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Who Was Marie Noe, the Philadelphia Mom Who Killed Eight of Her Kids Before They Turned 2?
Marie Noe drew sympathy after she and her husband, Arthur Noe, lost all 10 of their children between 1949 and 1968. Decades later, she confessed to murdering eight of them.
It would take decades for authorities in Philadelphia to formally charge a woman initially believed to have lost her 10 babies due to tragic happenstance.
Marie Noe was a mother in the city's Kensington neighborhood who drew sympathy after she and her husband, Arthur Noe, lost all 10 of their children between 1949 and 1968, as reported in profiles that ran in the mid-1960s in outlets such as Life and Newsweek.
Marie and Arthur became “the most bereaved parents in America,” according to a 1998 Philadelphia magazine article titled "Cradle to Grave," written and reported by investigative journalist Stephen Fried. It wasn’t until after Fried’s explosive piece that officials charged Marie with killing most of her children, in a case that ended with a controversial sentence.
Who were Marie and Arthur Noe’s children?
Between 1949 and 1967, Marie gave birth to three sons and seven daughters, though none made it to their second birthday, and some died within days or weeks or being born, as detailed in Philadelphia magazine. The 10 Noe children were: Richard Allen (born March 7, 1949, died at one month); Elizabeth Mary (born September 8, 1950, died at five months); Jacqueline (born April 23, 1952, died at 21 days); Arthur Jr. (born April 23, 1955, died at 13 days); Constance (born February 24, 1958, died at about a month); Letitia (delivered stillborn on August 24, 1959); Mary Lee (born June 19, 1962, died at six months); Theresa (born June of 1963, died with seven hours); Catherine Ellen (born December 3, 1964, died at 14 months); and Arthur Joseph (born July 28, 1967, died at five months).
Marie told Fried that she suffered from “enormous headaches,” according to the 1998 Philadelphia magazine article. "The doctor told me I was getting migraines from the loss of a child, and maybe it might help if I got pregnant again," Marie told the magazine at the time. "So I got pregnant again. I was like a factory. I was easy to get pregnant.”
What the Noe children were originally believed to have died from
At the time of their births, the children Marie would later be convicted of killing, were born in overall good health. Their manners of death were listed as natural or accidental, and causes of death listed ranged from “aspiration of vomitus” to congestive heart failure to pneumonia.
When Life profiled the Noes in its July 12, 1963 issue (one month after child number 8, Theresa, died in the hospital), the idea of “crib death” — now known as SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) — was relatively new. The Life article, according to Fried's Philadelphia story, earned the Noes “intense national sympathy,” especially for Marie.
Following the birth of the couple’s 10th child, Marie underwent a medically necessary hysterectomy, Philadelphia reported, putting an end to her child-bearing days.
Doctors and officials had suspicions about Marie over the years, but the case was injected with new life when Fried's 1998 "Cradle to Grave" article was published, which included firsthand interviews with the Noes. In a follow-up piece published in Philadelphia in 2020, the journalist wrote that he decided to revisit the story after someone posed a question on Reddit, asking what happened to Marie in the decades since she was convicted of murdering eight of her kids.
Fried wrote in the 2020 piece that police brought Marie in for questioning the same day that "Cradle to Grave" was published, which was 30 years after her 10th child’s death. At the time, Marie, then 69, and Arthur still lived together in Philadelphia’s West Kensington neighborhood.
Marie Noe confesses to killing her kids
After 11 hours of interrogation, Marie confessed to using a pillow to smother at least some of her children, according to a September 1998 Philadelphia story. The elderly woman claimed she could only remember killing four of her kids (Richard, Elizabeth, Jacqueline, and Constance). She told authorities she couldn’t remember killing Arthur Jr., Mary Lee, Catherine, and Arthur Joseph, but didn’t deny killing them.
According to Fried’s initial 1998 article on the Noes, Letitia and Theresa (babies number six and eight, respectively) died in the hospital the day they were born. To this day, they're still believed to have died of natural causes.
Marie was arrested on August 5, 1998, and charged with eight counts of murder, according to The Washington Post.
"I think that as a country, we don't want to admit to ourselves that mothers kill their children, but we are increasingly confronted with evidence of this kind of crime," then-Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham said following the arrest.
Marie was described as “detached and aloof and dispassionate in her feelings" by the supervisor in the pediatrics department where baby Catherine was held for three months for monitoring, according to Philadelphia.
Marie told Fried for his 1998 story that the deaths of her children were “one of them stupid things that happens."
“We just weren’t meant to have children, I guess,” she added in that interview.
After signing her sworn statement confessing to the murders, Marie whispered to investigators as she was leaving the interrogation room, “Don’t tell my husband what I told youse,” according to Philadelphia.
What happened to Marie and Arthur Noe?
On June 29, 1999, Marie pleaded guilty to eight counts of second-degree murder. In what was widely seen as controversial, a judge sentenced the then-71-year-old woman to 20 years’ probation, according to The New York Times. She was required to spend the first five months under home confinement.
Arthur stood by his wife and was never charged in connection with the babies’ killings.
''I've lived with this woman for 50 years,'' he told The New York Times. ''She was my life. That woman was not capable of doing such a thing. She wouldn't harm a fly.''
According to Philadelphia, Marie — as part of her deal with prosecutors — agreed to studies on her brain by “international experts,” though the studies never took place. Many believe that Marie had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, now known as factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), according to outlets including The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times,
The mental health disorder wasn’t introduced into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) until 1977. The diagnosis can be applied to someone in a caregiving role who inflicts harm on those they care for, often part of attention-seeking behavior.
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Are Marie and Arthur Noe still alive?
Arthur died shortly after Christmas in 2009, and Marie died on May 5, 2016, at a Philadelphia nursing home, according to Fried's 2020 piece. She was 87 years old.