Insanity Defense Project
Storyboard Text
- come home now
- 911 it's an emergency
- Andrea Yates had struggled with mental health all her life, suffering from bulimia & suicidal intentions, then diagnosed with depression, delusional thinking, & schizophrenia. While working as a registered nurse she met her husband Russel. They had 4 kids each giving Andrea severe postpartum depression. After that, she intentionally overdosed leaving her in a coma for 10 days. But was hospitalized again. She then met Woroniecki & heard him say that women derived from sin and those hell-bound mothers would see their children burn in hell. This caused delusions in her head. Shortly after she saw Dr. Eileen who prescribed her antipsychotic Haldol, which seemed to help. Andrea had another kid & her father passed leading her to be hospitalized often during this time. Woroniecki’s words stuck to her, creating delusions that her children wouldn’t grow up to be righteous, that killing them before they turned sinful saved them from hell and that only her killing them would defeat Satan on Earth.
- It was June 20th 2001 they were living in a modest house in Clear Lake, Texas. Russel around 8:30 a.m. left for work. He had already told his mother to come and help out with the children. After Andrea said goodbye to her husband she prepared cereal for her 4 boys. She then took her 6 month old and prepared a bath. The water was cold and filled the tub then she drowned Mary and left her body floating. Then she killed the rest of her children 1 by 1 systematically in order from youngest to oldest. Then she took them to the bed. But before she killed the oldest (Noah) he tried to run away after seeing his sister dead. She then left Noah in the Tub and placed
- After Andrea put Mary on the bed she called the police then her husband. She told her husband to come home. While he was on his way the police arrested her in her home after finding the children's bodies.
- Andrea Yates had two trials. In her first trial she was found guilty. She was found guilty because she failed to prove that she was incapable of telling wrong from right. Andrea Yates then got a second trial after discovering false testimony. They had said that Yates had probably seen an episode of “Law & Order” in which a mother who drowned her children was found not guilty by claiming insanity, but the episode didn’t exist. Because of this she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
- In Andrea’s first trial she was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility in 2041. But after her second trial she was sentenced to remediation in the Kernville State Hospital, a low-security mental health facility in Texas. She has been there ever since 2006.
- I found it interesting that she knew what she was going to do, hence how she waited for him to leave and took the only chance she had alone with them to do it. Also how the police found the body of Noah face-down in the tub and her four younger children next to each other on a bed and covered them with a sheet. I am 50/50 on this because she did struggle with mental illness since her teenage years and still in her adult life. But she knew it was wrong to murder her children and that her husband would try to stop her that’s why she waited. She knew she was killing them
Over 30 Million Storyboards Created