"Don't Tell My Husband"

After her confession was typed up, Marie read it over and signed it. She seemed relieved. But as she left the interrogation room with the three officers, she became skittish.

"Don't tell my husband what I told youse," she whispered.

THE MARIE NOE CONFESSION remained secret for almost a week, which seemed an eternity for those in the know but wasn't nearly as long as the D.A.'s office had hoped to keep the case to itself. A few shards of information leaked out to the Inquirer late Tuesday night, March 31st, and an unconfirmed report of the confession ran the next morning.

A media feeding frenzy ensued, with camera crews camped out on the Noes' block in West Kensington, waiting for a glimpse of the spent, slow-moving couple: a tiny red-faced man with a habitual cigarette and his broad-shouldered wife, who appeared blank until provoked. Their story made national nightly news, the New York Times, the Washington Post and all the morning shows. Several days later, it led the TV magazine show Dateline NBC. At the height of the coverage, a local defense attorney named David Rudenstein announced that he had been retained by the couple and that Marie Noe's so-called confession was inadmissible because she had been interrogated for 11 hours without a lawyer present. He contended that her mental condition that evening did not allow her to make an admissible confession.

Seeing Rudenstein on TV in his cream-colored three-piece suit did not thrill some involved with the case. Rudenstein is considered smart, but he's known for over-the-top courtroom antics, often involving props. He once produced a Pinocchio doll to drive home his point about a witness's alleged lies, and he has also done bits with a plastic shovel, a toy Liberty Bell and a scarf. Rudenstein did make one other provocative point about Marie Noe. "I've never seen anyone confess to five murders and be released from police custody," he told reporters. And as weeks, then months passed without word from authorities, observers began to wonder what had happened to the case.

THE POLICE and the D.A.'s office were lying low because they knew it would take a great deal of investigation to make a case against Marie Noe, even with her signed confession. Except for what she had told them, much of what they knew about the case came from the magazine article, which included current interviews with experts and an analysis of the ancient investigative files, some going back to 1949. But investigators understood that many of the accusatory statements in those old files might not be available to prosecutors if the case went to trial. Unless those who had been interviewed back then were still alive and could come into court to corroborate what they had said, some powerful past statements might not be admissible as evidence. Many of the statements had been taken by the medical examiner's lead investigator, Joe McGillen, who was still very much alive. But McGillen's testimony about what he'd been told could be considered hearsay.