Russell Yates testifies on wife’s mental state
By Joel Anderson
Associated Press

HOUSTON— The husband of Andrea Yates testified Thursday that she never told him she heard voices and saw visions that she later claimed led her to drown their five children.

“She kind of described it as a dark period, that she was in a dark place,” Russell Yates said, referring to his wife’s two suicide attempts two years before the June 20 slayings.

“At the time, I didn’t think she was dangerous, none of us did,” he said in a second day of testimony at his wife’s capital murder trial.

Yates’ 2 1/2-hour session on the witness was far less emotional than Wednesday, when he tearfully described his wife as a loving mother who was a victim of mental problems that worsened in the months before she drowned their children in a bathtub at their Houston home.

Andrea Yates, 37, has confessed to drowning the children but has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She is charged with killing three of the children and could face the death penalty if convicted.

The couple mouthed words of encouragement to each other on Wednesday as defense attorneys played home movies of their children watching butterflies and greeting their mother after the birth of her fifth child.

The tape was an attempt by defense attorney to depict a nurturing mother who they say became so mentally ill that she killed her children.

“She’s wonderful,” Russell Yates testified through teary eyes. “She was so involved with the children. She loved them and read to them.”

Prosecutors say Andrea Yates suffered from a mental illness but knew the difference between right and wrong at the time of the drownings. To prove insanity, the defense must show the Houston woman didn’t know the difference.

The husband, who sometimes rocked nervously on the witness stand, recounted his wife’s mental decline in the months before the killings, but insisted she posed no threat.

He said his wife attempted suicide twice in 1999, following the birth of Luke, their fourth child.

Russell Yates contradicted the testimony of a psychiatrist who treated his wife, saying Dr. Eileen Starbranch discouraged but didn’t forbid the couple from having more children. He also said Starbranch took Andrea Yates off anti-psychotic medication, a contention the doctor denied.

Andrea Yates became pregnant with Mary, their fifth child, after she got back to her “old self,” following the family’s move into their southeast Houston home, Russell Yates said.

After Mary’s birth in November 2000, the depression returned. Yates said the event that again triggered his wife’s disturbing symptoms was the death of her father last March.

“That was very traumatic for her,” Russell Yates said. “She became more withdrawn and day-by-day there were more symptoms.”

He testified that he took his wife to Devereux psychiatric hospital, which was closer to their home than Starbranch and a private facility.

Andrea Yates was discharged after about two weeks, he said, but her condition continued to worsen and he had her readmitted to Devereux about six weeks later.

Yates told jurors that his wife spent 10 days at Devereux before being discharged, with many of the same symptoms still apparent.

Russell Yates said he and his wife returned on June 18, but the doctor didn’t place her back on the anti-psychotic drug and changed her prescription.

Two days later, Andrea Yates called her husband and told him to hurry home because something had happened to the children.

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