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Psychiatrist Says Yates Thought Deaths Were Right

HOUSTON (AP) ― Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub because she thought she had ruined them so much that one son would grow up to be a serial killer and another would be a mute gay prostitute, a forensic psychiatrist testified Wednesday.

Dr. Phillip Resnick, who first evaluated Yates about three weeks after the June 2001 drownings, said she knew her actions were illegal because she expected to be executed, based on her delusion that Satan was inside her and also had to be killed. But she didn't know killing the youngsters was wrong because she was trying to save them from hell, Resnick said.

In her psychotic mind, Yates thought all of them -- 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John, 3-year-old Paul, 2-year-old Luke and even 6-month-old Mary -- were unrighteous and defective and would grow up to be criminals, Resnick told jurors.

"If she did not intervene and take their lives while they were still innocent, they would end up in hell," he said, testifying as a defense rebuttal witness. "Mrs. Yates knew what she was doing was right for her children. ... This was defeating Satan."

Yates, 42, is being retried because an appeals court overturned her 2002 capital murder conviction on the grounds that some erroneous testimony may have influenced jurors. Yates, charged in only three of the children's deaths, has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

If convicted, she will be sentenced to life in prison. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released -- although jurors are not allowed to know that.

Her attorneys say she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and meets Texas' definition of insanity: that a severe mental illness prevents someone who is committing a crime from knowing it is wrong.

Resnick, who also examined other psychiatrists' interviews with Yates, told jurors that she said when the children had been coloring fire trucks, she thought Satan was sending her a message that they would end up in hell. Another time when she was in a mental hospital and saw a fire extinguisher, she thought Satan was tormenting her about her children going to hell and becoming criminals, Resnick said.

Yates also thought Luke, who had difficulty talking, would grow up to become a mute, Resnick said. She blew normal parental concerns about childhood developmental issues out of proportion, he said.

Although she had thoughts of harming her children in 1999, she instead tried to commit suicide twice to protect them, he said. But by 2001, Yates decided to save their souls instead of saving their lives, although the outcome was worse for her, Resnick said.

Yates called 911 after drowning the children, told police what she had done and led them to the bodies -- further evidence she thought her actions were right, said Resnick, a psychiatry professor at Case Western Reserve University medical school in Cleveland.

Under cross-examination, Resnick acknowledged that Yates' question during an interview with a jail psychiatrist the day after the drownings, "Are they in heaven?" could indicate doubts about what she had done. But Resnick said he thought she was questioning whether the children had arrived in heaven yet.

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