HOUSTON, June 29 (UPI) -- Andrea Yates said she heard messages from movies and TV cartoons in the weeks before she drowned her children, a Houston psychiatrist testified Thursday.
Dr. Melissa Ferguson, the first psychiatrist to examine Yates after the killings in 2001, was the first witness for the defense at her retrial. She testified that Yates appeared psychotic to her, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Ferguson said that Yates, who cried and picked at her fingers until they bled as she talked, said she heard messages for her children as well as for herself while they watched cartoons. She was told she was a bad mother, while the children were told not to eat so much candy and that their mother was giving them too much cereal.
Yates also reported getting messages from a "savior character" in "The Matrix" and a "satanic character in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" who told her, "You've eluded me long enough."
Prosecutors, who argue that Yates did not meet the legal standard of insanity at the time of the crime, rested their case Wednesday.
Yates' ex-husband is expected to testify for the defense. Yates was convicted and sentenced to multiple life sentences, but an appellate court ruled that a psychiatric witness for the prosecution prejudiced the case.
