The ex-husband of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001 while suffering from postpartum depression, is speaking out again 22 years after their deaths to urge prosecutors to drop charges against Lindsay Clancy, a midwife mother who is currently charged with murdering her three children.
In 2001, Andrea drowned her five children with Russell ‘Rusty’ Yates in Houston. She suffered from postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia. She was convicted of five charges of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison, but in 2006, she was judged not guilty by reason of insanity, and the decision was reversed.
She has been receiving treatment at a mental hospital for the past sixteen years, declining eligibility for discharge each year.
Russell, who divorced Andrea in 2015 but always claimed to have forgiven her, appeared on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation program as 32-year-old Lindsay Clancy prepared for court.
He had claimed for a long time that his wife’s criminal trial was the ‘cruelest thing’ he had ever seen.
He believes that women suffering from postpartum depression should not face criminal prosecution because it is a medical condition.
Would I be charged with capital murder if, while driving down the street, I suffered a heart attack and swerved into oncoming traffic, killing everyone in the car except myself? Rusty Yates, whose ex-wife drowned their five children in 2001, is mistaken.
If I was driving our Suburban down the street when I suffered a heart attack and swerved into oncoming traffic, killing everyone in the vehicle except myself, would I be charged with capital murder and rubbed in crime scene photographs? Of my children?
“I don’t believe so. But to me, it is identical in every way.’
Yates went on to describe how psychiatrists had described psychosis to him.
It’s similar to having a dream or nightmare superimposed on reality, so that a person sees unreal things, hears unreal voices, thinks unreal things to be genuine, and acts accordingly.
He explained his wife’s psychosis by stating, “It is as much a part of their reality as anything else; they cannot distinguish between those thoughts, images, and voices and anything else.”
“Andrea was an exceptional mother. When someone acts so out of character like that it’s a flag that something else is going on. As far as forgiving goes, this is the beginning.
This cannot be correct if anything is absolutely out of character.
‘At the time, I did not know that she’d been psychotic, I did not know what psychosis even was or what the symptoms were.
He also disputed the notion that husbands or spouses can safeguard their children from danger, stating, ‘You can do all in your power, but you cannot defend yourself from a psychotic individual at home.
They are capable of waking up in the middle of the night to set fire to the house or poison everyone.
“The next step of forgiveness (for others), I would say, is understanding that it’s a disease, and that if it weren’t for her illness, she would have never, ever, ever harmed our children.”
Andrea was found guilty of capital murder and given a life sentence with the chance of parole after her children were murdered in 2001.
Upon a retrial in 2006, she was ruled not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, after her attorneys successfully appealed the original verdict.
She was transported to the Kerrville State Hospital the next year. She has remained there since that time.
She is available for review each year to decide if she should be released.
She declines the annual evaluation, opting instead to continue treatment.
She and Rusty formalized their divorce in 2015.
Her sole requests were that she be allowed to be buried alongside her children and that she have the nursing chair she used when they were tiny.
On January 29, Clancy, 32, strangled her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, at their house.
She then slit her own wrists and leapt from the highest window in the home.
Her husband Patrick, whom she had sent to pick up takeout food, arrived to discover her dead in the backyard and her children dead in the basement.
Lindsay has been rendered paralyzed in the hospital. In the past eight months, according to her attorneys, she was prescribed a debilitating mix of medications that stripped her of her individuality and emotions.
LINDSAY WAS PRESCRIBED DRUGS EIGHT MONTHS PRIOR TO THE MURDERINGS.
Zolpidem (Ambien) (Ambien)
Clonazepam (Klonopin) (Klonopin)
Diazepam (Valium)
Fluoxetine (Prozac)
Lamotrigine (Lamictil)
Lorazepam (Ativan)
Mirtazapine (Remeron)
Quetiapine fumarate (Seroquel)
Trazodone
Merciless Massachusetts prosecutors claimed in court that the attack on the children was premeditated, and that she deliberately sent her husband out of the house far enough away to allow her time to kill them.
Her husband, Patrick, has forgiven her, and is asking others to do the same.
In a GoFundMe page set up after the tragedy, he said his wife loved their children, and had succumb to a mental illness.
Lindsay’s attorney yesterday begged a judge not to send her to prison, citing her ongoing need for extensive medical attention.
‘She is not OK, at all. She suffered several, severe spine fractions. She is not expected to recover meaningful function below that level of the spinal chord.
‘She’s paraplegic, unable to move her legs or feel sensation. She is paralyzed.
‘She needs significant medical treatment,’ he said, begging the court not to jail her and instead allow her to be sent to a medical rehab center.
The judge also acknowledged that she has no criminal record – never even incurring a speeding ticket – and that she’d received a groundswell of support.
He ordered that she be allowed to remain in the hospital until doctors deem her fit enough to leave, but that she should then likely go to a 24/7 medical rehab facility.
Clancy’s attorney entered a not guilty plea on her behalf.
He does not dispute that she strangled the children, but says her deteriorated mental health and the influence of the drugs she’d been taking are to blame – not her.
‘Our society fails miserably in treating women with post partum depression or post partum psychosis.
‘It’s “medicate, medicate, medicate”.
‘Throw the pills at you and see how it works,’ he said.
She will return to court on May 2.