The amazing Kate Casey.

Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with Kate Casey.

Today's episode is about the cult behind the killer, the Andrea Yates story,

an HBO docu series which focuses on one of the most tragic and widely misunderstood cases in modern American history.

In June of 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five

young children in the family bathtub while her husband Rusty Yates was at work. For years,

the public narrative reduced this case to shock and horror, often ignoring the complex medical,

psychological, and ideological forces that surrounded it.

Andrea Yates was not suffering from ordinary postpartum depression.

She was experiencing postpartum psychosis, the most severe and dangerous postpartum psychiatric illness,

a condition marked by delusions, hallucinations, catatonia, and a complete loss

of reality testing. Multiple psychiatrists warned that she should not have more children,

that she should never be left alone with them, and that stopping antipsychotic medication

could be catastrophic. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored. But this case cannot

be understood through medicine alone. Andrea and her husband Rusty were deeply influenced for years

by the teachings of Michael Worennecke, an independent Christian street preacher known for

apocalyptic, fear-based messaging, centered on salvation, judgment,

and parental responsibility for children's eternal faith. Rusty first met Warreneky in the 1980s,

and the Yates family maintained correspondence with him for years, receiving his writings and religious

materials. At one point, Andrea and Rusty even lived in the same converted bus previously owned by the

Warrenneckee family during their ministry, a symbol of how closely intertwined their lives

and belief systems had become.

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