Cradle to Grave

The article also drew attention to the rising prominence of Molly Dapena as an authority on crib death. But mostly, it set a tone of intense national sympathy for the Noes, especially Mrs. Noe, who was described as “worn almost to gauntness, and stung by sharp-eyed stares from her neighbors ... her eyes are two enormous dark smudges in a face as gray as ashes. She seldom visits the children’s graves. Courage, in her lexicon, counts more than tears.”

Several weeks after the article appeared, the President and First Lady lost their two-day-old son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, to respiratory problems, and the issue of infant death was high on the national agenda. The autopsy results on Theresa were then released. Cause of death was attributed by the medical examiner to a blood disorder, congenital hemorrhagic diathesis. While the problem hadn’t been found in any of the other children or during extensive tests performed on the parents, the autopsy finding dampened some of the investigative zeal for the Noe case. It was still “bizarre,” as Fillinger had told the Daily News, but now it was no longer five healthy babies in a row who died mysteriously after the mother was the last to see them alive. It was eight babies, and two out of the last three didn’t fit any pattern at all. “Theresa confounded me,” Fillinger recalls today.

In the meantime, the Noes had been busy taking care of Art’s increasingly senile and infirm parents, who’d lived with them for the past few years. Mr. Noe’s father had died the day before Theresa’s birth and death. His mother was hospitalized soon after, and went from the hospital to a private nursing home. After disputes between the Noes and the home over payment, she was moved to a public home, where she died in June 1964.

By that time, Mrs. Noe was pregnant again.

Catherine Ellen Noe, baby number nine, was born on December 3rd at St. Joseph’s Hospital by cesarean section; seven pounds, seven ounces. This time, the apprehensive doctors were taking no chances. Cathy was kept in the hospital for three months, even though she was perfectly healthy, and given every possible diagnostic test. Hospital staff kept a watchful eye on the Noes.

Many of the nurses in the pediatrics department were nuns in the order of the Sisters of St. Felix, and the supervisor of the department was a young Sister Victorine, who developed a close attachment to Cathy. She gave a statement to investigators at the time (and recently corroborated it in a telephone interview) in which she described Cathy as “a happy baby” with “no problems of any kind” during her entire hospital stay. She did, however, observe that when the parents came to visit, “Mr. Noe always was much more affectionate toward the child than was Mrs. Noe ... [who] seemed to prefer to remain detached and aloof and dispassionate in her feelings.” The sister noticed, though, that when others were present, “Mrs. Noe would make a pretense of warming up to the baby, as if she felt it was required of her ... [and] would utter inane little offerings that would have no bearing on the moment.” Victorine felt these remarks “were born most probably out of a peculiar need by Mrs. Noe to say something, anything at those times.”

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