The Empty Cradle/My Baby Is Missing/Night Cries

[Fishface]

I have not found a whole book on the Norma Jean Armistead case, but there are, not one, but 3 movies about her:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106808/?...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077990/?...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844344/p...

Interestingly, all 3 of these were made for TV. I have only seen one of them for sure, NIGHT CRIES, about a woman who cannot accept that her baby died in childbirth and is going to a therapist to process her disturbing dreams that the baby is alive and in danger. It's a fine shrink-bashing film; the doc (played by William Conrad, of all people) gets so focused on her childhood issue of getting punished for playing doctor with a neighbor boy that he almost misses the fact that her dreams are warning her that the baby IS alive and IS in danger.

MY BABY IS MISSING is the closest to reality of the three; they do seem to add a lot of contrived Hollywood plotline to the story.

I may have also seen EMPTY CRADLE: I say this because I remember Kate Jackson in therapy with William Conrad, when IMDB says it was Susan Saint James, and Kate Jackson stars in this one. I also very dimly remember the discrepancy about her being told her son died in childbirth when she knew she was having a girl.

The one (or two) I saw made for pleasant, creepy, if not very convincing viewing. They are a far cry from the real horror of what went down in this case. For that you need to read the pertinent chapter of Alone With the Devil: Famous Cases of a Courtroom Psychiatrist. I wasn't wild about that book but she is in there.