Holmes ignored him, pointedly crossing the small room to put as much distance between them as possible. “I was very frustrated at the lack of care I felt she was receiving,” Holmes had earlier told the jury about her friend, who now faces the death penalty for drowning her five children in the family bathtub last summer.
Holmes’s complaints about what she saw as Rusty Yates’s failure to get timely psychiatric help for his wife came during testimony that often depicted him as a controlling and domineering husband. Rusty Yates himself, who spent two days giving evidence for the defense before Holmes took the stand, has rejected this portrayal, saying he and his wife were partners in all major marital decisions. He also told the jury that his wife had never told him about the voices and visions she claimed had led to the killings.
Nonetheless, the end of Thursday’s proceedings left at least some in court believing that the 37-year-old NASA engineer may have failed his wife in the darkest moments of her greatest need. “I feel horrible for Andrea Yates,” says Susie Tritter, a Houston woman who attended the trial on Thursday. “I can’t help but think his demeanor contributed to her illness. I don’t think he helped.”
The tragic details of the Yates case are well-known. On June 20, the former nurse and stay-at-home mom called police to her suburban home and stoically told them she had just drowned her children, ages 6 months to 7 years. She had a long history of mental illness: two previous suicide attempts and four psychiatric hospitalizations since 1999. In a confession to police, Yates said she killed her children because she thought she was a bad mother and that they were hopelessly damaged. She also told a jail psychiatrist that she believed she was Satan and that her children could only be saved if they were killed and she were punished.
Her attorneys say that Andrea Yates drowned her children during a severe psychotic state; she has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors dispute the insanity claim, however, and say that although she may have been mentally ill at the time, she knew killing her children was wrong.
During his much-anticipated testimony, Rusty Yates explained how his shy, quiet wife showed no signs of depression during their first few years of marriage. After their first son was born in 1994, Andrea Yates quit her job as a nurse at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and had decided to stay at home with her new son. “We just wanted a more traditional family,” Rusty Yates testified. “Man is the breadwinner and the woman is the homemaker.”
In late 1996, he told the jury, the couple decided to live “a simpler life.” They and their two children moved out of their new home and into a 38-foot trailer. A short time later, they traded in the RV for an old GMC bus that had been converted into a mobile home. Rusty Yates testified that although his wife liked their original house, he wanted to try living in the trailer. Andrea Yates agreed to do so. But Holmes, a former coworker of Andrea Yates who says the two were like sisters, testified that she thought the RV lifestyle was too stressful for her friend. Holmes recalled asking Andrea over a McDonald’s hamburger one day if Rusty was helping out more with the children as his family grew. “She said, ‘Well, Debbie, you know how Rusty is,’ which meant he wasn’t helping out,” Holmes told the jury.
Andrea Yates’s mental health quickly declined after the birth of their fourth child, Luke, in 1999. When the baby was four months old, Andrea tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of her ailing father’s sedative medication. She was hospitalized in June for six days, but brought back to the hospital the next month after her husband found her holding a knife to her neck.
Diagnosed with major depression with psychotic features, Andrea Yates was placed on the powerful antipsychotic drug Haldol. She was back to her normal self by August, Rusty testified. The couple also decided to give up the so-called simple life and move into a modest home in Clear Lake near NASA. But “normal” was a hectic lifestyle that included only three hours of free time a week for his wife. She had started home schooling their oldest child, Noah, and was helping care for her father in addition to her four young children. During counseling sessions, Andrea Yates would tell her therapist that she felt inadequate in her roles as wife and mother, and that Rusty criticized her organizational skills. “She felt she was not living up to standards that were appropriate,” social worker Earline Wilcott, told the jury.
Wilcott and Holmes also testified that during this time, Andrea Yates told them that she would stop taking her Haldol because she was pregnant with the couple’s fifth child–despite warnings by her previous psychiatrist that having more children would put her at great risk of future psychosis. The couple had agreed, however, that they would have as many children as God would allow, according to testimony. “I asked her, ‘Wouldn’t it be better for your children to have a live mother than for you not to take your medicine and possibly slit your throat?’” said Holmes. But she got no response, “which meant she didn’t want to talk about it.”
However, Rusty Yates testified that all seemed fine until early 2001, just months after Andrea gave birth to her fifth child, Mary. Already seeming depressed, Andrea became significantly worse in March after the death of her father, Andrew Kennedy, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. Yates said his wife became like a robot, refusing to eat, talking rarely and often staring into space.
Holmes, who had warned her friend against having another child because of her illness following Luke’s birth, said she also noticed a deterioration in her friend’s mental health. But when she took her concerns to Rusty Yates, she says, he seemed to dismiss them. “I called Rusty on three different occasions,” said Holmes. “I said I think she needs to see a doctor. He said, ‘I think she’s just having anticipatory guilt over the loss of her father.’ And we’d go back and forth.”
About this time, Holmes said, she began keeping a diary of Andrea Yates’s declining condition. She said her sister urged her to write down her observations “in case something bad happens.” Andrea’s health continued to worsen, Holmes said, and she became desperate for Rusty to take action. “I called her husband and I was crying and sobbing and saying she needed help now. I didn’t mean next week,” Holmes told the jury members, who feverishly took notes.
Rusty Yates told the jury that he called his wife’s previous psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, who urged him to bring his wife back to the hospital. He decided the facility was too far away, so he settled on the closer Devereux Texas Treatment Network, where Andrea was admitted on March 31. Rusty Yates testified that during that stay, he asked his wife’s doctor to put her back on Haldol. The psychiatrist, Dr. Mohammed Saeed, refused, however, and she was only slightly better when released 12 days later. (Saeed is expected to testify that he did not believe Yates was psychotic at that time.)
Holmes says she visited the Yates house regularly, bringing meals and helping Rusty’s mother take care of Andrea and the children. But she saw virtually no improvement in her friend, who by this time spent hours nervously pacing around the house and rarely bathing. Holmes again tearfully begged Rusty Yates to take his wife back to the hospital, who agreed to return her to Devereux. Again, Andrea Yates was released after just 10 days and showing little improvement, Rusty Yates testified. Holmes said she learned of her friend’s release when she arrived at the Yates home to visit the children and found Andrea there, too. She said she continued to visit her friend, although Andrea said virtually nothing during those times.
Holmes said she last visited the house on June 13, when she found her friend’s detached, zombielike mental state “unbelievable.” Rusty Yates testified that three days later, his wife woke up screaming from a nightmare of feeling “trapped.” Four days after that dream, Holmes got a call from a coworker who had asked if she had seen the news about Yates drowning her children. “I fell on the floor and was screaming,” Holmes told the jury as she began to weep on the witness stand. “I was screaming, ‘That can’t be my Andrea. That can’t be my Andrea’.”
Throughout Holmes’s testimony, Andrea Yates showed no emotion and often looked away from her friend. Holmes smiled at her several times. Defense attorneys say they expect to wrap up their case in the middle of next week, calling at least one more expert witness to testify that Yates was insane at the time she drowned her children. A neuropsychologist has already testified that he believes Yates suffers from schizophrenia.
The state is expected to call at least one rebuttal witness–forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz of Newport Beach, Calif. Dietz, who helped convince a jury that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sane, is expected to testify that Andrea Yates knew the difference between right and wrong when she drowned her children.
Experts on both sides are expected to attach significance to Rusty Yates’s relationship with his wife during testimony. When asked by defense attorney George Parnham if she was fond of her friend’s spouse, Holmes paused for several seconds then said, “That’s irrelevant. That’s her husband.” Holmes and Rusty Yates may not agree on much, but they do seem to agree on one point: the Andrea who killed her children is not the same Andrea they knew and loved.
