Show Notes
Andrea Yates, a Texas mother of five, drowned her children in a bathtub on June 20, 2001, shocking the nation. She immediately confessed to police and was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. Her medical history showed years of severe postpartum depression and psychosis, multiple hospitalizations, and suicide attempts. Doctors had warned her husband, Rusty Yates, that further pregnancies could worsen her condition and that she should not be left alone with the children. These warnings went unheeded. Rusty and Andrea adhered to a strict conservative Christian framework that emphasized traditional gender roles, homeschooling, and isolation from secular influences. Andrea gave up her nursing career to become a full-time mother, homeschooling all five children while managing household duties under increasing mental strain. A significant influence was evangelical street preacher Michael Woroniecki, whose writings and sermons the Yateses followed closely. Woroniecki preached that women must be submissive and that modern society was spiritually corrupt. He taught that mothers could lead their children to damnation by failing to follow God’s will. Andrea, in her delusional state, internalized these messages and believed her children were spiritually doomed. This religious pressure, combined with extreme isolation and untreated psychosis, shaped Andrea’s belief that killing her children was a way to save them from eternal suffering. Her statements after the killings reflected this belief, as she said she was trying to be a good mother and protect her children from Satan. Her case remains one of the most deeply tragic examples of how rigid religious ideology and untreated mental illness can collide.
Sources: Texas v. Yates, 99-CR-2990 through 99-CR-2994, Harris County District Court, trial transcripts and court records, 2002. Texas v. Yates, retrial transcripts and court records, Harris County District Court, 2006. Yates v. State, 171 S.W.3d 215 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2005), Texas Court of Appeals opinion overturning the first conviction. Resnick, Phillip J. “Filicide in the United States.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 126(3), 1969, 325–334. Resnick, Phillip J. expert testimony in State of Texas v. Andrea Yates, 2002 and 2006. Dietz, Park. expert testimony in State of Texas v. Andrea Yates, 2002. Spinelli, Margaret G. “Maternal Infanticide Associated With Mental Illness: Prevention and the Promise of Saved Lives.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 161(9), 2004. Friedman, Susan Hatters, and Deborah Hensel. “Child Murder by Mothers: A Critical Analysis of the Current State of Knowledge and a Research Agenda.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(9), 2005. Journal of Forensic Sciences. maternal filicide and postpartum psychosis (2000–2010 issues). National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Educational materials on postpartum mental illness and psychosis. Michael and Debi Woroniecki, Mission to the World ministries newsletters, sermons, and correspondence admitted to evidence Hassan, Steven. Combating Cult Mind Control. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2015 edition. The New York Times. “Texas Mother Found Guilty in Drowning of Her Children.” 2002; and follow-up reporting Houston Chronicle. Brian Rogers and staff. Ongoing coverage of the Yates case, 2001–2006. The Washington Post. “Yates Conviction Overturned” and related trial coverage, 2005–2006. Los Angeles Times. “Depression, Religion and the Yates Family Tragedy,” 2002 investigative reporting. Associated Press. National wire service reports on the Yates arrests, trial, appeals, and retrial, 2001–2006. ABC News. 20/20. “The Andrea Yates Story” broadcast segments and transcripts. NBC News. Dateline NBC. Andrea Yates case episode and transcripts. A&E Network. The Crimes That Changed Us, Season 1, Episode “Andrea Yates,” Investigation Discovery. The Cult Behind the Killer, Andrea Yates Cummins, Eric. “Religion, Motherhood, and Mental Illness: The Andrea Yates Case.”
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Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast On the top floor of a hotel in Sydney, on ground that was a convict hospital in 1788, two women on two different nights woke up to a sailor standing at the foot of the bed, looking at them. In a castle on the coast of Northern Ireland, a receptionist sent up the tower stair to sweep up a broken glass was shoved from behind on the top step and went down the whole flight. In Room 217 of the Stanley Hotel, a man hid under the covers at three in the morning while his wife whispered that something was bent over the bed with its mouth at her ear, and that she could still feel its breath. In a ground-floor suite in the Ozarks that used to be a cancer quack's office, four friends propped a vodka bottle against the inside of their door, came back at eleven, and found a row of cards laid out on the carpet in front of it with the two jokers turned face up. On a ship in Long Beach, a mother woke to a man made of darkness sitting on the other twin bed, and he sat there until dawn. Today we're counting down the ten most haunted hotels in the world, from number ten to number one. We're going from Sydney to the Scottish Highlands, the Antrim coast, London, the Canadian Rockies, the French Quarter, a California beach, a Cunard liner, an Arkansas mountaintop, and Estes Park, Colorado.
In 1977, a charismatic former Seventh-day Adventist named Roch Thériault led a small group of followers into the woods of Quebec’s Gaspé region to await the end of the world. He renamed himself Moïse, after Moses, and told his followers God would end the world in February of 1979. When the apocalypse never came, he kept them anyway. The group lived in handmade cabins, cut off from their families, working so relentlessly that outsiders called them the Ant Hill Kids. Thériault took nearly all of the women as his wives and fathered more than twenty children with them. In 1984, after a brief prison stint, he moved the commune to a remote property near Burnt River, Ontario, where almost no one was watching. What happened there over the next five years is among the most horrific abuse ever documented in a Canadian cult. Thériault drank heavily and ruled through torture, forcing members to break their own limbs, pull out their own teeth, and sit naked in the snow. He performed brutal “surgeries” with kitchen tools. In 1988 one of his wives, Solange Boilard, died after he cut open her abdomen. The end came in 1989, when another follower, Gabrielle Lavallée, had her arm hacked off with a cleaver after years of mutilation. She escaped, walked into a hospital, and told police everything. Thériault pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence. In 2011 he was killed by his cellmate in a New Brunswick prison.
Support the show, get ad free and bonus content patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast Carl Tanzler was a German-born radiology technician who emigrated to the United States and by 1927 was working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida. He claimed that as a young man he had been visited by the spirit of an ancestor who showed him the face of his destined true love, and in 1930 he became convinced he had found her in Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a 21-year-old Cuban-American patient dying of tuberculosis. Tanzler showered her with gifts and attempted to treat her with homemade tonics and X-ray equipment, but she died in 1931. He paid for an elaborate mausoleum, visited it nightly, and in 1933 removed her body and brought it home. Over the next seven years he reconstructed her decaying corpse with wire, plaster, wax, glass eyes, and her own hair fashioned into a wig, dressed it in a wedding gown, and kept it in his bed while dousing it in perfume to mask the odor. In 1940 Elena's sister heard rumors, confronted him, and found the body, leading to his arrest for grave robbing. The charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, and much of the public, swept up by the press coverage, viewed him as a tragic romantic rather than a criminal. Elena was reburied in an unmarked grave, and Tanzler died in 1952, reportedly with a life-sized effigy of her by his side. ICK Sources Harrison, Ben. Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion That Defied Death. Key West, 1997; expanded edition 2001. Swicegood, Tom. Von Cosel. iUniverse, 2003. Source of the body-switch theory. Sloan, David L. Ghosts of Key West. Phantom Press, 1998. Sloan also discussed the 1982 Michelfelder article on the NightMerica podcast, February 3, 2021. Peričić, Marija. Exquisite Corpse. Ultimo Press, 2023. Novel; ABC News (Australia) profile of the book and the Trial Bay internment, November 18, 2023. Tanzler von Cosel, Karl. "The Secret of Elena's Tomb." Fantastic Adventures, vol. 9 no. 5, September 1947, Ziff-Davis, Chicago. Full scan at archive.org (Fantastic_Adventures_v09n05_Ziff-Davis_Sep_1947). Von Cosel's journal, final entry ("Human jealousy has robbed me of the body of my Elena"), as quoted in Harrison and in later retellings. Miami Herald, October 1940. Source of Nana Medina's statements: "She never loved him… She looked upon von Cosel as a grandfather" and the "wedding… or a funeral" warning. Key West Citizen, October 1940. Hearing coverage before Justice of the Peace Enrique Esquinaldo, October 8–9, 1940; $1,000 bond; charge wording. The Tennessean (Nashville), October 1940. Cousin's statement that Elena "finally died hating her rescuer." Death certificate of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, October 25, 1931, as reported by Michelfelder (below); no autopsy performed. DePoo, Dr. Julio, and Dr. Foraker. Recollection of the 1940 examination, first stated 1972; DePoo interviewed on HBO's Autopsy series, 1999 ("I found a tube wide enough to permit sexual intercourse…"). Perez, Bienvenido (Key West chief of police, 1940). Statement to Men True Adventure magazine, undated ("I'll kill her, if necessary, to fulfil my destiny"). Michelfelder, William. Article in Detective Cases, 1982. Source of the unverified "wolfsbane… aconite" note and the "dormant epilepsy" death-certificate wording. Wikipedia, "Carl Tanzler" (with its cited sources: Harrison, Swicegood, Sloan, HBO Autopsy). Dates of birth, marriage, emigration (Rotterdam, February 6, 1926), Hoyos family dates, hearing, viewing, citizenship 1950, death July 3, 1952. WLRN, "A Love That Would Not Die: Key West Tells Its Most Macabre Legend," February 11, 2018. HistoryHub.info, "Twists in a Twisted Tale: The Exploitation, Defilement and Murder of Elena Hoyos."
Support the show at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast Does evil run in the family? Cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. murdered at least 10 women and girls in the Los Angeles area between October 1977 and February 1978. They would use the "cop ruse" posing as plainclothes police officers, pull women over or approach them on the street, and take them to Buono's upholstery shop in Glendale. There they raped, tortured, and strangled their victims, then dumped the bodies on hillsides around the city. Their victims ranged in age from 12 to 28. Bianchi would eventually be arrested in washington after two more kills, tried to fake multiple personality disorder to escape before agreeing to plead guilty and testify against Buono. Buono's trial was one of the longest criminal trials in American history, running from 1981 to 1983. He was convicted of nine of the ten LA murders and sentenced to life without parole. He died in prison in 2002. Bianchi is still alive and incarcerated in Washington State. Sources: - full list on patreon ABC News. (2021). ‘City of Angels, City of Death’: Inside the hunt for Los Angeles’ string of serial killers. https://abcnews.com/US/city-angels-city-death-inside-hunt-los-angeles/story?id=81231947 Balagtas, T. (2026, July 16). All about Hillside Stranglers Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, and the victim they spared because of her famous father. A&E. https://www.aetv.com/articles/all-about-the-hillside-stranglers-angelo-buono-kenneth-bianchi-victim-they-spared-because-of-her-famous-father Bardsley, M. (2015). Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Stranglers [19-chapter feature]. Crime Library, TruTV. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/2015/http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/stranglers/rampage_1.html Barnes, M. (Producer & Director). (1984). The mind of a murderer, Parts I and II [Television documentary transcript]. Frontline, WGBH/PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/206.html Board denies parole for Hillside Strangler. (2010, August 18). Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/hillside-strangler-denied-parole.html Boren, R. W. (2000). The Hillside Strangler trial. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 33(2), 707–725. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol33/iss2/ Chavez, S., & Gorman, A. (2002, September 22). ‘Hillside Strangler’ dies at 67. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-22-me-hillside22-story.html Chavez, S., & Gorman, A. (2002, September 23). Angelo Buono Jr. dies at 67. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/09/23/angelo-buono-jr-dies-at-67/5e2b4952-bb96-47a2-af4f-9cc744ffb281/ Convicted ‘Hillside Strangler’ serial killer is denied parole, will be eligible in a decade. (2025, July 10). Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-10/hillside-strangler-a-convicted-serial-killer-gets-denied-parole-will-be-eligible-in-a-decade Crabtree, M. (2026, July 4). The disturbing story of Angelo Buono, the ‘Hillside Strangler’ who tormented 1970s Los Angeles. All That’s Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/angelo-buono Dismissal of Buono murder counts asked. (1981, July 14). Los Angeles Times, p. 1. Edwards, M. (2025, July). ‘Hillside Strangler’ Kenneth Bianchi, convicted in 1970s serial killings, is denied parole. CBS News Los Angeles. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/hillside-strangler-kenneth-bianchi-denied-parole/ Farr, B. (1981, July 26). Prosecution memos list holes in Strangler case. Los Angeles Times, pp. 1, 3, 24–25. Find a Grave. (n.d.). Memorial pages for Dolores Ann “Dolly” Cepeda, Cindy Lee Hudspeth, Sonja Marie Johnson, Elissa Teresa “Lissa” Kastin, Evelyn Jane King, Kimberley Dianne “Kim” Martin, Judith Lynn “Judy” Miller, Beulah Mae Stofer, Lauren Rae Wagner, and Kristina Weckler. https://www.findagrave.com