Associated Press
HOUSTON — In his second day on the witness stand, the husband of Andrea Yates testified Thursday that she never told him about the voices and visions she later claimed led her to drown their five children.
"She kind of described it as a dark period, that she was in a dark place," said Russell Yates, referring to his wife’s two suicide attempts two years before the June 20 slayings.
The day of the drownings, Yates recalled, his wife was eating cereal out of a box as he left for work at the Johnson Space Center.
"At the time, I didn’t think she was dangerous," he said. "None of us did."
The testimony was far less emotional than Wednesday’s session, when Yates tearfully described his wife as a loving mother whose mental problems worsened in the months before she drowned their children in a bathtub at their Houston home.
Andrea Yates, 37, confessed to drowning the children but has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She is charged with killing three of the children and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Earlier in the trial, a psychiatrist who interviewed Andrea Yates in jail said the defendant believed she had been marked by Satan and that killing her children was the only way to save them from hell.
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