Chapter 1: What tragic event does the episode focus on?
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Lights Out. I'm your host, Josh. And I'm your host, Austin. And I'm the producer, Daniel. And today we've got a horrible, horrible tragedy we're going to be covering. This case has been on my radar for a long time and has been one I've wanted to dig into. But for just the sheer... sadness and just tragedy of this case.
I've just kind of stayed away from it for a long time until recently when a new documentary came out and it mentioned a cult being involved with this family story. It kind of piqued my interest a little bit because I was like, wait a minute, I had never really heard about there being some sort of cult connection.
I always knew that the family was religious and that there was definitely some more extreme religious views there, but I didn't really understand the full extent of What this sort of extreme Christian cult, its role that it played in this tragedy, it's honestly just crazy. I mean, it's hard to even wrap your head around even today. But we're going to be talking about the Andrea Yates story.
This is a woman in Texas in 2001 who drowned her five children. one by one, which is just horrible. Something that's hard to even comprehend or wrap your head around. And this case just absolutely took the entire nation by storm, even the world by storm. I mean, this is just something almost unheard of before.
For a mother to do this to their own children in a way that I think initially really appeared to everybody as... just pure evil. Like why would somebody do this and why would they do it in this way? And the more you dig into it, the more layers there, there appear. And the deeper you dig through those layers, you start seeing that the layers have layers within it.
And there's this religious dogma kind of intermeshed in, in this entire family. Uh, but especially in Andrea's, uh, mental state. So there's a lot to unpack. There's a lot to this particular case and maybe a lot of things. Maybe you've heard this case before or maybe even watched the documentary.
And even beyond the documentary, there's even more that wasn't covered, but a really, really tough one.
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Chapter 2: How did Andrea Yates' mental health issues develop?
even know about to some extent. And, uh, having been with somebody in postpartum, I know firsthand just how, from like being a partner to somebody going through a postpartum, just how difficult it is. And it's something that even the first time going through it, I couldn't even wrap my head around until after the fact.
And the fact that we sort of debriefed about that period and just how tough it is for any woman to come, come back from childbirth and just the mental toll it takes on you. And as a man, I can't even possibly wrap my head around, A, the experience of giving birth, but also just the mental thing that happens afterwards. It's hard to even understand. Yeah. It's just crazy.
It's just such a huge thing that impacts somebody to their very core and can completely change who they are and the person that you knew before.
Yeah. And in a time in their life where you'd think it would be, oh, the shining light comes into your life and you'd think like, oh, well, how can you be depressed in this moment of all moments that we've built up to work toward for this long? It's almost feels like counterintuitive, but yeah, it's very real thing.
Be very dark. It can be very, very dark and very, very scary and a danger to all involved. So To understand where this goes to and, you know, obviously the horrible crime that happens, we have to go back to the very beginning to really understand who Andrea and Rusty Yates were sort of before all of these horrible events unfolded.
So if we go back to the beginning, Andrea Yates was born Andrea Pia Kennedy in Hallsville, Texas on July 2nd, 1964, and she grew up in Houston. She was the youngest of five children, and her parents were Jutta Karen, who was a German immigrant, and Andrew Kennedy, who was a mechanic. As a teen, Andrea reportedly struggled with various mental health illnesses.
Bulimia and depression were some of them in her teen years, and when she was 17, she mentioned suicide to a friend of hers. And despite her struggles, she was an excellent student, excellent athlete. She graduated valedictorian in 1982 from Milby High School, which is super impressive. She was also an officer in the National Honor Society and the captain of her swim team. So just...
I mean, for any parent, that's like best case scenario for like your, you know, your child to achieve all these awesome things by the time they graduate. She then went on to go into a two-year nursing program at the University of Houston and then later graduated from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
And starting in 1986, she worked as a registered nurse at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. And in the summer of 1989, she met her future husband, Russell Yates. And he went by the nickname Rusty. And he had a degree in applied science and mathematics from Auburn University, as well as a law degree from the University of Houston. And he later worked as a NASA computer engineer.
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Chapter 3: What role did Michael Waranecki play in Andrea's life?
Rusty suggested that Andrea talk to her mother and a friend of hers for some guidance.
In February 1999, the couple had a fourth child, Luke, and a few months after Luke was born, Rusty noticed that Andrea wasn't acting like herself. He noticed she started to withdraw and became catatonic. She would stare blankly ahead and not say anything at all for very long periods of time.
And on June 18th, 1999, Andrea suffered from severe depression and tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of antidepressants. Others reported that she was taking an overdose of sleeping medication, so it's not clear what, but she was then admitted to the psychiatric unit of Methodist Hospital. Six days after her release, she began seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch.
The next month, on July 20th, 1999, Rusty found Andrea in the bathroom holding a knife to her own neck. He told her to give him the knife, but she refused, and he had to pry it out of her hands.
Andrea was then admitted to Spring Shadows Glen Hospital against her wishes the following day, and there she told a psychologist, Dr. James Thompson, that she experienced visions and had heard voices since the birth of her first child, Noah, five years previous. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Starbranch, claimed that Andrea was among the five sickest patients she had ever seen.
Andrea was diagnosed with postpartum depression, and women who have postpartum depression can develop postpartum psychosis. So to break it down, according to the Cleveland Clinic, postpartum psychosis, or PPP, is a reversible but severe mental health condition that affects people after they give birth. This condition is very rare, but it's also extremely dangerous.
People with postpartum psychosis have a much higher risk of harming themselves, dying by suicide or harming their children. Because of this, PPP is a mental health emergency.
The condition is rare but can affect anyone who has recently given birth, and symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, mood changes, depersonalization, disorganized thinking or behavior, insomnia, irritability or agitation, and thoughts of self-harm or harming others, especially their newborns. So keep this in mind going forward. And this is explicitly being told to both Rusty and Andrea.
So while being treated, Andrea expressed that she had been stressed trying to raise so many young children and that she didn't want to fail. She also confessed to having, quote, recurrent obsessive thoughts and that most of them were over her children and how they would turn out. Keep this in mind, especially going forward once we get into the more occult aspects of this case.
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Chapter 4: How did postpartum psychosis influence Andrea's actions?
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Chapter 5: What were the circumstances surrounding the Yates family before the tragedy?
So they thought the same about having their daughter married. They also thought that Andrea would simply go through the same treatment as before if things got worse. They're like. expecting things to go the same way. If they did, they felt like they had a course of action, they knew to get treatment, and then things would eventually get better.
Yeah, and it seemed like the Haldol really turned her around almost immediately. Right. But after the birth of Mary, Rusty said that Andrea was a completely different person. She was nearly catatonic. The following March, her father died and her condition seemed to only get worse.
Her depression also returned at this point and on March 28th, 2001, Rusty contacted Dr. Starbranch to inform her that Andrea was sick again. And according to court documents, Dr. Starbranch requested to see her immediately, but Rusty said she couldn't come in until the following Monday. According to him, Dr. Starbranch's offices were very far from their home.
Andrea didn't go to Dr. Starbranch's office, but instead was admitted to Davaro Hospital in League City on March 31st, 2001, and she was reportedly catatonic and possibly delusional or having bizarre thoughts. While there, she was treated by Dr. Mohamed Saeed and was also placed on suicide watch. She was later discharged on April 13th after about a week upon her own and Rusty's request.
She then began an outpatient program at the hospital and Dr. Saeed recommended that someone be with her at all times and that she shouldn't be alone with her children. After this, Andrea's mother, Jetta Karen Kennedy, came to visit, and she only planned to stay a week.
But when Rusty told her about how severe Andrea's condition was, she moved into an extended stay hotel nearby and came and visited the family every day. During this time, Andrea was mostly catatonic. She did not respond to people talking to her, and all of her interactions were delayed and just kind of in this spacey state of mind.
She didn't eat, she'd often scratch her head until she created bald spots and even trembled at times. On May 3rd, Andrea filled the home's bathtub with water, and when asked why she didn't give a good reason, all she said was, I might need it. The next day, she was readmitted to Davro Hospital. Ten days later, she was discharged and seemed to be getting better.
Dr. Saeed prescribed her Haldol, which she had taken before, and she was on two other antidepressants as well. And Dr. Saeed also recommended electroconvulsive therapy, but Andrea declined. And when she returned home, the medication seemed to improve her overall health within a day. Andrea went back to caring for her children, although she still rarely spoke and appeared withdrawn.
She barely smiled and showed little to no emotion. But by then, she had improved enough that Rusty thought it was okay to leave Andrea with their children. And he said, there's hope that Andrea will return.
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Chapter 6: How did the legal system respond to Andrea Yates' case?
And this couple is Michael and Rachel Warnecki. The public wasn't aware of the Warnecki's influence in Andrea's life leading up to the murders. It wouldn't be until the publication of the book Breaking Point by Susie Spencer in 2002 that many would begin to understand the spiritual and psychological manipulation that was taking place as Andrea's mental health deteriorated.
Michael Waranecki, let's talk about him a little bit. He was born on February 4th, 1954, and he grew up in a big Polish Catholic family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and served as an altar boy. Early on, he was a star football player, and according to Michael's friend, Steve Grinsel, Michael was the typical gung-ho jock. He was overconfident and loved being the center of attention.
in 1972 michael made a deal with god he promised to go to prayer meetings with his very religious mother but only if he can make all city tailback in football and get a scholarship for college which i'm not sure if that's how a relationship with god really works no like if you're if i do this yeah yeah no that's not how it works but both things came true and from that point on he became more and more zealous over his relationship with god
After high school, he went to Central Michigan University to play football on scholarship. He later admitted that he briefly forgot his deal with God and began drinking and partying while at Central Michigan.
That is what you do at Central. That is one of the party schools back home.
And one night, he was even arrested for getting into a fight at a bar just to prove how tough he was. While at CMU, he had big dreams of going to the NFL, but he later injured himself during a practice in 1974, which basically eliminated his chances of that dream ever happening.
He later claimed to have encountered the resurrected Jesus in the flesh, which is fucking wild, while attending a football game with his parents at the University of Notre Dame. And this was on June 14th, 1974. And Michael said, I was born again in that football stadium. Of all places, I stood up and I saw the kingdom of God. So what I believe he's saying is he literally saw like Jesus there.
He had an encounter there that forever altered his life.
And if you know the University of Notre Dame, it's like they even have a mural, like a huge mural of Jesus in their stadium because it's a big Catholic school. Right. And they're really big on football. So it's hilarious. That's like. That's his Mecca. He's obsessed with football and he's obsessed with God. And then he goes, he sees this big mural.
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Chapter 7: What was the impact of Andrea Yates' case on mental health awareness?
For me, it was years apart from doctor's visits, but that is no more. I want to make sure I'm healthy. I'm keeping up with all the tests that I need to do. As you get older, it feels like there's more tests they want to run.
Yeah. It's a very dude thing. Like we're always like, nothing's wrong with me. I'm good. I'm going to live forever. We're in denial about it, but we should be going to these checkups.
Yeah, it's just I have I feel like I have a new ailment every week now. I have like a busted knee right now. I'm contemplating whether or not to go see a doctor. Yeah, I took a bad fall at my house, tripped over a baby gate. It's been bothering me for the past two weeks. And Kendall's like, go see a doctor. Get on that. I got to get on ZocDoc. I got to find the knee doctor.
Is there a knee doctor? There might be. An ortho?
Is that what they do? I don't know.
Maybe I should just start with my primary care physician.
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Chapter 8: What are the long-term effects on Rusty Yates after the tragedy?
That once you're there, you're not getting out.
No, no.
And then you read further into Revelations and ultimately... God and Jesus and everybody up above wins and eventually destroys all of you. And then thinking about that, what does that even mean? Right. You're already in hell. So then once you get cast in the lake of fire with Satan, then what? Yeah. Then you just don't exist. But wouldn't that be like, it just, it always boggled my mind.
I'm like, what does that even mean? So if I end up in hell and I do eventually get destroyed in like the final showdown that happens, then what? I just cease to exist. So hell's over. I thought it was infinite. So then I'm not suffering anymore. I'm at peace. Like it just, I don't know. I'd love someone to explain that.
You're bringing up the inconsistencies of these teachings. I don't know. What does that mean?
But these guys like, I guess we'll find out.
Cause that's where Josh and I are going at the end of all this.
You know what? So be it. If that, if that's really what it is, I like to think that all these guys have it wrong. And if God and Jesus are real, They see through all this nonsense. And they're like, you know what? It's not that hard. No. Just be a good person. Compassion and mercy. Put love out there and treat each other good. Those that exploit and abuse and
Because ultimately, it becomes very clear that Michael's in it for who, right? Who is it about? It's Michael. It's his ego. He showed who he was early on. He wants to be the center of attention. He wants to also stand out and be different. And he knows that by being this radical person, he's going to get all this attention. And it's negative, mostly.
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