Murder by nature

The Unraveling Story of the Chicken Coop Murders

• Jazmin Hernandez • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Intro

“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!


Thank them for listening and being a part of this community.


References:



Introduction


You won’t find Wineville, California, anywhere on a map. The southern California town certainly existed, although it abruptly “vanished” in 1930 and was replaced suddenly by Mira Loma. What had happened in the small town that rattle them to the core was the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Crimes so heinous that the townspeople couldn’t bear to be associated with “Wineville” any longer.




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Intro

“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!


Thank them for listening and being a part of this community.


References:



Introduction


You won’t find Wineville, California, anywhere on a map. The southern California town certainly existed, although it abruptly “vanished” in 1930 and was replaced suddenly by Mira Loma. What had happened in the small town that rattle them to the core was the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Crimes so heinous that the townspeople couldn’t bear to be associated with “Wineville” any longer.


Gordon Stewart Northcott was born in Bladworth, Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in British Columbia. He moved to Los Angeles, California, with his parents in 1924. Two years later, at the age of 19, he asked his father to purchase a plot of land in the community of Wineville, located in Riverside County, where he built a chicken ranch and a house with the help of his father and his nephew, 11-year-old Sanford Clark. It was under this pretext that Northcott brought Clark from Bladworth to the U.S.

On March 10, 1928,  nine-year-old Walter Collins disappeared he was last seen around 5:00 PM by a neighbor at the corner of Pasadena Avenue and North Avenue 23 in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. His mother, Christine Collins, gave him some money to go see a movie at a nearby theatre. The Los Angeles Police Department was already under investigation for several corruption scandals and their inability to locate Walter Collins. The police chief, James Davis, was under a lot of pressure to solve the case. The police looked along Lincoln Park Lake but were unable to find anything. Collins’ father thought former prison inmates were responsible for his son’s disappearance in an attempt to get revenge. He worked at the prison’s cafeteria and was responsible for reporting other inmates’ infractions. With this sort of job, it is possible that he made more than a few enemies.


Several tips came in, but nothing turned out to be very useful. A gas station attendant in Glendale, Richard Strothers, reported seeing a dead boy wrapped in newspaper in the back of a car when a “foreign” couple stopped to ask for directions. A man named C.V. Staley followed the couple when they left the gas station. The couple stopped for a few moments in front of the police station and then sped out of town losing Staley. When the police showed Strothers and Staley Walter Collins’ photo, they both said he was the boy in the back of the car. Other tips came in about a couple traveling across the state with a boy who was begging them to let him go.


Walter’s disappearance wasn’t the only one around this time. Nelson and Lewis Winslow, ten and twelve years old, went missing on their way home to Pomona on May 16, 1928. Their parents received strange letters from them. The first said they were heading to Mexico, and the second said they planned to stay missing as long as possible to become famous.


The police didn’t connect these two disappearances together at first. They also didn’t find a connection between these cases and the headless body of a Latino boy they found in La Puente in February. And with none of these connections made, a neighbor’s complaint about a man mistreating a boy at his poultry farm didn’t appear relevant either.


In August 1928, Illinois police picked up a boy who told them his name was Arthur Kent. At first he would say only that his father abandoned him, so they placed him with a temporary family. Eventually he told them his real name was Walter Collins from Los Angeles and that he had been avoiding their questions to protect his father. Illinois police contacted California police, sent photographs of the boy, and later sent him to Los Angeles. California authorities contacted Christine Collins and showed her the photos of “her son.” She immediately said that he was not her son. However, Captain J.J. Jones talked her into “trying out” the boy for awhile.


Three weeks after their reunion, Christine Collins brought the boy back to the police station. She brought with her Walter’s dental records and signed statements from people who knew Walter saying that this boy was not him. Captain Jones called her a lunatic and claimed she was trying to get the state to take care of her child and believed she was just trying to embarrass the police department. He threw her into a psychiatric ward in Los Angeles County General Hospital on a “Code 12” which allowed police to get rid of troublemakers by throwing them into psychiatric hospitals.


The Los Angeles Police Department initially continued to insist that Christine Collins had her son. They only discontinued this belief when a handwriting expert came in to analyze their writing styles. The expert concluded that this boy’s handwriting was definitely not a match to the samples collected from previous years. The strange “R’s” the boy used was commonly taught in Illinois but not found in California.


During Christine's incarceration, Jones questioned the boy, who admitted to being 12-year-old Arthur Hutchens, Jr., a runaway originally from Iowa. A drifter at a roadside café in Illinois had told Hutchens of his resemblance to the missing Walter, so Hutchens came up with a plan to impersonate Walter. His motive was to get to Hollywood so that he could meet his favorite actor, Tom Mix.


Christine was released 10 days after Hutchens admitted that he was not her son. 


In 1928, Fifteen-year-old Sanford Clark had been working on the chicken ranch of his 19-year old cousin, Gordon Stewart Northcott. Jessie had been concerned that something seemed strange about her brother’s letters and made a trip down to visit him. Despite Northcott’s efforts to make sure the siblings were never alone together, Jessie managed to wheedle the truth out of her brother: their cousin had not only been sexually abusing him, but was also a murderer.


 Sanford asked his sister if she had recalled “reading in the papers about a little boy that was kidnapped” named Walter Collins. Collins had vanished in March of 1928 on his way to see a movie. Sanford then went on to say Gordon Northcott “had kept Walter at the ranch for a little over a week and had killed the boy when people started searching for him.” He also told his sister about the murders of two other boys as well as a Mexican ranch-hand Stewart had shot and decapitated. A terrified Jessie fled back to Canada and told the American consul the whole story, who alerted the Los Angeles Police Department. 



On August 31, 1928, The police in Los Angeles sent immigration officers Judson F. Shaw and George W. Scallorn to Wineville to check on Sanford. Gordon was driving down the road with his mother Sarah Louise Gordon. They saw the officers approaching and hid out until they could hot-tail it to Canada. The officers found Sanford at the ranch with Gordon’s father, Cyrus, and took them both into custody. While awaiting deportation, Sanford’s conscience grew heavy, and he told his jailers everything. He explained how Gordon raped him, and how he kidnapped other little boys and raped them too. He said to police that Gordon, along with his mother, even killed some of the boys and forced him to murder them also.


The cops showed Sanford photographs of several missing boys. He identified Nelson and Lewis Winslow, as well as Walter Collins. He also recalled a time that Gordon kept a Mexican boy in the chicken coop, and killed him too. When the police realized they found the headless body of the Mexican boy seven months prior in the nearby town of la Puente, they called for the immediate extradition and arrest of Gordon Stewart Northcott and his mother.


On September 15, 1928, Sanford told investigators that his uncle kidnapped him and had physically and sexually abused him. He also said Northcott had forced him to watch the abuse and murders of Walter Collins, Nelson and Lewis Winslow, and other boys. Sometimes he even made him participate in these acts. Northcott abducted boys to rape them, and when he got bored, he would lead them into the incubator room to see hatching chicks and kill them with an ax. 


Sanford told the police they could find graves near the chicken coop for the Winslow brothers and Walter Collins. Two graves were found, but the full bodies were not there, only pieces of bone. Axes found among other farm equipment had human hair and blood on them. 


Several bones were scattered across the ranch, which pathologists later determined to be from male children. Inside the house, a book checked out to one of the Winslow boys was found. Also, more letters to their parents were written.


Northcott’s father, Cyrus George Northcott, told police two days later that his son had admitted the murders to him. But by that time, Northcott and his mother, Louise Northcott, had left town. 


On September 20, 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott was arrested in British Columbia. They arrested his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, in Alberta. In December, the police took Northcott back to his ranch in an attempt to get more information. While there, he verbally confessed to five murders, including the Winslow brothers, Walter Collins, and a Mexican boy named Alvin Gothea. However,, later that day, Northcott only admitted one homicide in a written confession, which was the murder of Alvin Gothea. Northcott’s mother confessed to the murder of Walter Collins. She said she delivered the final blow to the boy and buried him in a hole near the chicken coop. Sanford Clark said his grandmother had told them that if they each hit the boy, they would be equally guilty if caught. Sarah Louise Northcott was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Walter Collins.


Gordon Stewart Northcott’s trial began in January 1929. He fired several defense attorneys and proceeded to defend himself. He admitted to abusing young boys because he loved them. He even had his mother testify for him. She claimed she was actually his grandmother because her husband had raped her daughter Winnefred and Northcott was Winnefred’s son. Northcott also claimed to have an incestuous relationship with Sarah Louise and that his father had molested him. Northcott’s defense was rather odd, and it was obvious that he was no lawyer. Along with the strange defense, Sarah Louise didn’t prove to be a very credible witness since the only continuous statement she made was that she would do anything for Gordon.


Gordon Northcott was implicated in the murder of Walter Collins, but because his mother had already confessed and been sentenced for it, the state chose to not prosecute Gordon for that murder.


It was speculated that Gordon may have killed as many as 20 boys, but the State of California could not produce evidence to support that speculation. Ultimately, the state only brought an indictment against Gordon for the murders of an unidentified underage Mexican national (known as the "headless Mexican") and the brothers Lewis and Nelson Winslow. 


On February 8, 1929, an all-male jury convicted Northcott for the first-degree murders of the Winslow brothers and an anonymous victim. Judge George R. Freeman sentenced him to death.Northcott was hanged on October 2, 1930. As for Sanford, he was never tried as he was seen as a victim


After being sentenced, Sarah attempted to commit suicide and begged the authorities not to execute her son. "I got a square deal," she said. "If they'll just be good to my boy if they just won’t hang him!" After learning that her son would be hanged, Sarah begged the authorities to hang her as well. Sarah served her sentence at Tehachapi State Prison and was paroled after less than twelve years. She died in 1944.


Christine became hopeful that her son, Walter, might still be alive after her first interview with Gordon Stewart Northcott. She asked Northcott if he had killed her son, and after listening to his repeated lies, confessions, and recantations, she concluded that Northcott was insane. Because Northcott did not seem to know whether he had even met Walter, much less killed him, she clung to the hope that Walter was still alive.


Northcott sent Christine a telegram shortly before his execution, saying he had lied when he denied that Walter was among his victims. He promised to tell the truth, if she came in person to hear it. Just a few hours before the execution, Christine visited Northcott. But upon her arrival, he balked. "I don't want to see you," he said when she confronted him. "I don't know anything about it. I'm innocent." A news account said, "The distraught woman was outraged by Northcott's conduct... but was also comforted by it. Northcott's ambiguous replies and his seeming refusal to remember such details as Walter's clothing and the color of his eyes gave her continued hope that her son still lived."

Conclusion 

She then filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department. On September 13, 1930, Christine won a lawsuit against Jones and was awarded $10,800 (equivalent to $162,000 in 2021), which Jones never paid. The last newspaper account of Christine is from 1941, when she attempted to collect a $15,562 judgment against then-retired Captain Jones in the Superior Court.


In 1935, five years after Northcott's execution, a boy and his parents came forward and spoke to authorities.  Seven years earlier, the boy had gone missing, and the parents had reported his disappearance to the police. At the time of the boy's disappearance, authorities speculated that he might have been a murder victim at Wineville.


Sanford Clark, however, never told authorities that a boy had escaped from the chicken coop. The historical record and Sanford Clark's own testimony indicate that only three boys were ever held in the chicken coop. These were Walter Collins and the two Winslow brothers, all of whom were murdered.  


Sanford Clark returned to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. City of Saskatoon records indicate that Sanford Wesley Clark died on June 20, 1991 and was buried in the Saskatoon Woodlawn Cemetery on August 26, 1993.


The horrors of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders have introduced again in 2008 when the Clint Eastwood film Changeling was released. The story reflects Christine Collins’ attempts to recover her son, Walter. The Changeling showed Christine Collins’ perseverance to overcome the unjust law enforcement system and to learn the truth about her son.


There is a theory that Walter was never really killed, but escaped. And having escaped, the theories go, he was too ashamed for whatever reasons to return home. It is believed by some he is either still alive or died recently of advanced age. The most common conclusion for most is that Walter was indeed murdered but his body was too destroyed to be discovered to this day or hidden out there waiting to be found.


My Thoughts

Outro

That brings us to the end of this episode!  As always, thanks for listening to Murder By Nature. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any streaming platform you are currently on, and be sure to come back Saturday for our new episode. Until then, I am your host, Jazmin Hernandez, don’t forget to stay safe! Don’t get murdered or murder people, you lovely humans!






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