost her identity. That's what he told the social worker anyway. He said that she relied mostly on him for any decision making and that she only focused on the children. She just lost herself and the kids, which does happen a lot with mothers, mothers specifically, because obviously they're the ones left with the children.
Speaker 2:What else are you supposed to do when you've got four eaters around you?
Speaker 1:They're all under the age of going to school.
Speaker 2:What are you supposed to do with that many and you're alone.
Speaker 1:Even when I was a nanny.
Speaker 2:I would get lonely. What other interests are you supposed to have?
Speaker 1:I would like plan with the parents. Like all right, we have to get out of the house during these uncertain days. Like I need to get out of the house and engage with other people because it is very lonely being with toddlers all day and no one else around. Very lonely, With toddlers all day and no one else around. Very lonely. Rusty did admit to the hospital staff that he could have treated his wife with a little more respect.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, rusty. Then went on to say that Andrea may be struggling with the concept of salvation.
Speaker 2:There it is, mm-hmm, oh Jesus.
Speaker 1:Oh Lord, there it is. Oh jesus, oh lord. The social worker also noted that the patient's husband might be a little bit controlling is what was written in the notes. Rusty was insistent that his wife's postpartum depression was only temporary and not a bigger mental illness. They're just like a lot of people back then, and he said that he was helping by teaching his kids to be quiet for longer periods of time. Oh, he was also instructing them on woodworking.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:That's what he said, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so your wife tried to off herself. You stopped her, and Now your kids can. Well, I'm teaching my kid how to off herself.
Speaker 1:You stopped her and now your kids can.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm teaching my kid how to sand wood yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't get it. I did see in another thing briefly, he mentioned how the kids and him built a four person bunk bed together. So I think in his head that's a family thing, it's a group activity. Yeah, when I looked into it I thought, okay, don't judge so hard.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's just the sweet, it was the way. Yeah, yeah, the starkness, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and got them into woodworking, like what? Okay?
Speaker 2:You like wood?
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, andrea's hospital psychiatrist discharged her due to insurance reasons oh right, very american.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's word america, because everything is dumb and preventable.
Speaker 1:Yeah he also wrote in his notes that she would respond better to a female psychiatrist, someone more nurturing I think this guy was just offloading her.
Speaker 2:I don't think he wanted her anymore.
Speaker 1:honestly, the psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft before offloading Andrea onto whoever? Else will take her. But Andrea did not like taking pills and she would often fake, swallow them, hide them in her cheek, she took 400 of them a week ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think you didn't mind taking them then.
Speaker 1:Right, but so soon. Andrea's mom and Rusty were double checking her, having her open her mouth. Show that they weren't hidden away somewhere. Andrea was just getting worse after she was discharged. She was staying in bed all day. She scratched four bald spots into her scalp and was picking sores like on her nose, scratching at herself, and was picking sores. Like on her nose, scratching at herself. She used her nails to scratch and like score marks on her legs and arms. Also during this time, she was having visions and hearing voices.
Speaker 2:Okay, so she's clearly tripping balls and having a psychotic break.
Speaker 1:Yes, rusty was not aware of the visions or the voices. She never told him about those. Andrea said she heard commands like get a knife, get a knife, and that the visions that she saw were the first ones she saw when noah was born. They came back, but they lasted longer this time and were more vivid.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:She said she saw them repeated about 10 times over the next several days.
Speaker 2:Does she acknowledge them as hallucinations or does she think they're the voice of God? Like does she believe? I guess it's hard to ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't really know. She doesn't make much sense, really ever, and she stays quiet. Her version is she's a bad mom and needs to salvation.
Speaker 2:So she stays religious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't. I think she battles with herself. She knows that their visions or hallucinations, but she also doesn't know how to say no to them. They're constant. So I think, say no to them. They're constant. So I think it's.
Speaker 2:If they're so constant, you just lose your sense of reality eventually is there any, if you know any, history of schizophrenia in her family?
Speaker 1:I did see that after everything came to light with andrea, that the family did look into their own just their own personal mental health. And I don't remember off the top of my head but I think one of them was diagnosed with bipolar, one of them was like depression or something. I don't know exactly, but they did kind of discover oh, there are things that run in our family and I think Andrea does have schizophrenia. I did not see what her diagnosis was, but the medicine she takes, the way that she speaks schizophrenia is at least one of them.
Speaker 1:Hallucinations yeah, it's at least one of them. But postpartum depression is what unleashed it all, I think, Because usually schizophrenia needs to crack open. It's in you, but it needs to crack open. It's not in everyone, but it's one of those fun gen. Listen to the Galvin family, part one and part two. Anyway, moving on, Andrea had visions. They repeated over several days. That's where we were Now. Andrea also told her mom that Rusty and the children were eating too much. Yeah, when four-month-old Luke would cry, Andrea would rock him, give him a pacifier sing, but she would not feed him. Andrea's mother had to bottle train Luke and then she ended up being the one that fed him all the time she took over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Andrea's dad still has Alzheimer's as well, so her mom is taking care of all of this. The day before Andrea was supposed to see her new female psychiatrist, rusty found her in the bathroom with a knife to her throat.
Speaker 2:Rusty demanded the knife, and then Andrea yelled at him to get out and then she said let me do it. So there's two attempts to have man once again. Sometimes you just let them go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, second attempt Rusty grabbed her arm and pried the knife out of her hand. Rusty told the psychiatrist about this and asked for her to be hospitalized again. The psychiatrist agreed and Andrea was sent to to spring shadows glenn, a private psychiatric hospital in houston. After just 10 days there, andrea was basically catatonic. Wow yeah, doctors were talking about electric shock therapy, but they decided against it. Instead, they chose to try an emergency injection.
Speaker 2:Of.
Speaker 1:Multiple drugs, multiple antipsychotic drugs, but the main thing was Haldol H-A-L-D-O-L.
Speaker 2:I've heard of that. There's a longer name for it, but this is, yes, antipsychotic, psychotropic medicine. Yes, haldol.
Speaker 1:And it's used for severe, typically schizophrenic cases. The effects of the emergency injection were pretty immediate. As soon as she was injected, rusty said that she exhaled, and then she kind of moved around erratically and then she fell asleep. When she woke up, rusty said she seemed a bit better. He said he could tell that she wanted to get back into the water. She was motivated again. The love for him entered her eyes once more. She was coming back. He said they had a great talk and that Andrea was finally unguarded. Later on, though, andrea said that it was the Haldol that made her talk that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the drugs. I know talk that way, yeah, it's the drugs.
Speaker 1:I know she hated it the hypocrisy of this country.
Speaker 2:You should not take mood altering drugs That'll increase your enjoyment of this world and mask how awful it fucking is. Also take this drug that just masks how awful the world is and gets you to go through your fucking day yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, one we can charge differently for day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, one we can charge differently for. Yeah, anyway, back on topic. Yep, andrea opened up more to the hospital psychologist. His name is james thompson and he wrote in his notes that andrea spoke about her attempted suicide. She finally confessed it out loud and how that was her way of trying to get rid of the visions and the voices. She said she had a fear that she was going to hurt someone and she thought it better to end her own life before that happened yes yeah, that's kind of always been your argument.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean don't kill anyone, just leave just leave.
Speaker 1:Leave is really the ultimate option here.
Speaker 2:Just leave and separate yourself. I know it's shitty to be a mom or a dad who abandons your family, but they're alive and abandoned right, yeah.
Speaker 1:She's starting to tell people now. This is why I'm doing this. I'm trying to not hurt others around me. Then she says that what others saw as her being quiet and nervous, those were her attempts to refrain herself from acting out and causing harm.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So everyone sees this kind of shy, quiet thing when she's really inside raging yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What's that quote from Mike Tyson? I'm on Zoloft to keep myself from killing all you motherfuckers. Yeah, he said it like at a press conference.
Speaker 1:He said some wild things. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm on Zoloft to keep myself from killing all you motherfuckers. Yeah, he said it like at a press conference. He said some wild things.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, I'm on Zoloft to keep from killing all you motherfuckers. Yeah, damn and.
Speaker 1:Rusty at the time didn't know any of this, because obviously she's saying all this to her medical professionals. These are in the notes. Back at Andrea's parents' house, things were getting crowded. Andrea's brother was now living at the house with his kids. They needed more space and the Yates. They could afford to move out. They could. But Andrea's mom the only hang up was she didn't want them to move back into the bus. She was like don't do that, get a house.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they all agreed.
Speaker 2:They're like yes, you work for NASA and you've got a brood yeah, and they all agreed.
Speaker 1:They're like yes for nasa and you've got a brood. Oh yeah, rusty was making eighty thousand dollars a year working at nasa. Eighty thousand at that time, yeah that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:So is that good?
Speaker 1:I don't know for today that would be 155 000 oh okay, yeah, that's solid. Yeah, if he's the only one making money, with a family of five children, so a family of seven has she had mary yet?
Speaker 2:she hasn't had Mary yet, but still whatever.
Speaker 1:They will. That's enough. They can get a house is all I'm saying Nothing crazy, but they can get a house. Yeah, they soon got a three-bedroom, two-bath house on Beachcomber Lane. Okay, it had a nice yard with nice big mature trees, enough space to park the bus as well, so he got to keep that.
Speaker 2:Oh, why not?
Speaker 1:sell it. Well, if they need to, they will, but they didn't have to. Like I said, he's doing well enough. They had a great privacy fence and there was a pool in their community like a neighborhood pool. Rusty brought Andrea to sign for the house. He wanted her name to be on the deed. Of course she the house. He wanted her name to be on the deed. Of course she was taking haldol once a month now and was pretty much a zombie at this point. She could barely hold the pen.
Speaker 1:But was able yeah, she was able to sign the papers, but barely able to hold the pen.
Speaker 2:So how was that legal like? How can that be legally binding if the witness is like she could, the pen kept falling out and she was drooling and she's like but that's legally binding if you're in that state.
Speaker 1:I mean, but it it honestly helps more than hurts her, though, to be on the deed Like it'd be more shitty of him, I think, for I think he was doing it in a nice way of like no, your name should be on the deed, because this is how you get any sort of property rights.
Speaker 2:If we get a divorce, your name, like this, is protection for her If she was like it had to be like that moment, like I'm sure she wasn't 24 seven on this, like you couldn't have waited. I don't know. A couple hours for it to wear off. Maybe the symptoms to I don't know. So she could hold a pen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she signed and there she, and that was that. As the months went by at the new house, andrea began to improve. She started swimming again. She would do about 70 laps at dawn in the neighborhood pool.
Speaker 2:She was gardening she was planting milkweed to attract butterflies that she and Noah both loved.
Speaker 1:Andrea turned their den into a classroom. She was homeschooling the kids. Well, Noah was the only one that needed to be homeschooled, but that was her plan.
Speaker 2:Oh cause he's the oldest.
Speaker 1:He's the oldest, yeah. Well yeah, one step forward, five steps back. Michael preacher, yeah, I planted some flowers, but also you're going to start homeschooling kids in your bunker? I don't Well anyone ever really talking about the religious side of Andrea Yates. I only knew this when I was like 12. But I feel like that was kind of missed, like I think that's a part of it. I do, I'm sorry, yeah.
Speaker 2:No one in this country wants to criticize other religions. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, so she was getting ready to homeschool and she would do like interactive lessons. Right, the benefits of homeschooling You're going to read something like Black Beauty and then you're going to go horseback riding Okay, that's fun. You're going to learn about plants by going outside and seeing the plants. So she was a very interactive mom with homeschooling. She bought extra workbooks even because she wanted their kids to like really excel they also for music. I thought this was cute. They would pretend that they were like in a marching band and march up and down and play instruments, but they would be recorded on the video camera so that Rusty could see it when he came home from work. It's like a fun thing.
Speaker 1:He wasn't like criticizing them, he was just like fun, like look what we did today Nice. Okay, I thought that was cute and cool. I thought you'd think that was weird, and you don't. You surprise me every day. Yeah, when Andrea wasn't homeschooling, she could be found baking late into the night or sewing costumes by hand. She wouldn't do this just for her own kids, but for her friends and their children as well. She was always helping out if they needed something.
Speaker 2:She's got some kind of social life. She's got friends outside of the house.
Speaker 1:When she's doing well, she really does have a little bit of a social life. At least she kept her distance, but she would do things. Andrea always had the best stocked diaper bag and stroller, docked diaper bag and stroller. One of the mothers that she would hang out with said that Andrea loved to nurture her children and that she never seemed like she was never in a rush. So yeah, when she was good she was good Like on. The Yates family eventually got into a good routine. On Wednesday nights Rusty would take one of the boys out for pizza, and Thursday nights was Mommy's Night Out, wherey would take one of the boys out for pizza, and Thursday nights was Mommy's Night Out, where Andrea would take one of the younger kids with her to go and do something.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mommy's Night Out sounds like she should be alone drinking wine or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mama's Night Out Pour me, another Moscato.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she rents out the pedal trolley alone.
Speaker 1:The family also studied the Bible together three nights a week in the living room. Rusty did not find a church that he liked, so he was growing less and less fond of organized religion, as we said before. And then Michael, the preacher guy, was still kind of around through letters and phone calls. At this point Rusty was starting to not really fall in line completely with the preacher. He did say in an interview that Andrea was intrigued by the whole repent or burn zeal. Yeah, she was kind of intrigued by that. Andrea would exchange letters with the preacher and his wife, michael, wrote in one letter to andrea that the role of the woman is derived from the sin of eve and bad children come from bad mothers. Andrea asked the preacher to write a letter to her parents trying to convert them from catholic it's weird that, like she was apparently raised catholic and needs more guilt, yeah like you know what catholic doesn't make me feel shitty enough?
Speaker 2:yeah, I need to get something that that's really pants me for the piece of shit I am. I.
Speaker 1:I don't get enough of that from Catholicism. Andrea's parents began to grow concerned after receiving this letter. Rusty was also taking note of all of this and like huh, okay, this is getting a little too much even for me.
Speaker 2:He introduced her to the concept.
Speaker 1:He did.
Speaker 2:This whole story is just like Frankenstein monsters being created yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:However, when he was interviewed and someone asked him about this, he kind of shrugged it off and he just said a guy can't complain that his wife is reading the Bible too much.
Speaker 2:Yes, you absolutely can.
Speaker 1:Yes, you can. Yes, you can, yes, you can.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would leave you in a heartbeat if you were like reading the Bible.
Speaker 1:Like seriously they're not religious in any way, though he is, so it's going to be different for him. Andrea was still taking her Haldol injections regularly. These injections have been up to twice a month now, instead of once a month. She's also seeing a social worker for her counseling. So she's around this time. Things are more or less stable. It's sort of being pushed under the rug, though. It's like not being handled. It's just there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if I can predict, you know, when a fire is contained, you throttle our baby on it, right?
Speaker 1:We're still in 1999, though. We're still in 1999, though. And at one point during this, within the eye of the storm, rusty asks Andrea what her mental illness was like Like. What's it like? And she just said very dark. And then she just didn't discuss it further and he never asked about it again, hitting the mic, mic pop, hitting the mic. So it's just by the end of 1999, andrea was seemingly happy again. It's all fixed, she's baking cookies, she's exercising.
Speaker 1:She felt so good that she took herself off of medication well, I don't know if she took herself off or if she spoke to her doctor about it, because her doctors did believe this was temporary as well. Like this was all like temporary. I mean just wait until you get better, yeah. While she was on medication and going through this ordeal, rusty and Andrea were using protection whenever they would become intimate with one another Coitus. Mm, hmm, but now that everything was better and she was off the medication, they stopped using protection okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to understand this logic. So you're aware that your wife is mentally ill?
Speaker 1:was is what he's thinking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at this moment when you're using the protection. You're using the contraceptives because you don't want to get pregnant. At that point they're deciding we don't want to get pregnant yes, they're not against birth control. Yeah, and they don't want to get pregnant, then because she's not okay?
Speaker 1:and of the medication she's on as well because of the hard medicine. It would affect her that the how, the how doll, I think would affect a pregnancy or be of concern they did not want to get pregnant while she was on medication. It's not temporary, we know now, but they did think it was. However, they see the pattern that every baby she has, she goes through this and she gets close to killing herself twice. So just, even if it's temporary, why go through it again?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even if you believe it's temporary, why risk doing it again? Yeah, why. It doesn't make sense to me this, yeah. So in the spring of 2000, andrea was pregnant again. Andrea's psychiatrist warned that if the depression did come back, it could be worse. But Rusty and Andrea, they were confident that they knew how to detect the warning signs now and were better prepared to handle it should it happen again.
Speaker 2:I'm asking what's worse than swallowing 40 pills and then putting a knife to your own neck?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we're going to find out what's worse than that yeah, exactly door number three yeah, andrea's mother and an old friend of andrea's from when she was a nurse back in the nursing days they also thought that another child was a bad idea. They were both in the same thought process of you already have four kids, why do you need another one? And there's a severe risk of postpartum depression. What are you doing? And the friend said in an interview that Rusty only cared about Rusty.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by Thanksgiving of 2000, andrea and Rusty had a baby girl, mary, born earlier that November. Now they have five children and Andrea was taking care of all of them, the household also trying to homeschool the oldest kids while taking care of the youngest baby, mary. Then Andrea's dad's health took a turn for the worst in the spring of 2001. Andrew's dad was hospitalized. Even though Andrew was very busy, she had the baby and all the kids and everything going on. She never missed a day at the hospital to visit and care for her dad. She would bring the kids with her.
Speaker 2:She was making it happen.
Speaker 1:The hospital eventually sent her dad home to spend his final days in his house with his family. Yeah, it was like a send-off situation. The night he died, Andrea went over to her parents' house to see them after he had passed away, but she just could not handle it. It was too devastating for her and she soon left. After the death of her dad, Andrea threw herself into the Bible even more. She became harsher with her kids.
Speaker 1:Andrea was constantly holding Mary, but she wouldn't feed her. Yeah, she stopped talking and would go days without drinking liquids. She began scratching her head to baldness again.
Speaker 2:This is only about three weeks since her dad's death nearly building up the tension andrea's psychiatrist suggested that she be re-hospitalized readmitted.
Speaker 1:She was sent to a different hospital this time because nasa didn't work well, the insurance again switched um, his job switched insurances, and so they had to go to a new place, and this place was the Devereux Texas Treatment Network. There's a few of them. This one is the one that's near League Texas.
Speaker 2:It just started picturing a hospital named after Blanche Devereux from Golden Girls, I started cracking up the idea that there's a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming it's pronounced Devereux because of how it's spelled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure it is I didn't look into it.
Speaker 1:D-E-V-E-R-E-U-X. Yeah, devereux.
Speaker 2:I just think it's funny you just pictured Blanche Devereux. Blanche Devereux. Come on, come on in we'll help you.
Speaker 1:Asylum for the criminally insane or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, she's not criminal yet yeah, well, she's getting there she's almost there the system's getting her there, though slowly, on its cart, on its tracks this is why I'm calling out the name here.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is the tipping point. March 31st 2001. Andrea refuses to leave the house. She's supposed to be going to Devereaux today. Okay, andrea's brother comes to help and Rusty and Andrea. Andrea refuses to leave the house. She's supposed to be going to Devereaux today.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Andrea's brother comes to help and Rusty and Andrea's brother have to drag her into the truck. Then they have to drag her into the facility and Andrea refuses to sign the forms she won't admit herself in right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what do you do? Well, the psychiatrist and the staff are like all right, we will write letters to a Texas judge and we will say that you need to be confined to the Austin State Hospital because your condition is dangerous. So you either do that or you come to this private facility. Which one yeah. After some convincing, Andrea complies and she checks herself in.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Now she finally admitted herself in, but she obviously didn't want to. She was clearly not really given a choice which she needed to go. I agree she had to get there. The psychiatrist at Devereaux is Dr Mohamed Saeed.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm calling him out. I don't really like him. He asked her or asked Rusty for Andrea's medical history, and Rusty told him what he knew. But he also was like, can you get it though?
Speaker 2:He didn't get her chart. Yes, from the previous physician.
Speaker 1:Right, right and Rusty in his, the husband's, like.
Speaker 2:so what are we dealing with here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and Rusty was like I'll tell you what I know is everything I know, but like, can you please get her information though, so you can see it all?
Speaker 2:It's like all the medicine, all the things I don't know, yeah.
Speaker 1:So Rusty was even like. This is weird. I don't like this. Eventually, dr Saeed did receive some of her records, but not all of them. Okay, I don't know what happened there. Know what happened there after receiving the little bit extra. Now again, rusty does not know about visions and auditory hallucinations. He doesn't know so he would never say anything about that this is what you would find in her records yeah, so she, she was.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, she did tell her yeah previous physicians she yeah, that's how in some of her notes anyway.
Speaker 1:Um, but after reading again he only got some of her records. But after reading it he wrote in his notes no new info. So then dr saeed decided, after the minimal background information he has on andrea, that he didn't want her to be on haldol. He didn't like that medication. Yeah, so he's changing her medication without even knowing the full extent of everything.
Speaker 1:Yep, rusty really disagreed and he was like no, no, no, no, no, we're keeping her on that. I don't agree with this. Like we've been through this, this is the only thing that really seems to help her at all. So Dr Saeed decided to keep her on there for a little bit. However, he discontinued the prescription just after three weeks.
Speaker 2:Okay, so he just weaned her off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he said he was concerned about flat face, which was a side effect. Okay, and I looked into it. So I first searched side effects of Haldol and this does not come up as like a normal on the list thing. It's not on the list, it's not even on a rare part of the list. So then I looked up does Haldol have a side effect of flat face? And then something did come up. It said flat face question mark. Do you think it's called mask face question mark? So I think that's the same thing, because 90s versus 2025, whatever. However, it's so rare that it doesn't come up on its own. It's like a rare, rare one and there's other side effects that are more common than this okay so I've I'm calling bullshit like he could have used anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anything. Just too rare of a side effect to be that concerned over now. Dr saeed, he did only speak during a pre hearing and during this pretrial hearing he mentioned that he based his decision about the medication on the limited responses that he was getting from Andrea. She barely spoke.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Exactly. That doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1:He said I did not see any evidence of psychosis and I have a notation that he saw from the little bit of background that he did get on her, a notation that said she denied hallucinations and delusions. So sure, maybe somewhere she did deny it, but if you don't have the full records then you don't see where she said she did see them or hear them. The doctor said that she never spoke about her inner torment and while she was at the hospital she watched videos about drug addiction. That's what he had her do, yeah.
Speaker 2:But she wasn't a substance abuser, exactly I mean the drug she was prescribed she took.
Speaker 1:but he doesn't make sense. So that was what he said in his pretrial hearing. That was his excuse for things. Okay, yeah, and the reason the hospital said that she was watching this drug addiction video was because it's therapeutic and offers coping skills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right.
Speaker 1:Yep, it took Andrea 10 days to start feeding herself again.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I don't know if this was another suicide attempt or what, but she wasn't really feeding herself. She was needed to be, like kind of fed.
Speaker 2:Spoon fed yeah.
Speaker 1:After she was feeding herself. Apparently that was enough, and Dr Saeed discharged her. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She can hold a spork, yeah, let her out Bye.
Speaker 1:Even her medicine was known at the time to not be very stable yet, like they were still kind of figuring out what this cocktail should be, but she could eat, so bye.
Speaker 2:Mission accomplished.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the doctor told Rusty that he calculated the risk and that Rusty would be able to take care of her and she would just do better at home.
Speaker 2:I mean he builds machines that go to space. He can handle a sad woman.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm sorry, but as a nanny, this came straight to my head and I'm sure mothers out there are, like there's five children at home. What, and is Rusty not going to work every day, then what the fuck? What I'm not going to work every day, then what the fuck? What I'm not going to heal at all or rest at all? What, again, the fuck.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, men, making decisions for women never works Period. It doesn't work. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it doesn't work for you, it's worked for us, okay, it's worked out us Okay, it's worked out fine for us Speak the truth, yeah. Sorry.
Speaker 1:It's okay, I hate you. Back at home. Andrea refuses to even get a housekeeper. She doesn't want extra help for anything, because that would admit that she was a failure at running her own home. So she's a bad mother if she can't do her own shit.
Speaker 2:Making virtues out of suffering.
Speaker 1:Rusty was able to have his mom, dora, come from Tennessee and help though, so Dora was staying at like a nearby motel and she would help Andrea with the children during the day while Rusty was at work. Okay, on May 3rd of 2001, andrea and her mother-in-law and the kids all went for a walk. After they returned home, noah the oldest saw Andrea turn the water on in the bathtub and begin drawing a bath. Noah told his grandmother about it and dora went and turned off the water. Dora asked andrea why she was filling up the tub, because it wasn't like bath time yeah and andrea said I might need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, dora drained the tub.
Speaker 2:She took care of that oh, she did, that was done.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's not the Okay. Nope, I know Edging. Yeah, oh God, I don't like this. There was another time Andrea's friend dropped off some food to her, but the friend said that Andrea would not let her inside. And this friend also said that Rusty wasn't really too big on pills. So I'm wondering if, like Rusty would say things you know some people like oh, you don't need pills.
Speaker 1:All in your head, it's all in your head. You know what, out of all the times I've heard that, you know how much happier my 20s would have been had I just fucking taken the pills. I worked out. I ate, right. I ran like 15 miles a day to chill out. You know what helps me chill out my medicine. It's the best. So yeah, it is all in your fucking head, but your head is strong and you need help sometimes.
Speaker 1:I hate people like that, anyway, but Andrea's friend wasn't much better either, because I guess back in 1999, this friend was talking torea when she had her first little breakdown well breakdown, yeah, and was like maybe you're possessed by the devil I mean, maybe she was you know well, whatever, yeah, so andrea's friend at this time in 2001 was like maybe it's a demon, it's not, but like, get that out of andrea's head. So this is happening all in andrea's world here, so stupid humans are so funny god.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, after all these weird things happening, rusty spoke to the doctors at devereaux again and they agreed that andrea should be readmitted. So a quick little recap here. She was first admitted to devereaux like march 31st. The end of March Spent a few weeks. There was discharged.
Speaker 2:Because she could eat again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as soon as she could eat again. Then she was back at the hospital roughly the first week, maybe into the second week of May, like May 5th, 6th somewhere in that time frame. So it's been like a few weeks, it's been a spring.
Speaker 2:Yes, spring is wrong.
Speaker 1:Now this time at Devereaux, Andrea's roommate said that she was eerily mute and her eyes were very wide and she looked like a scared person.
Speaker 2:Sounds like she barely spoke anyway. Yeah, like the doctor's, like she didn't, she didn't speak much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the roommate's name is Lori, and Lori said that there were rules that Rusty didn't follow, that he couldn't just come in whenever he wanted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I understand and he did. Why didn't the staff stop him?
Speaker 1:I don't know, but Lori said that that was—this is an interview that Lori said Okay, right, I don't know. Lori also said that her parents, lori's parents, would come to family group therapy sessions and they said that they would see Rusty there. They told Lori this and Rusty would dominate the conversations and he would answer questions that the counselor would ask Andrea directly. But they also said that Andrea wouldn't even nod her head when asked a question okay, maybe he's answering, because she just won't yeah I.
Speaker 1:I don't know what rusty's doing in that situation. So again we. Rusty seems to be a polarizing person I'm not a fan. I'll just say that yeah, as andrea was in hospital, her medicine began to stabilize and she was on a combination of Haldol and antidepressants. She seemed to be doing better. They were still doing suicide checks every 15 to 20 minutes though, okay, but she was doing better. When the doctors asked her the routine question of are you having thoughts of suicide, she finally answered no. I say routine questions.
Speaker 2:If you've been in any sort of mental health world, that's a standard question is like do you have thoughts of suicide?
Speaker 1:Do you have thoughts of harming others? You have that you just kind of go through the list yeah, may 14th 2001. When Rusty came to visit, he found Andrea waiting by the nurse's station, ready to go home.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, She'd been released and the doctor wrote in his notes that she still appeared depressed but was eating and sleeping much better. Yeah, Other hospital workers noted that in her group therapy sessions she still barely even said her name. The nurses noted that her mood was somber and her judgment was still impaired.
Speaker 2:However, she was showering and eating with minimal prompting, so she was ready to go, she still had to be told to do it, yeah.
Speaker 1:One month after her release. We're in early June of 2001 now. Andrea's psychiatrist still, dr Saeed took Haldol out of her medicine lineup. So once she's out in the world he starts to wean her off of it.
Speaker 1:And then he's switching up her meds a little bit here. Rusty said that he was going to the pharmacist like multiple times a week trying to keep up with all the changes he was making. Yes, on June 18th Andrea and Rusty had an appointment with Dr Saeed and Rusty told Dr Saeed that Andrea was declining and that he was concerned. Rusty also said that he was getting more and more frustrated. He just was like I'm getting annoyed because whenever Andrea makes a little progress, it'd be followed by a slightly faster decline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I said like an hour ago. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And he's like this is getting ridiculous, doc, but Dr Saeed was just still against using that Haldol. He's saying it was just a bad medication. Dr Saeed asked Andrea once again if she was suicidal and she said no. However, he never did ask if she felt like doing harm to others. He never asked that question, and that's standard.
Speaker 1:I go and see a therapist for anxiety and depression. It's like there's a list that you go through and you're almost like do you have harm, suicide, do you have thoughts of hurting others? Do you hear voices, do you see things? You just kind of go. It's just a part of the day that should be this way for him as well, and it's not. Also, as they were leaving his office, dr Saeed turns to Andrea and says that he's going to need her help as well and that she needs to find new ways of controlling her mind and to think positive thoughts. The following day, june 19th 2001, andrea watched cartoons in the living room and then later she joined in a round of basketball with Rusty and Noah in the garage. She took about 15 shots and then, without a word, went back inside and crawled into bed without changing her clothes.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:And she fell asleep and didn't wake up until the next morning.
Speaker 2:All right, I like that. This is also I just realized, but this is June of 2001.
Speaker 1:So we're also building towards the towers coming down.
Speaker 2:I know it's like this in the background.
Speaker 1:For me, this was the biggest news story in 2001 before 9-11 happened, oh, okay. These are the two news stories of 2001 that I remember Andrea Yates Spoiler Cut. These are the two things I remember in 2001. I won't spoil it this time. Andrea Yates and 9-11. Yeah, that defines my 2001.
Speaker 2:It's like, as she's planning what she's going to do in Texas, yeah. Those guys are all over the East Coast planning, yeah. Florida taking flying lessons and all that shit. Buying box cutters yeah.
Speaker 1:I forgot about the box cutters, anyway, sending back society by hundreds of years. The morning of June 20th 2001. Rusty noticed that Andrea was nervous in her movements. She seemed rushed and a bit erratic. Their son, john, asked rusty if he could finally go to work with him that day. Rusty could not take him that day because he had too many meetings, so he wasn't able to take his son. After Rusty checked to make sure that Andrea took her pills, he went off to work. Now Andrea is alone with her children from 9 am to 10 am. Dora, the mother-in-law, comes over at 10 am.
Speaker 2:Okay, she just got an hour.
Speaker 1:She got an hour alone with the kids.
Speaker 2:Okay, clock's ticking.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. As the children were eating breakfast, andrea called them into the bathroom, one at a time.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:She first calls in Paul. He's three years old.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And she proceeds to drown him in the bathtub.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:She holds him underwater and she said that he died quickly.
Speaker 2:Allegedly.
Speaker 1:She then carried Paul's body to her bed and tucked him under her maroon blanket and rested his head on the pillows. Next she called in two-year-old Luke and did the same thing Mm-hmm. And then five-year-old Luke did the same thing.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And then five-year-old John, same thing. And then baby sister Mary was next. Now Mary has been with Andrea this whole time.
Speaker 2:Like being held by her.
Speaker 1:Andrea was distracting Mary with a bottle, okay, which she didn't really feed Mary ever, but she fed her. Yeah, andrea was distracting Mary with a bottle Okay. Which she didn't really feed Mary ever, but she fed her this time. Okay, so she wouldn't crawl away and Mary's only six months at this time.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So Mary was drowned. Noah is the oldest child, at seven and he's the last one Andrea calls him in. Mary was still in the bathtub floating with her face down. Noah sees this when he comes in and he asks his mom what's wrong with Mary? Then, realizing that something bad was happening, Noah tries to run away. Happening Noah tries to run away. Andrea chased him down and dragged him into the bathroom.
Speaker 1:She forced him face down and Noah, according to Andrea, came up for air twice, and when it was all done, andrea placed Mary's body in the bed along with her brothers that were already there, and she wrapped the boys' arms around their baby sister. However, she left Noah in the bathtub.
Speaker 2:Did she say why?
Speaker 1:I didn't see, huh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:After Andrea drowned all of her children, she repeatedly called 911. I read the call transcript. It's interesting. I'm not going to read it all, I'm going to give you some because it's just odd. She tells the operator her name, Andrea Yates Then she doesn't say what the problem is. The operator asks and Andrea says I just need them to come. And the operator asks if her husband is there and she says no. Then the operator asks what the problem? What's?
Speaker 2:the problem. What do you need?
Speaker 1:police fire paramedics and andrea again says she just needs them to come, and the operator's like I need to know what they're responding to. Then the operator asks if andrea is is ill, and andrea says yep, I'm ill. And then the operator asks do you need an ambulance? And andrea says no, I need a police officer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, send an ambulance okay yeah, and they just kind of go back and forth, back and forth a little bit, and then Andrea just keeps being weird. The operator asks are you alone? And Andrea says yes. Then a little later she says are you alone again? And Andrea says no, my sister's here. And it just ends on that. So you can tell that she's just not in a state of anything right now.
Speaker 2:Frenzied.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Andrea then calls Rusty at work. She tells him to come home. Rusty asks her if anyone was hurt and she said yes, it's the children, All of them. So he rushes home. Andrea was drinking a Diet Coke when she told the homicide sergeant what she did and why. She said she didn't hate the children and she wasn't mad at them. They just weren't developing correctly. Oh Right.
Speaker 2:That's not what I was expecting.
Speaker 1:They weren't developing correctly. When they asked her how long she had been considering the murders, she said for about two years. Oh, her first breakdown was in 99. She said for about two years, oh, her first breakdown was in 99.
Speaker 2:yeah, 2001, two years later and how old was the second youngest one, right before mary?
Speaker 1:two okay, so around the time that she had, yeah yeah okay, yeah so she said she'd been thinking about it for two years quote since I realized I have not been a good mother to them. Later on she would tell the jail doctors that nothing could mute the pattern. That said she was a lousy mother. The death of her children was her punishment, not theirs, and she saw it as a final act of mercy for them, not theirs. And she saw it as a final act of mercy for them. This is that christian, american, christian woo-woo bullshit that I don't like and don't support. It don't christianity, sure, fine, whatever, I don't give a shit. This american crazy shit. Here. We know the difference, we know. And if you don't know, then you're in it. Get out, sorry, I'm sick of it. Ruining our damn country. That's right. After andrea failed her children, she felt only an execution would rescue her from the evil inside of her okay right then, after the execution talk, she asks for a state-sanctioned exorcism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't do those.
Speaker 1:Well, she wanted it from the then-governor George W Bush. She says scripture taught her that the government is a minister of God. That's what she says. I don't read the Bible, but she said that scripture taught her that government is a minister of God. Andrea also told the doctors that she wanted her hair shaved so she could see the numbers 666 on her scalp. Yeah, she then said she wanted her hair cropped into the shape of a crown. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rusty visited Andrea two days after her arrest and he said that Andrea went from being like a zombie to just plain bizarre.
Speaker 1:Okay, she was like suspicious of him, kind of skeptical of him when he tried to introduce her to her lawyer she was not wanting to meet him, didn't have any interest in it, because she said, I'm not going to plead not guilty.
Speaker 2:Plead not guilty, I am guilty. I you know. She was just ready to rot in jail. Well, it sounds like she wants to be executed too, right? Right, I mean texas is yeah, yeah, they are not shy about killing their inmates mentally ill.
Speaker 1:She didn't give a shit at this time. She was like I'm, I'm done. Yep, I did it, I'm done.
Speaker 2:Here it is that's the one, the one spot where Texas is like not discriminatory. They will kill any and everyone in their jail cells.
Speaker 1:Yep Andrea was charged with five counts of capital murder in 2002 and convicted to life in prison with possibility of parole in 40 years.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's shocking. Shocking, what do you mean? She killed five people.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's shocking.
Speaker 2:Shocking. What do you mean? She killed five people.
Speaker 1:Oh, that she didn't get the death penalty.
Speaker 2:Well, it's shocking that in Texas I guess they are a little discriminatory they don't want to kill women as much as they do men in. Texas because chivalry. But I mean it's weird that she would michigan life without parole, let alone five. I know this is in michigan, I'm just giving a counterpoint. But like there are five premeditated murders and she's still as eligible for parole, yeah, I thought that was strange too if only she had been a minority who shot a guy at 7-elevenven, then she would have gotten the death penalty in Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the judge was, I guess, pushing for the death penalty. I don't really know. I didn't dive too deep into the actual trial because there's another one. We will get into it, but I didn't get into all the nitty gritty like the actual legal terms and the paperwork and the sentencing conviction and the pleas and the guilty and the not guilty. I didn't really it doesn't matter. There's bigger things here. Sorry to you, I apologize, but I think what happened was she went in wanting to be punished, basically wanting to be executed, and wanting these things. I think over time of her sitting there. You know it's 2002 by this time.
Speaker 2:I'm sure she had all kinds of psychiatric evaluations, whether she's competent or not competent.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And her having a will that's contrary to what society says, by definition makes her mentally ill, Right?
Speaker 1:So so, and Rusty also is like supportive of his wife during this time.
Speaker 1:He's mentally ill though he you know, dusty also is supportive of his wife during this time. He's mentally ill, though I mean we'll get into the way he thinks, and his story is quite a tragedy as well, if you think about it. He's just in all of this. While she was in prison, she was still delusional. She was telling authorities that she was telling everyone the authorities and everyone that she'd been planning to kill her kids for two years in order to save them from eternal damnation.
Speaker 2:So she had a daughter to kill it.
Speaker 1:You're right.
Speaker 2:So she had one, just to kill it For two years she had another.
Speaker 1:She said that her children were not righteous.
Speaker 2:Whose fault would that be?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, right, she is at fault in her own way. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right, she is at fault in her own way.
Speaker 1:Well, she goes on to say 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.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'll buy all that, but then why'd you stop?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why didn't you kill yourself? And you again profess that you deserve to be executed because what you did is so bad. And well, why did you call down one at all? Yeah, I don't know, can't answer that.
Speaker 1:Rusty did divorce Andrea in 2002, even though he gave her support, he still divorced her.
Speaker 1:He did remarry and have another child that also ended in divorce. So there's that. Now here's how the retrial happened. March 14th of 2002 this is in the window of andrea was convicted of murder, but the sentencing hasn't officially happened yet. So there was a psychiatrist that was brought into the trial by the prosecution, and the psychiatrist informed the district attorney's office that he gave an incorrect answer during his cross-examination. In his original testimony, the psychiatrist said that he consulted on an episode of Law and Order that concerned a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children in a bathtub and was found insane. He said that this show aired shortly before the Yates murders occurred.
Speaker 2:Before Before.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he's saying in his testimony that she wanted to kill her kids and is using this as a way to get away with it.
Speaker 2:That she's saying she was inspired, and she was inspired by this episode. She's faking, essentially.
Speaker 1:Yes, now, the defense also used this episode in their case, but in the opposite way. They're like well, in the episode they show that the woman is insane, though which our person is Like, it's the same thing, you're right. They basically were like yeah, you're right, she's insane. And so this testimony was used quite a bit in the first trial, just back and forth.
Speaker 1:So, they had to do a retrial quite a bit in the first trial, just back and forth. Yeah, so they had to do a retrial. The psychiatrist said that the Law Order producers conducted a search of the show's 269 episodes and they told him that they couldn't find any episode with a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children in a bathtub.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It doesn't exist.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:The psychiatrist said that he must have misremembered a false memory. Wait a minute. The psychiatrist gave himself a false memory that he testified on and they didn't check beforehand that it actually existed.
Speaker 2:So he testified during the trial that he was a. How did law and order even come up?
Speaker 1:Because he is a consultant on law and order. That's how the false memory came up. Okay, okay, that part. I was like how?
Speaker 2:do you come up with that you have a false job?
Speaker 1:No, no, no, that's a real thing, he does consulting for Law Order.
Speaker 2:He does and he does watch Law Order as well. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:And so he said that he just honestly misremembered put the two together I thought the whole consulting too, was a false memory. I'm like how do you?
Speaker 2:forget that you worked for law. Like he's crazy, like that's not a false memory. He's a crazy person. If you, I'm a doctor who works for a law and order, hollywood pays me big bucks. Sir, you're crazy. You're not a doctor. You never worked for law and order. You don't know dick wolf uh, yes.
Speaker 1:So during the retrial the focus was very different. It was not on order, it was on andrea's mental health and not what influenced her to carry out the murders. So public opinion also had a major influence on the retrial, because when she was first sent or convicted a few weeks earlier, I remember even my mom talking about it being like, well, yeah, she watched Law and Order and that's what made her think of this. I remember people talking about the show and thinking that, yeah, that was the springboard to all of this. But then this happened. So the public outcry was like no, no, we're not focusing on the right thing. We need to focus on the postpartum depression of it all. We need to focus on how she was not treated correctly for her medical issue. She just wasn't treated correctly and women's health overall needs a spotlight. So this was kind of that In this retrial. Andrea was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity in July of 2006. So it must have taken a few years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't look into all of the nitty-gritty trial. This is a long enough podcast yeah, we got the bullet points.
Speaker 1:The judge sent her to curvil state hospital, where she continues to live today. In 2006, rusty was visiting andrea every wednesday, wednesday and Friday, with weekly calls thrown in there as well. During one of these visits, andrea told Rusty that it felt like a fog was being lifted. She was now finally stable and on proper medication. For a while at first, andrea was not allowed to see photos or videos of her kids, but once she was able to, rusty would have her hear recordings. He'd bring videos, pictures. Rusty also cataloged their memories in like a digital memorial site. I'll link it in the show notes if you want to see it. It's it's. It's a public space for a husband and a father to like mourn his life, and he has little pages for each of the kids and says what they like to do. It was just. It's a nice little moment in time and andrea does have access to the, so I think he probably keeps it up for himself and for her to see. So if you want it, the website, it'll be in the show notes, take a look.
Speaker 2:Is it still like frequently updated or is it kind of just?
Speaker 1:I don't know how frequently it's updated. I looked at it today and yesterday, but it doesn't really have anything on there that needs updating.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I didn't look at it super long because I actually started crying, but he doesn't really have anything on there that needs updating. Okay, so he makes it a memorial site?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I didn't look at it super long because I actually started crying because I mean these kids, you see their faces, you see their photos and you see how much Rusty loved them and the love that's there. And you hear how Rusty uses memories with Andrea too, or you read Like he's saying you, you know from john's perspective, you know I loved when mom and I would do this and I loved when mommy would do this with me, like it's just he's making it a point to have a positive space for them, and that's confusing and that's conflicting and that's there's a lot of a lot of layers to that I don't know what I would do yeah, ultimately, who gives a shit?
Speaker 2:if you're not, him, like who cares?
Speaker 1:yeah, he's not doing anything wrong yeah, it's yeah, the yates children are buried near a stream of running water at the forest park east cemetery. Rusty visits them often. He'll talk out loud to his children and he really wishes he would have let John come to work with him that day.
Speaker 2:I bet that sticks. Once again meetings, Pointless fucking meetings. That's why he couldn't save John, because he had to go to meetings. But jumping forward to 2024, Rusty will still speak about the incident in, like interviews and whatnot, not often you know, but like yeah, often there's new stuff come up about it.
Speaker 1:He has forgiven Andrea. He will still talk to her about once a month. Again, she's still at the Kerrville State Hospital. Rusty is around 60 now and he still works for NASA. Rusty still says that Andrea was a wonderful mother. He just doesn't In 2001.
Speaker 2:That's a bad mother.
Speaker 1:Well, and this is where it gets confusing right.
Speaker 2:In 2001,.
Speaker 1:Rusty was very infamously skeptical of Andrea's postpartum depression. He was like I think there's a quote he says depressed people just need a swift kick in the pants.
Speaker 1:He said that, but now he's evolved his beliefs and he likens it to something more physical like a heart attack or you know, if I had a heart attack while I was driving my car and I crashed and killed someone, I wouldn't be sentenced to murder or like convicted of murder. That's how he's viewing this. He doesn't. He doesn't view that andrea could control what she did. Now does that mean that everyone believes and agrees with that? I'm not saying yes or no. It's again very polarizing. It's something to talk about, you don't know. What's interesting, though, is that andrea, she can have a hearing every year to determine if she can be released from the hospital in there every year she refuses.
Speaker 2:Okay, she doesn't believe she can be out yeah, because, and I don't know I don't know how they are in Texas, but in Michigan if you're found not guilty by reason of insanity and a judge sentences you to psychiatric care, it's essentially indefinite until the physicians tell the court. We think this person is well and rehabilitated enough.
Speaker 1:It sounded like that was similar. I didn't look heavily into it, but from what I read it seems similar that it would be up to the hospital staff. Not up to those, because you're not punishing them.
Speaker 2:In theory, you're putting them in the hospital to get well, yes, so there's no like punitive, like well, you killed someone, so you still got to serve 10 years regardless or whatever. It's like no, if they're well in three months, theoretically they're free in three months months.
Speaker 1:Theoretically, yeah, they're free in three months. But Andrea says no, I don't want to do it. And I looked up when her most recent one was and the one I could find was last year and she said no last year. So she just doesn't want to be released. Andrea is a year older than Rusty. She's like 60 or 61 now, living quietly. She spends most of her days making greeting cards and other crafts.
Speaker 2:She's postmenopausal, so she can't recreate her crime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, her crafts are usually featuring rainbows and butterflies. She sells them at shows, like at art shows and festivals, and all of the proceeds from her crafts go to the Yates Children's Memorial Fund and that helps people that are suffering from postpartum depression. So, yeah, that's it Cool, we're done with the Yates family.
Speaker 2:The Yates family.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I just think it's important to bring that one up because a lot of people don't want to talk about it because it's so bad. But yet we'll sit here and talk about people like John List and like axe murderers all day. Why is this one so much worse? It's because a mother does it to her children, but a father doing it to their children isn't that bad Like this needs to be talked about. I just I don't know. I get frustrated when people will talk about all this other true crime.
Speaker 1:But why is it different? Yeah, it made me cry, so did other shit that men have done Like it all makes me cry.
Speaker 2:This one isn't any different. You know none of.
Speaker 1:It's like nothing really affects me I mean, I understand if, like, a parent doesn't do any true crime that involves children. In general, that makes sense. I, I can see that, but it's when you're okay with other true crime family murders but not this one. I've noticed that and I'm like why? Why?
Speaker 2:yeah, talk about all kinds of not specifically, but I mean we touched on jonestown and yeah obviously there was hundreds of parents who killed yeah their own kids at once, like yeah, hundreds of mobs who squirted poison into their kids mouths.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's part of depression. I'm not, I'm not linking, but I'm oh no, no, no, just'm just saying general filicide of parents killing their kids happens. Women do it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, you just.
Speaker 2:I've written I don't know between five and ten stories over the years of women who have killed their kids.
Speaker 1:Usually it's intentional, but important too, because, like I've been a nanny for a lot of people and I've been an infant nanny for a lot of women and a lot of women have had postpartum depression and they've been ashamed of it and they've said it to me in whispers of like have you been with anyone? Have you been with any other mothers who have felt this way and did it?
Speaker 1:and I'm just like, oh my god, yes, they've all gone through it. I'm telling you, mothers right now you've all gone through it on different levels, but you've all done it, so don't feel ashamed to speak up about it. It's okay to take a break from your kids. It's okay to fucking hate your kids for two seconds Don't hate them forever but to have a two-second moment where you just want to scream and walk away. Then do it Walk away. Walk away Like that's what you're taught when you're in child care. You're taught to take a break from those children, that they will push you to your limit, that you will want to hit them. You will want to, like, shake them. These are natural things that you're going to feel. You are, because your kid is going to cry and cry and cry and be a little bitch and you can't do anything about it. So walk away, that's it.
Speaker 1:Or don't have tea in the first place, yeah, or don't have any in the first place, but if you do decide to walk away and doom scroll, you can follow us on instagram at borrowed bones podcast. Also, listen to us wherever you know apple spotify. Please make sure you're rating, sharing us, us, liking us, whatever us. I don't know All the us's, but yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye.
