Steve Malzberg
Tuesday, June 26, 2001

What does it say about our society in the year 2001 when there are so many who care more about the feelings and the future of five-time murderer Andrea Yates than about the five dead victims: 6-month-old Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old John and 7-year-old Noah. All five were systematically drowned by their mother, and now it seems all that matters is that we have compassion for Andrea Yates, the murderer of her five kids, and make sure that she doesn't get punished too harshly.

Sadly, this isn't the first time that this scenario has unfolded, and I'm sure that it won't be the last.

Let's go back to the night of Nov. 12, 1996. On that night 18-year-old Brian Peterson, a student at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, made the three-hour drive to pick up his girlfriend Amy Grossberg, also 18 years old. She was waiting at her school, the University of Delaware in Newark, Del. Amy was pregnant with Brian's child. Very pregnant.

Once Amy was in the car, the pair drove off to a motel, where with Brian's help, she delivered a healthy little baby boy. So what did the proud parents proceed to do? Why, they wrapped him up and dumped him in the hotel trash bin, where he was found the next day.

The autopsy was unable to tell if the boy, who was born healthy, received his skull fracture and brain injuries before he was thrown in the trash, after he was tossed in, or during the act of being thrown into the garbage by his daddy.

Less than a month later the proud parents were indicted on charges of first-degree murder. Both faced the death penalty if convicted. Soon the outcry began.

"How in the world could little Amy and poor Brian be facing the death penalty?" many wondered. "After all," their defenders argued, "they were scared kids in that motel room. They didn't know what they were doing. Her hormones were out of control, and they panicked." But the best line in defense of the two baby killers was "Why should we ruin the lives of two youngsters who made a mistake?"

In the end both took a plea, and served about two years in jail. During that time we kept hearing what model prisoners they were. Believe it or not, mommy Amy made holiday gifts for her fellow prisoners and would be assigned to counsel young mothers about having their babies. I kid you not. As for daddy Peterson, he would go on to coach kids on the soccer field.

Oh yes, the baby, thrown in the trash like a piece of garbage, their flesh and blood, is still very much dead.

Which brings me back to the five children drowned by Andrea Yates. Murdered by a woman who we are supposed to feel sorry for. A woman who we are supposed to show compassion to. A woman who was depressed. A woman who was suffering from postpartum depression. A woman who tried to kill herself two years ago. A woman who we are told was insane, not in control of her mind or body. A woman who may have been hearing voices. A woman who didn't know right from wrong.

Yet she is a woman who reportedly told police that she had been thinking about killing her kids for months. A woman who one by one drowned her children in the bathtub, and then laid all but her oldest under a sheet in the bedroom. (Noah, 7, was left in the tub.) A woman who chased Noah, her oldest child, around the house after he discovered what was going on. A woman who caught him and dragged him by his leg into the death tub as he reportedly screamed for his life. A woman who, after she had finished her mission, calmly called the police and told them what she had done. A woman who calmly called her husband and told him that he had better return home, something had happened to all of the kids.

Obviously a woman who knew what she had done. A woman who knew that it was wrong, that's why she called the police. A woman who knew that she had harmed her children, that's why she called her husband.

Insane? Hardly. Yet it will reportedly be her defense. Among those who defend her above her dead children, the real victims here, some say that she was forced to have five children when she really didn't want so many. Some say it's the husband's fault for sticking to his religious beliefs and not using birth control. (I don't believe that has been established as fact, yet that doesn't seem to stop some of Yates' defenders from throwing it out there.)

It was a travesty of justice that Grossberg-Peterson got just a couple of years for killing their baby boy. It will be even worse if Andrea Yates gets anything less than life without parole. I'm hoping for the death penalty.

It is a privilege and a blessing to have a child. Anyone who kills a child should lose the privilege of having and raising another child forever.

Steve Malzberg is a talk host on 77WABC News Talk Radio (www.wabcradio.com) in New York City, where he can be heard from 6-9 p.m. and 9-11 p.m. solo weeknights Eastern time. He was recently named one of radio's Top 100 Hosts by Talkers magazine.