Pierce, Winifred: 1934

It was early November, 1934, and the Great Depression gripped the country.  Elmo Noakes, aged 32, spent his last $46.00 for a 1928 Pontiac Essex, and left Roseville, California, heading east.  Noakes’ wife, Mary, had died about two years before, leaving three children in the power of the man who would become their killer.
The oldest girl, aged 12, was Norma Sedgwick born on Jan. 11, 1922, in either Bountiful or Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Roland B. Sedgwick and Mary Isabelle (Hayford) Sedgwick.  Their marriage ended in divorce, and her mother kept custody of Norma when she left her husband for Noakes.   The other two girls were the daughters of Noakes and Mary; Dewilla born in Eureka, Utah, aged 10 at her death, and Cordelia, born in Roseville, California, aged 8 at her death.
After Mary’s death, Roland Sedgwick sought custody of Norma after her mother’s death.  A petition was filed in Salt Lake City, Utah, but Noakes left the jurisdiction of Utah courts, with Norma, before a restraining order could be served.
In California, Noakes found a housekeeper and perhaps lover, his niece, Winifred Pierce, just 18 years old in the summer of 1933.  She helped care for three young girls in his charge, despite her family’s objections to the arrangement.
They had no known connections to Pennsylvania, but on November 11, 1934, they headed east.  Their exact route is unknown, but they apparently spent some time in Philadelphia, and they reached Waynesboro on November 17th.  They stayed at a trailer camp that night.  South Mountain, in Cumberland County, on November 21st.  The three young girls had had nothing to eat for more than 18 hours.  Noakes was penniless, desperate, and without any prospect of gaining employment or money.  He took his three young daughters, aged 12, 10, and 8, in the woods of a Kings Gap estate between Pine Grove Furnace and Hunstdale.  There he, possibly with Ms Pierce, apparently suffocated them, leaving the bodies tucked in with blankets.   It was November 23rd.
Other accounts paint a more violent picture.  The New Castle News of November 24, 1934, stated the three sisters were beaten to death, their blond hair matted in blood, their heads brusied and battered with a heavy instrument.  They were arranged in a row, their faces turned the same direction on a blanket, and covered with a green, purple-trimmed, blanket.
John Clark and Clark Jardine discovered the three bodies on November 24th when they traveled to the vicinity for a load of wood.  They noticed a green blanket on the ground, and pulling it back, found the bodies.  The girls were well-dressed, and the youngest was snuggled in the arms of the oldest.  The two men hurried to the nearest telephone and alerted the police.  An investigation began that was fated to stretch across the country.
Noakes and Ms Pierce drove west after the killings, and abandoned their blue sedan when they ran out of gas near McVeytown.  They filed the serial number from the car and removed all identification from it.  They did not remove the California license plates, however.
They hitchhiked, and were picked up by a truck driver.  He took them as far as Altoona, where they checked into a boarding home under false names.  Noakes sold their last possession, Ms Pierce’s coat.  With the $2.55 proceeds, he purchased a rusty .22 caliber rifle from a second-hand store.  Near Altoona’s Spring Meadow Station, on the Hollidaysburg Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, he first killed Winifred Pierce and then committed suicide.  The weapon was found between them.
At first, there was no connection seen between the mysterious girls in the woods and the murder-suicide in Altoona.  There was nation-wide excitement and comparisons made to the Lindbergh kidnapping, which had taken place just two years before.   Over 10,000 people came to view the remains of the girls in the funeral home; the American Legion provided for the burials, and Boy and Girl Scouts served as pallbearers.   Their tombstone reads:
Babes in the Woods
Sleep tender blossoms, folded so close
In slumber which broken shall be
By His gentle voice whispering low
“Little Children Come Unto Me”
Five days after the bodies were discovered, a man named John Naugle found a black leather case about three miles from the site.  It had the name “Norma” written on it.  The sedan was discovered, and the plates were traced to Elmo Noakes.  Investigators had the pieces.  Noakes was identified by his Navy record fingerprints; he had served in the Marine Corps.
The Noakes children were buried in Westminster Cemetery in Carlisle, and a state historical marker was placed where the bodies were found.  Norma Sedgwick’s father did not learn of her death until he received some newspaper clippings.  Because Norma had been listed on county death certificates as Norma Noakes, her family continued to advocate for the Noakes name to be removed.  In 2004, 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 Sedgwick and Mary Isabelle Hayford, were added to the record.
After the investigation connected Noakes to their death, he and Ms Pierce were buried in the same place, about 100 feet from the children.  The actual role of Winifred Pierce in the deaths of the children seems to that of a willing accomplice.  Her actions are difficult to explain otherwise.