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 isn t possible. apparently because it s 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 weren t dying from sids, then what or who was killing them? on several occasions, marie noe took her babies to the hospital with breathing problems. but the children were released after doctors found nothing wrong with them. dr. feldman believes this kind of behavior could be a symptom of munchausen syndrome by proxy. the mother sickens the child
state wasn t passed until 1967. one year before marie noe s last child was born. today there are many laws and agencies protecting the welfare of children. and doctors are required by law to report any suspected cases of child endangerment or abuse. this was a case unlike any philadelphia police or doctors had ever seen. ten babies from the same family died over a period of 19 years. two of natural causes and eight died at the hands of their own mother. 30 years ago or 40 years ago, we were all focusing on the poor mother. she had gone through this terrible trauma of losing her child or children. all our attention was focused on her. and today, we re focusing on yes, it is a tragedy for the mother.
story after story, one more disturbing than the next. there was another time when the cat scratched the kid and tried to strangle her or whatever. so it s just all these stories. i m not saying that none of these stories had any, you know, validity at all because kids get into things. but in this case, what ended up happening is more like they re saying, why did you have a dry cleaning bag near the crib? the noes took catherine to the world s fair in new york in 1964. and two vacations at the beach. she was the first of their babies to reach her first birthday. she celebrated it in the hospital with her mother and nurses. three months later, she was dead. the cause of death was undetermined. by this time, doctors at the medical examiner s office were learning more about crib death and questioning whether the serial case was actually possible.
she had killed our kids? the important thing that happened today was the finality. we have a woman who has admitted that she killed all eight of her children. in all, ten children died. two died of natural causes and 30 years after the last baby, arty, was buried, the truth was finally revealed about the others. marie noe would not serve any time in prison. in her plea bargain, she received an unusual sentence of 20 years probation, including five years house arrest and a special condition. that she would be examined by a team of psychiatrists, among them experts on postpartum depression and munchausen syndrome by proxy. conditions that can cause mothers to harm their own children. instead of spending money to house this woman in a prison, the money will be spent to try and find out why she did this. that was 1999. according to the d.a. s office, marie noe was evaluated by four
you want? do you want to send a woman in her 70s who is physically impaired to jail? is that what you re shooting for? that s 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 didn t want to admit to ourselves that women did on occasion kill their own children. arthur noe was never considered a suspect in his children s deaths. that s because marie noe admitted, she was always the last one to see each child alive. mrs. noe is the focus of our attention. there doesn t appear right now to be any evidence linking mr. noe to the deaths of these children, except that he came home after all of the children had been pronounced dead at the hospital. so right now, there is no evidence against him at all. on august 5, 1998, district