Ex-husband of woman who drowned her five children says Lindsay Clancy deserves forgiveness

Russell ‘Rusty’ Yates was at work when his then-wife Andrea Yates drowned their five children, all under the age of seven, in 2001

The ex-husband of a woman who killed their children has expressed sympathy for Lindsay Clancy.

Russell “Rusty” Yates was at work when his then-wife Andrea Yates drowned their five children, all under the age of seven, in 2001. Yates, who was found not guilty of the murders by reason of insanity in a second trial in 2006, was suffering from severe postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia at the time.

Her case is eerily similar to that of Ms Clancy, a Massachusetts nurse who strangled their three children with exercise bands during what her attorney has described as an episode of postpartum psychosis last month. She then jumped off a second-storey window and is now recovering from severe spine injuries that have left her paraplegic.

Speaking on Chris Cuomo’s eponymous NewsNation show, Mr Yates recounted learning about Ms Clancy’s case and experiencing sadness that a tragedy of that kind would still happen 22 years after his kids’ deaths brought widespread attention to the dangers of postpartum psychosis. He said that upon gaining a better understanding of what the illness entailed, he was able to forgive his ex-wife.

“Andrea was a wonderful mother. When someone acts so out of character like that it’s a flag that something else is going on. As far as forgiveness goes, it’s kind of the start,” Mr Yates said. “...[T]he next step of forgiveness, I’d say, is understanding it’s a sickness, that but for her sickness, she never, ever, ever would have harmed our children.”

Mr Yates, who worked as a computer engineer at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre at the time of the tragedy, has since re-married and is the father of a 14-year-old son.

He said the mental illness changed Yates’ personality and affected her sense of self and reality. Mr Yates likened the killings to a situation out of her control and was critical of the prosecution’s tactics during the trial.

“If I were driving our suburban down the street and had a heart attack and swerved into oncoming traffic and everyone in the car died but me, would they prosecute me for capital murder and rub my face in crime scene photos? Of my children?” he said. “I don’t think so. But to me, it’s 100 per cent exactly the same.”

This undated family photo shows four of the five children of Andrea Yates, who confessed on June 20, 2001 to murdering her children by drowning them in their home in Clear Lake, a suburb of south Houston, Texas (Getty Images)

“It’s much like having a dream or nightmare overlaid on reality so that a person sees things that aren’t real, hears voices that aren’t real, believes things to be true that aren’t true and they act on that.”

“It’s every bit a part of their reality as everything else, they can’t distinguish between those thoughts and images and voices and anything else,” he added.

Yates, now 58, is granted a review annually to leave the Kerrville state hospital in Texas where she has lived for more than 15 years, but denies herself the opportunity to leave every year. Her attorney George Parnham told People magazine in 2021 that Yates “grieves for her children” every day and often watches home videos of them.

She spends her time in the facility making aprons, cards and gifts so she can sell them anonymously, the report said.

“She’s where she wants to be. Where she needs to be,” Mr Parnham said at the time. “And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?”

Andrea Yates (C) listens with her attorneys, George Parnham (L) and Wendell Odom (R) (Getty Images)

In her confession to police in 2001, Yates said she first drowned her two-year-old son Luke, then three-year-old Paul and five-year-old John. She then laid them out on a bed and wrapped them in a sheet.

But when she was putting down her six-month-old lifeless baby girl, her eldest son Noah entered the bedroom and asked, “What’s wrong with Mary?”. He ran before his mother could answer, but Yates dragged him back to the bathroom and held him underwater until he died too.

She called the police and her husband and asked him to come home. When he asked Yates if anyone was hurt, her husband said she told him: “Yes... the children. All of them.”

The police said she had described the horrifying events in “a zombie-like fashion” in a videotaped confession.

Ms Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington said in her arraignment last week that his client was in a similar “zombie” state when she is accused of strangling Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and seven-month-old Callan on 24 January.

Mr Reddington had previously said he intends to argue in court that Ms Clancy was not competent to stand trial, but the prosecution argued on Tuesday that Ms Clancy “created” the opportunity to kill her children by allegedly timing out how long her husband would be gone.

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said that on the morning of the tragedy, Ms Clancy had taken Cora to a paediatric appointment and seemed her normal self. The mother-of-three reportedly played with the children in the snow and called a local CVS to inquire about medication for their kids.

Patrick Clancy, the husband of Lindsay Clancy, is pictured with the couple’s three children (GoFundMe)

During those interactions, the prosecution alleges that Ms Clancy seemed “lucid” and did not slur her words. Ms Sprague said she specifically asked her husband Patrick Clancy to pick up food because “[she] didn’t cook anything, [and it had] been a long day.”

The couple had a short 14-second-long conversation while Mr Clancy bought medication for the children at a CVS. He initially said that Ms Clancy seemed normal but later told investigators that it sounded like she was in the middle of something.

Ms Sprague said Mr Clancy arrived at the home around 6pm to find his bedroom room locked. When he managed to get inside, he saw blood and found Ms Clancy, who had jumped from the window to the ground after allegedly slashing her wrists.

“He called 911. During this time, he asked the defendant, ‘What did you do?’ She responded to him, ‘I tried to kill myself and jumped out the window.’ During the 911 call, Patrick can be heard asking the defendant, ‘Where are the kids?’ He later told police that she replied in the basement,” Ms Sprague said, per WCBV.

In this video screen image, Lindsay Clancy with a surgical mask over her face in a hospital appears during her arraignment (The Boston Globe)

“He can then be heard screaming in agony, in shock as he found his children. His screams seemed to get louder and more agonised as the time passes.”

She added: “...Patrick removed the bands [from the children’s necks] and could be heard begging his children to breathe. He continued to scream uncontrollably, ‘She killed the kids.’”

Ms Clancy faces two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of strangulation and suffocation and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon. She is also expected to be charged with the murder of her youngest child, who died three days after the attack.

On 28 January, Mr Clancy wrote in an update on a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $1m that he forgave his wife, saying that the nurse was “loving and caring towards everyone”.

“I want to ask all of you that you find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay, as I have,” he wrote. “The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone — me, our kids, family, friends, and her patients. The very fibers of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace.”