Rusty Yates, Father of 5 Kids Drowned by Ex-Wife, Has Son

HOUSTON – Rusty Yates, whose first wife drowned their five children, has started a new family.

Yates said Monday his second wife, Laura, gave birth to a son March 20.

"He's doing well," Yates said, declining to disclose the child's name or birth weight. "I'm happy."

The couple wed in March 2006, a year after he divorced his first wife, Andrea, who is in a state mental institution.

Andrea Yates drowned the couple's five children — ranging in age from 7 years to 6 months — in June 2001 at the family's home near NASA's Johnson Space Center, where Yates works as an engineer, saying she was trying to save them from the devil. She was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2002.

But an appeals court in 2005 overturned her conviction because of some erroneous testimony.

Andrea Yates was found innocent by reason of insanity in July 2006 and sent to a state mental hospital.

"She's at peace with it," George Parnham, Andrea Yates' lawyer, said. "She obviously wants Rusty to carry on... She wants only the best for Rusty's new family."

Parnham said he sees Yates frequently and described her as "doing well."

"She's adapted so well to the realization that she has a mental illness and that she has to take her medication," he said.