-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- June 22, 2001 -- Horrifying new details of the deaths of five Texas kids drowned by their mom emerged yesterday - as their grief-stricken dad stunned the nation by declaring his undying love for his wife. The Houston Chronicle, quoting an unidentified investigator, said Andrea Yates told cops that her oldest son, Noah, 7, walked into the bathroom as she drowned his baby sister, 6-month-old Mary. "What's wrong with Mary," the little boy asked - then bolted from the room. His mom chased him through the house and dragged him to the bathtub, where he shared his siblings' fate, the report said. In an extraordinary news conference, Russell Yates, the NASA computer scientist who raced home from work to find his life in ruins, stood in front of his Houston home yesterday, gripped a portrait of his wife and children and spoke stoically of forgiveness. "You know, Andrea, if you see this, I love you," he told his imprisoned wife, who is due in court today on a charge of capital murder. "I want to help her through this. I want to show her that I love her, support her, and be there for her. "It's hard because on one hand I know she killed our children, but on the other I know that the woman here is not the woman who killed my children . . . She wasn't in the right frame of mind." Andrea Yates, 36, drowned Noah, Mary, John, 5, Paul, 3 and Luke, 2 - before calling police and her husband to their tidy brick home Wednesday morning, authorities said. Fear gripped her husband as he raced home from the nearby Johnson Space Center after a chilling phone conversation. "She said, ‘I need you to come home.' I said, ‘Is anyone hurt?' She said, ‘Yes.' And I said: ‘Who?' And she said: ‘All of them.' My heart just sank." The mom is being held under suicide watch. Family members say the drownings were the terrible climax to years of post partum depression brought on by the birth of her fourth child. They will argue she be spared the death penalty. Standing on his front lawn, in front of a tree decorated with flowers and a giant teddy bear, Yates maintained his wife loved her children. "She is a kind and gentle person. What you saw yesterday, that's not her," he said, before disappearing inside the house to plan his children's funerals. ------------------------------------ what is this world coming to? Mother killing her own children. I don't understand this.... so sad...