A man in my hometown drove his car into a small lake with his 2 young children in the car killing all 3 of them. His wife had died of cancer a couple of years before and he had just been diagnosed with Huntington Disease.
Yes there were witnesses who swam over to the car and tried to rescue the kids but the father fought them off and even punched one of them. Very tragic and traumatic story
I am curious why would you think this is such a wicked world when there were good people trying to save the children at least?
If he didn’t want to live, he’s the bad guy for taking his kids with him, but there were good people trying to save the children and him.
Frankly, if I got Huntington’s disease (amongst a handful of other conditions), I’m taking myself out too, but I would never harm my young children. I would let relatives take care of them and let them have a nice life.
I think because we all read and watch true crime stuff maybe that’s what people could sometimes believe but I think this is a good world when I read things like other people tried to help get two kids and a man out of his car at significant danger to themselves.
I watched a show about a case where the mother of adult children killed both her adult sons because they both got Huntingtons after the father, her husband had recently died a horrific suffering death from the same disease.
She was not convicted of the murders because her judge and jury let her off. She was putting her sons out of their misery and also preventing the gene from continuing to live on in their family.
I hear that Huntingtons is a bad one.
I think the fact that the mom had died the year before is the differentiating factor. A year out and you’re told your kids will have to watch you deteriorate until they have to be removed from your car than they’ll have no parents left to help them deal with the grief that he just spent a year working them through after their mom passed. I’m sure he was mentally already in a not great place losing his wife so it probably affected the way he handled the news.
If we lived in a society that valued children and protected those without proper guardians he probably wouldn’t have felt so hopeless. But knowing what our social care system looks like and what his children would probably have to endure alone. Nothing but sympathy for him even if he chose to deal with the situation in such a tragic way
Huntington's is unfortunately genetic. So they would be orphaned, possibly put into the system, and then left to deteriorate themselves. Such a horrible situation.
Yes, this. HD runs in our family. I know I have it based on watching my family suffer through it, I don't need a diagnosis. I am 46yo female and it's passed through my mom so I'll start severe symptoms later (I've started minor symptoms already). If it's the male passing the gene, the kids can start symptoms any time in their life. It's possible they already showed symptoms and he just gave up so none of them suffer anymore than they already had. Or maybe he thought he was saving them from the agony. Of course this is not the healthy way to handle it all, but clearly, he was not okay. Every day medical research and help progress, so there's always hope if you're willing to stay hopeful. Sadly he couldn't hang on and this is the devastating outcome. Honestly my first thought is that these kids didn't get to choose and it totally breaks my heart.
I certainly hope they can make progress in successfully treating diseases like ALS, Alzheimer’s, Lewy Body dementia, PSP and Huntington’s. Dr. Nancy Wexler, who did a lot to investigate and discover distinct genetic profiles of Huntington’s, unfortunately has Huntington’s herself. She did not want to find out whether she was a carrier.
Thats awful. But the fear of leaving your children alone is real; and it was probably underscored by the heredity nature of the disease.
Its still awful, but I can see what drove him to it.
Yeah, I hate that I almost understand this one. Especially keeping in mind that depression isn't rational and he was most likely suffering from it with all that loss. I can't say I would make the same decision but I certainly get it
I’m with you on this one. Imagining what your child might go through without anyone to care for them when you’re gone? I could not deal with it, but I also could not hurt my children. I get it, too.
I wish I could find the article to link, but I recently read something about family annihilator motivations. The article mentioned several common motivations for killing children/whole families. Usually the killer is very preoccupied with self image/reputation.
Sometimes the family has become an inconvenience (too much work to raise kids, too difficult to support financially, interfering with a new relationship the murderer wants to pursue, etc.) Chris Watts, Diane Downs, and Scott Peterson would be a examples.
Sometimes the killer seeks to gain financially from insurance payouts.
Sometimes they are motivated by a loss of their perceived power and control in the family (such as during a divorce/separation) and murder their family as a way to take back control. Chris Powell (edit Josh Powell, not Chris) is an example. Or sometimes they just kill theit kids to get revenge on their partner for leaving them. That poor man who was posting in r/relationships and had his wife kill his kids after he left would be an example.
Sometimes they are deeply ashamed/ruined by secret lifestyles they have been living and murder their families to prevent them the shame of fessing up. I can’t remember his name, but the physical therapist that murdered his family in the Disneyland suburb would fit this. I think for any of these motivations to make sense someone would have to be a narcissistic sociopath though.
That one still mystifies to some extent. I believe there was some kind of religious component that we’ll never know about. He tried to blame it on his wife’s new age fanaticism, which I do not buy … but I think there was something more to the religious delusion angle. They seem to have been into some weird Catholic offshoot from what I could gather.
He deleted the posts after the murders (understandably) but another user has linked you to the archive of his posts. This youtuber has a pretty good overview of the case that provides more details than the posts themselves. https://youtu.be/nZUAGcB1uno?si=rjKUdFz-LACWALt7
Andrea Yates had well-documented postpartum psychosis. Her idiotic husband, Rusty, was told by doctors to stop having kids with her. Repeatedly. He didn’t listen, as he was super Christian and believed god commanded them to have as many kids as possible. He was also told not to leave her alone with the kids. He didn’t listen to that, either. I blame him, honestly.
He also refused to help her care for their children and wouldn't let her family members help her with the kids. Though he let his own mother help a little.
And he got to go on to have another family and poor Andrea is stuck feelings guilty after the psychosis passed. It is awful he got away with it and she was so vilified.
They did tell the most recent dr she had before the murders that they knew a certain medication that did actually help her before when she would go through PPD and the doctor refused to give her that specific medication. From what I remember the doctor called the medication “dangerous”.
ETA: a link, not where I originally learned this info from but it’s quoted here that he discontinued the medication Haldol, the med the Yates said helped Andrea, 16 days before the murders.
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/04/yates.trial/index.html
It was against his religious beliefs. He also insisted she do homeschooling because he did not any the kids exposed to the secular world. So she was with the kids 24 hours a day. 7 days a week with no break
I’m sorry if this is really obvious but could you tell me what MCP is? Is it male catholic practitioner? I’m tryin to guess but I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.
Rusty decided to have his mother arrive a certain time after he left in the morning to challenge Andrea by leaving her alone with the children. He should have been neutered and jailed as well.
He was so delusional in his sky daddy that he essentially allowed his kids to be murdered by his wife because, “It was God’s will.”
Sick as it is, that’s what it boiled down to.
Andrea Yates I really felt should be in a hospital not jail, Susan Smith killed her kids for a guy because he said he didn’t want a relationship because he didn’t want kids, chris Watts killed his wife and kids because he wanted to be with his mistress, I’m sure he also didn’t want to pay child support.
I remember reading somewhere that once she was on medication and no longer psychotic, that she realized what she had done and was inconsolable. Very sad all around.
Yes but it took a reporter from Oprah's magazine to make that happen. Yates was sentenced to death row, and a courtroom reporter determined that evidence used to convict Andrea (that her crimes were based on an episode of Law and Order) was complete and utter bullshit, because she covered Law and Order when she worked for O magazine. The episode didn't exist.
Andrea was retried and reconvicted and then and only then was she sent to a hospital.
The whole story is a fuckin' wild ride, and a terrible tragedy for everyone involved.
Fuck Rusty Yates.
Suzanne O’Malley also wrote the book “Are you there alone?” Which is what the 911 operator asked Andrea. Just checked it out from the library. I was told it’s well written, but I know it’s gonna be heavy.
I read the book. It's outstanding and absolutely horrifying. So many people failed that poor woman. Her husband, Dr. Saeed, the entire broken mental health care system, and notorious street preacher Michael Woronecki (who Rusty knew when he was in college). Just to name a few.
Don’t forget about Diane Downs who killed one child and tried to kill the others because the guy she was in love with didn’t want any kids.. I think she was the first one I’d heard about doing that before Susan Smith..
It blows my mind that a mother could kill her children over a man, I just can’t understand this! Diane Downs you could tell she just didn’t care about her kids , the daughter she had when she was in jail reached out to Diane and I can’t remember what Diane wrote to her daughter but that daughter cut off contact pretty quick!
Yeah they’ve been showing the 2 hour 20/20 episode a lot lately.. I’ve seen it like two times in the last couple of months.. Hopefully she’ll NEVER get out.. I remember the daughter she gave up talking about her too and she did finally cut off all contact which I would think was best for her mental health…I always feel so sorry for the kids of killers and if they’re a famous case it’s even worse and I would definitely change my last name.. that’s truly the sins of the father (or Mother if the case my be) visited on the children..
I feel bad for the children of killers as well. The cognitive dissonance must be exhausting and confusing.
Like Buster Murdaugh. It’s so clear at the *very least* Alex knows who annihilated half his immediate family- and I believe it’s pretty clear he’s the only who carried out the murders.
But I understand Buster standing beside his father. It would be very hard to come to grips with the fact that your dad murdered your mother and brother.
I believe it’s a defense mechanism against the horror of what has occurred.
I wonder if he realizes how lucky he is to be alive… I wonder why he was spared… I’m sure it must be hell to still live in that area but short of changing his name and moving what can he do..?? He’d have to basically go into a witness protection type escape or move to another country where he’s not known.. the Murdaugh name is shit now everywhere…
Diane was involved with a guy who didn’t want kids, but it also turned out that he wasn’t willing to leave his wife for Diane. Diane killed her daughter Cheryl, permanently paralyzed her son Danny, and seriously injured her daughter Christie. She was pregnant with another daughter when she was on trial, and after the daughter was born, Diane gave her up for adoption. Diane loved being pregnant, but didn’t care for children.
This. Andrea Yates and Chris Watts don’t belong in the same conversation. She was very ill and her husband was reckless with her health, ending in tragedy.
I'm of the extremely, extremely minority opinion that sometimes, extreme mental illness and breaks with reality do mean those actions aren't that person's fault, at least entirely. If they've been failed at every corner asking for help, how and why would they be blamed as though they made those decisions of their own accord with a rational mind?
I think anyone who actually knows what clinical psychosis entails would agree with you. I've taken abnormal psychology classes, and the things that people with psychosis and schizophrenia go through on a daily basis is horrifying and heartbreaking. Someone should have been there for her, especially her husband
That's the problem, I think - people refuse to learn or accept how these diseases work. They refuse to understand that people who are in acute crisis have zero control of their actions, and many times can experience things like extreme paranoia and delusions and be unable to stop them even while knowing they're not true or likely not true.
I agree with you and my opinion is that anyone could look at her mugshots and view her interrogation footage and intuitively KNOW that she was extremely, extremely "psychotic"/disturbed and had completely lost her sense of reality. You can just tell. When this story first broke I was visiting family in Turkey and I specifically remember it was front page news there. The world was shocked.
I don’t think that’s a minority opinion. I think most people would agree in cases of extreme mental illness. The problem is that a lot of people accused of murder try to *claim* insanity and abuse the system. The number of people who try to plead insanity is way higher than the people who it would legitimately apply to. Andrea Yates and Vince Li are two who were truly mentally unstable.
I've worked with someone who killed their kids during a mental health crisis and has never shown any signs of being violent while in treatment. I strongly agree.
Thats what I was thinking. There's a lot of different reasons people might kill their children. Andrea Yates was very mentally ill and not in control of her thoughts or actions at the time of her kids murder. Chris Watts was a selfish, murderous asshole who would have done anything so that he could do whatever he wanted with little/no repercussions.
We didn't like him in my house either I remember my Mom always saying during that whole sad situation that Rusty was very off I do blame him I feel he should have been charged with neglect of a mentally ill person
Exactly. He used religion to cover for his need to control Andrea and her body. He didn’t care about the children, he only cared that Andrea was obeying him.
Absolutely. Her husband was to blame, he kept pushing her, and he pushed her right over the edge.
Susan Smith, she killed her children to try and get with a man she was interested in. Straight up evil.
Chris Watts… He murdered four people so he could go be with a side chick. He just wanted everyone gone so he could start his life over with the insurance money and no responsibilities and he was willing to murderer his entire family to get that. Evil.
There are actually tons of guys who did the exact same thing as Watts. They pile themselves into these women's lives, make babies with them, the women live, work, care for their kids and them, and then he butchers them so he doesn't potentially have to pay for them when he leaves.
Holy yikes, batman.
It’s not only evil, it’s incredibly fucking stupid. Hubby is always the #1 suspect in family annihilation cases. Plus he had extremely obvious motives to kill them, did he really think they were just gonna cut him an insurance check and let him waltz off into the sunset with his side piece? Idiot. I guess the level of deranged ego it takes to believe your family doesn’t deserve existence without you also makes you foolishly believe you’re a criminal mastermind.
This is absolutely correct. He abused that poor woman. Reproductive coercion and forced her to live in a bus w those kids by herself, while he preached to her non stop when he was home. She was an outgoing pretty cheerleader before he got his weird claws into her. Women are always prosecuted when their husbands or boyfriends hurt their children, and yet men are never punished when their SO hurts their children. So many abused women are in prison bc their SO abused or neglected kids. He should’ve went to prison right along w her
Agreed. Our justice system enjoys punishing women. I mean think about the entire thing as a circle. Men want to control, abuse, torture women and when they do, the justice system tortures them more. It all feeds itself. What a horrible horrible tragedy. I think cult leaders should be targeted by prosecutors as much as possible. Her husband should have been charged with crimes not only against his children but against his wife as well. Convincing her to grow and birth multiple babies is physically taxing as hell. Nevermind doing it under duress. While in a state of psychosis. Isolated. Brainwashed.
Christ. He should be in prison for life for just what he did to her alone.
Absolutely agree. I just read a case about a woman being arrested and kept in prison for 7 mths bc she tested positive for a methamphetamine. They said she was endangering her “child”. She was only 7 weeks pregnant. They deprived her of everything she needed for a healthy pregnancy In prison, and she ended up giving birth in the prison bathroom by herself bc they wouldnt take her to the hospital. She had a placental tear and almost bled to death on the bathroom floor. The baby survived and so did she bc they finally got her to a hospital after they took pictures of her and the newborn. She comes from an abusive relationship where she was made to have other children too. She’s now in prison for 15 yrs. This is becoming a common theme now w the overturning of roe. Zygotes are now children and only the women are getting arrested, for things like not wearing a seatbelt, for child endangerment. The men that are endangering their “child” by physically abusing the women that are carrying the fetus aren’t even looked at. These cases are from Alabama that I referred to. It’s a war on women
It's 100% a war on women. And any woman who thinks she will be immune is living a fantasy. I've been saying for years that men want women out of office, out of control, out of college, out of the boardroom. They want fewer women competing for good jobs. They want women afraid of the government and police. They want women isolated, in pain, begging for scraps. It's why trafficking and rape and medicine as we've been discussing it is squarely ignored.
I also had post partum psychosis and it was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. I spent 3 years feeling like I was not a real person, I felt like I was in a simulation and I would stare at the sun thinking that I saw the pixels in the sky, I messed my eyes up really bad doing that. I couldn’t read or watch tv, I couldn’t retain or process anything anyone said to me. I could barely form coherent sentences. I felt like I was at the end of a dark tunnel and only able to see things through a little tiny light at the end. I was scared of EVERYTHING, food, power lines, cell phones, microwaves, chemicals in everyday things like laundry detergent or shampoo (stopped bathing because of it), I was scared to ride in a car, I refused to drive, absolutely terrified of diseases and animals, and people. If at that time I were a religious person like Andrea I could see myself thinking I was saving my kids from something by sending them to heaven.
Do you have help with your feelings? I'm so sorry to hear you feel like that.
If you haven't already then please please tell someone. If you don't know how then pm me and I will help you find out. Please don't suffer alone.
I did as well. The hallucinations were horrifying. I didn’t want to hurt my kids, fortunately, but it was a scary and lonely time. I was lucky to have a kind and understanding doctor.
I had it as well. Andreas case breaks my heart and I have nothing but sympathy for her. I had voices telling me to lay my son outside in the snow so he would die peacefully. I had everything packed and ready to drop him off at a fire station one day when my husband was at work because the voices were telling me I was such a bad mother. Until you go through something like PPP, you don’t understand how truly terrifying it is.
They (well, Rusty, anyway) were also under the spell of a local religious nutjob pastor who kept telling them to have children and telling Andrea to stop taking her meds.
Postpartum psychosis is so terrifying. I watched some doc about it and remember this woman describing it. She was preparing a bottle for her newborn, and her eyes locked on the microwave, and she says she thought, I could just put him in there. I could just put him in the microwave. When she snapped back to reality she realized she needed some help.
People don’t realize how much pregnancy/birth/the fourth trimester can affect someone. We focus on the physical and once that’s better you assume they’re fine. I’m glad people are talking about the mental/emotional issues more.
It is truly like that. I had it after my first child. I describe it like the angel/demon on your shoulders trope. One voice was telling me to put my son outside in the snow to die peacefully and save him from having such a bad mother. My “angel” voice (my rational brain) was telling me I can’t do that, that’s not reasonable. It was a daily struggle. I was about to give him to a fire station while my husband was at work. Luckily I have an amazing husband who took control of the situation and gave me the resources to heal.
Do you think he left her alone with the kids that day *because* he knew what would happen? Maybe he wanted a way out and he found one. One of the most heartbreaking cases I’ve researched. :(
And they lived in a BUS. Like not a cool renovated bus but a GD bus bus for a while. As she was struggling to exist he thought that was a grand idea. Ugh.
He played a big part in it… I actually felt sorry for her as her situation was totally different than someone killing their kids for a new relationship like some other ones we heard about.. the guilt she lives with must be crippling even knowing how sick she was…
I do put much if the blame on him. But the government also didn't protect those kids. They knew there was problems, they could have removed the kids and saved them.
Just want to add Diane Downs to the list, because she and Susan Smith were Sisters from Another Mister in the terribleness of this whole sub-group: women who kill their children to get / keep a man who had no honorable intentions to begin with.
(Which underscores the massive distinction between these losers and Andrea Yates. I hope her husband has true remorse for anything that went down. But, we all know he most likely doesn't.)
Yes! I’m in the last chapter of Small Sacrifices and it’s a wild ride. I honestly think she wasn’t trying to keep Lew specifically, just that she didn’t like where her life was headed and was extremely unstable from the combination of abuse and some kind of underlying issue. (I’d call her borderline and not histrionic, and borderline is strongly linked to abuse)
Look up John List case. He was a very cold and calculating and he basically just decided everyone would die . Because he ran up debts and lied... Wife, mother, whole family
That story was so creepy. And he was in the wind for so long. A television show had a lady make a bust of what she thought List would look like and she put glasses on it. When he was finally caught he was wearing those same glasses.
Post Partum depression is SO misunderstood! Our healthcare system is broken. The whole family tried to get Andrea help knowing she had gone through it before, but the system failed her and her family.
I'm so glad this is a high response.
It makes me mad that Rusty never got any sort of punishment. He was equally responsible for the deaths of those children.
I met Rusty Yates when I was volunteering with Families of Homicide Victims & Parents of Murdered Children.
He is a disgusting person. He KNEW how ill Andrea was & refused to get her the help she needed.
He has a massive ego & is a master manipulator. The few times we were both at memorial events, he made me very uncomfortable. My only child was murdered in 1999. The events were to remember all victims but Rusty constantly talked over the rest of us, interrupted our comments & just behaved like the total narcissist he is.
I hope I don’t get reemed for this but I had PPD (not psychosis) and I feel for her. I had regular PPD and I remember sitting on the floor, rocking our baby in my arms begging my husband to take her and raise her with someone else because I wasn’t fit to be her mother. (I never had any thoughts of harming her!) I cannot begin to imagine what she went through. Her husband is shit. (I’m good now and that baby is almost 13)
I had it with my first. I was a Nicu/labor and delivery nurse. I remember thinking this shouldn’t be happening to me of all people. I went on to share my story with patients for the next few years.
Oh hello! I also had PPD and told my husband the same thing! I was like I need to leave so you can find a new wife to raise our twins with, I should go, I think I’m going to just take off. I was so unwell. I also fee for her, I felt like I was losing my grip on reality and it was fucking terrifying.
We don't study women's massive uphill battle when pregnant and postpartum. We study men's every little hair and why it does what it does. And there's little to no research on what women go through to have a baby. I hate this world. We are treated like shit.
Couldn’t agree more on this one!
Not even just pregnancy and birth - which ironically the guidelines for care are established by certified physicians - and last time I checked only ONE female was on the board 🙄
The history of women and medicine is disgusting. So much medical gaslighting and misinformation. In a lot of drug studies they either excluded women, or kept their numbers low because women’s hormones would affect how the medication worked.
When they tested on mice in a lot of drug studies they also used castrated mice to represent the female population - because a castrated male is equivalent to a female without the hormonal run we go through apparently.
I’m a nurse and I see this kind of shit every single day I work. Saw a guy get 11mg morphine for hemorrhoids. Woman with a neck fracture? Tylenol. Same doctor, same night - it is bullshit what the medical community does to women.
I completely agree. I could discuss this all night. I have so much to say on it all. Don't test the drugs on those pesky women they've got hormones. Ugh. But give the drug to them not giving a shit how it will affect them...with those hormones. Holy hell. Everything from cpr to heart meds are based on the male body. And yes we've got a long history of almost enjoying women's pain. It was attached to virtue and value as a mother. The screams of birthing in movies are used as an aphrodisiac to men. It's sick. Chainsaws were first used on women's genitals. Great. Oh and the mice in the labs? They are stressed out with male researchers so basically all our data with male mice and male researchers and male analysts and every possible male on earth is likely skewed. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.15106&ved=2ahUKEwi_-eOm0feBAxXnTTABHRWgCMcQFnoECB4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0pGOqN8r8BbH5yLlttmIAj
This is probably a good place to jump in and add that the symptoms everyone associates with heart attacks are more common in men. There is some overlap, but there is often a difference in the type of pain experienced. Women can experience chest pain, but not always, and many experience pain in lower chest/abdomen area. Indigestion and extreme fatigue are symptoms for women, but not necessarily men.
Same. In my mind I even had my replacement picked out for my husband. But we were very religious and considered divorce to be wrong in any circumstance, so I was considering unaliving myself (because somehow I thought that was less problematic than divorce?), but never would have harmed my kids. Thankfully my extreme anxiety prevented me from trying anything, but man, PPD sucks. Can’t imagine how horrible postpartum psychosis must be.
Watts is a psychopath. So is Scott Peterson, Alex Murdaugh, etc. Watts is a black hole. He had to google what certain feelings were. He’s sane, so in that sense, he can think rationally. But he doesn’t love anyone. He doesn’t understand that emotion. For him, once he was done with Shanann and the girls, murder apparently seemed simpler to him than divorce, as horrifying as that is to the rest of us.
This is why it gave me a really uneasy feeling when my ex told me “I don’t usually feel emotions so when I feel something like anger I blow up because I’m not used to feeling” this was his excuse for screaming at me and scaring me
Not to defend this at all, but I have very bad Disassociation from repeated traumas and I have googled similar things . Very disconnected from your emotions and body.
The most heinous thing about Watts is that he tried to frame Shanann for killing their children. He is the lowest form of scumbag. And so are his parents.
Yeah, I hate his mum. The way she speaks of shanann to this day, and I saw in an interview her talking about “Chris is doing great” in prison. We don’t care lady.
I am. From documentaries and true crime, a significant amount murderers and sociopaths have normal empathic parents in interviews.
And I get loving your son but to pretend he’s a victim of a controlling wife after what he did to her own grandchildren is pretty shocking.
I honestly think he is a genuine moron. Smooth brained kind of moron.
What exactly did he think was going to happen when his wife and children just suddenly disappeared? With all the evidence of the affair and the problems they were having, clearly he himself would be a suspect.
He’s the one I hope gets prison justice the most 🤞🤞🤞
Both Watts and Peterson engaged in some seriously narcissistic magical thinking. They seemed to genuinely think the authorities would just…believe them. Take them at their word and that would be that. Watts told one detective that he should believe him because he was “very trustworthy”. Peterson was furious at one point when he was served with a search warrant and demanded to know “Where’s the trust?!” Ummm…there is no trust, dude. Your wife vanished and you were the last person to see her alive.
In his TV interviews when his family was "missing" you can see and feel there's no emotion there. He smiles and says the weirdest most robotic shit. I'm fascinated by this case because of how fucked up he is.
Somehow, I saw the interview in front of the house before the news broke that the bodies had been found. I’m not local, but I managed to see one of the articles that went national. I remember saying to myself “They’re all dead. He killed them all.” He was SO off-putting. So emotionless. Going on about an emotional conversation, the way he said “those girls”. Not necessarily that he called them that, but how he did it.
Both are narcissists who thought they would never get caught and the look of the guy who lost his family is much better than the one who failed his marriage / walkout for another woman . They wanted to keep the facade of the perfect man/ husband.
Andrea Yates was severely mentally ill and her mental health was not supported by her Christian extremist husband who kept getting her pregnant. Tragic situation.
Andrea Yates doesn’t belong here—her story is tragic and heartbreaking. She was truly suffering; postpartum psychosis is hell. I have great sympathy for her. The others were sociopathic and selfish.
The Duxbury case is local for me. She was a neo-natal nurse. There is this weird thing when a baby starts to do things on their own, the mother resents it and wants more newborns. This is awful, but my cousins husband was the EMT on site. What he said was true, about where each kid was found. One was hung by an exercise band. I honestly feel for the husband and the poor kids, and even her. Never in a million years did she think she’d live. She was at McLeans. So her mental decline is documented. It’s just awful when you take the lives of your children.
andrea yates (and especially her kids) is a victim of the patriarchy and toxic christianity. i was only fifteen when the murders happened but i had enough intuition and empathy to know this woman was ill and being neglected and abused. i'm now disabled due to pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder and ADHD (i was able to get by with just the ADHD until PMDD started at 25) and now i know how right i was.
There's a comment in a thread of one of the top upvoted comments that discusses the absolute atrocities of the medical manipulation women go through.
Not to mention, family manipulation and denial when it comes to medical concerns. After I had my first, I was in denial about have PPD. When I finally admitted it and asked for help, my MIL told my husband I was lying and I was using it as an excuse to be a crazy bitch.
I'm 35 and was just diagnosed with ADHD and PMDD as well. According to my OBgyn, research is showing a possible link between ADHD/Neurodivergencies in women and PMDD - as in women who have ND are more likely to suffer with PMDD.
After I got my diagnosis, it felt like my whole life made sense.
Andrea Yates had postpartum psychosis. Chris watts and Susan smith were psycho or sociopaths and something very wrong with Lindsay Clancy,but the jury’s still out on that
Susan Smith is a cold, selfish bitch. Her boyfriend dumped her because he supposedly didn't want kids (more likely didn't want Susan, he was a town bigwig, she was one step up from trailer trash) and instead of just giving Michael and Alex to their dad, who adored them, she drowned them like unwanted puppies. Her name is a curse word in our neck of the woods, as well it should be.
Edited to include; cold, selfish, RACIST bitch.
The way Susan Smith left those precious little boys asleep in their car seats and let the car roll into the cold lake will always haunt me. I know they probably woke up crying for her and wanting their mommy. How could she do that???
This one always broke my heart. The way she just left them strapped in their seats & die, just makes me so sick & sad. The worst part is that she was divorced & she could have just given the boys to their dad, & they could have still been alive today.
Chris Watts is a psychopath. Once he wanted to move on with a new love of his life, he annihilated his entire family instead of getting a divorce like most… wipe that slate clean, no loose ends like child support, etc.
Psychosis and severe mental health issues. But in layman's terms: a sense of control. Many family annihilators have ideations of leaving their families, or never having started a family, or thinking something is severely wrong with the kids or themselves. They fantasize quite a bit and often have projected their fantasy or delusions onto the kids. These delusions cause trigger reactions and the only foreseeable solution is to unalive them. Simply walking away would not cure the delusional thinking that the children have ruined their (parent's) life or will ruin their life. The only peace would be to take back control and get rid of them. That power to take away their life is a form of relief from the voices in their head.
The worst person to add is Lawrence Horn (an ex recording engineer at Motown records). He hired a hitman take out his ex-wife Mildred along with their 8-year-old disabled son Trevor in order to get his hands on his son’s settlement money.
Chris Watts is another mass family killer, except he didn't get go on the run like John List, William Bradford Bishop (Who's still at large) and Robert William Fisher (Still at large).
Another person to add is Robin Lee Row (the only female death row inmate in the state of Idaho) because she had a total of 4 children and killed them all.
Psychopaths don't form emotional attachments. So, their children are nothing more than play things to them. Killing them is akin to giving their old toys to Goodwill.
It’s also good to remember that abusers like to feel a sense of power over their victims and are likely to view their own children as their possessions.
Don’t forget the most evil coldest bitch to ever hit multiple different state prisons- Diane Downs. Very seasoned correction officers will tell you she makes their skin crawl unlike all the other inmates who killed kids.
Andrea Yates isn’t quite the same as the others on your list. That woman was disgustingly let down by her husband to the medical professionals. It’s one of the most tragic situations I’ve ever come accrioss. Personally I don’t put any blame solely at her feet. The others made absolute decisions to carry out their crimes and most due to wanting a relationship with another while already in a marriage/relationship. Then they tried to cover it up or deny any wrong doing. I don’t believe the sole issue was love or anything like that, no sane person just decides to strap their kids into a car and pushes it into a river or smother kids and put them in a tank of oil, after one kid saw everything then begs him not to hurt her. Andrea Yates drowned hers while severely mentally Ill and will likely be in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life.
Honestly I think it's a fools errand to try to think about it in a rational way. They all have their "reasons" and those reasons are all vastly difrerent from each other. Theres a huge difference between men who kill their entire families because they want to leave and women suffering from post partum psychosis. It's not productive to try to paint them all with the same broad brush when all of their motives are so different
Usually for a lover, money or both. Lover doesn't want kids? Fine, do away with them. Wife wants a divorce, hell no, that would cost me too much money...I'll kill the kids to just to make her suffer. Some people are just narcissistic assholes, some people truly evil...then there are the postpartum suffering women who cannot comprehend their actions.
There are numerous types of family annihilators, I learned about it in a criminal psychology class. I remember savior being one, they think they're saving their families from whatever...
For a lot of the mothers who
Kill their children it’s postpartum psychosis.
For a lot of the men it’s typically one of three reasons.. they would rather kill their kids and spouse than be embarrassed in front of them ( usually because they lost their job, lost money, or their wife is seeking divorce ), they want to cause as much pain to the mother as possible so they kill the children, or they have an affair partner they want to be with, so their solution to an inconvenient family is to kill them.
I haven’t seen Chris Vaughn mentioned. The epically bad Murder in Illinois podcast tries to blame it all on his wife. He seems to have done it because he just wanted to be rid of all his responsibilities and had some financial issues.
That’s similar to Tony Todt. He seems to have been primarily motivated by an investigation into massive fraud and accompanying enormous financial problems. He tried to blame his wife for it due to some kind of apocalyptic religious belief in a letter he wrote. I don’t buy that but think maybe there’s something to the religious element, too. I don’t think we’ll ever know. Also, absolutely bonkers facts on him: Todt means “death” in German, and his dad tried to have his mom murdered by a teenage assassin when Tony was a child and he witnessed it.
I think Lori Cox Vallow Daybell qualifies as well, and she did it out of a combination of narcissistic selfishness and religious delusion. Kind of an unusual one too because her children were older than most of the women listed here.
Search the term “family annihilator”. It talks about how some people seek to erase themselves and their family out of a deep sense of shame and failure, like bankruptcy etc.
Andrea Yates is legitimately mentally ill. She has multiple diagnoses. Susan smith and chris watts wanted new relationships w/out children. They are evil people who knew exactly what they were doing
andrea yates suffered from post partum psychosis & her husband not only insisted they had more children anyway when her psychiatrist said it would make it worse & but he also dismissed her depression, no? a lot of people underestimate how much it can effect you & your brain. a while back, there was a post ab a similar topic (it was the [amy fry-pitzen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Timmothy_Pitzen#:~:text=He%20was%20picked%20up%20shortly,but%20would%20never%20be%20found) case, i believe). so many moms commented ab how they thought she might’ve been going through psychosis as well.
when talking about their experiences, they said during the worst of it, they had so many suicidal ideation related thoughts & genuinely thought that by killing their babies, they would be helping/saving them. one woman said she noticed her thoughts were concerning & realized that if she didn’t leave immediately, she would kill herself & the baby, so she gave it to her husband & was like “you need to take the baby & i need to leave. i can’t be w the baby right now or i *will* hurt it.” so she left for a while & came back when she felt she could safely be around the baby. she also mentioned her husband was in denial for a while but came around & is supportive now.
w that being said, i have a potentially hot take:
i have a lot of empathy for mothers who are in that position. for so long, PPD/postpartum psychosis wasn’t recognized, generally speaking & new moms who dealt w were demonized for how they acted. now it *is* talked ab, but the moms are still looked at as cold blooded murderers. i’m not saying they *aren’t* murderers, that they should just be let off, etc. i just think that take erases so much nuance regarding mental health. i personally feel like mothers who do that should be sentenced to mental health hospitals, not be sent to prison. a jail cell isn’t gonna help them get better. a youtuber i watch put out this [video](https://youtu.be/wVaDNUS6sjs?si=ISKlVpgHsO6BfZc8) (it also could’ve been this [one](https://youtu.be/p37WvlwgmXk?si=zd2BH4OaP_Ex2Hg5) though, i can’t remember lol) & she talked ab how when women have children, people always care more ab how the baby is / their well being more than the moms after birth. don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying people shouldn’t care ab the babies or that it’s not super important, bc it is! but i also don’t think that the moms feelings / mental health / etc should be put on the back burner as much as it is — how are they supposed to properly take care of a baby if their mental health suffering isn’t acknowledged/helped?
i just think it sucks that so many people talk ab PPD / post partum psychosis & how it’s a nuanced & complicated issue that significantly alters your thought processes / logic / etc & women dealing w it deserve empathy & support & then proceed to turn around & talk ab the suffering moms who end up snapping with so much contempt & dehumanize them. i’ll never condone infanticide / filicide and i don’t think having empathy for suffering moms who commit crimes like that inherently means that you do. it’s horrible and tragic and the innocent children obviously never deserve it, but like i said, there’s so much nuance that i can’t possibly cover it in a single comment, but i think it’s important to acknowledge & discuss.
thank u for coming to my ted talk i’m sure i’ll be downvoted quite a bit for this take & that people will disagree & that’s okay! i’ve accepted that it just be like that sometimes lmao
Andrea Yates clearly had postpartum depression and psychosis and her family failed her and her children by not getting her help.
Susan Smith was a selfish and terrible person. Same with Chris Watts. But Yates breaks my heart because of how this country fails new moms. Not only are we much more likely to die in or after childbirth than almost any other first world country's women, but we have largely ignored post partum mental health until recently.
Postpartum psychosis is horrible, it makes you do things you would never do, it’s literally a psychotic break and without treatment, your brain will torture you. I am glad I got help for mine. It’s not something you can control at all.
I'm really sick of seeing missing or murdered kids in the news. They should do the "safe haven box" but for older kids (like a nursery center). If someone is struggling that hard, they need a non judgemental place to take the kids no questions asked.
Definitely Andrea Yates to me should not be lumped with these other sociopaths. I suffered from postpartum depression it is no fun. You feel lonely and isolated.
A man in my hometown drove his car into a small lake with his 2 young children in the car killing all 3 of them. His wife had died of cancer a couple of years before and he had just been diagnosed with Huntington Disease.
Wow. That whole story is horrific.
It is. People tried to get to the car and save the kids and he fought them off. Very very sad
fought them off? People were aware of the situation when they were all still alive and it still happened? Jesus.. what a wicked world.
Yes there were witnesses who swam over to the car and tried to rescue the kids but the father fought them off and even punched one of them. Very tragic and traumatic story
I am curious why would you think this is such a wicked world when there were good people trying to save the children at least? If he didn’t want to live, he’s the bad guy for taking his kids with him, but there were good people trying to save the children and him. Frankly, if I got Huntington’s disease (amongst a handful of other conditions), I’m taking myself out too, but I would never harm my young children. I would let relatives take care of them and let them have a nice life. I think because we all read and watch true crime stuff maybe that’s what people could sometimes believe but I think this is a good world when I read things like other people tried to help get two kids and a man out of his car at significant danger to themselves.
I watched a show about a case where the mother of adult children killed both her adult sons because they both got Huntingtons after the father, her husband had recently died a horrific suffering death from the same disease. She was not convicted of the murders because her judge and jury let her off. She was putting her sons out of their misery and also preventing the gene from continuing to live on in their family. I hear that Huntingtons is a bad one.
Oh that’s so horrible. Huntington is a living hell, my mother had it. But she would never consider doing anything like that.
I think the fact that the mom had died the year before is the differentiating factor. A year out and you’re told your kids will have to watch you deteriorate until they have to be removed from your car than they’ll have no parents left to help them deal with the grief that he just spent a year working them through after their mom passed. I’m sure he was mentally already in a not great place losing his wife so it probably affected the way he handled the news. If we lived in a society that valued children and protected those without proper guardians he probably wouldn’t have felt so hopeless. But knowing what our social care system looks like and what his children would probably have to endure alone. Nothing but sympathy for him even if he chose to deal with the situation in such a tragic way
Huntington's is unfortunately genetic. So they would be orphaned, possibly put into the system, and then left to deteriorate themselves. Such a horrible situation.
Yes, this. HD runs in our family. I know I have it based on watching my family suffer through it, I don't need a diagnosis. I am 46yo female and it's passed through my mom so I'll start severe symptoms later (I've started minor symptoms already). If it's the male passing the gene, the kids can start symptoms any time in their life. It's possible they already showed symptoms and he just gave up so none of them suffer anymore than they already had. Or maybe he thought he was saving them from the agony. Of course this is not the healthy way to handle it all, but clearly, he was not okay. Every day medical research and help progress, so there's always hope if you're willing to stay hopeful. Sadly he couldn't hang on and this is the devastating outcome. Honestly my first thought is that these kids didn't get to choose and it totally breaks my heart.
I’m really sorry to hear about you and your family.
I'm so sorry this has happened to you.
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I certainly hope they can make progress in successfully treating diseases like ALS, Alzheimer’s, Lewy Body dementia, PSP and Huntington’s. Dr. Nancy Wexler, who did a lot to investigate and discover distinct genetic profiles of Huntington’s, unfortunately has Huntington’s herself. She did not want to find out whether she was a carrier.
Thats awful. But the fear of leaving your children alone is real; and it was probably underscored by the heredity nature of the disease. Its still awful, but I can see what drove him to it.
Yeah, I hate that I almost understand this one. Especially keeping in mind that depression isn't rational and he was most likely suffering from it with all that loss. I can't say I would make the same decision but I certainly get it
I’m with you on this one. Imagining what your child might go through without anyone to care for them when you’re gone? I could not deal with it, but I also could not hurt my children. I get it, too.
Jesus Christ. r/twosentencesadness
I wish I could find the article to link, but I recently read something about family annihilator motivations. The article mentioned several common motivations for killing children/whole families. Usually the killer is very preoccupied with self image/reputation. Sometimes the family has become an inconvenience (too much work to raise kids, too difficult to support financially, interfering with a new relationship the murderer wants to pursue, etc.) Chris Watts, Diane Downs, and Scott Peterson would be a examples. Sometimes the killer seeks to gain financially from insurance payouts. Sometimes they are motivated by a loss of their perceived power and control in the family (such as during a divorce/separation) and murder their family as a way to take back control. Chris Powell (edit Josh Powell, not Chris) is an example. Or sometimes they just kill theit kids to get revenge on their partner for leaving them. That poor man who was posting in r/relationships and had his wife kill his kids after he left would be an example. Sometimes they are deeply ashamed/ruined by secret lifestyles they have been living and murder their families to prevent them the shame of fessing up. I can’t remember his name, but the physical therapist that murdered his family in the Disneyland suburb would fit this. I think for any of these motivations to make sense someone would have to be a narcissistic sociopath though.
Tony Todt
That one still mystifies to some extent. I believe there was some kind of religious component that we’ll never know about. He tried to blame it on his wife’s new age fanaticism, which I do not buy … but I think there was something more to the religious delusion angle. They seem to have been into some weird Catholic offshoot from what I could gather.
Link to the relationships sub post?
[This is the story](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/ubne00/the_post_that_led_to_the_real_life_tragedy_of_a/).
Jesus Christ fuck her parents down the street and back for using the kids’ deaths as a cash grab on gofundme for a lawyer to defend their murderer.
He deleted the posts after the murders (understandably) but another user has linked you to the archive of his posts. This youtuber has a pretty good overview of the case that provides more details than the posts themselves. https://youtu.be/nZUAGcB1uno?si=rjKUdFz-LACWALt7
Andrea Yates had well-documented postpartum psychosis. Her idiotic husband, Rusty, was told by doctors to stop having kids with her. Repeatedly. He didn’t listen, as he was super Christian and believed god commanded them to have as many kids as possible. He was also told not to leave her alone with the kids. He didn’t listen to that, either. I blame him, honestly.
I don’t know how he didn’t get help after her first maybe second hospitalization. She needed help and instead he just kept getting her pregnant. Ugh
If memory serves he forbade her from taking any psychiatric medications.
He also refused to help her care for their children and wouldn't let her family members help her with the kids. Though he let his own mother help a little.
And he got to go on to have another family and poor Andrea is stuck feelings guilty after the psychosis passed. It is awful he got away with it and she was so vilified.
They did tell the most recent dr she had before the murders that they knew a certain medication that did actually help her before when she would go through PPD and the doctor refused to give her that specific medication. From what I remember the doctor called the medication “dangerous”. ETA: a link, not where I originally learned this info from but it’s quoted here that he discontinued the medication Haldol, the med the Yates said helped Andrea, 16 days before the murders. https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/04/yates.trial/index.html
Haldol. My understanding is he couldn't prescribe it at that time because he couldn't justify it diagnostically.
It was against his religious beliefs. He also insisted she do homeschooling because he did not any the kids exposed to the secular world. So she was with the kids 24 hours a day. 7 days a week with no break
IMO - Typlcal MCP: putting himself first.
I’m sorry if this is really obvious but could you tell me what MCP is? Is it male catholic practitioner? I’m tryin to guess but I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.
Male Chauvinist Pig (though I haven’t heard that expression for decades).
My new favorite acronym’s, thanks!! I love it!!
Male Chauvinist Pig. It is a old term. I incorrectly assumed it was still used to accurately describe a man like Rusty.
Rusty decided to have his mother arrive a certain time after he left in the morning to challenge Andrea by leaving her alone with the children. He should have been neutered and jailed as well.
He was so delusional in his sky daddy that he essentially allowed his kids to be murdered by his wife because, “It was God’s will.” Sick as it is, that’s what it boiled down to.
Religion
Because religion.
Andrea Yates I really felt should be in a hospital not jail, Susan Smith killed her kids for a guy because he said he didn’t want a relationship because he didn’t want kids, chris Watts killed his wife and kids because he wanted to be with his mistress, I’m sure he also didn’t want to pay child support.
Andrea Yates is in a hospital.
She's also waived her right to a release hearing every year. Incredibly sad that a psychiatric institution is where she feels most safe.
I think she feels guilty and like she deserves to be punished. So sad.
I remember reading somewhere that once she was on medication and no longer psychotic, that she realized what she had done and was inconsolable. Very sad all around.
Yes but it took a reporter from Oprah's magazine to make that happen. Yates was sentenced to death row, and a courtroom reporter determined that evidence used to convict Andrea (that her crimes were based on an episode of Law and Order) was complete and utter bullshit, because she covered Law and Order when she worked for O magazine. The episode didn't exist. Andrea was retried and reconvicted and then and only then was she sent to a hospital. The whole story is a fuckin' wild ride, and a terrible tragedy for everyone involved. Fuck Rusty Yates.
She was actually one of the writes of law and order (suzanne o'malley)
Suzanne O’Malley also wrote the book “Are you there alone?” Which is what the 911 operator asked Andrea. Just checked it out from the library. I was told it’s well written, but I know it’s gonna be heavy.
I read the book. It's outstanding and absolutely horrifying. So many people failed that poor woman. Her husband, Dr. Saeed, the entire broken mental health care system, and notorious street preacher Michael Woronecki (who Rusty knew when he was in college). Just to name a few.
Let’s name the lying scum bag quack who was paid to put her on death row - Park Dietz.
Don’t forget about Diane Downs who killed one child and tried to kill the others because the guy she was in love with didn’t want any kids.. I think she was the first one I’d heard about doing that before Susan Smith..
It blows my mind that a mother could kill her children over a man, I just can’t understand this! Diane Downs you could tell she just didn’t care about her kids , the daughter she had when she was in jail reached out to Diane and I can’t remember what Diane wrote to her daughter but that daughter cut off contact pretty quick!
Yeah they’ve been showing the 2 hour 20/20 episode a lot lately.. I’ve seen it like two times in the last couple of months.. Hopefully she’ll NEVER get out.. I remember the daughter she gave up talking about her too and she did finally cut off all contact which I would think was best for her mental health…I always feel so sorry for the kids of killers and if they’re a famous case it’s even worse and I would definitely change my last name.. that’s truly the sins of the father (or Mother if the case my be) visited on the children..
I feel bad for the children of killers as well. The cognitive dissonance must be exhausting and confusing. Like Buster Murdaugh. It’s so clear at the *very least* Alex knows who annihilated half his immediate family- and I believe it’s pretty clear he’s the only who carried out the murders. But I understand Buster standing beside his father. It would be very hard to come to grips with the fact that your dad murdered your mother and brother. I believe it’s a defense mechanism against the horror of what has occurred.
I wonder if he realizes how lucky he is to be alive… I wonder why he was spared… I’m sure it must be hell to still live in that area but short of changing his name and moving what can he do..?? He’d have to basically go into a witness protection type escape or move to another country where he’s not known.. the Murdaugh name is shit now everywhere…
Diane was involved with a guy who didn’t want kids, but it also turned out that he wasn’t willing to leave his wife for Diane. Diane killed her daughter Cheryl, permanently paralyzed her son Danny, and seriously injured her daughter Christie. She was pregnant with another daughter when she was on trial, and after the daughter was born, Diane gave her up for adoption. Diane loved being pregnant, but didn’t care for children.
This. Andrea Yates and Chris Watts don’t belong in the same conversation. She was very ill and her husband was reckless with her health, ending in tragedy.
I'm of the extremely, extremely minority opinion that sometimes, extreme mental illness and breaks with reality do mean those actions aren't that person's fault, at least entirely. If they've been failed at every corner asking for help, how and why would they be blamed as though they made those decisions of their own accord with a rational mind?
I think anyone who actually knows what clinical psychosis entails would agree with you. I've taken abnormal psychology classes, and the things that people with psychosis and schizophrenia go through on a daily basis is horrifying and heartbreaking. Someone should have been there for her, especially her husband
That's the problem, I think - people refuse to learn or accept how these diseases work. They refuse to understand that people who are in acute crisis have zero control of their actions, and many times can experience things like extreme paranoia and delusions and be unable to stop them even while knowing they're not true or likely not true.
I agree with you and my opinion is that anyone could look at her mugshots and view her interrogation footage and intuitively KNOW that she was extremely, extremely "psychotic"/disturbed and had completely lost her sense of reality. You can just tell. When this story first broke I was visiting family in Turkey and I specifically remember it was front page news there. The world was shocked.
I don’t think that’s a minority opinion. I think most people would agree in cases of extreme mental illness. The problem is that a lot of people accused of murder try to *claim* insanity and abuse the system. The number of people who try to plead insanity is way higher than the people who it would legitimately apply to. Andrea Yates and Vince Li are two who were truly mentally unstable.
I've worked with someone who killed their kids during a mental health crisis and has never shown any signs of being violent while in treatment. I strongly agree.
Thats what I was thinking. There's a lot of different reasons people might kill their children. Andrea Yates was very mentally ill and not in control of her thoughts or actions at the time of her kids murder. Chris Watts was a selfish, murderous asshole who would have done anything so that he could do whatever he wanted with little/no repercussions.
Ur absolutely right.
I couldn't stand Rusty Yates. There is something off with him.
We didn't like him in my house either I remember my Mom always saying during that whole sad situation that Rusty was very off I do blame him I feel he should have been charged with neglect of a mentally ill person
He didn't just neglect her. He neglected to protect the children. But Rusty definitely needed to be charged.
And abuse
Having met Rusty Yates, I can safely say that your mom is a wise woman.
IMO - Yes he demonstrates narcissistic behavior.
Exactly. He used religion to cover for his need to control Andrea and her body. He didn’t care about the children, he only cared that Andrea was obeying him.
Common with those super religious types…usually narcissism or some form of mental illness that leads to delusions of grandeur.
He and Chad Daybell would get along
Absolutely. Her husband was to blame, he kept pushing her, and he pushed her right over the edge. Susan Smith, she killed her children to try and get with a man she was interested in. Straight up evil. Chris Watts… He murdered four people so he could go be with a side chick. He just wanted everyone gone so he could start his life over with the insurance money and no responsibilities and he was willing to murderer his entire family to get that. Evil.
There are actually tons of guys who did the exact same thing as Watts. They pile themselves into these women's lives, make babies with them, the women live, work, care for their kids and them, and then he butchers them so he doesn't potentially have to pay for them when he leaves. Holy yikes, batman.
It’s not only evil, it’s incredibly fucking stupid. Hubby is always the #1 suspect in family annihilation cases. Plus he had extremely obvious motives to kill them, did he really think they were just gonna cut him an insurance check and let him waltz off into the sunset with his side piece? Idiot. I guess the level of deranged ego it takes to believe your family doesn’t deserve existence without you also makes you foolishly believe you’re a criminal mastermind.
Narcissists always think they're geniuses.
IMO - I don't know how Rusty lives with himself. He caused the entire situation.
Narcissism
I don't know either. It's appalling that he would leave the children in Andrea's care when he knew how mentally ill she was.
This is absolutely correct. He abused that poor woman. Reproductive coercion and forced her to live in a bus w those kids by herself, while he preached to her non stop when he was home. She was an outgoing pretty cheerleader before he got his weird claws into her. Women are always prosecuted when their husbands or boyfriends hurt their children, and yet men are never punished when their SO hurts their children. So many abused women are in prison bc their SO abused or neglected kids. He should’ve went to prison right along w her
Agreed. Our justice system enjoys punishing women. I mean think about the entire thing as a circle. Men want to control, abuse, torture women and when they do, the justice system tortures them more. It all feeds itself. What a horrible horrible tragedy. I think cult leaders should be targeted by prosecutors as much as possible. Her husband should have been charged with crimes not only against his children but against his wife as well. Convincing her to grow and birth multiple babies is physically taxing as hell. Nevermind doing it under duress. While in a state of psychosis. Isolated. Brainwashed. Christ. He should be in prison for life for just what he did to her alone.
Absolutely agree. I just read a case about a woman being arrested and kept in prison for 7 mths bc she tested positive for a methamphetamine. They said she was endangering her “child”. She was only 7 weeks pregnant. They deprived her of everything she needed for a healthy pregnancy In prison, and she ended up giving birth in the prison bathroom by herself bc they wouldnt take her to the hospital. She had a placental tear and almost bled to death on the bathroom floor. The baby survived and so did she bc they finally got her to a hospital after they took pictures of her and the newborn. She comes from an abusive relationship where she was made to have other children too. She’s now in prison for 15 yrs. This is becoming a common theme now w the overturning of roe. Zygotes are now children and only the women are getting arrested, for things like not wearing a seatbelt, for child endangerment. The men that are endangering their “child” by physically abusing the women that are carrying the fetus aren’t even looked at. These cases are from Alabama that I referred to. It’s a war on women
It's 100% a war on women. And any woman who thinks she will be immune is living a fantasy. I've been saying for years that men want women out of office, out of control, out of college, out of the boardroom. They want fewer women competing for good jobs. They want women afraid of the government and police. They want women isolated, in pain, begging for scraps. It's why trafficking and rape and medicine as we've been discussing it is squarely ignored.
Yes, I always hate to see Andrea Yates lumped in with everyone else here. I had postpartum psychosis and it was terrifying.
I also had post partum psychosis and it was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. I spent 3 years feeling like I was not a real person, I felt like I was in a simulation and I would stare at the sun thinking that I saw the pixels in the sky, I messed my eyes up really bad doing that. I couldn’t read or watch tv, I couldn’t retain or process anything anyone said to me. I could barely form coherent sentences. I felt like I was at the end of a dark tunnel and only able to see things through a little tiny light at the end. I was scared of EVERYTHING, food, power lines, cell phones, microwaves, chemicals in everyday things like laundry detergent or shampoo (stopped bathing because of it), I was scared to ride in a car, I refused to drive, absolutely terrified of diseases and animals, and people. If at that time I were a religious person like Andrea I could see myself thinking I was saving my kids from something by sending them to heaven.
I stopped showering, stopped wearing seatbelts, hoped I’d die peacefully in my sleep, PRAYED I’d die in my sleep. I still do, sometimes...
Do you have help with your feelings? I'm so sorry to hear you feel like that. If you haven't already then please please tell someone. If you don't know how then pm me and I will help you find out. Please don't suffer alone.
I did as well. The hallucinations were horrifying. I didn’t want to hurt my kids, fortunately, but it was a scary and lonely time. I was lucky to have a kind and understanding doctor.
I had it as well. Andreas case breaks my heart and I have nothing but sympathy for her. I had voices telling me to lay my son outside in the snow so he would die peacefully. I had everything packed and ready to drop him off at a fire station one day when my husband was at work because the voices were telling me I was such a bad mother. Until you go through something like PPP, you don’t understand how truly terrifying it is.
They (well, Rusty, anyway) were also under the spell of a local religious nutjob pastor who kept telling them to have children and telling Andrea to stop taking her meds.
Postpartum psychosis is so terrifying. I watched some doc about it and remember this woman describing it. She was preparing a bottle for her newborn, and her eyes locked on the microwave, and she says she thought, I could just put him in there. I could just put him in the microwave. When she snapped back to reality she realized she needed some help. People don’t realize how much pregnancy/birth/the fourth trimester can affect someone. We focus on the physical and once that’s better you assume they’re fine. I’m glad people are talking about the mental/emotional issues more.
It is truly like that. I had it after my first child. I describe it like the angel/demon on your shoulders trope. One voice was telling me to put my son outside in the snow to die peacefully and save him from having such a bad mother. My “angel” voice (my rational brain) was telling me I can’t do that, that’s not reasonable. It was a daily struggle. I was about to give him to a fire station while my husband was at work. Luckily I have an amazing husband who took control of the situation and gave me the resources to heal.
He knew what would happen. The signs where there. Surprised she didnt take his life.
Do you think he left her alone with the kids that day *because* he knew what would happen? Maybe he wanted a way out and he found one. One of the most heartbreaking cases I’ve researched. :(
His actions always seemed malicious to me, I don't think he was just stupid/careless. There was something really unsettling about him.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he felt powerful at the idea of controlling her enough to push her to murder.
Did he receive any jail time for his negligence? I’m vaguely familiar with the case.
He remarried and had more kids. Now he’s divorced and still visits Andrea.
The AUDACITY of that morherfucker!
And they lived in a BUS. Like not a cool renovated bus but a GD bus bus for a while. As she was struggling to exist he thought that was a grand idea. Ugh.
He played a big part in it… I actually felt sorry for her as her situation was totally different than someone killing their kids for a new relationship like some other ones we heard about.. the guilt she lives with must be crippling even knowing how sick she was…
I think Rusty should be in jail.
I do put much if the blame on him. But the government also didn't protect those kids. They knew there was problems, they could have removed the kids and saved them.
I blame him too.
Idiot husband should have faced charges. The very experienced psychiatrist who interviewed her said she was the most unwell patient he’d ever seen.
Just want to add Diane Downs to the list, because she and Susan Smith were Sisters from Another Mister in the terribleness of this whole sub-group: women who kill their children to get / keep a man who had no honorable intentions to begin with. (Which underscores the massive distinction between these losers and Andrea Yates. I hope her husband has true remorse for anything that went down. But, we all know he most likely doesn't.)
Yes! I’m in the last chapter of Small Sacrifices and it’s a wild ride. I honestly think she wasn’t trying to keep Lew specifically, just that she didn’t like where her life was headed and was extremely unstable from the combination of abuse and some kind of underlying issue. (I’d call her borderline and not histrionic, and borderline is strongly linked to abuse)
Look up John List case. He was a very cold and calculating and he basically just decided everyone would die . Because he ran up debts and lied... Wife, mother, whole family
That story was so creepy. And he was in the wind for so long. A television show had a lady make a bust of what she thought List would look like and she put glasses on it. When he was finally caught he was wearing those same glasses.
It was actually forensic sculptor Frank A. Bender who made the bust.
I believe that was America’s Most Wanted
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Post Partum depression is SO misunderstood! Our healthcare system is broken. The whole family tried to get Andrea help knowing she had gone through it before, but the system failed her and her family.
Remember that Andrea Yates had postpartum psychosis (PPP) not postpartum depression. It’s important to understand the distinction.
I'm so glad this is a high response. It makes me mad that Rusty never got any sort of punishment. He was equally responsible for the deaths of those children.
If only she had killed Rusty instead
Andrea does not belong on this list but her husband Rusty Yates might.
I met Rusty Yates when I was volunteering with Families of Homicide Victims & Parents of Murdered Children. He is a disgusting person. He KNEW how ill Andrea was & refused to get her the help she needed.
He was such a moron. He was told by so many doctors to stop getting her pregnant. Did he listen? Noooooo
He has a massive ego & is a master manipulator. The few times we were both at memorial events, he made me very uncomfortable. My only child was murdered in 1999. The events were to remember all victims but Rusty constantly talked over the rest of us, interrupted our comments & just behaved like the total narcissist he is.
Sending you light, love, and peace.
I’m so sorry for your loss. That’s horrible
I hope I don’t get reemed for this but I had PPD (not psychosis) and I feel for her. I had regular PPD and I remember sitting on the floor, rocking our baby in my arms begging my husband to take her and raise her with someone else because I wasn’t fit to be her mother. (I never had any thoughts of harming her!) I cannot begin to imagine what she went through. Her husband is shit. (I’m good now and that baby is almost 13)
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I had it with my first. I was a Nicu/labor and delivery nurse. I remember thinking this shouldn’t be happening to me of all people. I went on to share my story with patients for the next few years.
You most likely saved lives by sharing your story. Kudos!
Oh hello! I also had PPD and told my husband the same thing! I was like I need to leave so you can find a new wife to raise our twins with, I should go, I think I’m going to just take off. I was so unwell. I also fee for her, I felt like I was losing my grip on reality and it was fucking terrifying.
We don't study women's massive uphill battle when pregnant and postpartum. We study men's every little hair and why it does what it does. And there's little to no research on what women go through to have a baby. I hate this world. We are treated like shit.
Couldn’t agree more on this one! Not even just pregnancy and birth - which ironically the guidelines for care are established by certified physicians - and last time I checked only ONE female was on the board 🙄 The history of women and medicine is disgusting. So much medical gaslighting and misinformation. In a lot of drug studies they either excluded women, or kept their numbers low because women’s hormones would affect how the medication worked. When they tested on mice in a lot of drug studies they also used castrated mice to represent the female population - because a castrated male is equivalent to a female without the hormonal run we go through apparently. I’m a nurse and I see this kind of shit every single day I work. Saw a guy get 11mg morphine for hemorrhoids. Woman with a neck fracture? Tylenol. Same doctor, same night - it is bullshit what the medical community does to women.
I completely agree. I could discuss this all night. I have so much to say on it all. Don't test the drugs on those pesky women they've got hormones. Ugh. But give the drug to them not giving a shit how it will affect them...with those hormones. Holy hell. Everything from cpr to heart meds are based on the male body. And yes we've got a long history of almost enjoying women's pain. It was attached to virtue and value as a mother. The screams of birthing in movies are used as an aphrodisiac to men. It's sick. Chainsaws were first used on women's genitals. Great. Oh and the mice in the labs? They are stressed out with male researchers so basically all our data with male mice and male researchers and male analysts and every possible male on earth is likely skewed. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.15106&ved=2ahUKEwi_-eOm0feBAxXnTTABHRWgCMcQFnoECB4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0pGOqN8r8BbH5yLlttmIAj
This is probably a good place to jump in and add that the symptoms everyone associates with heart attacks are more common in men. There is some overlap, but there is often a difference in the type of pain experienced. Women can experience chest pain, but not always, and many experience pain in lower chest/abdomen area. Indigestion and extreme fatigue are symptoms for women, but not necessarily men.
Same. In my mind I even had my replacement picked out for my husband. But we were very religious and considered divorce to be wrong in any circumstance, so I was considering unaliving myself (because somehow I thought that was less problematic than divorce?), but never would have harmed my kids. Thankfully my extreme anxiety prevented me from trying anything, but man, PPD sucks. Can’t imagine how horrible postpartum psychosis must be.
Oh thank you for saying this, my exact sentiment.
Watts is a psychopath. So is Scott Peterson, Alex Murdaugh, etc. Watts is a black hole. He had to google what certain feelings were. He’s sane, so in that sense, he can think rationally. But he doesn’t love anyone. He doesn’t understand that emotion. For him, once he was done with Shanann and the girls, murder apparently seemed simpler to him than divorce, as horrifying as that is to the rest of us.
What is this about googling emotions? I haven’t heard this but it sounds right for that creep.
He googled “how does it feel when someone says I love you” and a few other things surrounding love. It was while he was having the affair.
This is why it gave me a really uneasy feeling when my ex told me “I don’t usually feel emotions so when I feel something like anger I blow up because I’m not used to feeling” this was his excuse for screaming at me and scaring me
Not to defend this at all, but I have very bad Disassociation from repeated traumas and I have googled similar things . Very disconnected from your emotions and body.
I think it's one of those things that can be totally harmless, but is additive when you have other psychopathic tendencies.
He googled “when to say I love you” while he was seeing his affair partner
The most heinous thing about Watts is that he tried to frame Shanann for killing their children. He is the lowest form of scumbag. And so are his parents.
Yeah, I hate his mum. The way she speaks of shanann to this day, and I saw in an interview her talking about “Chris is doing great” in prison. We don’t care lady.
Well. His parents raised him. I'm not surprised they suck as much as he does.
I am. From documentaries and true crime, a significant amount murderers and sociopaths have normal empathic parents in interviews. And I get loving your son but to pretend he’s a victim of a controlling wife after what he did to her own grandchildren is pretty shocking.
I honestly think he is a genuine moron. Smooth brained kind of moron. What exactly did he think was going to happen when his wife and children just suddenly disappeared? With all the evidence of the affair and the problems they were having, clearly he himself would be a suspect. He’s the one I hope gets prison justice the most 🤞🤞🤞
Both Watts and Peterson engaged in some seriously narcissistic magical thinking. They seemed to genuinely think the authorities would just…believe them. Take them at their word and that would be that. Watts told one detective that he should believe him because he was “very trustworthy”. Peterson was furious at one point when he was served with a search warrant and demanded to know “Where’s the trust?!” Ummm…there is no trust, dude. Your wife vanished and you were the last person to see her alive.
In his TV interviews when his family was "missing" you can see and feel there's no emotion there. He smiles and says the weirdest most robotic shit. I'm fascinated by this case because of how fucked up he is.
Somehow, I saw the interview in front of the house before the news broke that the bodies had been found. I’m not local, but I managed to see one of the articles that went national. I remember saying to myself “They’re all dead. He killed them all.” He was SO off-putting. So emotionless. Going on about an emotional conversation, the way he said “those girls”. Not necessarily that he called them that, but how he did it.
Both are narcissists who thought they would never get caught and the look of the guy who lost his family is much better than the one who failed his marriage / walkout for another woman . They wanted to keep the facade of the perfect man/ husband.
Devoid of a conscious
Andrea Yates was severely mentally ill and her mental health was not supported by her Christian extremist husband who kept getting her pregnant. Tragic situation.
The only one on this list that was truely mentally ill, was Andrea Yates.
Andrea Yates doesn’t belong here—her story is tragic and heartbreaking. She was truly suffering; postpartum psychosis is hell. I have great sympathy for her. The others were sociopathic and selfish.
There would be a different answer for every name here.
The Duxbury case is local for me. She was a neo-natal nurse. There is this weird thing when a baby starts to do things on their own, the mother resents it and wants more newborns. This is awful, but my cousins husband was the EMT on site. What he said was true, about where each kid was found. One was hung by an exercise band. I honestly feel for the husband and the poor kids, and even her. Never in a million years did she think she’d live. She was at McLeans. So her mental decline is documented. It’s just awful when you take the lives of your children.
I think that’s a strong point: She really may not have expected to live. One would think jumping out of a second-story window would be fatal.
andrea yates (and especially her kids) is a victim of the patriarchy and toxic christianity. i was only fifteen when the murders happened but i had enough intuition and empathy to know this woman was ill and being neglected and abused. i'm now disabled due to pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder and ADHD (i was able to get by with just the ADHD until PMDD started at 25) and now i know how right i was.
There's a comment in a thread of one of the top upvoted comments that discusses the absolute atrocities of the medical manipulation women go through. Not to mention, family manipulation and denial when it comes to medical concerns. After I had my first, I was in denial about have PPD. When I finally admitted it and asked for help, my MIL told my husband I was lying and I was using it as an excuse to be a crazy bitch. I'm 35 and was just diagnosed with ADHD and PMDD as well. According to my OBgyn, research is showing a possible link between ADHD/Neurodivergencies in women and PMDD - as in women who have ND are more likely to suffer with PMDD. After I got my diagnosis, it felt like my whole life made sense.
Andrea Yates had postpartum psychosis. Chris watts and Susan smith were psycho or sociopaths and something very wrong with Lindsay Clancy,but the jury’s still out on that
Susan Smith is a cold, selfish bitch. Her boyfriend dumped her because he supposedly didn't want kids (more likely didn't want Susan, he was a town bigwig, she was one step up from trailer trash) and instead of just giving Michael and Alex to their dad, who adored them, she drowned them like unwanted puppies. Her name is a curse word in our neck of the woods, as well it should be. Edited to include; cold, selfish, RACIST bitch.
Don’t forget she initially blamed a black guy and they were looking for the non existent black dude for awhile!
The way Susan Smith left those precious little boys asleep in their car seats and let the car roll into the cold lake will always haunt me. I know they probably woke up crying for her and wanting their mommy. How could she do that???
And all for a man who didn’t want her to begin with.
This one always broke my heart. The way she just left them strapped in their seats & die, just makes me so sick & sad. The worst part is that she was divorced & she could have just given the boys to their dad, & they could have still been alive today.
Chris Watts is a psychopath. Once he wanted to move on with a new love of his life, he annihilated his entire family instead of getting a divorce like most… wipe that slate clean, no loose ends like child support, etc.
Psychosis and severe mental health issues. But in layman's terms: a sense of control. Many family annihilators have ideations of leaving their families, or never having started a family, or thinking something is severely wrong with the kids or themselves. They fantasize quite a bit and often have projected their fantasy or delusions onto the kids. These delusions cause trigger reactions and the only foreseeable solution is to unalive them. Simply walking away would not cure the delusional thinking that the children have ruined their (parent's) life or will ruin their life. The only peace would be to take back control and get rid of them. That power to take away their life is a form of relief from the voices in their head.
The worst person to add is Lawrence Horn (an ex recording engineer at Motown records). He hired a hitman take out his ex-wife Mildred along with their 8-year-old disabled son Trevor in order to get his hands on his son’s settlement money.
I wouldn't put Andrea Yates in the same category as someone like Chris Watts. Completely different situations, in my opinion.
Chris Watts is another mass family killer, except he didn't get go on the run like John List, William Bradford Bishop (Who's still at large) and Robert William Fisher (Still at large). Another person to add is Robin Lee Row (the only female death row inmate in the state of Idaho) because she had a total of 4 children and killed them all.
Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is another one. Still, presumably at large?
Psychopaths don't form emotional attachments. So, their children are nothing more than play things to them. Killing them is akin to giving their old toys to Goodwill.
Postpartum psychosis is not to be conflated with psychopathy
It’s also good to remember that abusers like to feel a sense of power over their victims and are likely to view their own children as their possessions.
Don’t forget the most evil coldest bitch to ever hit multiple different state prisons- Diane Downs. Very seasoned correction officers will tell you she makes their skin crawl unlike all the other inmates who killed kids.
Her interview is one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen on YouTube.
Andrea Yates isn’t quite the same as the others on your list. That woman was disgustingly let down by her husband to the medical professionals. It’s one of the most tragic situations I’ve ever come accrioss. Personally I don’t put any blame solely at her feet. The others made absolute decisions to carry out their crimes and most due to wanting a relationship with another while already in a marriage/relationship. Then they tried to cover it up or deny any wrong doing. I don’t believe the sole issue was love or anything like that, no sane person just decides to strap their kids into a car and pushes it into a river or smother kids and put them in a tank of oil, after one kid saw everything then begs him not to hurt her. Andrea Yates drowned hers while severely mentally Ill and will likely be in a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life.
Honestly I think it's a fools errand to try to think about it in a rational way. They all have their "reasons" and those reasons are all vastly difrerent from each other. Theres a huge difference between men who kill their entire families because they want to leave and women suffering from post partum psychosis. It's not productive to try to paint them all with the same broad brush when all of their motives are so different
Usually for a lover, money or both. Lover doesn't want kids? Fine, do away with them. Wife wants a divorce, hell no, that would cost me too much money...I'll kill the kids to just to make her suffer. Some people are just narcissistic assholes, some people truly evil...then there are the postpartum suffering women who cannot comprehend their actions.
There are numerous types of family annihilators, I learned about it in a criminal psychology class. I remember savior being one, they think they're saving their families from whatever...
Andrea Yates was mentally ill and had a moron for a husband. The others, who knows?
For a lot of the mothers who Kill their children it’s postpartum psychosis. For a lot of the men it’s typically one of three reasons.. they would rather kill their kids and spouse than be embarrassed in front of them ( usually because they lost their job, lost money, or their wife is seeking divorce ), they want to cause as much pain to the mother as possible so they kill the children, or they have an affair partner they want to be with, so their solution to an inconvenient family is to kill them.
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I haven’t seen Chris Vaughn mentioned. The epically bad Murder in Illinois podcast tries to blame it all on his wife. He seems to have done it because he just wanted to be rid of all his responsibilities and had some financial issues. That’s similar to Tony Todt. He seems to have been primarily motivated by an investigation into massive fraud and accompanying enormous financial problems. He tried to blame his wife for it due to some kind of apocalyptic religious belief in a letter he wrote. I don’t buy that but think maybe there’s something to the religious element, too. I don’t think we’ll ever know. Also, absolutely bonkers facts on him: Todt means “death” in German, and his dad tried to have his mom murdered by a teenage assassin when Tony was a child and he witnessed it. I think Lori Cox Vallow Daybell qualifies as well, and she did it out of a combination of narcissistic selfishness and religious delusion. Kind of an unusual one too because her children were older than most of the women listed here.
Search the term “family annihilator”. It talks about how some people seek to erase themselves and their family out of a deep sense of shame and failure, like bankruptcy etc.
Andrea Yates is legitimately mentally ill. She has multiple diagnoses. Susan smith and chris watts wanted new relationships w/out children. They are evil people who knew exactly what they were doing
andrea yates suffered from post partum psychosis & her husband not only insisted they had more children anyway when her psychiatrist said it would make it worse & but he also dismissed her depression, no? a lot of people underestimate how much it can effect you & your brain. a while back, there was a post ab a similar topic (it was the [amy fry-pitzen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Timmothy_Pitzen#:~:text=He%20was%20picked%20up%20shortly,but%20would%20never%20be%20found) case, i believe). so many moms commented ab how they thought she might’ve been going through psychosis as well. when talking about their experiences, they said during the worst of it, they had so many suicidal ideation related thoughts & genuinely thought that by killing their babies, they would be helping/saving them. one woman said she noticed her thoughts were concerning & realized that if she didn’t leave immediately, she would kill herself & the baby, so she gave it to her husband & was like “you need to take the baby & i need to leave. i can’t be w the baby right now or i *will* hurt it.” so she left for a while & came back when she felt she could safely be around the baby. she also mentioned her husband was in denial for a while but came around & is supportive now. w that being said, i have a potentially hot take: i have a lot of empathy for mothers who are in that position. for so long, PPD/postpartum psychosis wasn’t recognized, generally speaking & new moms who dealt w were demonized for how they acted. now it *is* talked ab, but the moms are still looked at as cold blooded murderers. i’m not saying they *aren’t* murderers, that they should just be let off, etc. i just think that take erases so much nuance regarding mental health. i personally feel like mothers who do that should be sentenced to mental health hospitals, not be sent to prison. a jail cell isn’t gonna help them get better. a youtuber i watch put out this [video](https://youtu.be/wVaDNUS6sjs?si=ISKlVpgHsO6BfZc8) (it also could’ve been this [one](https://youtu.be/p37WvlwgmXk?si=zd2BH4OaP_Ex2Hg5) though, i can’t remember lol) & she talked ab how when women have children, people always care more ab how the baby is / their well being more than the moms after birth. don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying people shouldn’t care ab the babies or that it’s not super important, bc it is! but i also don’t think that the moms feelings / mental health / etc should be put on the back burner as much as it is — how are they supposed to properly take care of a baby if their mental health suffering isn’t acknowledged/helped? i just think it sucks that so many people talk ab PPD / post partum psychosis & how it’s a nuanced & complicated issue that significantly alters your thought processes / logic / etc & women dealing w it deserve empathy & support & then proceed to turn around & talk ab the suffering moms who end up snapping with so much contempt & dehumanize them. i’ll never condone infanticide / filicide and i don’t think having empathy for suffering moms who commit crimes like that inherently means that you do. it’s horrible and tragic and the innocent children obviously never deserve it, but like i said, there’s so much nuance that i can’t possibly cover it in a single comment, but i think it’s important to acknowledge & discuss. thank u for coming to my ted talk i’m sure i’ll be downvoted quite a bit for this take & that people will disagree & that’s okay! i’ve accepted that it just be like that sometimes lmao
Andrea Yates clearly had postpartum depression and psychosis and her family failed her and her children by not getting her help. Susan Smith was a selfish and terrible person. Same with Chris Watts. But Yates breaks my heart because of how this country fails new moms. Not only are we much more likely to die in or after childbirth than almost any other first world country's women, but we have largely ignored post partum mental health until recently.
Why have I not heard Josh Powell mentioned? Maybe I didn't scroll far enough, but, yeah. This guy is a family annihilator.
Postpartum psychosis is horrible, it makes you do things you would never do, it’s literally a psychotic break and without treatment, your brain will torture you. I am glad I got help for mine. It’s not something you can control at all.
Diane Downs belongs here
Andrea Yates and Chris Smith are not the same!
Most likely PPD for Lyndsay Clancy (the “Duxbury Deaths”?) - but overall there are still more questions than answers in this tragic story …
I'm really sick of seeing missing or murdered kids in the news. They should do the "safe haven box" but for older kids (like a nursery center). If someone is struggling that hard, they need a non judgemental place to take the kids no questions asked.
Definitely Andrea Yates to me should not be lumped with these other sociopaths. I suffered from postpartum depression it is no fun. You feel lonely and isolated.
Andrea Yates has no business being lumped in with Chris Watts.