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Psychiatrist:
Yates considered ways to kill kids HOUSTON — Andrea Yates had visions and heard voices encouraging her use a knife to kill her five children, but she decided it was “too bloody,” a jail psychiatrist testified Monday. As testimony resumed in the second week of Yates’ capital murder trial, Dr. Melissa Ferguson said under cross-examination that Yates also ruled out drugs to kill her children, but believed drugs were possible for suicide. Ferguson interviewed the Houston mother at the Harris County Jail the day after her children were drowned in their bathtub June 20. “Do you remember her making a statement, ’After thinking about my options, I decided drowning would be the best way to end their life’?” assistant district attorney Kaylynn Williford asked. Yates said “something about drowning, that drowning was the way,” Ferguson replied. Asked by Williford if she recalled Yates saying, “I decided a knife was too bloody,” Ferguson said yes. Ferguson testified Yates told her she thought about killing her children for at least three months and thought about it the night before the children were drowned. Other testimony this week is expected to include doctors who treated Yates before the killings. Yates is on trial for two counts of capital murder for the deaths of three of her five children. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the deaths of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and 6-month-old Mary. Charges could eventually be filed in the deaths of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2. Yates’ attorneys contend the former nurse turned stay-at-home mother is innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Ferguson testified Friday that Yates thought she had been marked by Satan, that killing her children was the only way to save her children from the torment of hell, and that Yates believed the state would destroy Satan when it punished her for her children’s deaths. ”‘My children weren’t righteous,”’ Ferguson said Yates told her. ”‘They stumbled because I was evil.”’ ”‘I deserve to be punished. I am guilty,”’ she quoted Yates as saying. Prosecutors had finished their case earlier Friday after four days of testimony from police officers, homicide detectives, a crime scene specialist and the 911 operator who took Yates’ call. Prosecutors presented an audio taped statement Yates made to police. In it she detailed how she waited until her husband left for work to fill the tub. Jurors also viewed photos of the children’s bodies. In Texas, a person is presumed sane and it is up to the defense to prove a defendant is insane. During opening statements, prosecutors said Yates knew what she was doing was a sin and, therefore, that it was wrong. Yates medical records from 1999 detail two suicide attempts following Luke’s birth and a doctor’s warning that she should think twice before having additional children. They also include a mention that Yates had her first homicidal thought following Noah’s birth. If jurors determine Yates was insane, a separate hearing will be held to determine if she will be released or involuntarily committed. |
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