Are You There Alone? by Suzanne O'malley

Author:Suzanne O'malley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

A T 11:00 AM, Officer Bob King and his partner, Officer Douglas Bacon, both homicide investigators, arrived at the crime scene to begin collecting evidence along with Sergeant Boyd Smith, who interviewed Dora Yates outside.

King took one look at Andrea Yates and asked that her handcuffs be removed. He pulled a worn card from his pocket and read Yates her rights “one at a time from the card verbatim.” She “gave him her yeses.”

“You have the right to remain silent and not make any statement at all. Do you understand that?” he asked her.

Yates nodded.

“Any statement you make may be used—and probably will be used—as evidence against you in court,” King continued. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“You have the right to have a lawyer present to advise you prior to and during any questioning. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“If you are unable to employ a lawyer you have the right to have a lawyer appointed to advise you prior to and during any questioning. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“And finally, you have the right to stop this interview at any time. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Are you willing to give up your right to remain silent and to have an attorney present?” he asked.

“Yes,” Yates replied.

Then he asked for Yates’s consent to search the house, handing her a Voluntary Consent for Search and Seizure. She spent thirty seconds reading the form and signed it.

King selected some dry clothes from the master bedroom closet: some underwear, a purple short-sleeved T-shirt, white socks, blue jeans, and tan shoes. He asked Yates whether that clothing would be all right; she nodded. King handed the dry clothing to Stumpo. Without a female officer present, Andrea Yates would have to change back at the jail.

Stumpo wanted to take Andrea to his squad car through the back of the house to avoid the media activity in front. Another officer was taking a statement from Rusty Yates at the cedar picnic table in the backyard. Stumpo tried the knob on the side door to the garage with no luck. “Great, it’s locked,” he said out loud.

“The keys are there,” Andrea volunteered, pointing to a cork bulletin board in the kitchen. Wherever Andrea Yates’s mind had gone, Stumpo thought, she damn sure knew where things were.

Stumpo drove Andrea Yates to police headquarters at 1200 Travis for interrogation and later to the Mykawa police facility. He tuned the car radio to a talk show reporting on the Yates homicides. It was “harsh,” he recalled. Andrea Yates was already “the Medea” of Houston. Already the stuff of which myths were made. The “Rub-a-dub-dub, five dead kids in a tub murderer,” one shock jock called her. Stumpo “noticed her reacting to the words the gentleman was saying on the radio show.” She was “quivering” and began to look “sullen.” “Honestly,” he recalled, “she seemed very embarrassed.” He later told Yates’s lawyer that he didn’t recall purposely turning up the radio. “I may have,” he said. “I was on the freeway.” But Andrea Yates heard the volume rising, or thought she did.

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