"I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since." - H. H. Holmes
Christine Collins gave her son some money to go to the cinema on the evening of March 10th 1928. Walter went to see a film but he never returned. Christine expected him home a few hours later and when he didn't return, she called the police and filed a missing person’s report. Walter was 9 years old. He was last seen around 5:00pm by a neighbor at the corner of Pasadena Avenue and North Avenue 23 in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. 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 16th, 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 they could to become famous. The headless body of a Latino boy was also found in February of the same year and all the cases remained unsolved which put increasing pressure in the Los Angeles Police Department. The Walter Collins case gained nationwide notoriety and the LAPD were eager to solve the case to save themselves from further embarrassment. The Los Angeles Police Department followed up on hundreds of leads without success. The police immediately faced negative publicity and increased public pressure to resolve the case immediately. They were desperate.
In August of 1928, 5 months after Walter went missing the LAPD found a missing boy in Illinois. The boy initially would not give the police any information except to say that his father had abandoned him. He was put into temporary care with a foster family. After some questioning, the boy admitted to police his name was Walter Collins from Los Angeles and that he had been avoiding their questions to protect his father. Walter had been found! Illinois police contacted the LAPD, sent photographs of the boy, and later sent him to Los Angeles. Media outlets were notified and newspapers reported that Walter Collins had been found through incredible detective work by the police department and the case was now resolved. A public reunion was organised and scheduled for broadcast. Christine Collins was notified and given pictures of the boy. She immediately said that it was not her son Walter. The boy resembled him and there was a likewise but without question, the boy that was brought to Los Angeles was not Walter. Such was the LAPD's desperation to save face in front of the national media that the LAPD tried to convince Christine to take the boy home for a while just in case she was mistaken. The detective in charge of the case Captain J.J Jones is quoted as asking Christine to just 'try the boy out' for a period of time.
Exhausted from protesting, Collins consented to take him home. 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 said she was wrong and that she need psychiatric help. He 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. Jones had Collins committed to the psychiatric ward at Los Angeles County Hospital under a "Code 12" internment – a term used to jail or commit someone who was deemed difficult or an inconvenience. Jones questioned the boy, who eventually admitted to being 12-year-old Arthur Hutchens, Jr., a runaway from Iowa. His motive for posing as Collins was to get to Hollywood so he could meet his favorite actor, Tom Mix. People had mentioned to him that he resembled the missing boy Walter Collins and Arthur decided to use this to his advantage. Collins was released ten days after Hutchens admitted that he was not her son and she filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department. Collins won a lawsuit against Jones and was awarded $10,800, the equivalent of $160,000 today, which Jones never paid.
In September 1928, a Canadian woman named Winifred Clark contacted U.S. authorities to tell them that her nephew had kidnapped and was holding her son, Sanford Wesley Clark, in California. Jessie Clark was worried about her 15-year-old brother since he left two years prior with their uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott, who was only 21 at the time. Jessie decided to go to Northcott’s ranch in Wineville, California to check on things. In the few days she stayed, she found out her uncle was abusing her brother. 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. Sanford also said Northcott had killed a Latino boy in La Puente. They both killed Walter Collins because the boy had seen Northcott help another man kill his mining partner. Sanford told the police that 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. A child’s whistle and several Boy Scout badges were found. However, there was no evidence to suggest Walter Collins had been killed there. These murders became known as the 'Wineville Chicken Coop Murders' it is still unknown the exact amount of deaths that occurred on the farm. On August 31, 1928, two Immigration Service inspectors, Judson F. Shaw and George W. Scallorn, visited the ranch and took Clark into custody. Northcott had seen the agents driving up the long road to his ranch and, before fleeing into the treeline which lined the edge of his property, told Clark to stall them or threatened to shoot him from the treeline with a rifle. During the next two hours, while Clark stalled, Northcott kept running. Finally, when Clark felt that the agents could protect him, he told them that Northcott had fled. Northcott and his mother, Sarah Louise, fled to Canada but were arrested near Vernon, British Columbia, on September 19, 1928.
In 1929, Gordon Stewart Northcott was found guilty of abducting, molesting, and killing three young boys in what became known as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Northcott's mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, confessed in late 1928 to her participation in the murder of Walter Collins and that he was one of her son's victims, acknowledging that she played a role in Walter's death on the farm in Wineville. Following her confession, she was sentenced without trial to life imprisonment for her role in Walter's death. The state chose not to prosecute Gordon Northcott for Walter's murder and instead brought him to trial for the murders of three other young boys for which there was also forensic evidence. On February 13, 1929, he was found guilty for all three murders and sentenced to death. Despite these convictions, Gordon Northcott denied killing Walter Collins, and Sarah Northcott later attempted to rescind her confession and gave other scattered and inconsistent statements. Christine Collins, who chose to believe her son was still alive (in spite of the guilty plea entered by Sarah Northcott to a judge, and corroborating testimony by Sanford Clark, in the murder of Walter Collins), corresponded with Gordon Northcott and received permission to interview him shortly before his execution. Northcott pledged to explain the true account of her son's fate, but he recanted at the last minute and professed his innocence of any involvement. Gordan Northcott was hanged. He was 23 years old at the time of his death. Shortly after his death the town of Wineville changed its name to 'Mira Loma' in order to disassociate itself from Northcutt and the murders, due to relentless negative press. Christine Collins was encouraged by the fact that a boy Northcutt had been accused of killing was found alive some years later. This gave her the faith she needed to continue searching for Walter as she believed he was still alive. She died on the 8th of December 1964 aged 75 years old. The Hollywood blockbuster 'The Changeling' starring Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins is based on the events of the Walter Collins case.
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