Andrea Yates showed signs of severe mental illness and psychosis in the weeks before she drowned her five children, doctors and Yates' former mother in law testified yesterday in Yates' capital murder retrial. At least one doctor who saw Yates before the killings said she presented a substantial risk to herself and other people:
"She was one of the sickest people I've ever seen, and I think she was suffering from some sort of mental disturbance for quite a while," Dr. Ellen Allbritton, a psychiatrist who concluded that Yates was a risk after seeing her at the Devereux Texas Treatment Network in League City."I was profoundly affected by how sick she was when I saw her."
Allbritton had seen Yates less than three months before the drownings. Another doctor who saw her at Devereux about two months before the incident, Dr. Patricia Corke, said Yates "absolutely" should be commited to a state hospital, and a psychologist who tetsted yer two years before the killings said he had no doubt then that Yates was mentally ill. She had been hospitalized at that time after a suicide attempt, but was sent home at the request of her ex-husband, Rusty Yates.
Rusty Yates' mother, Dora, gave more than two hours of testimony yesterday about Andrea Yates' mental state in the weeks before the kids' deaths, saying Andrea Yates rarely spoke and continually wandered the rooms of the family's Clear Lake house, frequently stopping to stare at the walls and floors for hours. Dora Yates remembered an incident on May 3, 2001, about six weeks before the drownings, when she asked Andrea Yates why she was filling the bathtub and Andrea responded, "Because I might need it later." Yates drowned all the children in the tub on June 20, 2001.
Testimony will resume this morning, with defense attorneys expected to call expert mental health witnesses Dr. George Ringholz and Dr. Lucy Puryear. Though Rusty Yates is expected to take the stand soon, the Chronicle reports he probably won't do so today.
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