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Yates wanted to 'save' children
02/03/2002 14:38 - (SA)
Houston - Three weeks after she drowned her five children, Andrea Yates
told a psychiatrist that she was failing as a mother and believed
she had to kill the children to keep them from going to hell.
"These were their innocent years," Yates told psychiatrist
Phillip Resnick. "God would take them up."
Defence attorneys introduced a videotape of the interview into
evidence on Friday as Resnick took the witness stand in Yates' capital
murder trial. Yates (37) is charged with capital murder for the June 20 deaths
of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and 6-month-old Mary. Charges
could be filed later in the deaths of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.
Resnick testified that Yates suffers from schizophrenia and
major depression that impaired her behaviour and thinking, causing
delusions, hallucinations and social withdrawal.
Yates has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She faces life
in prison or the death penalty if convicted of drowning her
children.
Resnick first met with Yates at the Harris County Jail on July
14, nearly three weeks after her children's deaths.
Resnick told jurors Friday that from his interviews and a review
of police and medical records, he concluded Yates didn't think that
what she did was wrong.
"Even though she knew it was against the law, she did what she
thought was right in the world she perceived through her psychotic
eyes at the time," Resnick said.
Resnick has also testified in the cases of such high-profile
defendants as serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski
and Susan Smith, who was sentenced to life for drowning her two
sons in 1994 in South Carolina.
On the tape, Yates stared blankly at the camera with a clenched
jaw, her eyes ringed by dark circles.
At one point in the interview Resnick asked her how she felt
about her children.
"I didn't hate my children," Yates responded.
"Did you love your children?" Resnick asked.
She responded after a long pause. "Yeah. Some. Not in the right
way though."
Yates said she believed that if she killed her children, the
state would execute her, Satan would be eliminated from the world
and the children would be saved.
Resnick said Yates began having delusions in 1999 following
Luke's birth and attempted suicide twice that year. The voices and
delusions again grew intense after Mary's birth in November 2000.
Not long after that, Yates told Resnick, she became frustrated
by what she felt was a lack of development by her children. If she
didn't do something, Yates said, the children would be destined for
eternal damnation.
"They did a lot of silly stuff and didn't obey," Yates said.
"They did things God didn't like." - Sapa-AP
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