Wineville Chicken Coop murders

Authorities found three shallow graves at the ranch exactly where Clark had stated they were. These graves did not contain complete bodies, but only parts. Clark and his sister Jessie testified that Northcott and his mother had exhumed the bodies on the evening of August 4, 1928, a few weeks before Clark was taken into protective custody. They had taken the bodies to a deserted area, where they were most likely burned in the night.[6] The complete bodies were never recovered.

The evidence found in the graves consisted of "51 parts of human anatomy... those silent bits of evidence, of human bones and blood, have spoken and corroborated the testimony of living witnesses".[7] This evidence enabled the authorities to conclude that Walter Collins, two brothers named Lewis and Nelson Winslow (aged 12 and 10, respectively), and the unidentified fourth victim had all been murdered. The body parts and Clark's testimony resulted in a death sentence for Gordon Northcott and life imprisonment for Sarah Louise Northcott, who was paroled in 1940. She died in 1944.

Wineville changed its name to Mira Loma on November 1, 1930, in large part because of the negative publicity surrounding the murders. The new cities of Eastvale and Jurupa Valley took different parts of the area of Mira Loma in 2010 and 2011, respectively.[8][9] Wineville Avenue, Wineville Road, Wineville Park, and other geographic references provide reminders of the community's former name.[2]

Clark returned to Saskatoon, where city records indicate that he died on June 20, 1991.[10]

California State Reform School in Whittier, California, circa 1901

Sanford's older sister, Jessie, became suspicious of the letters Sanford was forced to send home from Northcott's ranch. These letters assured the family that Sanford was well.

Jessie traveled to the ranch in Wineville and stayed there for several days. At night, Clark told his sister about the crimes that had been committed at the Ranch. Jessie became terrified of Northcott, left the ranch, and returned to Canada. There, she told the American consul about the crimes that had occurred at Wineville.[27]

Sanford was not tried for murder because Assistant District Attorney Loyal C. Kelley believed very strongly that the boy was innocent.[28] He said that Sanford had been a victim of Northcott's death threats and sexual abuse and was not a willing participant in the crimes committed at the chicken ranch.

Kelley told Sanford that he had secured an entirely unique settlement of Sanford's legal situation by having him taken to the nearby Whittier State School, where an experimental program for delinquent youths was under way. He assured Sanford that the Whittier school was unique because of its compassionate mission of genuine rehabilitation.[29]

Sanford was sentenced to five years at the Whittier State School (later renamed the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility). His sentence was later commuted to 23 months, as he "had impressed the Trustees with his temperament, job skills and his personal desire to live a productive life during his nearly two years there."[30]

He died in 1991 at the age of 78, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1993.[31][32]

Nine-year-old Walter Collins was abducted when he went to the movies and never came back, on March 10, 1928. He lived in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles.[33]

Initially, his mother, Christine Collins, and the police believed that enemies of Walter Collins, Sr. had abducted Walter.[34] Walter Collins, Sr. had been convicted of eight armed robberies and was an inmate at Folsom State Prison.[35][36]

Walter Collins' disappearance received nationwide attention and the Los Angeles Police Department followed up hundreds of leads without success.[37] The police faced negative publicity and increasing public pressure to solve the case.[38]

Five months after Walter's disappearance,[37] a boy claiming to be Walter was found in DeKalb, Illinois. Letters and photographs were exchanged before Walter's mother, Christine Collins, eventually paid for the boy to be brought to Los Angeles. A public reunion was organized by the police, who hoped to negate the bad publicity they had received for their failure to solve this case and others. The police also hoped that the uplifting story would deflect attention from a series of corruption scandals that had sullied the department's reputation. At the reunion, Christine stated that the boy was not her son. She was told by the officer in charge of the case, police Captain J. J. Jones, to take the boy home to "try him out for a couple of weeks". Christine hesitantly agreed to do that. [38]

Three weeks later, Christine returned to see Captain Jones and persisted in her claim that the boy was not Walter. Even though she had dental records proving it, Jones had her committed to the psychiatric ward at Los Angeles County Hospital under a "Code 12", a term used to jail or commit someone who was deemed difficult or inconvenient. [38]

During Christine's incarceration, Jones questioned the boy,[37] who admitted to being 12-year-old Arthur Hutchens, Jr., a runaway originally from Iowa.[39][40] 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. [38]

Christine was released 10 days after Hutchens admitted that he was not her son.[41] She then filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department.[37]

On September 13, 1930, Christine won a lawsuit against Jones and was awarded $10,800 (equivalent to $175,000 in 2022), which Jones never paid.[37] 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.[42]

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.[43]

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."[44]

Lewis, 12, and Nelson, 10, were the sons of Nelson Winslow, Sr. and his wife. The boys were abducted on May 16, 1928, from Pomona, California on their way home from a yacht club meeting. Northcott was convicted of kidnapping and killing them.

Mr. Winslow led a lynch mob to the Riverside County Jail, where Northcott was temporarily being held, with the intent of hanging Northcott after the completion of his trial but before his sentencing. Police convinced the mob to disband.[45]

In 1933, Arthur J. Hutchens, Jr. wrote about how and why he impersonated the missing boy, Walter Collins. Hutchens' biological mother had died in 1925 when he was nine years old, and he had been living with his stepmother, Violet Hutchens.

Hutchens pretended to be Walter Collins to get as far away as possible from his stepmother. After living on the road for a month, he arrived in DeKalb, Illinois. When police brought him in, they began to ask him questions about Walter Collins. Initially he stated that he did not know about Walter, but changed his story when he saw a chance of getting to California.

He died in 1954.[46]

Briegleb was a Presbyterian minister and an early radio evangelist. He was the pastor of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church on Jefferson Boulevard at Third Avenue in Los Angeles, California.

He took up many important causes in the City of Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably the poor handling of the Walter Collins kidnapping case in 1928. He fought to have Christine Collins released from a mental hospital after she was committed there in retaliation for disagreeing with the Los Angeles Police Department's version of events.[47] He died in 1943 at the age of 61.

In 1935, five years after Northcott's execution, a boy and his parents came forward and spoke to authorities.[48] 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.[49]