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In one of the most disturbing and tragic stories of recent times, a mum callously drowned all five of her children in the delusion that she was 'saving them'.

Andrea Yates, then 37, committed the horrific crime at their family home in Clear Lake City, Texas. The victims were aged between seven years old and the youngest was just six months old.

After the birth of her fourth child, she tried to take her own life multiple times and was also hospitalised in psychiatric wards on multiple occasions. In July 1999, she was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and was urged by a psychiatrist not to have any more children as the effects on her could be even more devastating.

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However, she and her husband Rusty soon had a fifth child in November, 2000. Things seemed to be getting better for Yates until her dad died in March, 2001 - she then stopped taking her medication, began self-harming and read the Bible constantly.

On June 20, 2001, Yates waited for Rusty, a Nasa engineer at the Johnson Space Center, to leave for work before she proceeded to methodically killed her children - Noah, seven, John, five, Paul, three, Luke, two, and Mary, six months old.

In fear, Noah attempted to flee for his life but his efforts were futile as his mum managed to catch him. After killing the youngsters one by one, she laid out the lifeless bodies on a bed.

She meticulously executed the act, positioning the bodies of her younger children and covering them with a sheet before calling 911. She reported the deaths of her children, then phoned her husband Rusty instructing him to return home from work.

"I just killed my children," she confessed to the police officers who arrived at the scene. Yates faced five counts of capital murder charges in a case the prosecution described as "heinous," pushing for the death penalty.

However, her legal team contended that Yates was afflicted by severe depression and psychosis following the birth of Mary - and it was this mental state that led her to take the lives of all five of her children.

They advocated for comprehensive mental health treatment instead of incarceration.

Convicted of capital murder in 2002, she received a life sentence with eligibility for parole after 40 years. Yates' legal representatives launched an appeal and succeeded in having the verdict overturned.

At a retrial in 2006, she was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. Even whilst incarcerated, Yates persisted in expressing delusional beliefs.

She informed authorities that she had contemplated killing her children for two years, in order to spare them from what she described as "eternal damnation".

"My children weren't righteous," she told her jail psychiatrist, according to court documents. "They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell."

Defence solicitor George Parnham has consistently maintained that Yates is content and flourishing at Kerrville, the only place she's lived for the past 24 years. According to the courts, she may spend the remainder of her life at the facility.

She allegedly maintains monthly contact with Rusty, despite their divorce and his subsequent remarriage.

"She's where she wants to be, where she needs to be," Parnham told ABC News in 2021. "And I mean, hypothetically, where would she go? What would she do?".