Why Andrea Yates’ Ex-Husband Rusty Still Visits Her Decades After She Drowned Their 5 Children (Exclusive) By Christine Pelisek

On June 20, 2001, a stay-at-home mother called 911 to confess she had drowned her five children in the bathtub of their home in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake, Texas. 

The shocking crime made national and international news and led to the arrest of then-37-year-old Andrea Yates.

In March 2002, Andrea was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison in connection with the deaths of Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and 6-month-old Mary. That verdict was later reversed, and in July 2006, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Her attorneys argued that she had suffered from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, and that weeks before the murders, her doctor had taken her off of the powerful antipsychotic drug Haldol.

Andrea’s ex-husband Rusty, 61, tells PEOPLE about his life with Andrea, and why he still visits her once a year at a Kerrville, Texas, mental health facility nearly 25 years after the death of their children.

“I try once a year to visit in person and we text back and forth some and talk on the phone some,” Rusty says. “Andrea and I always got along. That’s a time of our life that we both cherish and she’s the only person I can talk to about it. She and I are the only two who can get together and reminisce about what it was like to enjoy those years together.”

Rusty, who divorced Andrea in 2005, says that although they both appreciate each other’s friendship, “it’s bittersweet.”

“I mean, it’s nice to reminisce. Honestly, I never imagined anything like this could happen, especially with her, especially how caring and loving and devoted Andrea is. I don’t hold it against her, but even just communicating with her is a reminder of that. So, we try to focus on the better times, but it’s a little hard to, even in our conversations, avoid that most significant tragedy. And I think that for her, it loomed so large that it’s really kept her from growing, from really living and trying to enjoy the balance of her years. It’s just too big. She can’t get past it.”

Andrea has been held at the facility since 2007.

According to previous reporting by PEOPLE, she can undergo a review every year to see if she is competent to leave the facility but has opted each year to waive her right to be reviewed.

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According to Rusty, Andrea fully embraced her role as a mother and “to have it end the way that it did is just so devastating for her.”

Andrea “spends a lot more time going over old videos of our family, looking through old pictures — that sort of thing — because her mind is still sort of stuck there,” says Rusty, who is a computer engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I was raised in a tradition where intention matters as much as anything, right? And we’re flawed humans. We can have good intentions and do the wrong thing,” he says. “So, it’s easier for me to forgive Andrea than it is for her to forgive herself because she was raised in a tradition of works. It’s a strict Catholic upbringing.  She’s kind of stuck because she has this extremely hard time forgiving herself. It’s like, how do you take something that significant and get past it in life? Or do you get stuck there? And that’s where you’re stuck and that’s it.”

Rusty says he met Andrea, who was a nurse at the time, in the late 80s while living at the same apartment complex in Houston.

“One night someone had bumped her car in the parking lot, and I was sitting in my apartment,” he says. “I was talking to somebody on the phone. I heard a knock at the door and opened the door, and it was Andrea. And I literally dropped the phone. She asked me; she said, ‘Hey, do you know anything about that?’ Because she knew that I parked out in the same area she did. And later she admitted that it was just an excuse to meet me.”

“She’d been wanting to meet me,” he adds. “And Andrea is a very shy, kind of reserved person. And if you know her at all, that was a big step for her because she’s not a very forward person at all.”

They married four years later in 1993 and started a family.

“I was almost jealous of the fact that she got to spend so much time with the kids while I had to work all the time,” says Rusty, who participated in ID’s The Cult Behind the Killer: The Andrea Yates Story, which premiered Jan. 6 and is available to stream on HBO Max. “I offered; I said, ‘Hey, we could probably make it if I work halftime and you work halftime.’ And she said, ‘I’m a mother now.’ And I thought, ‘That’s a role that she embraced and being a father is a role that I embraced.'”

“It’s my favorite role in life — being a father,” says Rusty, who has a 17-year-old son from a second marriage that has since ended in divorce. “And I honestly think being a mother was [Andrea’s] favorite role.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.