Killer Texas mom who drowned five children in bathtub still spends days in hospital

A mother who drowned her five children, believing they were "doomed to perish in the fires of hell", now spends her days in a mental health hospital, engaging in two poignant activities.

Andrea Yates, from Houston, Texas, took the lives of her five young children in 2001 while suffering from postpartum psychosis. She continues to live in Kerrville State Hospital, having declined a 2024 hearing that could have assessed her readiness for release, as reported by .

Now aged 60, Yates leads a quiet life within the hospital, an institution designed for individuals acquitted of criminal charges but court-ordered to receive inpatient mental health services.

She occupies her time by creating greeting cards and other crafts, often decorated with rainbows and butterflies. Her childlike crafts are sold at art shows and festivals, with all proceeds going towards the Yates Children Memorial Fund, which supports those battling postpartum depression.

Yates also has internet access and regularly visits set up by her husband, where she can view pictures of the children she killed, reports .

On June 20, 2001, when Yates was 37, she drowned her five young children in the bathtub at their suburban Clear Lake home. Court testimonies reveal that she waited for her husband, Rusty, to leave for work before she began to kill her children - Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and Mary, 6 months - one after another.

Following the tragic event where she drowned her children, the mother in question made a series of calls to emergency services confessing to the deaths and urgently contacted her husband, a NASA engineer, telling him to come home straight away. She faced five charges of capital murder, with prosecutors branding her actions "heinous" and seeking the death penalty.

However, her defence team emphasised her battles with acute depression and postpartum psychosis, urging that treatment for mental health issues was necessary rather than imprisonment.

Originally given a life sentence, Yates's condition worsened as she continued to suffer from delusions, at times telling authorities she had contemplated the murders for two years, thinking it would prevent them from going to hell. "My children weren't righteous," she expressed during a psychiatric examination in prison, according to official documents.

"They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell."

Her initially severe sentence was later overturned thanks to her lawyers, who argued on account of her reduced mental faculties, leading to a 2006 retrial outcome of not guilty due to insanity - thereafter she was committed to a state mental institution in Kerrville. Although Yates has the right to request a review of her mental state periodically, there is no obligation for her to seek release, and it remains possible for her to spend an indefinite length of time at the psychiatric hospital where she has been a resident for 18 years.

Despite their separation and Rusty's subsequent remarriage (and second divorce), Yates maintains monthly conversations with her former spouse. Her defence attorney, George Parnham, is convinced that Yates has found contentment and is thriving at Kerrville, the place she now calls home.

Speaking to ABC News in 2021, Parnham declared, "She's where she wants to be. Where she needs to be," and went on to ponder, "And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?".