Cradle to Grave

Noe baby number four was Arthur Jr., born April 23, 1955, at Episcopal Hospital, seven pounds, 11.5 ounces. Only 12 days later, he was found by mother having difficulty breathing, brought to Episcopal, assessed to be healthy, and discharged. Next day, mother, home alone, again found baby not breathing and called the rescue squad. Brought to Episcopal Hospital. DOA. Cause of death attributed by coroner to bronchopneumonia after standard autopsy.

Noe baby number five was Constance, born February 24, 1958, in St. Luke’s Hospital, seven pounds, eight ounces. Born with conjunctivitis that cleared up quickly, the baby was discharged in good condition, although one treating physician later recalled a shocking interchange with the mother in the maternity ward. When informed that he would be helping with her baby’s care, mother reportedly said, “What’s the use? She’s going to die just like all the others.” On March 19th, mother called the family doctor to report that the baby was having trouble breathing. After making a house call, the doctor had the baby taken to the hospital because, although the problem seemed simply to be a cold that didn’t respond to medication, he wondered if something might be lacking in the infant’s blood. After three days of observation and testing, baby discharged in good condition. Two days later, father was at St. Hugh’s Catholic Church taking instruction so his marriage, an elopement, could be properly sanctified and his one-month-old daughter could be baptized. He returned home to find baby lifeless in her crib. Mother was upstairs, having just left child a few minutes before. When he pressed on baby’s abdomen to resuscitate, milk curds came out of nose and mouth. Rescue squad called, baby taken to Episcopal Hospital. DOA. Cause of death withheld 45 days for investigation by OME and police because parents had lost four other children.

Dr. Molly Dapena was asked to do the autopsy on Constance Noe. Even in the world of medical examiners, the brilliant 36-year-old pathologist was considered a curiosity. The former Molly Brown, a country girl from Pottsville, she had fallen in love after medical school with “a tall, dark, handsome Cuban man.” He was a pathologist, she became one as well, and even though they had a horde of kids — seven by 1958, on their way to 11 -- Molly had decided to specialize in autopsies on children. She was one of just half a dozen such experts in the country. Dapena had recently asked medical examiner Joseph Spelman if she could do pediatric autopsies for the city. This was a relief, because no death affects a medical examiner as profoundly as a child’s, and nobody else in the office liked doing the tedious, finely detailed work on infant bodies.

Dapena quickly decided that the on-scene diagnosis of Constance Noe — “aspiration of vomitus” due to”natural or accidental” causes — was wrong. The vomit, she believed, wasn’t the cause of death at all but more likely the result of death, an artifact. The autopsy, however, didn’t reveal what had caused the death, so Dapena proceeded with extensive microscopic tissue examination and toxicology.

Both came back negative.

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