Mom of Slain Kids Moved to Hospital

HOUSTON —  Andrea Pia Yates, who summoned her five children into the bathroom three years ago and drowned them one by one, has stopped eating and drinking and has been hospitalized, her mother and attorney said Wednesday.

Yates, 40, has been transferred from her prison cell to a hospital in Galveston, Texas. Yates, who stands 5 foot 8 inches, has dropped from 137 pounds to less than 110 pounds, said her mother, Jutta Karin Kennedy.

Kennedy, 75, who visits her daughter every other weekend, said Yates was caught in a cycle of emotions. She often maintains delusions that her children are still alive. Then, through medication and therapy, her mental condition improves, but as it does she begins to acknowledge what she did, and plunges back into depression.

The latest episode appears to be the most dramatic yet, her mother said, and began in June, on the third anniversary of the children’s deaths.

“We have mixed emotions,” Kennedy said. “We want her to get better. But we are afraid of what will happen if she does. She is just now remembering, and we don’t know what to hope for. She’s shaking like a leaf. She won’t eat. If this happens every time she is back to normal, then it will start all over again.”

Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said Yates had been housed at the agency’s Skyview Unit, a psychiatric prison facility in Rusk, southeast of Dallas. Lyons said Yates was transferred Monday to a University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston.

Her lawyer, George Parnham, said he had spoken with authorities about her condition and expected to visit her at the new facility for the first time today.

“She is incoherent,” he said. “The anniversary was something that seemed to trigger the depth of her grief. She is deep in darkness and despair.”

Yates’ husband, Russell, could not be reached for comment.

On the morning of June 20, 2001, not long after her husband left for work at a nearby NASA facility, Andrea Yates called police to her home in Clear Lake, a suburb south of Houston.

She was wearing wet clothes when she answered the door, and led an officer to a back bedroom, where four of her children, whose ages ranged from 6 months to 5 years, were lying dead on a bed. A fifth child -- the oldest, 7-year-old Noah -- was found floating face-down in the bathtub.

Yates was charged with capital murder in the deaths of the five children. Prosecutors tried her on charges related to three of the deaths, enough to make her eligible for the death penalty under Texas law.

Yates, who told investigators that she had been possessed by Satan and that she felt she needed to be punished for being an inadequate mother, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

In 2002, despite testimony that she suffered from severe postpartum depression and schizophrenia, a jury found that she knew killing her children was wrong, convicted her of murder and sentenced her to life in prison.

She will be eligible for parole in 37 years.