Selected Reading
70-Year-Old Mother Admits Killing 8 Of 10 Children
PHILADELPHIA — An elderly Philadelphia woman Monday admitted that she smothered eight of her 10 infant children over a 19-year period beginning in 1949.Marie Noe, 70, a gaunt white-haired woman who suffers from diabetes and arthritis, had maintained for decades that her children had succumbed to crib death, now known as sudden infant death syndrome, while police reported that they could find no evidence of foul play.
A 1963 article in Life magazine cast the housewife and part-time factory worker from Philadelphia's Kensington section as one of the most bereaved mothers in America.
But Monday, 10 months after her arrest for murder, Noe pleaded guilty to eight counts of second-degree murder in Philadelphia County Common Pleas Court, as part of an agreement with prosecutors that will allow her to avoid prison.
Noe agreed to spend 20 years on probation, including five years of house arrest that will require her to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. She also must undergo intensive psychiatric therapy, which officials hope will shed new light on the causes of parental infanticide.
"I don't know any other person accused of this type of crime in the history of the world who has ever come forward to work with doctors the way this woman is willing to,'' said her attorney, David Rudenstein.
Noe and her 77-year-old husband, Arthur, a retired machinist, had 10 children in all. One was stillborn and another died in the hospital shortly after birth.
But eight other boys and girls — aged 13 days to 14 months — died between 1949 and the 1960s, even though each had been normal at birth and were healthy and developing well until the time of their death.
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The Holocaust in American Life
by Peter Novick
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first because they didn't want to be seen as victims.Police detectives who questioned Noe several times over the years were suspicious of her, as were some medical examiners.
Then in 1998, 30 years after the last child's death, city police reopened the cases when an article in Philadelphia Magazine contended that most multiple crib deaths from the same family should be considered possible homicides.
According to court papers, two Philadelphia medical examiners reviewed death certificates and available autopsy reports. Both concluded that all eight infants had been suffocated.
Police who questioned Noe last year said she appeared to implicate herself in the deaths of her son Richard Alan, who was born in 1949, as well as in those of her daughters Elizabeth Mary, Jacqueline and Constance, who all died in the 1950s.
Noe was initially charged in August but released on bail. Police said Noe's husband Arthur was not charged because he was not at home at the time of any of the deaths and they came to the conclusion he had no part in the crime.
June 28, 1999
Source: Newswire
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