Constance Noe News Today

His wife, homemaker marie, had lost five children, attributed to various conditions. ranging from bronchopneumonia to congestive heart failure. yet the couple, apparently desperate to start a family, had another child. letitia. the result was the same. the child died. but this time, there was no question about what happened. >> they knew that it was going to be a stillbirth. mrs. noe described the situation where the doctors knew that the cord was wrapped around the babys neck, the baby was dead...

In the family. the saying was that one sids death in a family is sids. two is suspicious and three is homicide. >> dr. molly depena, who is a sids expert and performed autopsies on three of the noe children agrees that a serial sids case just isnt possible. >> apparently because its not a genetic phenomenon, it is a natural, as far as we know, death, they are simply, sudden, unexpected and unexplained deaths. >> if the children werent dying from sids, then what or who was killing them? on severa...

Her, tied a necktie around her neck until she passed out. >> after finishing their investigation, the medical examiners office turned over their findings to police. and it was now up to the department to do their own investigation. but police did not find enough evidence to arrest marie or arthur noe. in 1966, after losing nine babies, the noes decided to adopt. they went through an adoption service at a catholic church and were frustrated when they learned they had to wait up to nine months for...

You want? do you want to send a woman in her 70s who is physically impaired to jail? is that what youre shooting for? >> thats the dilemma the philadelphia district attorney faced. how do you handle a case like this? like any other murder confession, according to d.a. lynne abraham. >> this is not unexplained. this is not undetermined. this is homicide. >> we didnt want to admit to ourselves that women did on occasion kill their own children. >> arthur noe was never considered a suspect in his c...

Up with was dr. depena and dr. halbert fillinger who had recently joined the medical examiners staff as an assistant medical examiner, got a grant. the grant was that they could offer the noes free medical care in order to allow them to monitor mrs. noes pregnancy and her childbirth and the childs life after the child was born. >> but the noes rejected the offer. >> the noes were told by their doctor, and they told this to me, that they shouldnt get involved with this study because these big hig...

Information that could help them secure a confession. after an expert looked at a lie detector test given to the couple in 1968. police learned it had been misread. marie noe did not pass the test as previously thought. and arthur noes results were inconclusive at best but leaning toward deception. >> the cops described the situation where when mrs. noe started thinking about that she was going to talk to them, she actually put her hand on one of the cops legs, which the cop thought was a little...

None of the babies lived longer than six months. neither the medical examiners office nor the police had any hard evidence that the couple had harmed any of their children. and marie noe continued to have babies. catherine, the noes ninth baby, was born in december of 1964. she lived longer than any of her brothers and sisters. long enough, for example, to have this portrait taken. >> the baby was kept in the hospital because they were afraid to let the baby go home. >> one doctor later told an ...

>> we released the article to them the minute that it was available. and what i was told was that they took the article, they highlighted it, the parts that they needed for information, and they went and took the noes in for questioning. we werent told about any of this. it was all happening in secret. >> on the evening of march 25th, 1998, arthur and marie noe were taken to philadelphia police headquarters, separated and questioned. this was the first time, according to police records, the pair...

Dr. feldman thinks the noes previous willingness to speak to reporters about their dead children was yet another symptom of munchausen by proxy. >> the mothers present themselves as having black clouds over their shoulders and thats what happened when magazines like "newsweek" and especially "life" magazine covered the noe deaths. it made her famous for a time as the most sympathetic mother in the country. >> dr. howell fillinger, who performed autopsies on some of the noe babies, agrees with dr...

Priest and told her of her intentions and he told her that this would be a mortal sin. and that she could not do this. and so she didnt. >> three years later, in 1955, the noes fourth child, arthur jr., was born. >> this child comes out of a very mysterious set of events. mrs. noe was reported being attacked exactly nine months before this child was born. the emergency room report did not show any signs of any kind of sexual violence, but the bottom line is that exactly nine months from that day...