Wineville Chicken Coop Murders

On a sunny afternoon in March 1928, 9-year-old Walter Collins disappeared after his mother, Christine, a telephone operator, gave him a dime to spend on admission to the theater near their Mt. Washington area home. The boy’s father, Walter J.S. Collins, who was serving time in prison for robbery, believed that former inmates out for revenge against him may have kidnapped his son, though there were no witnesses and no proof that that had occurred. Arthur Hutchins, Jr., a runaway from Illinois and originally from Iowa, claimed he was the missing Walter Collins so he could get a free trip to California. The police considered the case closed and tried to convince Walter's mother, Christine Collins, that Hutchins was her son. “What are you trying to do, make fools out of us all? Or are you trying to shirk your duty as a mother and have the state provide for your son? You are the most cruel-hearted woman I’ve ever known. You are a . . . fool!” LAPD police Captain J.J. Jones allegedly said to Collins.When she refused to believe it, she was placed in the psychiatric ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital.

While she spent five days in the hospital, Jones extracted the truth from the faux Walter.

The boy from Illinois confessed that while stopped at an Illinois roadside cafe, he listened to a diner tell him how much he resembled the kidnapped boy from Los Angeles, whose picture had appeared in newspapers nationwide. Arthur quickly seized on an opportunity to see Hollywood, turned himself in to authorities and carried out the charade by assuming the identity of the missing boy.

Only after Hutchins admitted he was not Christine Collins' son, ten days later, was she released.

Meanwhile Gordon Stewart Northcott, in what was known as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, was found guilty of killing 12-year-old Lewis Winslow, his brother Nelson, and an "unidentified" Mexican boy. Investigators found an axe and bones, hair and fingers from three of the victims buried in lime near the chicken house at the Northcott ranch near Wineville. The jury heard that he kidnapped, molested, tortured, killed, and beheaded these and other boys throughout 1928. Northcott was hanged. Sarah Louise "Louisa" Northcott, Northcott's mother, admitted to killing Walter Collins, but then recanted her confession. She was sentenced to life and served her sentence at Tehachapi State Prison. Gordon Stewart Northcott, while on trial for abusing and murdering four boys, heard his mother testify that she was not his mother, but his grandmother."Louisa stated that Gordon was the result of a crime of incest that her husband, Cyruss George Northcott, committed against their daughter Winifred.

The LAPD insisted that Walter had been one of the victims of Gordon Stewart Northcott. But Collins refused to believe it, especially because her son’s body was never found on the Northcotts’ chicken ranch in Wineville. Continuing her search and never giving up hope, Collins became the first woman in more than three decades to receive permission to visit a serial killer on the eve of his execution at San Quentin. In October 1930, Northcott sent her a telegram 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. 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.”

Five years after Northcott’s execution, one of the other boys he was accused of killing was found alive and well. This tiny bit of news gave Collins the hope she needed to go on searching for the rest of her life.