Don't most murderers fabricate some kind of story to cover themselves?
Yes, but this woman apparently has a documented history of severe post partum depression. It doesn't sound like she just pulled this out of a hat. You know this. Are you playing extreme-devil's-advocate?
posted on June 21, 2001 12:49:54 PMspazmodeus:And speaking of premeditation, how convenient that her "psychosis" or whatever you want to call it struck exactly when all 5 kids were home and her husband was at work. What a well-timed psychosis. What an opportunistic psychosis.
With post partum depression, that is when it would be most like to take a dive. The woman had 5 kids all 7 years & younger! (had they ever heard of birth control--and the husband had just been saying *he* wanted more kids!)
How 'bout this: find 5 kids of the same ages as hers & ask their parents if you can borrow them. Then take one short month & stay at home--by yourself, with no help--with them for at least 8 hours every day. I say "at least" because many mothers find that dads "have no time" (or interest) tohelp out in the evenings either, 'cause "that's women's work" so you might also find yourself mostly or solely responsible for them at night, too. At the end of the month, come on back and tell us how you feel. You'll be contributing to science & the male version of post partum depression will be named after you...
posted on June 21, 2001 12:55:22 PM
I know someone who has 8 kids. Should she drown them because she's depressed? I am sure it IS hard to raise that many kids, but you don't KILL them because you are depressed. If she had the presence of mind to call AFTER killing them, why wouldn't she have the same presence of mind to call for help BEFORE?
posted on June 21, 2001 01:03:51 PM
I wonder how sympathetic the assembled commentators would be had it been the father who murdered the children during, say, an alcoholic rage? After all, alcoholism is a disease, one that grossly impairs judgment, yet many kids are left in the care of alcoholics even though family and friends know about it.
Would you be lamenting "that poor alcoholic father?"
posted on June 21, 2001 01:10:22 PM
Sorry, I read that wrong.Edited.
So it's ok to kill your kids if you have PPD? If she had PPD, why did she have 5 kids and not take birth control? She was sane enough to lay in the bed with her husband and wasn't too depressed to make them, was she?
[ edited by hepburn on Jun 21, 2001 01:12 PM ]
posted on June 21, 2001 01:26:17 PM
Nice to see that most posters here have the maturity to reserve their judgements until further information can be had. It speaks well for their emotional stability.
I always worry about the situations imposed upon people when they're forced to interact through familial or day to day relations with a person given to emotional overreactions to happenstance which do not involve them.
posted on June 21, 2001 01:29:52 PM
"I wonder how sympathetic the assembled commentators would be had it been the father who murdered the children during, say, an alcoholic rage? After all, alcoholism is a disease, one that grossly impairs judgment, yet many kids are left in the care of alcoholics even though family and friends know about it"
My thoughts would be the same. Who the hell left the kids at home with an alcoholic - they are responsible too.
posted on June 21, 2001 01:31:34 PM
I don't think there's a person here who doesn't feel that those five children weren't victims. But perhaps the mother was a victim as well.
I remember a thread here about anti-depressants. I was one of many people who contributed to it. Most of us had used anti-depressants and had been helped. Did we just use them for the hell of it - I don't think so. I used them because I knew that the level of lethargy and sleeplessness I felt were not normal and I wanted help.( I've suffered from a low-grade depression most of my life.) I'm willing to admit that people may suffer differently - I've never suffered from severe depression and for that I'm thankful. But others suffer from it - and from psychoses. Because I don't experience what they experience doesn't mean those conditions don't exist.
[ edited by saabsister on Jun 21, 2001 01:50 PM ]
You attributed a quote to me that I did not make. I believe that Kraftdinner suggested that maybe she gave the children a sleeping pill before killing them.
My quote referred only to your reaction to this tragedy. I'll repeat it for you in case you are confused....
"Your lack of compassion for this poor mentally ill mother is astounding. It should embarass you to have this thread titled
"I Hope She Gets the Death Penalty".
Nobody is overlooking the tragedy of the children's deaths or the grief of their father and family."
With you, I am sincerely appalled. Your narrow minded view on this topic is "myopic"
but mine is not.
At least, wait until the evidence is available before you send her to death row without a trial.
posted on June 21, 2001 01:39:25 PM
Not being privy to what it is like to have PPD, I cannot understand the why's and wherefore's of that particular ailment. It is extremely hard for me to understand what can make a mind go so insane that the actions of the person could do such a horrendous act. Some of you have PPD. Would you, knowing you had it or were experiencing it, kill YOUR children? Would you continue to have children? Would you let someone who had PPD watch your children? Is having PPD an excuse for being not responsible for murder? No, I can't understand it. If I am the "bad guy" for having no pity for someone who not killed just one child, but 5, was sane enough to continue to have them, understood herself what was wrong with her but did nothing for herself KNOWING it, then so be it. I can't have compassion or pity for something I haven't experienced or understand. All I see is the children seeing their mother at the end. And it hardens my heart even more.
edited for spelling.
[ edited by hepburn on Jun 21, 2001 01:44 PM ]
posted on June 21, 2001 01:47:56 PMAt least, wait until the evidence is available until you send her to death row without a trial.
Helen,
That's a rather absurd thing to say, seeing as how I have no power to send her to death row or anywhere else.
But I can always hope that she meets the same end she inflicted on those little children (the end being death, although the death penalty would be a far milder and more humane way to die than the brutal murders she perpetrated), and that's the sentiment I expressed in the title to this thread.
Also, I didn't attribute your comment or the one that followed it to anyone. I figured those who have been reading the thread know who said what just three or four posts earlier. Sorry you got confused.
posted on June 21, 2001 01:49:31 PM
hepburn, I don't know why she continued to have children. Maybe her religous beliefs precluded the alternatives. Or she could have suffered such immobility from the depression that she just let it happen - too helpless to take control of her life in a nondestructive way.
posted on June 21, 2001 01:49:54 PM
Since when does anyone withhold judgement in these forums? I expressed my opinion. My opinion is I, too, hope she gets the death penalty. PPD or not. Your opinion is for me to keep my opinion to myself, which I refuse to do since that is what this forum is all about.
Where did I say that I was confused. You were the author of your post and I simply pointed out to you that you had failed to
attribute a quote correctly.
Before the evidence is presented, you are
hoping that she will be given a death sentence. That was your absurd idea, not mine.
posted on June 21, 2001 02:10:40 PM I simply pointed out to you that you had failed to attribute a quote correctly.
Golly, Miss HJW, I hope this won't affect my grade. I thought this was a message board, not a term paper.
As for the rest, I'd send anyone who murders -- or even molests -- a child to the death chamber. In this case, she admitted killing her children. No one has the slightest doubt that she did it. I hope they jam a needle in her arm.
I'm sick and tired of children dying at the hands of adults and those adults being allowed to live because somebody comes up with some justification or excuse for the act. There is no justification for killing five kids. There is no excuse for killing even one.
For anyone (I suppose it's possible) who has not seen, the husband has made statements and so has a doctor relevent to this case:
"He said his wife of eight years suffered separate episodes of severe postpartum depression after having their fourth and fifth kids and had tried to commit suicide two years ago. The depression caused her to
become so withdrawn and incapacitated that his mother, Dora Yates, would come over to help care for the children".
Doctors used a cocktail of drugs to help Yates during both bouts of depression. She was currently taking medication that included Haldol, Yates said.
According to Baylor College of Medicine psychiatry professor Lauren Marangell, Haldol is usually prescribed for psychosis, a more severe illness than garden variety postpartum depression and one more likely to lead to
violence.
"When she was well, Andrea Yates homeschooled the children and lavished attention on them", Yates said.
posted on June 21, 2001 02:16:17 PM
You can't equate the children being "depressed" as they were dying with the woman's "depression." The kind of depression this woman has (assuming she has it), is totally different from the situational type of "feeling depressed" that all us experience. I must've said, in my life, more than a thousand times - "Gee, I'm so depressed, (this happened, that happened, blah blah.)" It's not the same.
I don't have "clinical" depression, but my husband does. His doctor tried to explain it to us as something like this - It starts from a physical cause, and that affects your emotions. The bad feelings trigger more physical changes, and those physical changes cause you to feel even worse. Those worse feelings in turn cause more severe physical changes, etc. etc. The physical and emotional bounce off each other into a downward spiral.
While I once might have been of the "quit whining and snap out of it" school, after seeing what happened to him it would have been as reasonable to tell him to jump up and start flying through the air. He couldn't "snap out of it," he couldn't move. Not wouldn't, couldn't, and it was much more than just "not caring enough" to move, he had real physical manisfestations. At the height (depth) of his depression, in the middle of the summer, he suddenly got so cold he was shivering uncontrollably.
If you can accept that "clinical" depression can start from a real physical cause, can that physical cause occur because of giving birth? I'd say yes, giving birth can cause a real physical reaction, and I have a personal story for that too. It's not the same as post partum depression, but it's physical and clear.
I'm not allergic to anything, no foods, no animals, I don't even get hay fever. But, after I had my first baby, about 3 days and 7 hours after giving birth, when I was home and preparing to go to sleep for the night, I suddenly broke out in itchy welts, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. I was in agony all night long, it was horrible. I thrashed and screamed and moaned, I drove my husband crazy, he threatened to take me back to the hospital, he couldn't stand me going on and on. I was pounding on my obstretician's door practically at daybreak, and I've never been on time for anything in my life.
The obstetrecian gave me a shot and it was like a miracle. Immediately my welts went away and I stopped itching, and they didn't come back. When I asked him why that had happened, he just shrugged. No one in my family had ever had anything like that happen to them, and I'd never broken out in welts before.
When I had my next baby two years later, I hoped the welts had been a one-time occurrence, or triggered by something I could avoid. With my first baby, I'd had a spinal block. With my second baby, no drugs at all. With the first baby, I'd gone home to my own house. With the second baby, I went to my sister's house. I even had the babies in two different hospitals. But, like clockwork, 3 days and 7 hours after giving birth to the second baby, I suddenly broke out in welts again, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet.
If this woman could have chosen to have her body's physical reaction from having a baby be welts, instead of whatever happened to her, I'm sure she would have chosen welts. If I could have chosen, I would have chosen not to have anything at all. But I could no more have stopped from breaking out in welts than I could have stopped the sun from rising.
posted on June 21, 2001 02:34:29 PM
[i]"As for the rest, I'd send anyone who murders -- or even molests -- a child to the death chamber. In this case, she admitted killing her children. No one has the slightest doubt that she did it. I hope they jam a needle in her arm"[/i}.
posted on June 21, 2001 02:35:05 PM
spaz & hepburn, I think there are 2 different issues here. I don't think anyone would disagree that she "should" have the same punishment given to her as she did to her kids. How she should be punished is one issue. But the other issue being talked about is how diminished mental capacity can lead to murder and trying to understand such a state.
posted on June 21, 2001 02:35:10 PM
"I'm sick and tired of children dying at the hands of adults and those adults being allowed to live because somebody comes up with some justification or excuse for the act."
I could not agree with you more. However, we have to look at the roots of the problems if we want to solve the end results. And, here, it looks as though many professional and personal contacts/relatives and hubby all were well aware of her extreme condition.
I absolutely hold this person responsible but I find it apalling that 'sane' individuals, including these children's daddy, allowed this insane woman to care for the children. Actually, seeing the lifestyle they lived and the home and cars I find it disgusting that she did not have a nanny and in house care.
They all admit when she was normal she was a great mother but out of control - she was out of control. The dad said over the last two years she has been spiraling darker and into deeper places. Maybe in her mind her children were better off out of this world and she stayed to pay for her crimes. You cannot ration with a truly psychotic person.
BUT -
The others that knew and still put those innocent childrens fate in her hands - are the sick ones.
This is why it is so unbelievable that we require pre-marriage counseling, test to drive car etc. - but hell, you wanna have kids = go for it. Who cares if you use drugs, abuse your kids etc.
It is sick to me that our society has progressed in some many ways but we still do not ensure that our most innocent beings among us are safe until they are on their own.
