Mother who drowned children 'weighed alternatives' - witness
Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children while her husband was at work, considered stabbing them but decided it was too bloody.
A psychiatrist told jurors at the Texas murder trial that Yates also ruled out using drugs to kill her children. Dr Melissa Ferguson said she interviewed the Houston mother in jail the day after her children were drowned.
Ferguson said 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.
Yates’ lawyers are arguing the former nurse is innocent by reason of insanity. Ferguson said Yates told her killing her children was the right thing to do.
‘‘She was convinced that the children were going to be tormented for the rest of their lives and that they were going to perish in the fires of hell,’’ the psychiatrist said.
Dr George Ringholz, a neuropsychologist, also testified that Yates told him she felt Satan’s presence shortly after the birth of her eldest son, Noah.
‘‘She heard Satan’s voice tell her to pick up the knife and stab the child,’’ Ringholz testified, adding Yates’ comments were typical of schizophrenia.
Ringholz said Yates had suffered from schizophrenia since childhood and that her condition was aggravated by the birth of Noah, and again by the birth of another son in 1999.
He said he was prepared to testify Yates was insane when she drowned her children.
John Bayliss, a jail nurse, said Yates thought she may have been hearing voices in the weeks after she was jailed: ‘‘She was a person who wasn’t connected with reality at all.’’
Other testimony this week is expected to include doctors who treated Yates before the killings. In Texas, a person is presumed sane, and it is up to the defence to prove a defendant is insane.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the deaths of seven-year-old Noah, five-year-old John and six-month-old Mary. Charges could eventually be filed in the deaths of Paul, three, and Luke, two.
