Yates trial: 'Horror house' greeted police

The trial of a woman facing the death penalty for drowning her five young children has heard of the scene of horror which greeted police.

Officers who arrived at the home of Andrea Yates, 37, found the bodies of four children. One was a six-month-old baby laid out on a bed. Another child was face-down in a bathtub where his mother had drowned him.

Yates admits drowning her five children in a bathtub in her home in Houston, Texas, and has gone on trial charged with their murder, which she denies by reason of insanity. Her lawyers claim the mother-of-five was suffering from post-partum psychosis, an extreme form of post-natal depression, when she carried out the killings last June.

All five children, Noah, seven; John, five; Paul three; Luke, two; and six-month-old Mary, were declared dead at the suburban home.

Texas state prosecutor Joe Ownby said: "He (a police officer) went to the back bedroom and saw on a bed those children laid out. Luke, Paul, John and Mary. Mary lay cradled on John's arm.

"Luke was wearing a pyjama outfit that had Fire Department on it. Mary had on a red outfit, the kind for infants that buttons between the legs."

He said in the bath, the eldest child, Noah, was lying face down in nine inches of water.

He added: "The cereal bowls were on the table from when the children had eaten that morning. The carpet was soaking. An officer saw tiny wet footprints in the carpet. Yates was sitting in the front room. Her clothes were soaked and her hair was matted."

Yates was taken to a local police station and interviewed by a detective, Mr Ownby said.

"She told him that she was not mad at the children, that she killed them because they were not developing correctly and she was a bad mother. She told them she had been thinking of killing them for two years.