Last month, Yates refused a hearing that would have assessed her competency for release. Under the terms of her conviction, she is eligible for an annual review, which she has consistently declined, according to The Post.
Yates, 60, leads a quiet life at Kerrville State Hospital, designated for individuals acquitted of a criminal offense and committed by a court to receive inpatient mental health services.
She spends her days creating greeting cards and other crafts, often featuring rainbows and butterflies, which she sells at art shows and festivals. The proceeds go to the Yates Children’s Memorial Fund, supporting those suffering from postpartum depression.
Yates has internet access and often visits the family website launched by her husband, where she can view photos of the children she killed.
On June 20, 2001, at the age of 37, Yates drowned her five young children in the bathtub of their suburban Houston home. According to court testimony, she waited for her husband, Rusty, to go to work before beginning the killings.
The children—Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months—were drowned one by one. Afterward, she called 911 repeatedly to report the deaths and then contacted Rusty, a NASA engineer, instructing him to come home.
Yates was charged with five counts of capital murder. The prosecution deemed the crime “heinous” and sought the death penalty.
However, the defense argued that Yates suffered from severe depression and psychosis following her recent delivery, leading her to kill her children, and advocated for intensive mental health treatment instead of prison.
Initially convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life, Yates continued to express delusional thoughts even behind bars, telling authorities she had contemplated killing the children for two years to save them from eternal damnation.
“My children weren’t righteous,” she told her jail psychiatrist, according to court 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.”
Given her mental state, Yates’ lawyers appealed the case and secured a retrial.
In 2006, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was subsequently sent to Kerrville State Hospital. While Yates is eligible for a hearing to assess her sanity, she is not obligated to seek release. According to the courts, she can remain in the facility.
Her defence attorney, George Parnham, has long maintained that Yates is happy and thriving at Kerrville, the only place she’s called home for the past 17 years. “She’s where she wants to be. Where she needs to be,” Parnham told ABC News in 2021. “And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?”
