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Murder record corrected
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Plaque for the "Babes in the Woods" stands in Westminster Cemetery west of Carlisle. (Wally Shank/The Sentinel)
Norma Sedgwick, one of the "Babes in the Woods," is getting her name back.
On Nov. 24, 1934, 12-year-old Norma and her two half-sisters, Cordelia and Dewilla Noakes, were found dead and tucked under a blanket in the woods of South Mountain between Pine Grove Furnace and Huntsdale.
The girls had been killed by Elmo Noakes, Norma's stepfather and Cordelia and Dewilla's father.
Because they had lived in California just before their deaths, information on the girls was incomplete and Norma's correct name was not known.
Norma was listed as Norma Noakes on her death certificate and was buried at Westminster Cemetery in North Middleton Township with her half-sisters.
A grave marker lists her name as Norma Sedgwick Noakes.
This week Cumberland County Court Judge George E. Hoffer ordered that Norma's name on county death certificate records be changed to Norma Sedgwick. The names of her parents, Roland B. Sedgwick and Mary Isabelle Hayford, were added to the record.
Petition filed
Norma's half-sister, Beverly Sedgwick Hatch, of Spanish Fork, Utah, petitioned for the changes.
Roland Sedgwick sought custody of Norma after her mother's death. Court papers seeking custody and signed July 21,1931, from Salt Lake County, Utah, were included with the petition, but Noakes left the jurisdiction of Utah courts before a restraining order could be served.
Craig Kennedy, a local author who is writing a book about the Babes in the Woods, says Norma never was adopted by Noakes.
Kennedy has been in contact with both Hatch and her sister, Sandra Banks.
"It's a bit of purging, perhaps," Kennedy says. "I think they're looking for closure. They wanted that Noakes name purged from everything."
Hatch was born five years after Norma was killed.
"She's our sister. We wanted her name to be listed the right way. And after all these years, it will be," Hatch said.
"I'm so excited. I've been crying all morning," Hatch said Tuesday after learning the news.
Divorce broke up family
Norma was born on Jan. 11, 1922, in Salt Lake City. Her mother took custody of her when she divorced Norma's father and took up with Noakes.
The father lost track of Norma when his ex-wife died.
"They dropped out of sight for five years," Hatch says. "Dad felt so bad about it. ... He tried everything he could to get her."
Roland B. Sedgwick carried the pain to his grave in 1969, she says.
The family learned of the slayings when a Carlisle woman sent him newspaper clippings. But he rarely mentioned it over the years.
"We kids didn't know much because back then people didn't talk about those things," Hatch says.
10,000 view bodies
The murders rocked the nation back in 1934. At first nobody knew who the dead girls were, and the mystery was dubbed "the biggest crime since the Lindbergh kidnapping" two years before.
When the bodies couldn't be identified, they were laid out at Ewing Funeral Home on South Hanover Street in Carlisle.
An estimated 10,000 people walked past the bodies of the little girls, wearing out the carpet.
American Legion Post 101 provided for the burial on Dec. 1, 1934, with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts serving as pallbearers.
On the same day the little girls were found, Elmo Noakes, 32, and Winifred Pierce, 18, his niece and lover, were found dead outside Altoona in an apparent murder-suicide.
At first, no one put the two sets of deaths together.
Murderer sells coat
Two weeks before the bodies were found, Noakes, still in California, bought a 1928 Pontiac Essex. He left California that day with the girls and Pierce and arrived in Waynesboro on Nov. 17, where they stayed in a tourist camp.
After placing the bodies of the girls in Cumberland County, Noakes and Pierce ran out of gasoline in McVeytown, where they removed all identification from the car, even filing off the serial number.
They made their way to Altoona where Noakes sold his coat and purchased a .22-caliber rifle at a pawn shop.
Noakes apparently shot Miss Pierce and then himself.
Their bodies were found in the Altoona train yards.
