there it is. [ man ] so i used mine to get a whole new perspective. [ male announcer ] the new citi thankyou premier card gives you more ways to earn points. what s your story? citi can help you write it. by 1958, philadelphia factory worker arthur noe and his wife, homemaker marie, had lost five children, attributed
the noes had four children and not one lived to see the first birthday. arthur and marie s fifth child, constance, was born in february of 1958. mrs. noe talked about her fear with each of the children. and, in fact, after constance was born, there s a mention in one of the files of a doctor coming in and saying to her, i m going to be your new pediatrician. and i m looking forward to taking care of your kids. she said something like, well, why bother, they all die anyway. those words proved prophetic. constance noe lived just one month before she was found dead in her crib by her father. for the first time, the death was referred to as a crib death. today known as sudden infant death syndrome, or sids. sids is a cause of death given when doctors fail to find anything physically wrong with the baby.
it was the spring of 1998. 30 years after marie noe s tenth baby died, and decades after police first investigated marie and arthur noe. investigative journalist stephen fried had just finished an article on the couple when he received a phone call he ll never forget. dr. hal fillinger, the former assistant philadelphia medical examiner, made the call. hal called me one day and he said, can you keep a secret? and i was like, yeah. and he said, she confessed. and honestly, i fell down on the floor crying. the whole time we had done this investigation while we all agreed that it was an important investigation to do and it would be a really interesting story, everybody always said, the only way that anything happens here is if she confesses, and that will never happen. just days before the article was released to the public, the police received an advance copy. and took action.
questioning, police got some new 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 noe s 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 cop s legs, which the cop thought was a little strange. they didn t quite know what to do about it. but it was part of the dynamic of seeing that she was sort of connecting to them. and i think there was a little bit of good cop, bad cop in that situation. and then she just started telling them. almost 50 years after her first baby died, and after
health but weakened the child s health. dr. feldman s main field of study is munchausen s and while he said marie noe s case isn t completely typical of a munchausen by proxy case, it still fits the bill. marie noe got attention each time she brought her babies into the hospital. turning blue and gasping for breath. having the child be terribly ill over a period of time was probably a little gratifying for her, but not as gratifying as being a bereaved parent. marie noe granted many interviews in the past but declined our request. when contacted, arthur noe said we re both sick and we just want to live out the last few years peacefully. dr. feldman thinks the noes previous willingness to speak to reporters about their dead