Andrea Yates

Andrea Pia Kennedy Yates is a former resident of Houston, Texas, who confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. She had been suffering for some time with very severe postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. She was represented by Houston criminal defense attorney George Parnham. Chuck Rosenthal, the district attorney in Harris County, asked for the death penalty in her 2002 trial. Her case placed the MNaghten Rules with the Irresistible Impulse Test, a legal test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States. She was convicted of capital murder. After the guilty verdict, but before sentencing, the State abandoned its request for the death penalty in light of false testimony by one of its expert psychiatric witnesses. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole afteryears. The verdict was overturned on appeal.

Yates was born in Hallsville, Texas. She is the youngest of the five children of Jutta Karin Koehler, a German immigrant, and Andrew Emmett Kennedy, whose parents were Irish immigrants. She suffered from bulimia during her teenage years. She also suffered from depression, and atshe spoke to a friend about suicide. She graduated from Houstons Milby High School in 1982. She was the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and an officer in the National Honor Society.

Source: Wikipedia