Cradle to Grave

Arthur Joseph Noe was born on July 28, 1967, at 9:57 p.m., in St. Joseph’s Hospital, eight pounds, five ounces. The delivery was by cesarean section, complicated by the rupture of Marie Noe’s uterine wall. Before delivery she had been told by the obstetric surgeon, Dr. Cucinotta, that there was a strong possibility she would have such a problem while under anesthesia and he might have to perform an emergency hysterectomy. She gave him her consent, and in fact he did need to remove her uterus in order to save her life.

Cucinotta, who at 86 still remembers the Noes and the procedure vividly, is adamant that the hysterectomy was medically necessary and was not done just to stop Mrs. Noe from having more children. However, he had been suspicious of the Noes for several years and had implored Mrs. Noe not to get pregnant again after the death of Cathy. And he recalls asking his lawyer about his legal responsibility to report his concerns to authorities. Instead he discussed his concerns only with Gangemi, who referred the Noes and many other patients to his practice. Cucinotta was never made aware of any investigation.

Cucinotta handed newborn Arthur Noe to Dr. Patrick Pasquariello, today a senior pediatrician at Children’s Hospital, who recalls carrying the baby from the delivery room to the nursery. He, too, was very suspicious of the Noes, but says it was a time when “people weren’t as tuned in to what to do with those suspicions. Today, the kid gets a bruise and you file a form. Back then, we were only starting to hear about SIDS and child abuse and all that.” Yet he knows the staff was anxiously watching baby Arthur — the second baby Arthur — whom the Noes called “Little Arty.”

During the two months that Little Arty was kept in the hospital, the staff had plenty of time to observe him. As Gangemi noted emphatically on his chart, “The child appears normal in every respect. NEVER has this child displayed any ... respiratory embarrassment [as] described by the mother [in] her other now-deceased infants.”

The attentive hospital staff did not get much of an opportunity to observe the Noes, however. According to a medical examiner’s review of the baby’s chart, during the entire two months that Little Arty was in the hospital, the mother and father visited him two times.

Arthur Noe was discharged from the hospital on September 29, 1967. At the end of his discharge note, Gangemi wrote: “In God We Trust!”

One month later, Gangemi got a call from St. Christopher’s Hospital that baby Arthur Noe had been brought in by the rescue squad. Mrs. Noe, who had been home alone with the baby, said that while she was feeding Little Arty, “something must have gone down the wrong way,” and he began choking and turning blue. She said she “banged it out of his chest,” called the rescue squad and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. By the time the baby arrived at the hospital, he was “pale but not cyanotic [blue] ... flaccid but in no apparent respiratory distress.” Gangemi asked that the baby be brought down to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he remained for 19 days.

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