Witness - Mother weighed methods of killing children

HOUSTON -- Andrea Yates considered stabbing her five children but decided it was too bloody and that drowning was a better way to end their lives, a psychiatrist testified Monday.

Dr. Melissa Ferguson also said that Yates ruled out drugs to kill her children, but believed drugs were possible for suicide. Ferguson interviewed the Houston mother in jail the day after her children were drowned in their bathtub June 20.

"Do you remember her making a statement, 'After thinking about my options, I decided drowning would be the best way to end their life'?" prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said in cross-examining the defense witness.

Yates said "something about drowning, that drowning was the way," Ferguson replied. Asked by Williford if she recalled Yates saying, "I decided a knife was too bloody," Ferguson said yes.

Ferguson testified Yates told her she thought about killing her children for at least three months and thought about it the night before the children were drowned.

John Bayliss, a jail nurse who has observed Yates since her arrest, followed Ferguson to the stand Monday and said Yates requested her hair be cut in the shape of a crown the day after the deaths.

'Internally occupied'

Bayliss said Yates appeared to be "internally occupied" and thought she may have been hearing voices in the weeks after she was jailed. "She was a person who wasn't connected with reality at all," he said.

Yates' demeanor in jail has improved dramatically over the last few months since she's been taking medication, he said.

Ferguson, elaborating on her earlier testimony when she described how Yates believed she had been marked by Satan, said Monday that Yates told her killing her children was the right thing to do.

"She was convinced that the children were going to be tormented for the rest of their lives and that they were going to perish in the fires of hell," the psychiatrist said.