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Mother of 5 Slain Kids in U.S. Charged With Multiple Murder Counts
A woman called police to her home in Houston, U.S. Wednesday and showed a stunned officer the bodies of her five young children, all apparently drowned in the bathtub. "I killed my children," she told authorities before she was arrested.
The 36-year-old woman was said to be on medication for depression following the birth of her fourth child two years ago. Social services officials also said she had attempted suicide two years ago. The woman, identified as Andrea Pia Yates, was charged late Wednesday with multiple counts of capital murder, said police spokesman John Cannon. He said Yates was taken to county jail.
"It is just rather unimaginable," Cannon said. "It's difficult to deal with when you are talking about five little kids who were killed, probably systematically."
Autopsies will be performed to determine the cause of death, but police said they believe the children were drowned. Their mother was wet when she answered the door at the home in a middle-class neighborhood of southeastern Houston near NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Cannon said the officer asked where the children were and was led to a bedroom. Found under a sheet on a bed were Mary, 6 months, and three of her brothers, Luke, 2; Paul, 3; and John, 5. The fifth child, Noah, 7, was in the bathtub.
Police gave no motive for the slayings, but the woman's husband told police she had been on medication to treat postpartum depression since Luke's birth.
Cannon said Yates called her husband home Wednesday morning after calling police. The man, a computer specialist at NASA, arrived about the same time as police but was kept out of the home. His wife was later led away in handcuffs from the one-story Spanish-style home.
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